TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (AP) -- American politics changed 40 years ago this week at a schoolhouse door.

Five months after vowing "segregation forever" at his 1963 inaugural, Gov. George C. Wallace tried to block the admission of two black students to the all-white University of Alabama.

Wallace's defiant "stand in the schoolhouse door," failed to keep out minorities -- with about 19,600 students, Alabama's student body is now 13 percent black. But it launched Wallace onto the national political scene and moved the Democratic Party firmly into the corner of civil rights.

"What happened that day did represent a tectonic shift in American politics," said Culpepper Clark, Alabama's communications dean and the author of a book on the showdown.

This week, the university will hold a three-day observance for the anniversary of Wallace's infamous stand. Honorees include the two black students who faced the governor that day -- Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood.