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1963 - Integration of Alabama Schools

The "deliberate speed" called for in the Supreme Court's Brown decision was quickly overshadowed by events outside the nation's courtrooms. In Montgomery, Alabama, a grassroots revolt against segregated public transportation inspired a multitude of similar protests and boycotts. A number of school districts in the Southern and border states desegregated peacefully. Elsewhere, white resistance to school desegregation resulted in open defiance and violent confrontations.

In September 1963, a total of 17 Southern and border states, 147 school districts were ready to integrate their facilities for the first time. At most places, everything went well. But in Alabama trouble flared and diverted much of the nation's attention from the civil rights progress achieved elsewhere. Four Alabama cities-Tuskegee, Mobile, Birmingham and Huntsville-were scheduled to start token public school integration. Even Birmingham, long a national symbol of diehard segregationist sentiment, now seemed resigned.

Alabama's Democratic Governor George Wallace was having no temperate talk. When 13 Negro children were supposed to show up for enrollment in a Tuskegee high school, Wallace sent more than 100 state troopers into the town. On 10 September 1963 the troopers surrounded the school, turned away all pupils and teachers trying to enter, and passed around copies of Wallace's "Executive Order No.9" - which declared that the school was being shut down in order to "preserve the peace and maintain domestic tranquillity."

All of the Alabama National Guard was called to active duty but held on standby in armories 10-14 September 1963; authorized by EO 11118 of 10 September 1963.

From Mayor Howard Rutherford on down, Tuskegee officials were enraged by Wallace. Tuskegee city officials, backed by most of the community's citizens, protested Wallace's action as an "invasion." But the high school stayed shut - and Wallace ordered most of his troopers to move on to Birmingham, where integration was supposed to start two days later, on 11 September 1963.

Speculation ran strong that Wallace, seeking the political advantage that defiance of the Federal Government on civil rights issues can bring in Alabama, was deliberately trying to goad the Kennedy Administration into sending U.S. troops into the state for a second time.

A riot in Birmingham gave Governor Wallace the excuse he needed to postpone integration not only in Tuskegee and Birmingham but in Mobile and Huntsville as well. Said Wallace's press secretary: "The Governor is concerned over the situation in these two cities, as he is concerned about the situation in Birmingham and Tuskegee." Governor Wallace could still boast to the press: "I want you to realize that there is not a single integrated school in the state of Alabama yet."