University of Alabama pioneer James Hood: 'He changed Alabama and we are all better for it.'

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama ? Fifty years ago this week George Wallace stood on the steps of the Alabama Capitol and promised the people of Alabama "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

Just five months later 20-year-old James Hood exposed Wallace's words for the demagoguery they were.

He did it along with Vivian Malone, by successfully enrolling at the University of Alabama.

Hood and Malone made history that day by becoming the university's first black students.

James Hood died Thursday. He was 70.

Hood's history-making moment at Alabama was a brief one. He enrolled in June of 1963 and just a few months later he withdrew from the school. Malone stayed.

Why Hood left has more than one answer, but a man who knew him and knew Malone and knows well the history they made together was not focusing late Thursday on why Hood left Alabama. E. Culpepper "Cully" Clark was focused on the fact that Hood had come to UA at all and what that means almost a half century later.

"James Hood and Vivian Malone changed the University of Alabama forever and allowed it to join the first tier of universities in our nation," said Clark.

But Hood and Malone did more than just change the university, said Clark.

"They changed us, the people of Alabama and the South. They made us a better people because of the courage they had and that is what I want to remember right now with James' passing," said Clark.

Clark was a professor and administrator at Alabama for 35 years. Now 69, he is dean of the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia.

Clark's book, "The Schoolhouse Door" provides a definitive history of Wallace's famous attempt to block Hood and Malone from enrolling at UA by standing in the door of Foster Auditorium on June 11, 1963.

"It's hard for students today to put themselves in James and Vivian's shoes and in one way that is good because it means we have come so far from those times," said Clark. "But the courage it took to be the first two to actually do it, to enroll, was enormous. Others had tried but were always blocked. But on that day history found in James and Vivian two people willing to defy a governor and so many others so that they could achieve their dream of a better future not only for them, but for others."

Clark said Hood's eventual withdrawal from the university was almost inevitable.

"Vivian Malone was such an emotionally stable person who would find a way to do what she needed to do," said Clark. "James, on the other hand, wanted to always please. He had a view of Wallace, a view that Wallace was simply acting on principle, carrying out his constitutional duty. That did not go over well with some. He lost some support, some emotional support he needed and he said some other things that left him alone. It was all too much."

But Clark went back to that June day in 1963 when Hood showed a state and nation that it could change.

"That really was then and is now an iconic moment in our history, that moment Wallace stepped aside and James and Vivian enrolled," said Clark. "Whatever happened after that, whatever missteps James may have made, on that day he changed Alabama and we are all better for it."

Source: http://blog.al.com/wire/2013/01/james_hood_he_changed_alabama.html

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