TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- On that long-ago day of Alabama's great shame, Gov. George C. Wallace (D) stood in a schoolhouse door and declared that his state's constitution forbade black students to enroll at the University of Alabama.
He was correct.
If Wallace could be brought back to life today to reprise his 1963 moment of infamy outside Foster Auditorium, he would still be correct. Alabama voters made sure of that Nov. 2, refusing to approve a constitutional amendment to erase segregation-era wording requiring separate schools for "white and colored children" and to eliminate references to the poll taxes once imposed to disenfranchise blacks.
The vote was so close -- a margin of 1,850 votes out of 1.38 million -- that an automatic recount will take place Monday. But, with few expecting the results to change, the amendment's saga has dragged Alabama into a confrontation with its segregationist past that illuminates the sometimes uneasy race relations of its present.
The outcome resonates achingly here in this college town, where the silver-haired men and women who close their eyes and lift their arms when the organ wails at Bethel Baptist Church -- a short drive from Wallace's schoolhouse door -- don't have to strain to remember riding buses past the shiny all-white school on their way to the all-black school.
"There are people here who are still fighting the Civil War," said Tommy Woods, 63, a deacon at Bethel and a retired school administrator. "They're holding on to things that are long since past. It's almost like a religion."
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It is funny long after segregation is over, the people of Alabama can't even vote to erase the segregation-era wording in their constitution. I am not surprised though.
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