RIP, Fred Shuttlesworth
Ted Torgerson
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Somewhat overshadowed by the passing of Steve Jobs was the death of Civil Rights leader Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. Both improved life for millions of people, though in very different ways. Follows a brief summary of his life.
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Ted Torgerson
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Born in Mount Meigs, Alabama, Shuttlesworth became pastor of the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1953 and was Membership Chairman of the Alabama state chapter of the NAACP in 1956, when the State of Alabama formally outlawed it from operating within the state. In May, 1956 Shuttlesworth and Ed Gardner established the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights to take up the work formerly done by the NAACP.
The ACMHR raised almost all of its funds from local sources at mass meetings. It used both litigation and direct action to pursue its goals. When the authorities ignored the ACMHR's demand that the City hire black police officers, the organization sued. Similarly, when the United States Supreme Court ruled in December 1956 that bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, was unconstitutional, Shuttlesworth announced that the ACMHR would challenge segregation laws in Birmingham on December 26, 1956.
(Roy Wilkins Executive Director of the NAACP)
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Ted Torgerson
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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On December 25, 1956, unknown persons tried to kill Shuttlesworth by placing sixteen sticks of dynamite under his bedroom window. Shuttlesworth somehow escaped unhurt even though his house was heavily damaged. A police officer, who also belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, told Shuttlesworth as he came out of his home, "If I were you I'd get out of town as quick as I could". Shuttlesworth told him to tell the Klan that he was not leaving and "I wasn't saved to run."
Fred Shuttlesworth led a group that integrated Birmingham's buses the next day, then sued after police arrested twenty-one passengers. His congregation built a new parsonage for him and posted sentries outside his house.
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Ted Torgerson
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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In 1957 Shuttlesworth, along with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy from Montgomery, Rev. Joseph Lowery from Mobile, Alabama, Rev. T. J. Jemison from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Rev. C. K. Steele from Tallahassee, Florida, Rev. A. L. Davis from New Orleans, Louisiana, Bayard Rustin and Ella Baker founded the Southern Leadership Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration, later renamed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The SCLC adopted a motto to underscore its commitment to nonviolence: "Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed."
Shuttlesworth embraced that philosophy, even though his own personality was combative, headstrong and sometimes blunt-spoken to the point that he frequently antagonized his colleagues in the movement as well as his opponents. He was not shy in asking King to take a more active role in leading the fight against segregation and warning that history would not look kindly on those who gave "flowery speeches" but did not act on them. He alienated some members of his congregation by devoting as much time as he did to the civil rights movement, at the expense of weddings, funerals, and other ordinary church functions.
Shuttlesworth himself was a fiery orator, able to whip crowds into a frenzy. In Brimingham he had the nickname "Black Moses."
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Ted Torgerson
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Shuttlesworth was apparently personally fearless, even though he was aware of the risks he ran. Other committed activists were scared off or mystified by his willingness to accept the risk of death. Shuttlesworth himself vowed to "kill segregation or be killed by it".
Shuttlesworth and his wife Ruby attempted to enroll their children in a previously all-white public school in Birmingham in 1957, but a mob of Klansmen attacked them, with the police nowhere to be seen. His assailants included Bobby Frank Cherry,who had been involved in the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing. The mob beat him with chains and brass knuckles in the street while someone stabbed his wife. Shuttlesworth lost consciousness but was dragged to safety and driven away.
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Ted Torgerson
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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In 1958 Shuttlesworth survived another attempt on his life. A church member standing guard saw a bomb and quickly moved it to the street before it went off.
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Ted Torgerson
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Shuttlesworth participated in the sit-ins against segregated lunch counters in 1960 and took part in the organization and completion of the Freedom Rides in 1961.
Shuttlesworth originally warned that Alabama was extremely volatile when he was consulted before the Freedom Rides began. Shuttlesworth noted that he respected the courage of the activists proposing the Rides but that he felt other actions could be taken to accelerate the Civil Rights Movement that would be less dangerous. However, the planners of the Rides were undeterred and decided to continue preparing.
After it became certain that the Freedom Rides were to be carried out, Shuttlesworth worked with the Congress of Racial Equality to organize the Rides and became engaged with ensuring the success of the rides, especially during their stint in Alabama. Shuttlesworth mobilized some of his fellow clergy to assist the rides. After the Riders were badly beaten and nearly killed in Birmingham and Anniston during the Rides, he sent deacons to pick up the Riders from a hospital in Anniston after being brutalized earlier in the day and threatened to be thrown out by the hospital superintendent. Shuttlesworth took in the Freedom Riders at the Bethel Baptist Church, allowing them to recuperate after the violence that had occurred earlier in the day.
The violence in Anniston and Birmingham almost led to a quick end to the Freedom Rides. However, the actions of supporters like Shuttlesworth gave James Farmer, the leader of C.O.R.E., which had originally organized the Freedom Rides, and other activists the courage to press forward. After the violence that occurred in Alabama but before the Freedom Riders could move on, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy gave Shuttlesworth his personal phone number in case the Freedom Riders needed federal support.
When Shuttlesworth prepared the Riders to leave Birmingham and they reached the Greyhound Terminal, the Riders found themselves stranded as no bus driver was willing to drive controversial group into Mississippi.Shuttlesworth stuck with the Riders and called Kennedy. Prompted by Shuttlesworth, Kennedy tried to find a replacement bus driver. Unfortunately, his efforts eventually proved to be unsuccessful. The Riders then decided to take a plane to New Orleans (where they had planned on finishing the Rides) and were assisted by Shuttlesworth in getting to the airport and onto the plane.
Shuttlesworth’s commitment to the Freedom Rides was highlighted by Diane Nash, a student activist and major organizer of the later waves of Rides, as she noted, “Fred was practically a legend. I think it was important – for me, definitely, and for a city of people who were carrying on a movement – for there to be somebody that really represented strength, and that’s certainly what Fred did. He would not back down, and you could count on it. He would not sell out, [and] you could count on that.” The students involved in the Rides appreciated Shuttlesworth's commitment to the principals of the Freedom Rides – ending the segregationist laws of the Jim Crow South. Shuttlesworth's fervent passion for equality made him a role model to many of the Riders.
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Ted Torgerson
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Shuttlesworth invited SCLC and Dr. King to come to Birmingham in 1963 to lead the campaign to desegregate it through mass demonstrations–what Shuttlesworth called "Project C", the "C" standing for "confrontation". While Shuttlesworth was willing to negotiate with political and business leaders for peaceful abandonment of segregation, he believed, with good reason, that they would not take any steps that they were not forced to take. He suspected their promises could not be trusted on until they acted on them.
One of the 1963 demonstrations he led resulted in Shuttlesworth's being convicted of parading without a permit from the City Commission. On appeals the case reached the US Supreme Court. In its 1969 decision of Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham, the Supreme Court reversed Shuttlesworth's conviction. They determined circumstances indicated that the parade permit was denied not to control traffic, as the state contended, but to censor ideas.
In 1963 Shuttlesworth was set on provoking a crisis that would force the authorities and business leaders to recalculate the cost of segregation. He was helped immeasurably by Eugene "Bull" Connor, the Commissioner of Public Safety and most powerful public official in Birmingham, who used Klan groups to heighten violence against blacks in the city. Even as the business class was beginning to see the end of segregation, Connor was determined to maintain it. While Connor's direct police tactics intimidated black citizens of Birmingham, they also created a split between Connor and the business leaders. They resented both the damage Connor was doing to Birmingham's image around the world and his high-handed attitude toward them.
Similarly, while Connor may have benefited politically in the short run from Shuttlesworth's determined provocations, that also fit Shuttleworth's long-term plans. The televised images of Connor's directing handlers of police dogs to attack unarmed demonstrators and firefighters' using hoses to knock down children had a profound effect on American citizens' view of the civil rights struggle.
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Ted Torgerson
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Shuttlesworth's activities were not limited to Birmingham. In 1964 he traveled to St. Augustine, Florida (which he often cited as the place where the civil rights struggle met with the most violent resistance), taking part in marches and widely publicized beach wade-ins that led directly to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Thus he was a key figure in the Birmingham campaign that led to the initiation of the law, and the St. Augustine campaign that finally brought it into being.
In 1965 he was also active in Selma, Alabama, and the march from Selma to Montgomery that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, thus playing an important role in the efforts that led to the passage of the two great legislative accomplishments of the civil rights movement. In later years he took part in commemorative activities in Selma at the time of the anniversary of the famous march. And he returned to St. Augustine in 2004 to take part in a celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the civil rights movement there.
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Ted Torgerson
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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On October 5, 2011, Shuttlesworth died at the age of 89 in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute announced that it intends to include Shuttlesworth's burial site on the Civil Rights History Trail. By order of Alabama governor Robert Bentley, flags on state government buildings were to be lowered to half-staff until Shuttlesworth's interment.
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Laura Lawson
United States
Cincinnati
Ohio
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From the mid- to late 1960s until 2008, Fred Shuttlesworth lived in Cincinnati. At one point, he was named a "Great Living Cincinnatian."
Here I quote from the Cincinnati Enquirer:
Quote: For those inclined to find symbolism in such matters, Rev. Shuttlesworth’s passing Wednesday provided a poignantly powerful moment. Within hours of his death, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder – the first black to hold that post in the nation’s history, and a cabinet member of the first black president – was in Cincinnati to present a black mayor with a $6.8 million grant for police officers.
“Barack Obama is in the position he’s in, I’m in the position I’m in and Mayor Mark Mallory is in the position he’s in as a result of the sacrifices (Rev. Shuttlesworth) and his counterparts made,” Holder said.
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Ted Torgerson
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Story of Reverend Shuttlesworth's speech at the March on Washington. The controversy over Lewis's speech is rather well known. It was re-written only after A. Phillip Randolph, head of the Pullman Car porters union and the organizer of the March on Washington, pleaded with Lewis to change his confrontational tone. Meanwhile Fred Shuttlesworth was called upon to stand tall in a crisis.
(John Lewis. Roy Wilkins with A. Philip Randolph leading the March on Washington)
Charles Euchner, author of Nobody Turn Me Around: A People's History of the March on Washington:
"I remembered that I had a recording of his speech at the March on Washington. WBUR allowed me listen to recordings of the Educational Radio Network’s coverage of the March. So I spent three days at WBUR, transcribing the recordings. But I liked Shuttlesworth’s speech so much that I downloaded it. (Sorry, WBUR guys.)
“Reverend Shuttlesworth, do you want to hear your speech at the March on Washington?”
He smiled and nodded.
I pulled my laptop out of the case and held it near his head. I clicked and together we listened to his crackling speech.
In the days before the March, Shuttlesworth was annoyed that he was left off the roster of speakers. The afternoon program was restricted to the heads of the ten cosponsors of the March. But the program was delayed while March leaders settled a controversy over John Lewis’s speech. Catholic leaders threatened to pull out of the March to protest Lewis’s speech. They saw a draft the night before and considered it too radical and incendiary. To stall for time, Shuttlesworth was asked to speak. Without any preparation, he belted out a classic:
'We didn’t come to molest nor to cajole, we came to be peaceful and loving and law abiding because we are a law-abiding people. We came because we love our country. We came because our country needs us and we need our country. We came to serve notice that if our country wants peace and tranquility and quiet, they might as well just free the Negro because until the Negro is freed nobody else will be free. …
We’re going to march. We’re going to walk together, we’re going to stand together, we’re going to sing together, we’re going to stay together, we’re going to moan together, we’re going to groan together, and after a while we’ll have freedom! Freedom! Freedom now!'
As his words ended and the crowd roared, a tear ran down Fred Shuttlesworth’s cheek. He had never heard a recording of his speech before. Now he was back in that moment again.
And now he’s gone. But he left a big part of himself behind, the way all those other heroes of the movement did.
Godspeed, Reverend Shuttlesworth. And, once again, thank you."
http://www.thewritingcodesystem.com/shuttlesworth/
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Arlington
Virginia
Thank you for posting this, and teaching us something new.
Very fine piece here.
and here.
Chicago
Illinois
Very fine piece here.
and here.
Thanks for adding this link. I added an item to the Geek list about it.
Virginia Beach
Virginia
Thank you for teaching me about Mr. Shuttlesworth.