Word: alabama
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Alabama, the Cradle of the Confederacy, was the center of resistance. George Wallace tuned up for his presidential campaign by swinging around the state, telling devotes about the perils of Freedom of Choice. Those black children are goin' into the schools, George said, and that means that the whites ones are goin' to leave. George said that he was shore nuff sorry, but it looked like the state of Alabama wouldn't be able to keep a public school system goin' no more, because there wouldn't be any support from the legislature and the entire white public would resist...
...Federal judges in Alabama were not impressed. They clamped down Freedom of Choice, and George Wallace, as he had done before in the University of Alabama doorway, backed down. A few whites migrated to the private schools, but they came back soon. Public schools continued...
Once white Alabama learned about this soft underbelly of Freedom of Choice, the people who had resisted it so vehemently suddenly found themselves defending it as "the best hope for quality education in our state." Obviously it wasn't going to turn their schools into segregated ones; and if it did, it would do it more slowly than any other plan. At the same time, the Justice Department and many black lawyers also realized that a new system was needed. So they began yet another legal battle against the sturdy Southern schools...
This summer's court session in Alabama saw two major trials, each illustrating one phase of the fight against Freedom of Choice. The first, held in early August, was mainly valuable as a theatrical production. The name of the suit--The United States of America vs. The United Klans of America--hinted what kind of an affair it would be. An inexperienced Justice Department lawyer brought a parade of 50 residents of Crenshaw County, Ala., to the stand and had them tell what the Klan had been doing to keep Freedom of Choice from working in the county's schools...
Working from statistics that showed that 97 per cent of Alabama's black children had "chosen" to stay in black schools, and quoting a Supreme Court ruling that invalidated Freedom of Choice when it didn't "speedily end the dual school system," the Justice Department asked for more radical measures. Specifically, it wanted the court to close many black schools and begin bussing and zoning plans to achieve racial balance in the schools. And it wanted all of this done before the 1968 school year opened...