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 Justice Warren rules "separate education facilities are inherently unequal in Brown vs The Board of Education of Topeka. Dec. 1955... Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, AL when she refuses to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back of the bus. A young black minister, Martin Luther King Jr., leads blacks in a boycott of this public transportation. Feb. 3, 1956... The federal court in Birmingham orders that the University of Alabama admit their first black student, Autherine Lucy. Lucy is assaulted on campus by an angry mob of segregationists and Klansmen. She is later suspended and expelled by the University's trustees for allegedly enrolling as part of an NAACP conspiracy. June 1956... Federal...