[CentOS] Can't get .htaccess to work

Hi,

I'm trying to password protect one of my web accessable 
directories and I can't get .htaccess to work in a Centos 5.1 box
Here's what I did

I created an .htaccess file with the contents:

AuthName "Restricted Area" 
AuthType Basic 
AuthUserFile /home/mysite/.htpasswd 
AuthGroupFile /dev/null 
require valid-user

and I uploaded it to the dir I want to protect.  Then I created my password 
outside of my web dir with the command: htpasswd -c .htpasswd pam
then followed password prompts, created my password.

So then I go to the site, and am not seeing any password required box,
I can see site without a login.

So then I figured it's not turned on in apache, and went to httpd.conf and changed 
AllowOverride None to AllowOverride AuthConfig

When I reload, apache will not reload.

What am I doing wrong?
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