title: The Schoolhouse Door: Segregation's Last Stand at the University of Alabama
author:  E. Culpepper Clark 
description: "This is a book about threats, intimidation, courage, perseverance, and the morality of an old and rotten way of life finally giving way. The story moves from the national politics of the Kennedy's confrontations with George Wallace to Wallace's artfully orchest6rated public surrender and the impact<br />of the transformation of the base of the Democratic Party in the Southern states as a result. This is a story of high drama about the human spirit and how Lucy's religious faith sustained her through the turmoil and racist threats. The author's research is carefully documented and his access to Lucy<br />is evident. Mor4e important, the author clearly identifies the forces of racism, anti-democracy and ignorance. He names names, he discloses the betrayals, and h e pierces the hypocrisies of the politicans and leaders who failed."--Nashville Banner<br />"Clark charts Wallace's rise to power from 1957 onward, and offers day-by-day insight into goings-on within the Kennedy adminstration....Engaging and upbeat, and Clarke's case that events at the University of Alabama amounted to a microcosm of the civil rights struggle is strong indeed."--Booklist<br />"All but impossible to put down, this remarkable study recalls the high drama of the days when the human spirit at its best met the human spirit at its worst at 'the schoolhouse door.' Rarely have I seen a more effective blend of analytical rigor and masterful storytelling than this book<br />presents."--James C. Cobb, The University of Tennessee, author of The Most Southern Place on Earth<br />"This readable, minutely detailed chronicle adds to the histories of the era."--Publishers Weekly<br />"Clark exposes the University of Alabama's hatefuland ill-considered responses to the crisis of racial integration that began there....His accounting of how Alabama came to occupy a special place in the demise of both segregation and states' rights deserves a close reading."--Library Journal<br />
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  # A Negro Schoolmaster in the New South
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### W. E. Burghardt Du Bois
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com
  
  
  ONCE upon a time I taught school in the hills of Tennessee, where the broad
  dark vale of the Mississippi begins
  
  
  to roll and crumple to greet the Alleghanies. I was a Fisk student then, and
  all Fisk men think that Tennessee —
  
  
  beyond the Veil — is theirs alone, and in vacation time they sally forth in
  lusty bands to meet the county school
  
  
  commissioners. Young and happy, I too went, and I shall not soon forget that
  summer, ten years ago.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  First, there was a teachers' Institute at the county-seat; and there
  distinguished guests of the superintendent
  
  
  taught the teachers fractions and spelling and other mysteries, — white
  teachers in the morning, Negroes at
  
  
  night. A picnic now and then, and a supper, and the rough world was softened
  by laughter and song. I
  
  
  remember how