Mr. Wagstaff's appointment is one example. Another is that of Delores Pickett, a black former actress, who was named to head the newly created Department of Minority Affairs. She serves as Mr. Wallace's personal liaison to black people in the state.

It is Miss Pickett who assembles the data that show, for example, that since his inauguration Governor Wallace has named more than 160 blacks to advisory panels and boards. As he promised in the campaign, he has also used his influence to insure that blacks were named to key committees in the Legislature. Even more significant to blacks was Mr. Wallace's endorsement of a plan that more than doubled the number of black voting registrars in Alabama's 67 counties. That will make it easier for blacks to register and to vote.

Still, not everyone is convinced that Mr. Wallace has done enough. ''If you ask me, 'Has George Wallace paid back his debt to blacks?' the answer is no,'' says Joe Reed, the chairman of the Alabama Democratic Conference, the Democratic party's black caucus. ''If you ask me, 'Will he?' the answer is: 'Time will tell.' ''

Mr. Reed, for example, says that, for one thing, the administration has got to earmark more state funds for Alabama's traditionally black colleges, an expectation that others say the Governor will be hard pressed to meet given the depressed economy and the fact that the all public schools in the state are chronically underfunded. Blacks now hold 24.5 percent of all civil service jobs in the state, as against 2 percent in 1970. But some black legislators say they have information, culled from computer printouts of employment files, that there are agencies with few if any blacks. One of these, they say, is the Highway Department. According to Alvin Holmes, a black legislator, there are fewer than 300 blacks among the department's 4,000 employees, and most of those hold menial positions. A few days ago Mr. Holmes threatened to sue if Mr. Wallace did not come up with an affirmative-action hiring program. Miss Pickett, among others, argues fervently that Governor Wallace has done a good job for minorities, given the time he has been on the job in his current term. ''It makes no sense to ask, after a year in office, whether or not Wallace has paid his debt to blacks,'' she said. ''I don't know many folks who pay off their debts when they've still got three years to run on the note.'' Besides, she says the question of who is doing what for blacks in Alabama is not something to be addressed only to the Governor. ''Times have changed in Alabama,'' she said. ''We have the highest percentage of elected black officials in South. They have to take some responsiblity too for what's happening. You can't lay everything on Governor Wallace and say it's his fault if nothing happens.''

If anything, the fact that people are asking these kinds of questions may be a clear measure of the changing realities of biracial politics. Those changes are a large part of the reason that Mr. Wallace set out to court black voters when he ran for Governor in 1982. And that's also why some 200 blacks, including Mr. Reed, the black caucus leader, paid $25 apiece to attend a fund- raising dinner in Montgomery last month on the Governor's behalf.