Ex-Segregationist Welcomes Marchers George Wallace Has Learned ‘Hard, Important Lessons’

George Wallace, who as governor stood in the schoolhouse door to keep blacks out, sat in a schoolhouse door Friday to welcome demonstrators marking the anniversary of the 1965 voting rights march.

Marchers climbed the steps of an elementary school to shake the hand of the man who once vowed “segregation forever.”

The frail Wallace, 75, who has used a wheelchair since an assassination attempt, held hands with Southern Christian Leadership Conference President Joseph Lowery as marchers sang “We Shall Overcome.”

“Seeing that image gave a sense of hope,” said Helen Cooke, a University of Toledo professor who brought 31 high school students on the 54-mile trek from Selma.

Lowery urged Wallace to ask the state to open an investigation into the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose death catalyzed voting rights activists. He was shot by a trooper in 1965 when officers and a deputized mob attacked demonstrators leaving a church in Marion.

The 1965 report on the slaying does not address the identity of the killer. Lowery wants the killer named and brought to trial. A spokesman said Gov. Fob James will consider any formal request.

Wallace, a segregationist elected to his first term in 1962, gained notoriety for his unsuccessful “stand in the schoolhouse door” at the University of Alabama in 1963.

Two years later, as voting rights demonstrators gathered in Selma for a march to Montgomery, he sought to block the procession. A federal judge allowed it to go ahead.

Partially paralyzed by an assassin’s bullet in 1972, Wallace eventually conceded he was wrong about segregation and included blacks in his coalition when he won his fourth and final term in 1982.

“Those were different days and we are all in our own way different people,” Wallace said in a statement read by an aide. “We have all learned hard, important lessons in the 30 years that passed.”