[6][7] Wallace privately signaled to the Kennedy administration his intention to avoid fomenting violence, such as had occurred in the September 1962 Battle of Oxford with the desegregation of the University of Mississippi.

The head of the Alabama State Police, Albert Lingo, who reported directly to Wallace, warned leaders of the Ku Klux Klan that their members would be arrested if they appeared in Tuscaloosa.

Bull Connor, the chief of Birmingham Police, also told Klan members to spread word that Wallace wanted no crowds to gather in the town.

[8] On the eve of the incident, the U.S. Justice Department tried to discredit Wallace by leaking to a Newsday reporter the private health information that the Governor was receiving government payments related to a psychiatric disability suffered while flying in bombing missions over Japan during World War II.

Kennedy administration officials, struggling with a potentially violent situation, considered simply bypassing Foster Auditorium and having Malone and Hood escorted directly to their dorm rooms.

But given reports of an agitated Wallace, Robert Kennedy told Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, "You'd better give him his show because I'm concerned if he doesn't have it ... that God knows what could happen by way of violence.

"[10] Administration officials also concluded the best optics would be to present the matter as a conflict between state and federal authority, not a racial confrontation between the white governor and the black students.

So it was that Malone and Hood remained in their vehicle as Wallace, attempting to uphold his promise as well as for political show,[6][11] blocked the entrance to Foster Auditorium with the media watching.

[19] The stage managing of the incident did avoid provoking violence, but it also served Wallace's purposes by amplifying his contention that desegregation was not primarily an issue of racial justice, but one of "states' rights" instead.

[22] After living in a dorm surrounded by federal marshals, he'd had a dead black cat mailed to him and was threatened with expulsion for a speech he gave that berated Governor Wallace and the University of Alabama.

In June 2012, George Wallace Jr. commented on his father's legacy, and mentioned the reference to the event in Bob Dylan's 1964 song "The Times They Are a-Changin' ": "Come Senators, Congressmen, please heed the call.