I am posting this in responce to those who claim we Dems unfairly tag the race card on Conservatives.
Alabama Vote Opens Old Racial Wounds
School Segregation Remains a State Law as Amendment Is Defeated
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 28, 2004; Page A01
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- On that long-ago day of Alabama's great shame, Gov. George C. Wallace (D) stood in a schoolhouse door and declared that his state's constitution forbade black students to enroll at the University of Alabama.
He was correct.
Confronted by U.S. Justice Department officials, Alabama Gov. George Wallace stands in the doorway of the all-white University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa to block the admission of two black students in 1963. (Calvin Hannah -- Tuscaloosa News Via AP)
If Wallace could be brought back to life today to reprise his 1963 moment of infamy outside Foster Auditorium, he would still be correct. Alabama voters made sure of that Nov. 2, refusing to approve a constitutional amendment to erase segregation-era wording requiring separate schools for "white and colored children" and to eliminate references to the poll taxes once imposed to disenfranchise blacks.
The vote was so close -- a margin of 1,850 votes out of 1.38 million -- that an automatic recount will take place Monday. But, with few expecting the results to change, the amendment's saga has dragged Alabama into a confrontation with its segregationist past that illuminates the sometimes uneasy race relations of its present............
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16443-2004Nov27.html?referrer=emailarticle