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The "affirmative action" precedent may some day be used to attack de facto segregated schools in the North as well. Not that Northern judges are yet obliged to follow the precedent: its applicability depends on proof that a segregated system is the result of unconstitutional state action. Meanwhile, the Wallaces are apparently determined to stage a dramatic happening in Alabama next fall—a confrontation between state and federal forces comparable to Little Rock. George has already declared: "You know what we're goin' to tell them when they ask us to give 'em more in the schools of Alabama this fall? I'll tell you what we'll tell 'em: 'Goddammit, we jus' ain't."
Toward that end, Lurleen delivered a TV speech in March invoking the discredited doctrine of interposition—the notion that a state government can halt any federal action it deems unconstitutional. Conjuring up visions of parents being jailed wholesale by federal agents, Lurleen asked the legislature to hire more state troopers. Not only must all Alabamians resist desegregation "in every possible way," cried Lurleen, but "the entire nation is the battlefield! This is what Hitler did in Germany!"
The argument failed to impress a group of three Southern Governors convened by George and Lurleen to map strategy against the integration order. But it was bound to go down well in Alabama, where State Education Superintendent Austin R. Meadows said last summer: "Segregation is the basic principle of culture. The good segregate themselves from the bad." Avoiding euphemism, Alabama's Chief Justice J. Edwin Livingston says plainly: "I'm for segregation, and I don't care who knows it. I would close every school from the highest to the lowest before I would go to school with colored people."
Unlisted Number. Judge Johnson pays no attention. Two boys once burned a cross in his front yard, but to Johnson it was just a prank. After anonymous callers threatened to bomb his family, he simply got an unlisted number; federal agents have periodically guarded his comfortable ranch house ever since. He keeps a current file on all active Alabama Klansmen. Asked whether his wires are tapped, Johnson lights up another Home Run cigarette (a brand that makes Gauloises seem bleu by comparison) and noncommittally drawls: "I've made a studied effort to avoid areas of paranoia."
It takes an effort. When the judge's son Johnny was attending a private school in Montgomery, George Wallace chortled that Johnson was evading desegregation, and state agents descended on the school to investigate alleged "Communist overtones." No clues have yet led to the persons unknown who set off a bomb outside the Montgomery home of Johnson's 69-year-old mother two weeks ago. The Johnsons have lost friends, though "none we wanted to keep." They belong to Montgomery's handsome country club, but the judge confines his avid golfing (mid-80s) to a few open-minded military partners at nearby Maxwell Air Force Base, where "it's easier to be just Frank Johnson." He is not about to defend his decisions by writing articles or giving law-school lectures. "Judges make their decrees,"