On April 25, 1963 – the day U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy came to Montgomery to urge the state to integrate one of its universities – Alabama Governor George Wallace raised the Confederate battle flag over the State Capitol dome.

A lawsuit by Southern Poverty Law Center attorneys, Holmes v. Hunt, finally brought the flag down in 1993. Working with African American state legislators, SPLC used a forgotten sentence in the state code to argue the law permitted only state and national flags to fly above the capitol. A state judge agreed and issued an injunction prohibiting the governor from flying the flag.