Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth: A Legacy of Fire and Courage in the Struggle for Civil Rights

Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, delivering an address on the prison industrial complex on Saturday, August 25, 2007. (Photo: Cheryl LaBash)., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth: A Legacy of Fire and Courage in the Struggle for Civil Rights

Unsung hero played critical role in the Birmingham movement and beyond

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire

One of the leading figures in the civil rights movement, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth (1922-2011), passed away on October 5 in Cincinnati, Ohio at the age of 89. Shuttlesworth is one of the many unsung heroes in the struggle to breakdown legalized segregation in the southern United States where African Americans were subjected to slave-like conditions of social deprivation and state-sanctioned terror for over a century after the end the civil war.

Shuttlesworth’s life and legacy illustrated that the passage of the laws striking down racial barriers in the United States were won by the self-organization and mobilization of the African American people themselves. It was the atmosphere created by various organizations including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Shuttlesworth’s own Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), among others, that would result in the Congressional passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Shuttlesworth was born on March 18, 1922 in Mt. Meigs, Montgomery County, Alabama. His family would later move to Oxmoor in Jefferson County in 1925.

By 1940 Shuttlesworth would graduate from Rosedale High School, a significant achievement for African Americans during this period in the Deep South. During World War II he would work as a truck driver at the Brookley Air Force base and soon become a Baptist minister.

After the war he began work on a Bachelor’s degree at Selma University. Later he would pastor churches in Selma, Mobile and eventually re-locate in Birmingham in 1952.

Birmingham during the 1950s was considered the most segregated major city in the South. It was also known for its violent suppression of the African American population that was carried out through police repression, mob violence such as the bombing of homes and the super-exploitation of black workers within the steel industry and the service sectors of the economy.

Rev. Shuttlesworth became the pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in the North Birmingham section of Collegeville. In 1953 the first emergence of a mass civil rights movement would surface with a bus boycott against segregation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The U.S. Supreme Court, after years of legal challenge, issued the historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling in Topeka, Kansas. In 1955 the court would declare that school desegregation should proceed “with all deliberate speed.”

The Civil Rights Struggle Emerges in Alabama

Nonetheless, it would take another decade-and-a-half to get any real movement in regard to school integration in both the South and the North of the country. In response to the rising ferment in 1955, Rev. Shuttlesworth, along with seventy-six other ministers, would petition the Birmingham City Commission to hire African American police officers.

After the initial petition was rejected by the city administration, Shuttlesworth would lead a delegation to city hall on September 1 to request action on their demands. These efforts were rejected by the City of Birmingham.

During this same period, the African American people throughout the entire country would be shocked and angered by the brutal lynching of young Emmett Till in Mississippi in August of 1955. Later that year, the African American community in Montgomery under the leadership of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) would organize a citywide boycott against the segregated public transportation system, which resulted in the emergence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a 26-year-old minister, to national prominence as a civil rights spokesperson.

In February of 1956, Rev. Shuttlesworth would accompany Ms. Autherine Lucy in her attempt to desegregate the University of Alabama. In response to these efforts, the Alabama state courts would virtually outlaw the NAACP by issuing an injunction to dissolve the organization.

Five days after the injunction against the NAACP by Circuit Court Judge Walter B. Jones, Rev. Shuttlesworth would found the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR). The organization demanded an end to segregation in the city and the hiring of African Americans within the civil service in Birmingham.

After the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation on the buses in Montgomery resulting in the first significant victory in the civil rights movement, Shuttlesworth home was bombed on December 25 (Christmas Day) in 1956. Shuttlesworth emerged unharmed with greater determination to continue the struggle against segregation.

In January of 1957, Rev. Shuttlesworth would, along with Dr. King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). On March 6, Rev. Shuttlesworth, his wife Ruby and a white union worker and lay minister, Lamar Weaver, sought to desegregate the bus station in Birmingham and were beaten viciously by a racist mob.

On August 22, 1957, Shuttlesworth would petition the Birmingham Board of Education to enroll his daughters Pat and Ricky at the all-white Phillips High School. In an effort to instill fear in the African American community, the Ku Klux Klan castrated a young Black man, Judge Aaron, and threatened to take similar action against any student enrolling in a segregated public school.

While attempting to enter the Philips High School Shuttlesworth was attacked, along with his wife and daughters, suffering a concussion. The following year on June 29, 1958, the racist police chief Bull Conners and J.B. Stoner carried out the bombing of Bethel Baptist Church pastured by Shuttlesworth.

Shuttlesworth and other leaders of the civil rights struggle in Birmingham were ordered to be arrested and would spend five days in jail. Although Shuttlesworth and the ACMHR appealed to Dr. King and other leaders to initiate a campaign of mass civil disobedience in Birmingham in 1959, it would take another four years to bring an end to segregation in the city.

1963: The High Tide of the Civil Rights Struggle

In the spring and summer of 1963, demonstrations against racism and segregation would spread throughout the South and other regions of the U.S. In Birmingham, thousands would march in the streets and face jail for their efforts.

In retaliation the Ku Klux Klan would bomb the 16th Street Baptist Church in September 1963 killling four little African American girls. The crime would go unpunished for many years.

Just two years earlier, Shuttesworth would be driven out of the state of Alabama after an ad appeared in the New York Times accusing the city of a campaign of harassment against the ACMHR. Shuttlesworth and others were sued and assessed damages by the racist courts of $500,000.

His automobile, home and other property were seized by the authorities and Shuttlesworth would re-locate in Cincinnati in 1961. Nonetheless, he would continue to travel to Birmingham on a regular basis to organize demonstrations against segregation.

By 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court would reverse the conviction and legal judgment against Shuttlesworth in a landmark case. Also that same year the Civil Rights Act was passed ostensibly outlawing legalized segregation in the U.S.

Shuttlesworth would continue his activism in both Alabama and Ohio during the following years of the 1960s through the 1980s. He would speak out strongly against police brutality and murder against African Americans in both Birmingham and Cincinnati.

In 1967 he attempted to intervene in the rebellions in Cincinnati by advocating nonviolence. However, by this period, African American youth were moving in the direction of Black Power and revolutionary struggle.

Shuttlesworth’s Legacy and the Role of Youth Today

Although legalized segregation was ended in the U.S. as a result of the civil rights struggle, the ruling class is continuing its efforts to reverse the gains of the last five decades. Today with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, racism is on the rise despite the advent of the first African American president in the White House.

Youth, students and the entire working class have initiated a new round of mass struggles in the U.S. The demonstrations and occupations in the state of Wisconsin, the emergence of new layers of activists in this fight as well as the execution of Troy Davis has fueled the anger and impatience of millions across the country.

Today, youth and workers are occupying financial districts on Wall Street as well as other cities, suburbs and towns throughout the U.S. The contributions of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and the civil rights activists of the 1950s and 1960s should serve as an inspiration to the current generation who are seeking the final elimination of racism, national oppression, economic exploitation, imperialist war and social injustice.