Tuskegee High School

In August 1963, the United States District Court for M. D. Alabama sided with the plaintiff in Lee v. Macon County Board of Education, a pivotal civil rights case involving the integration of the all-white Tuskegee High School located on this site. On September 2, 1963, thirteen African American students attempted to attend the school on the first day of classes, but Alabama Governor George Wallace ordered the school closed because of “safety concerns.” The school reopened a week later, but it ultimately closed permanently as white students rapidly withdrew. Because of these events and others, in March 1967 a three-judge federal district court issued a blanket order for nationwide desegregation of schools, and that order was upheld later that year in the U.S. Supreme Court case Wallace v. United States. The Supreme Court case, of which Lee v. Macon County was a part, went on to become a blueprint for school desegregation throughout the United States.

Tuskegee, Alabama · United States