ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, July 5, 1996 TAG: 9607050049
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MONTGOMERY, ALA.
SOURCE: Associated Press
THIRTY-THREE YEARS AGO, Gov. George Wallace vowed to ``stand in the schoolhouse door'' to keep James Hood out of the University of Alabama. The two had a few things to say to each other Tuesday.
Once, George C. Wallace vowed to ``stand in the schoolhouse door'' to keep James Hood out of the University of Alabama.
Hood is now a doctoral candidate at the university. Wallace, a sickly man who is just a shadow of the fiery segregationist governor he was in 1963, hopes to be in good enough health to see him receive his degree next month.
They met for the first time Tuesday, 33 years after Wallace tried to prevent Hood and Vivian Malone, both black, from registering at the school.
Wallace renounced his segregationist views years ago, but Hood still wanted to meet him ``because you never get to know a man until you look him in the eye.''
They met privately for about 20 minutes in Wallace's office. Afterward, Hood said he asked whether the former governor really believed segregation was right.
``His answer was that it was right politically. He does not agree with that now, but he felt that the people of the state of Alabama expected that,'' Hood said. ``He was a segregationist, and that's something it was acceptable to be in this state in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.''
Hood said he forgave Wallace: ``I have never had any reason not to forgive Governor Wallace.''
Wallace, Hood and Malone did not meet when the governor made his largely ceremonial stand at Foster Auditorium on June 11, 1963. After declaring his opposition, Wallace left, and the two students - with a National Guard escort - were enrolled.
Hood said he doesn't recall being angry or afraid he would be hurt.
``I guess the question was `why?''' Hood recalled. ``Not why he was there, but why was this necessary? Why did I have to be confronted to attain this right that was in the Constitution?''
Wallace, in a wheelchair since an assassination attempt in 1972 and stricken with a variety of ailments, admitted Tuesday he probably will be remembered for that episode, but ``it's all right with me.''
``I did what the people of Alabama wanted me to do in those days,'' he said. ``I'm a Christian, I love all people, black, brown ... all people are God's children.''
Hood, now 54, invited Wallace to his graduation next month, and Wallace plans to attend if his health permits. And Hood said he plans in the next four or five years to pursue his long-held ambition: to run for governor.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 linesby CNB