Civil Rights Leader Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth Has Died

Tuesday, January 09, 2001

Shuttlesworth receives Presidential Medal

Clinton cites 'lifetime of leadership'

By Howard Wilkinson and Derrick DePledge
The Cincinnati Enquirer

President Clinton greets the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth.
(Gannett New Service photo)

WASHINGTON — Some cities have places where people in period costume speak scripted lines about events of long ago, and they call it “living history.” Cincinnati has its own “living history” of the civil rights movement in 77-year-old Baptist preacher Fred L. Shuttlesworth.

Monday, after a lifetime of preaching, marching, organizing and struggling for the cause of freedom, the pastor from North Avondale — born in the backwoods of Alabama and tested under fire in the civil rights movement of the 1950s — received from President Clinton the Presidential Citizens Medal.

He joined Hank Aaron, Muhammad Ali, Archibald Cox, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and 23 others honored for their accomplishments in public life.

For the Rev. Mr. Shuttlesworth, it was one of a string of honors that have come to him in recent years from people wanting to recognize him as one of the pioneers of the civil rights movement and as a constant, unwavering voice for freedom and opportunity.

At an afternoon ceremony in a tent on the White House south lawn, the president recalled how Mr. Shuttlesworth risked his life in the segregated South so blacks could have the same freedoms as whites.

“Fred Shuttlesworth risked his life so that every American, no matter the color of his or her skin, might live in a nation with dignity, opportunity and equal justice under the law. We thank him for a lifetime of leadership and for an unextinguished spirit,” Mr. Clinton said before he embraced the reverend.

Although he was proud and moved by the medal and Mr. Clinton's praise, the Rev. Mr. Shuttlesworth still believes the march for social justice moves slowly.

In a statement, he referred to the “vote miscarriage” of the presidential election, where people reported that some black precincts had a much higher rate of disqualified ballots than predominantly white precincts.

“Truth compels all of us to admit that the souls of America have not yet been fully redeemed to ensure exact freedom, justice and sustained concern for the poor and needy,” he said.

“The poor and needy grow more and more, the rich and greedy grow more and more, and the growing conglomerates become more ungoverned and unregulated.”

The Rev. Abraham Lincoln Woods, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference chapter in Birmingham, Ala., said with some satisfaction that the government's view of the Rev. Mr. Shuttlesworth had changed, even if his old friend had not.

“Look back at what we came through. Fred was vilified,” Mr. Woods said. “He has moved from a seat of great dishonor to the seat of great honor.”

“But he is not one of those historical figures who has faded into the background,” Mr. Mallory said. “He is as passionate today as he was back then.”

“Back then” was the 1950s in Alabama, when the young preacher was one of millions of blacks living under the oppression of the Jim Crow South.

As pastor of the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, he joined with other young black clergymen — men such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy — in an organized effort to end segregation.

He almost paid for it with his life.

On Christmas night 1956, he was at home with his wife and three of his children when 16 sticks of dynamite blew up his house. His wife and children escaped the house without injury; so did the Rev. Mr. Shuttlesworth, although he had to be dug out from under fallen timbers.

Outside the house, a Birmingham police officer told him how sorry he was the bombing had occurred, saying he “didn't think they would go this far” and advising him to get out of town.

“You go back and tell your (Ku Klux) Klan brethren that if God can keep me through this, the war is on and I'm here for the duration,” the pastor replied.

And stay he did, battling for voting rights and equal access to public accommodations, hospitals and lunch counters.

The night his parsonage was bombed, he formed the Alabama Christian Movement for Civil Rights, which later joined forces with Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

In 1957, when he tried to enroll two of his daughters in an all-white Birmingham high school, he and his family were attacked outside the school by a group of whites with chains and baseball bats. His wife was stabbed in the hip.

The Rev. Mr. Shuttlesworth came to Cincinnati in 1961 to be pastor of the Revelation Baptist Church in the West End. Since 1965, he has been pastor at North Avondale's Greater New Light Baptist Church.

He is immortalized in Birmingham's Civil Rights Institute Museum with an 8-foot bronze statue at the entrance.

“I just hope young people will understand the significance of the civil rights movement and of that man's role in it,” Mr. Mallory said. “We all owe him a lot.”

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http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2001/01/09/shuttlesworth_120x152.jpg
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2001/01/09/shuttlesworth.jpg

http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=1281&catego...

The History Makers...

Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth Biography

One of the most relentless figures of the Civil Rights Movement, the Reverend Fred Lee Shuttlesworth was born on March 18, 1922, in Montgomery County, Alabama. His biological father was Vetta Green. However, Shuttlesworth was raised by his mother, Alberta Robinson Shuttlesworth and his stepfather, William Nathan Shuttlesworth, a farmer in rural Oxmore, Alabama. Shuttlesworth attended Oxmore Elementary School where he was mentored by teacher Israel Ramsey. He started as a student at Winona High School, but graduated from Rosedale High School in 1940. Shuttlesworth married Ruby Keeler, a nurse, in 1941 and moved to Mobile in 1943 where he became a truck driver and studied auto mechanics. Rev. E.A. Palmer encouraged Shuttlesworth to attend Cedar Grove Academy, a local bible college. In 1945, he delivered a sermon at Selma University and decided to pursue his A.B. degree there and later at Alabama State College. By 1950, Shuttlesworth was the pastor of First Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama, and in 1953, he returned to Birmingham as pastor of Bethel Baptist Church.

In May of 1956, at a mass meeting at Bethel, Shuttlesworth established the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR). In December of that year, the United States Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, was illegal. Shuttlesworth immediately announced that the ACMHR was going to test segregation laws in Birmingham. On Christmas night the Shuttlesworth house was blown up by sixteen sticks of Ku Klux Klan dynamite. Shuttlesworth, who landed in the basement and whose bedroom was blown apart, and visiting Deacon Charles Robinson were unharmed. Shuttlesworth, then, led a rally the very next day. He was beaten by police in 1957 for trying to enroll his daughter in an all white school and that same year joined with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and Bayard Rustin to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He also assisted the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) in organizing the Freedom Rides. Shuttlesworth was hospitalized in 1963 as a result of being attacked by Sheriff Bull Connor's water cannons as he led a mass nonviolent demonstration. However, Shuttlesworth continued to work to secure Birmingham's public accommodations and the desegregation of its schools.

In 1966, Shuttlesworth became the pastor of the Greater New Light Baptist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and served as founding director of the Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation. The recipient of numerous awards, Shuttlesworth is a remarkable figure and unsung hero of the Civil Rights Movement. He is the proud father of three grown children.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/hospital-spokeswoman-says-civil-...

Washington Post...

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Hospital spokeswoman says civil rights leader the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth has died at 89

By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, October 5, 10:18 AM

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, who was bombed, beaten and repeatedly arrested in the fight for civil rights and hailed by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for his courage and energy, has died. He was 89.

Princeton Baptist Medical Center spokeswoman Jennifer Dodd confirmed he died at the Birmingham hospital Wednesday morning..

Shuttlesworth, a former truck driver who studied religion at night, became pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., in 1953 and soon was an outspoken leader in the fight for racial equality.

“My church was a beehive,” Shuttlesworth once said. “I made the movement. I made the challenge. Birmingham was the citadel of segregation, and the people wanted to march.”

In his 1963 book “Why We Can’t Wait,” King called Shuttlesworth “one of the nation’s the most courageous freedom fighters ... a wiry, energetic and indomitable man.”

He survived a 1956 bombing, an assault during a 1957 demonstration, chest injuries when Birmingham authorities turned fire hoses on demonstrators in 1963, and countless arrests.

“I went to jail 30 or 40 times, not for fighting or stealing or drugs,” Shuttlesworth told grade school students in 1997. “I went to jail for a good thing, trying to make a difference.”

He visited frequently and remained active in the movement in Alabama even after moving in 1961 to Cincinnati, where he was a pastor for most of the next 47 years. He moved back to Birmingham in February 2008 for rehabilitation after a mild stroke. That summer, the once-segregated city honored him with a four-day tribute and named its airport after him; his statue stands outside the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

And in November 2008, Shuttlesworth watched from a hospital bed as Sen. Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first African-American president. The year before, Obama had pushed Shuttlesworth’s wheelchair across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma during a commemoration of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march.

In the early 1960s, Shuttlesworth had invited King back to Birmingham. Televised scenes of police dogs and fire hoses being turned on black marchers, including children, in spring 1963 helped the rest of the nation grasp the depth of racial animosity in the Deep South.

Referring to the city’s notoriously racist safety commissioner, Shuttlesworth would tell followers, “We’re telling ol’ ‘Bull’ Connor right here tonight that we’re on the march and we’re not going to stop marching until we get our rights.”

According to a May 1963 New York Times profile of Shuttlesworth, Connor responded to the word Shuttlesworth had been injured by the spray of fire hoses by saying: “I’m sorry I missed it. ... I wish they’d carried him away in a hearse.”

While King went on to international fame, Shuttlesworth was relatively little known outside Alabama. But he was a key figure in Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary, “4 Little Girls,” about the September 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four black children.

He also gained attention in Diane McWhorter’s book “Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution,” which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/us/rev-fred-l-shuttlesworth-civil-rights-leade...

The New York Times...

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The New York Times

October 5, 2011
Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, an Elder Statesman for Civil Rights, Dies at 89
By JON NORDHEIMER

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The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, a storied civil rights leader who survived beatings and bombings in Alabama more than four decades ago as he fought against racial injustice alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., died on Wednesday in Birmingham, Ala. He was 89.

He died at Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham, where Mr. Shuttlesworth lived, his wife, Sephira Shuttlesworth, said.

It was in Birmingham in the spring of 1963 that Mr. Shuttlesworth, an important ally of Dr. King, organized two tumultuous weeks of daily demonstrations by black children, students, clergymen and adults against a rigidly segregated society.

Graphic scenes of helmeted police officers and firefighters under the direction of Eugene (Bull) Connor, Birmingham’s intransigent public safety commissioner, scattering peaceful marchers with fire hoses, police dogs and rattling nightsticks, provoked a national outcry.

The brutality helped galvanize the nation’s conscience, as did the Ku Klux Klan bombing of a black Birmingham church that summer that killed four girls attending Sunday school. The events led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, after the historic protest march in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, organized in part by Mr. Shuttlesworth, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The measures were the bedrock of civil rights legislation.

“Without Fred Shuttlesworth laying the groundwork, those demonstrations in Birmingham would not have been as successful,” said Andrew M. Manis, author of “A Fire You Can’t Put Out,” a biography of Mr. Shuttlesworth. “Birmingham led to Selma, and those two became the basis of the civil rights struggle.”

Mr. Shuttlesworth, he added, had “no equal in terms of courage and putting his life in the line of fire” to battle segregation.

Mr. Shuttlesworth joined with Dr. King in 1957 as one of the four founding ministers of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the engine of Dr. King’s effort to unify the black clergy and their flocks to combat Jim Crow laws. At the time, Mr. Shuttlesworth was leader of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, which he helped form in 1956 to replace the Alabama offices of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, shut down for years by court injunction.

Outside of their roles as men of the cloth and civil rights advocates, however, Mr. Shuttlesworth and Dr. King stood in sharp contrast to one another in terms of background, personality and strategies to break down racial barriers.

Dr. King was a polished product of Atlanta’s black middle class. A graduate of Morehouse College, he held a Ph.D. in systematic theology from Boston University. Fred Shuttlesworth was a child of poor black Alabama whose ministerial degree was from an unaccredited black school. (He later earned a master’s degree in education from Alabama State College.)

Where Dr. King could deliver thunderous oratory and move audiences by his reasoned convictions and faith, Mr. Shuttlesworth was fiery, whether preaching in the pulpit or standing up to “Bull” Connor, who dueled with him for years in street protests and boycotts leading up to their historic 1963 showdown.

Diane McWhorter, the author of “Carry Me Home,” the 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the struggle in Birmingham, wrote in an email that Mr. Shuttlesworth was known among some civil rights activists as “the Wild Man from Birmingham.”

“Among the youthful ‘elders’ of the movement,” she added, “he was Martin Luther King’s most effective and insistent foil: blunt where King was soothing, driven where King was leisurely, and most important, confrontational where King was conciliatory — meaning, critically, that he was more upsetting than King in the eyes of the white public.”

Mr. Shuttlesworth was temperamental, even obstinate, and championed action and confrontation over words. He could antagonize segregationists and allies alike, quarreling with the latter behind closed doors.

But few doubted his courage. In the years before 1963 he was arrested time and again on charges aimed at impeding peaceful protests. He was repeatedly jailed and twice the target of bombs.

When in 1957 he tried to enroll his children in an all-white school, Klansmen attacked him with bicycle chains and brass knuckles. When a doctor treating his head wounds marveled that he had not suffered a concussion, Mr. Shuttlesworth replied famously, “Doctor, the Lord knew I lived in a hard town, so he gave me a hard head.”

He was born Freddie Lee Robinson on March 18, 1922, in rural Mount Meigs, Ala. He took the surname Shuttlesworth from a man his mother later married. The family supplemented its income by sharecropping and making moonshine liquor, an activity for which Mr. Shuttlesworth was sentenced to two years’ probation in 1940.

He was a truck driver in the early 1940s but was soon drawn to pulpits in Selma and Birmingham. In 1953 he became pastor of the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham and had joined the Alabama chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. before it was outlawed from operating in the state in 1956. He and others established the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights to carry on the chapter’s work and came to challenge the white power structure on many fronts.

In 1963 he welcomed Dr. King to Birmingham to take part in the protests. They planned a boycott of white merchants coupled with large marches that they expected would provoke overreaction by city officials and show the world the depth of white resistance. “We wanted confrontation, nonviolent confrontation, to see if it would work,” Mr. Shuttlesworth later said. “Not just for Birmingham — for the nation. We were trying to launch a systematic, wholehearted battle against segregation which would set the pace for the nation.”

After 1965, with the new civil rights legislation on the books and Dr. King turning his attention to poverty and black problems in the urban North, Mr. Shuttlesworth remained focused on local issues in Birmingham and Cincinnati, where he had moved to take the pulpit of a black church. He traveled frequently between Ohio and Alabama before returning permanently to Birmingham in 2008 for medical treatment after being felled by a stroke the previous year.

He outlived Dr. King and Dr. King’s chief aide, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, eventually assuming the role of elder statesman in the civil rights movement. Information about his survivors was not immediately available.

In 2004, he was named president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but stepped down the same year, complaining that “deceit, mistrust and a lack of spiritual discipline and truth have eaten at the core of this once-hallowed organization.”

In 2008, the city where Mr. Shuttlesworth’s civil rights efforts met such brutal resistance renamed its principal airport Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport.

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Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/05/us/obit-rev-fred-shuttlesworth/index.html?hpt=hp_t...

CNN...

Civil rights leader Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth dies at 89
By Michael Martinez, CNN
updated 2:52 PM EST, Wed October 5, 2011

Click photo to play video

Celebrating civl rights leader's life

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

NEW: The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was beaten and his home bombed in 1950s
NEW: President Clinton gave him a Citizens Medal in 2001 for his leadership
He challenged segregated busing in Birmingham, Alabama
Martin Luther King Jr. called him "most courageous civil rights fighter in the South"

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(CNN) -- The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who helped lead the civil rights movement, has died, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute said Wednesday. He was 89.

Shuttlesworth is among the iconic figures honored in the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta. King once called Shuttlesworth "the most courageous civil rights fighter in the South."

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against segregated busing in Montgomery, Alabama, Shuttlesworth rallied the membership of a group he established in May 1956 -- the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights -- to challenge the practice of segregated busing in Birmingham.

Shuttlesworth also helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, with King and other civil rights leaders.

Shuttlesworth's efforts weren't without a price: his home was bombed on Christmas Day in 1956, but he and his family were not injured.

He was, however, hurt in 1957 when he was beaten with chains and whips as he sought to integrate an all-white public school.

That same year, Shuttlesworth helped King organize the SCLC, serving as the organization's first secretary from 1958 to 1970. He later served briefly as its president in 2004.

In 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded Shuttlesworth a Presidential Citizens Medal -- the nation's second-highest civilian award -- for his leadership in the "non-violent civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, leading efforts to integrate Birmingham, Alabama's schools, buses and recreational facilities" and helping found the SCLC.

Shuttlesworth also protested segregated lunch counters and helped lead sit-ins at the eateries in 1960.

He participated in organizing the Freedom Rides against segregated interstate buses in the South when he joined forces with the Congress On Racial Equality.

In 1963, he was injured again when a fire hose was turned on him during a protest against segregation in Birmingham. The blast of water, directed against demonstrators by order of local sheriff Bull Connor, slammed Shuttlesworth against a wall. He was hospitalized but recovered.

He was also a principal in the historic march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, which he helped organize.

In the early 1960s, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he fought homelessness and continued the movement against racism. There, he founded and served as pastor of the Greater New Light Baptist Church from 1966 to 2006.

In the 1980s, he established the Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation in Cincinnati, which provided grants to help low-income families buy homes.

The Ohio Civil Rights Commission has placed Shuttlesworth in its Hall of Fame.

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CNN's Tenisha Bell contributed to this report.