George Wallace's Schoolhouse Speech Donation

      The official copy of George Wallace's schoolhouse "Statement and Proclamation" will be presented by Al Steineker to the Alabama Department of Archives and History on Monday, June 11th at 10 a.m. in the Milo B. Howard, Jr. Auditorium, 624 Washington Avenue, Montgomery.

      On this day 38 years ago, Alabama's Governor George Wallace came to national prominence when he kept a campaign pledge to stand in the schoolhouse door to block integration of Alabama public schools. Governor Wallace read this proclamation when he first stood in the door-way to block the attempt of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, to register at the University of Alabama. President Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard, and ordered its units to the university campus. Wallace then stepped aside and returned to Montgomery allowing the students to enter.

      E. Culpepper Clark will give a brief talk about the events and significance of the day and show video footage of the encounter. Well-versed on this subject, Clark is Dean of the College of Communications and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama and author of The Schoolhouse Door: Segregation's Last Stand at the University of Alabama. The donor, Al Steineker, will present the document in behalf of the Steineker family, and talk about how he acquired the original copy of the speech during his presentation of the document to the Archives. The program is open to the public.

      Another copy of the speech is located in the Samford University Library Special Collections Department. This unsigned copy was discarded by Governor Wallace after he completed the speech and found later by Lillie Mae Beason, then an adult graduate student at the University.

      Celebrating its centennial this year, the Alabama Archives, the oldest state-funded archives in the United States, is the major repository for Alabama history. Archival collections dating from the territorial period to the present are available to researchers. Museum exhibits include Indian history, military history, 19^th century Alabama, and a more recent photographic exhibit of the Selma to Montgomery March. Construction on a new west wing --to begin this summer-- will better enable the Alabama Archives to accommodate its existing collections and provide additional exhibition space to tell the history of the State.