When James Hood integrated the University of Alabama under the watchful eye of a national television audience in 1963, education was the farthest career from his mind. He was planning to earn a degree, enter a seminary and become a minister. More than three decades later, Hood has returned to the university where he and Vivian Malone, the other Black student who enrolled with him, defied then Gov. George Wallace’s pledge to prevent desegregation efforts to earn a doctorate degree and to continue to nurture his love of education. That love has been focused for many years on community college education.
“I think [the community college] is where the need is and where the future of education is,” said Hood, who plans to return to Madison Area Technical College, where he has worked as an administrators for the department of human and protective services.
Said Hood: “I think that the community college will be the place where people can get prepared for the most abundant jobs available now _ service occupations. If you look at statistics for people coming out of four-year institutions … the jobs are not there. But if you look at the two- year college, I think that most of the jobs out there available for folks are the service jobs.”
At age 17, and during the height of the civil rights movement, Hood and the NAACP sued the University of Alabama to admit him. Federal courts ordered the university to desegregate. It was the last state in the country to do so. He and Malone were admitted the following year. Hood said he became involved with the civil rights movement through Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s sister, his English teacher at Clarke University in Atlanta. He attended Clarke while waiting to enter the university in his home state.
Hood dropped out of the University of Alabama shortly after enrolling, he said, on his doctor’s advice. “I was under more stress than a normal person should be,” he said. “I had an active ulcer. Also, my father was dying of cancer, though my mother kept that information from me when I was first trying to get admitted. The stress of my situation was not good for him,” recalled Hood. His father died shortly after he left the university.
Hood later enrolled in Wayne State University in Michigan where he completed an undergraduate degree in police administration and political science.
Before discovering his passion for education, he tried his hand in several careers. He was a minister for three years in Detroit. He served as a police chaplain, and later worked on the political campaign of Sen. Coleman Young, when he ran for mayor of Detroit. After the campaign, Young appointed Hood deputy chief of police for the city, a position he held from 1974 to 1978.
