# James Hood

James Alexander Hood (November 10, 1942 – January 17, 2013) was one of the first African Americans to enroll at the University of Alabama in 1963, and was made famous when Alabama Governor George Wallace attempted to block him and fellow student Vivian Malone from enrolling at the then all-white university, an incident which became known as the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door".

## Early life

Hood was born on November 10, 1942, in Gadsden, Alabama. His father, Octavie Hood, drove a tractor at a Goodyear tire plant.
Hood began college at the historically-black Clark College, but wanted to transfer so he could pursue a degree in clinical psychology, which wasn't available at Clark.

## University of Alabama

On June 11, 1963, in a ceremonial demonstration, Wallace stood in front of the university's Foster Auditorium. Hood arrived to pay his fees, accompanied by Vivian Malone and Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. Wallace intended to keep true to his promise of upholding segregation in the state and stopping "integration at the schoolhouse door". As Malone and Hood waited in a car, Deputy Attorney General Katzenbach and a small team of federal marshals confronted Wallace to demand that he step aside and allow Malone and Hood entry, by order of the state court. Wallace not only refused the order, he interrupted Katzenbach and, in front of the crowds of media crews surrounding him, delivered a short, symbolic speech concerning state sovereignty, claiming that: "The unwelcomed, unwanted, unwarranted and force-induced intrusion upon the campus of the University of Alabama... of the might of the Central Government offers frightful example of the oppression of the rights, privileges and sovereignty of this State by officers of the Federal Government."
After seeing that Wallace would not step aside, Katzenbach called upon the assistance of President John F. Kennedy to force Wallace to permit the black students' entry into the university. President Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard later the same day, which put them under the command of the President, rather than the Governor of Alabama. Guardsmen escorted Hood and Malone back to the auditorium, where Wallace moved aside at the request of General Henry Graham. Hood and Malone then entered the building, albeit through another door.
Hood left the university after only two months. He'd started his time on campus on a dorm floor shared only by federal marshals, and had a dead black cat mailed to him. He was then threatened with expulsion for a speech he gave that berated Governor Wallace and the University of Alabama. The final straw was his father's cancer, and so he left to avoid a "complete mental and physical breakdown." He received a bachelor's degree from Michigan's Wayne State University and a master's degree from Michigan State University, concentrating in criminal justice and sociology.

## Later life

Hood then moved to Wisconsin, where he worked at the Madison Area Technical College for 26 years. He was a deputy police chief in Detroit at one point, and worked in the police science program at the Madison Area Technical College.
Hood returned to the University of Alabama in the 1990s to begin earning his doctorate degree in interdisciplinary studies. In 1996, he started a book on George Wallace, the governor who had tried to prevent his integration of the University of Alabama back in 1963. Hood sat at Wallace's bedside for hours of interviews and the two became friends, although Hood grappled with how Wallace could explain his actions. Hood decided that Wallace was a politician willing to exploit racism for votes rather than a deeply racist person, although other black people who knew Wallace contested Hood's justifications. Hood earned his Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies in 1997 and requested that Wallace present his degree, and Wallace would have if not for his poor health. Hood believed that Wallace's apologies for his past actions were sincere, as he wrote in an interchange following a PBS documentary on Wallace, Setting the Woods on Fire. Hood attended Wallace's funeral in 1998, saying that Wallace was haunted by the lack of forgiveness for his actions and that he had already forgiven Wallace, since Wallace had publicly apologized for his opinions and actions. Vivian Malone, the other black student who integrated the university with Hood, had similarly forgiven Wallace in his later years, and met with him in 1996 as well.

## Personal life

Hood retired in 2002 as chairman of public safety services in charge of police and fire training at the Madison Area Technical College. He then moved back to Gadsden, Alabama, the city in which he was born, where he died at home on January 17, 2013, at the age of 70. He was survived by his daughters Mary Hood and Jacquelyn Hood-Duncan, and sons Darrell, Anthony, and Marvis Hood.