James A. Hood, one of two black students whose effort to enroll at the University of Alabama in June 1963 led to Gov. George Wallace's segregationist 'stand in the schoolhouse door' and who later forged an unlikely friendship with the former governor, has died. He was 70.

Hood, who left the university after eight weeks but returned years later to earn a doctorate there, died Thursday at his home in Gadsden, Ala., northeast of Birmingham, according to a funeral home official.

The June 11, 1963, enrollment of Hood and Vivian Malone, who went on to become the first black graduate of the university, came during one of the most violent summers of the civil rights movement. The next day, Medgar Evers, a civil rights activist working for the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People in Jackson, Miss., was shot to death by a white supremacist. That September, four young girls were killed in the bombing of an African American church in Birmingham, Ala.

Wallace had campaigned for governor in 1962 on a pledge to block any plans by the federal government to integrate Alabama's all-white schools and state university, the only public university in the country that remained segregated. In his inaugural address, he declared, 'Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.'

Hood was a student at Clark College in Atlanta and already considering applying to the University of Alabama.