Chapter 23, Crossing Over: Nightmares and Dreams, Summary and Analysis

In September, Governor Wallace fought the integration of three elementary schools in Birmingham, but stood down when Kennedy federalized the Alabama guard troops and withdrew them. Then a group of white students at West End High formed a movement to integrate classes while other students staged a sit-in at the mayor's office. Wallace went to Maryland and declared his intention to run in the 1964 presidential primary.

On Youth Day at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, a bomb went off outside the church, injuring many people and killing four little girls. Violence quickly broke out in the city streets, mostly white on blacks; but Wallace called in the state troopers in anticipation of angry Negroes taking revenge in the streets. Kennedy immediately sent Marshall to Birmingham to make sure there...