Civil Rights

By the mid-20th century, racial tensions had escalated and demonstrations swelled for voting rights and school integration. Beginning with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 lead by Reverend Martin Luther King, conflicts between the Civil Rights movement and those who would fight to maintain "the white way of life" would lead to violence and, in some cases, murder. Between 1948 and 1965, over two hundred Black churches and homes in the Deep South were the target of bombings, and there was no more volatile city than Birmingham, Alabama (dubbed "Bombingham.") In 1962, before his election as Governor, George Wallace aligned himself with other Southern Governors who were facing the same issues of federal intervention in order to impose desegregation in their states' schools. Wallace appeared at a rally for Georgia's Marvin Griffin, who was running against a candidate with more moderate views on desegregation. Wallace also supported Mississippi's Governor Ross Barnett in the dramatic confrontation between state and federal authority over the admission of the University of Mississippi's first black student, James Meredith. The stage was set for his own dramatic stand at the University of Alabama. 1954... Supreme Court Chief

Over 200 Northern college students travel to Mississippi to participate in "Freedom Summer. Students belonging to the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee in Greensboro, NC conduct the first "sit-in" at lunch counters. Segregation by Force and by Choice It was America's apartheid system. Wallace, though regretful of the injuries inflicted on the Civil Rights marchers, maintains that he "saved their lives by stopping the march. Job opportunities for blacks and whites were consistently different and unequal. They arrive on the lawn of the state capitol in Montgomery on March 25 joined by tens of thousands of supporters to hear Rev.