First to challenge ban against black students at University of Alabama

Date

February 5, 2013

James Hood.

JAMES ALEXANDER HOOD
ANTI-SEGREGATIONIST
10-11-1942 — 17-1-2013

JAMES Hood, who has died aged 70, rose to national prominence in the US as a civil rights campaigner when he defied segregationists as one of the first black students to enrol at the University of Alabama.

On a scorching hot day in June 1963, Hood, accompanied by Vivian Malone, an African-American woman, attempted to register for classes. They were prevented from doing so by George Wallace, the then governor of Alabama, in a confrontation that was broadcast live on national television.

Wallace, a hardline segregationist, promised to ”stand in the schoolhouse door” rather than allow black students to attend the university; however, he was forced to stand aside when President John F. Kennedy responded by calling in the National Guard.

Two months after enrolling, Hood withdrew from the university after being sent a dead cat and receiving threats to his life. His stand against segregation nonetheless remains a seminal moment in the civil rights movement, and helped lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Hood was born at Gadsden, Alabama, and attended Carver High School, where he excelled as an athlete and student leader. At Clark College in Atlanta, he was already considering pursuing a psychology degree at the University of Alabama when he read an article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, written by an academic, that claimed blacks lacked higher-thinking abilities.

Incensed, Hood wrote to the newspaper, and later received a reply from the academic, written on lavatory paper.

During this period the civil rights movement was gaining momentum, as students initiated sit-ins and freedom rides across the American south in non-violent resistance to segregation.

Hood applied to study at Alabama University in the knowledge that it was the sole public university left in the US that admitted only white students. When declined a place on the basis of his race, Hood won a court ruling forcing the university to admit him.

Wallace had campaigned for governor the previous year on a pledge to fight plans by the federal government to integrate Alabama’s schools and state university, and had won by a landslide. In later years Wallace underwent a political transformation, and apologised for his actions that day.

Hood subsequently graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit and received a masters degree in criminal justice from Michigan State University.

He became deputy police chief in Detroit in the 1970s.

He is survived by three sons and two daughters.

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