"THE WHITE SOUTH ANSWERS"

 “THE WHITE SOUTH ANSWERS”

This year marks the 60th anniversary of many important events in 1963 in the civil rights movement.  In January, 1963, George Wallace was inaugurated governor of Alabama, with his “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” speech.  In April and May, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference held a series of demonstrations in Birmingham, designed to break the hold of white supremacy on the institutions of Birmingham.  Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his famous “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” during this campaign.  Later he would lead the March on Washington in late August.  

This week marks two events which were part of the response of the white South to the civil rights movement.  For several months in 1963, the NAACP had been working on desegregating the University of Alabama, and after sifting through many potential students to be the test cases, James Hood and Vivian Malone were selected.  Both were native Alabamians – Hood was born in Gadsden, and Malone in Mobile County.  The NAACP had filed suit in federal court in Alabama to force the University to admit Hood and Malone.  Federal judge Harlan Grooms ordered the University of Alabama to allow Malone and Hood to register for classes.  On June 11, 1963, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach accompanied Malone and Hood to register, but standing in the door of Foster Auditorium was Governor George Wallace, who had vowed to block the registration of Hood and Malone.  The students stayed in the car, while Attorney General Katzenbach asked Wallace to step aside and allow the students to register.  

While Katzenbach was speaking, Wallace interrupted him to say:

“The unwelcomed, unwanted, unwarranted and force-induced intrusion upon the campus of the University of Alabama ... of the might of the Central Government offers frightful example of the oppression of the rights, privileges and sovereignty of this State by officers of the Federal Government." Katzenbach then contacted President John F. Kennedy, who nationalized the Alabama National Guard.  The Guard then accompanied Malone and Hood, and Governor Wallace stepped aside, with Malone and Hood becoming the first Black students at the University of Alabama.  Vivian Malone would later become the first Black graduate of the University.

The power of that white resistance would travel quickly almost 200 miles to the west in Jackson, Mississippi.  The next day on June 12, Medgar Evers, field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi, was assassinated by Byron de la Beckwith, as Evers returned home from many meetings.  Beckwith shot Evers with a rifle, dropped the rifle and ran.  Evers was a World War II veteran, and he had been heavily involved in the civil rights movement in Mississippi, including assisting Mamie Till Mobley in dealing with the lynching of her son Emmett Till. Beckwith was arrested and tried twice, but an all-white jury acquitted him both times. Thanks to the hard work and witness of Myrlie Evers, Medgar Evers’ widow, and thanks to the investigative work of reporter Jerry Mitchell and others, Beckwith was retried in 1994 and sentenced to life in prison, which is where he died in 2001.

These events of white resistance to the idea of the equality of those classified as “Black” are part of a long and terrible history, which is continuing and even being revived in these days.  Historian Jefferson Cowie wrote a powerful book on this last year entitled “Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power,” and it details the sordid story of this white resistance, focused on George Wallace’s home county, Barbour County, with Eufala as the center of it.  That story is echoed all over the South, and it still resonates today.  Many of us were surprised when SCOTUS ruled last week that Alabama’s redistricting map violated the Voting Rights Act and will have to be redrawn – that will be interesting to watch.  Vivian Malone’s spirit will be involved in that – for a while in the 1970’s, she was the director of the The Voter Education Project, which sought to expand voting rights for all, especially for those classified as “Black.”