There have been many recent events in my hometown, Tuscaloosa, Ala., commemorating or commiserating (take your choice) the 40th anniversary of Gov. George C. Wallace’s famous “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” at the University of Alabama.

I will never forget June 11, 1963. I had just completed my sophomore year at Druid High School, the all-Black facility at the opposite end of town, and we followed the televised cross-town antics as they unfolded at Foster Auditorium. Wallace was making his stand there, having had a circle painted on the ground, a line that the two Black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, were not to cross and then register inside.

With sweat dripping off of his face, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, representing President John F. Kennedy, asked Wallace if he would grant “unequivocal assurance that you or anybody under your control will not bar these students.” Wallace replied, “No.”

As they had agreed to in behind-the-scenes negotiating sessions, Katzenbach left but returned three hours later to successfully enroll the students. Vivian Malone, now Vivian Malone Jones, graduated in 1965, the first African-American to finish ’Bama since it was founded in 1831. After two months, Hood decided to leave campus, enrolling in Wayne State University in Detroit, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science and police administration.

On that hot June day, like other African-Americans in my hometown, I wanted to see the federal government win the showdown with our state’s segregationist governor. And I couldn’t have been happier with the outcome. For years, I had watched my stepfather leave home for work at the university as a truck driver. I had watched my next-door neighbor, Ms. Willie Mae Temple, go to work there, too. We could work at the University of Alabama, our taxes could support the University of Alabama, but Black students could not attend classes there. Not until Wallace put on his public show and stepped aside.

That’s why you don’t hear many intelligent African-Americans say the federal government has no substantial role to play in our lives. If it had not been involved that day, the University of Alabama and other state universities in the Deep South might still be lily White. Instead, the University of Alabama now has a student body that is 13.3 percent Black and a faulty and staff that is 15.3 percent African-American. Blacks have served as student body president and in other leadership capacities on campus.

While they are celebrating back in “the heart of Dixie,” I hope they don’t forget about the other pioneers of that era. Before there was Vivian Malone and James Hood on the Tuscaloosa campus, there was Autherine Lucy, now Autherine Lucy Foster. She arrived on campus in February 1956, but was expelled three days later by the board of trustees, supposedly for her own safety. I was about to turn nine and I have few memories of her time on campus except the photos of the violent opposition to her presence. She returned to campus more than three decades later and earned her master’s degree in library science, graduating with her daughter.

And let’s not forget what happened after President Kennedy went on television that night to defend his decision to federalize the Alabama National Guard and to address the “moral crisis” that led to that day’s standoff with George Wallace. Shortly after Kennedy ended his address, Medgar Evers was murdered as he was getting out of his car and about to enter his home in Jackson, Miss.

While not as overt as 40 years ago, today we have public officials—including President Bush—who are still “standing in the schoolhouse door.” No, they are not using the n-word. No, they are not openly advocating White supremacy. But the end result of their policies will prevent some African-American students from enrolling in college, a pattern that if left unchecked, could return us to the educational apartheid of George Wallace’s heyday.

Bush’s opposition to affirmative action at the University of Michigan, for example, would decrease the number of Blacks who will have access to higher education and, by extension, better jobs, better housing and better lives.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress have shifted the bulk of financial aid to college students from need-based Pell Grants to student loans. Consequently, the average student debt has doubled over the past eight years to $16,928 and one-third of college students now graduate with debt of more than $20,000.

It’s nice to celebrate—or commiserate—the passing of an era. But it would be even nicer to celebrate it by making a stronger commitment to higher education and to students who need financial assistance to attend.