Harlan Hobart Grooms; Judge Ordered U. of Alabama to Admit Blacks

Harlan Hobart Grooms, 90, a senior U.S. district judge who ordered the University of Alabama to admit its first black students. In 1962, nine years after he was appointed to the federal bench, Grooms directed the university to accept three blacks who had sued for admittance. Then-Gov. George C. Wallace vowed to keep them from attending but gave way after a brief, nationally televised stand in a school doorway. In Birmingham on Friday.