Selma Marches: Civil Rights Forces Voting Rights Act

George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door in June 1963, literally, physically, in the doorway of the University of Alabama's Foster Auditorium, to block two Black students from enrolling. President Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard the same day and forced him to step aside. Vivian Malone and James Hood walked in. Wallace had made his position explicit in his inaugural address six months earlier: "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." He meant it. Alabama had been slow to comply with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, and Wallace embodied the state's defiance. But the doorway stand was theater. He knew the federal government would prevail. The performance was aimed at white voters who wanted a governor willing to make the gesture. Two months later, twenty African American students entered public schools across Alabama under federal court orders, extending desegregation from the university to primary and secondary education. Each student's enrollment required individual court battles, and many faced threats and harassment that continued for years. The broader civil rights movement in Alabama had already produced the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, the Freedom Rides in 1961, and would culminate in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches that pushed Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. Wallace built a national political career on that schoolhouse doorway, running for president four times. He was shot and paralyzed during his 1972 campaign. In the 1980s, he publicly renounced his segregationist positions, won a final term as governor with significant Black voter support, and spent his last years seeking forgiveness from the people he had worked to oppress.