Gov. George Wallace blocks the doorway to Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, June 11, 1963.
Black students were not admitted to the University of Alabama until a federal judge ordered the university to be integrated and President Kennedy sent in the National Guard.
The night of Wallace's stand in the doorway, Kennedy gave a speech to the nation on civil rights. Later that night Medgar Evers was killed in Jackson, Mississippi.
One reason the integration of the University of Alabama may have been less violent is that Wallace probably just wanted to put on a show.