Fred Shuttlesworth

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Frederick Lee Shuttlesworth (born March 18, 1922 in Mugler) was pastor of Bethel Baptist Church, a founder of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and a tireless leader of Birmingham's Civil Rights Movement. He is now retired and resides in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Shuttlesworth was born in the community of Mugler, in Montgomery County. He was raised on a farm in the Oxmoor community near Birmingham by his mother, Alberta Robinson Shuttlesworth and stepfather William Nathan Shuttlesworth. He attended Oxmoor Elementary School where he was taught by Israel Ramsey. He entered high school at Wenonah High School, but transferred to Rosedale High School before graduating in 1940.

In 1941, Shuttlesworth married nurse Ruby Keeler. The couple moved to Mobile a year later, where he took a job as a truck driver and started studying to become a mechanic. His pastor there, E. A. Palmer, encouraged him to enter Bible college at the Cedar Grove Academy.

He delivered a sermon at Selma University, a Baptist theological school, in 1945 and decided to follow the call to preaching. He entered that institution, graduating with an A.B. in 1951 while he was pastor of the First (Colored) Baptist Church. He went on to get another A.B. from the Alabama State College in Montgomery, which he completed in 1953. Later that year he returned to Birmingham to accept the pastorate of Bethel Baptist Church, where he soon became a leader in the emerging campaign by African Americans to secure fundamental civil rights.

Civil Rights campaign

Shuttlesworth entered the Civil Rights fray by presenting petitions to the Birmingham City Commission asking them to hire black officers to the Birmingham Police Department. He was the main speaker at the January 1956 "Emancipation Rally" sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

At the start of 1956, Shuttlesworth was working as the membership chairman for the Alabama chapter of the NAACP. On May 26 of that year, the NAACP was barred by state law from continuing to operate in Alabama, so Shuttlesworth led a group of ministers that founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights to continue that work. The new group was launched at a mass meeting at Sardis Baptist Church on June 5 with over 1,000 people in attendance.

In December 1956 the United States Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation on buses in Montgomery was illegal. He announced that the ACMHR would test Birmingham's enforcement of similar segregation laws the day after Christmas. On the night of December 25, his house was bombed. Though he was blown into the basement, he and his family and guests were unharmed. His miraculous survival affirmed his sense of duty to lead and earned a measure of awe from his followers. The next morning, he led a group of 300 demonstrators who boarded Birmingham busses. He filed a suit against the city after 22 of the demonstrators were arrested and fined.

In early 1957, Shuttlesworth joined Martin Luther King, Jr and several other Southern religious leaders in forming the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration. He was installed as the secretary of the group, a position he held for 12 years. In March, Shuttlesworth and his wife challenged the segregation of the Birmingham Terminal Station by using the waiting room reserved for whites.

In May, Shuttlesworth expressed his vision of the spiritual movement for righteousness in a speech given to a gathering of black ministers in Washington D. C.: "We have arisen to walk with destiny, and we shall march till victory is won. Not a victory for Negroes, but a victory for America, for right, for righteousness. No man can make us hate; and no men can make us afraid. ... and let History, and they that come behind us, rejoice that we arose in strength, armed only with the weapon of Love..."

That September, Shuttlesworth was badly beaten by a crowd while he attempted to enroll his children at Phillips High School. From University Hospital, he pledged that attempts to integrate the schools would continue the very next day.

Over the next few years the movement was active in petitioning for the removal of segregation laws and filing lawsuits to protect the civil rights of African American citizens. Funds to support these activities were raised at mass meetings, held weekly on Monday evenings in churches all across the city. The activities of the ACMHR were dogged by intimidation from the Ku Klux Klan. The Monday meetings were regularly attended by officers of the Birmingham Police Department, who transcribed the speeches. Additional meetings were held during critical moments of action. Bombings increased in frequency at homes, churches and synagogues.

Shuttlesworth's national reputation was climbing, as well. In 1958 he began writing a weekly column for The Pittsburgh Courier, a national black newspaper.

In 1961 Shuttlesworth helped to organize the Alabama leg of the Freedeom Rides, initiated by the Chicago-based Congress for Racial Equality. A Greyhound bus carrying Freedom Riders was torched in Anniston. A violent mob met the arrival of a bus in Birmingham on May 14 and badly injured several activists. Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor indicated that police were not available to dispel the violence due to the Mother's Day holiday.

On August 1, 1961 Shuttlesworth moved to Cincinnati to accept the pastorate of Revelation Baptist Church. Churches in several midwestern cities had competed for his services and the tripling of his salary allowed him to pay for his children to enroll in college. He chose Cincinnati in part because daily air service would allow him to continue leading the ACMHR in Birmingham and to guide the pursuance numerous federal lawsuits he initiated.

References

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