GEORGE WALLACE DIRECTS ALABAMA STATE POLICE TO KEEP PUBLIC SCHOOLS CLOSED
Birmingham, Alabama (JFK+50) On September 9, 1963, Governor George C. Wallace* attempted to stop the carrying out of a Federal court order "directing that blacks be admitted to three public schools."
The Alabama governor sent state police to Huntsville, Mobile, Tuskegee and Birmingham to prevent public schools from opening. Tensions were particularly high in Birmingham where riots broke out.
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Birmingham and informed reporters that the city was "in a state of civil disorder."
*George C. Wallace (1919-1998) was 4 times governor of Alabama & 4 times a candidate for POTUS. GCW became known as "the embodiment of resistance to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
In 1962, he said...."Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever."
SOURCES
"Former Ala. Gov. George C. Wallace Dies," by Richard Pearson, The Washington Post, September 14, 1998, www.washingtonpost.com
"Kennedy, Johnson and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes," by Jonathan Rosenberg & Zachary Karabell, W.W. Norton and Company, 2003.
