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Fred Shuttlesworth

1922–2011 · 89 years

The man who was there before King came to Birmingham

Portrait of Fred Shuttlesworth — Kingkongphoto &amp — www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA — 2011 — CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The name on the birth certificate was Freddie Lee Robinson. He took his stepfather's instead — a coal miner who ran liquor on the side — and grew up in Oxmoor, a poor rural settlement outside Birmingham, in a household his mother Alberta ran hard. He finished Rosedale High as valedictorian, then drove a truck at the Brookley air base in Mobile during the war and mixed cement for wages, taking theology courses at night. Licensed to preach in 1948, he worked through Selma University and Alabama State College, took a pulpit in Selma, and lost it fighting with his deacons. In 1953 Bethel Baptist Church in north Birmingham called him. He was 30.

Alabama outlawed the NAACP in 1956, and Shuttlesworth built the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights to carry on the work, then ran it from the front. That Christmas night 16 sticks of dynamite went off under his bedroom. He walked out unhurt and told a policeman to tell the Klan he was not leaving. In 1957 a mob with chains and bats beat him into hospital at Phillips High School, where he was trying to enroll his children. A fire hose hospitalised him again in 1963. Bull Connor said he wished they had carried him away in a hearse.

He spent five years asking King to come to Birmingham, and when King finally came in 1963 the two men fought. Shuttlesworth had named the campaign Project C, for confrontation, and he did not trust the city's white businessmen to do anything they were not forced to do. On May 8, while he lay in a hospital bed, King and the negotiators agreed to halt the marches for a day. Shuttlesworth learned of it secondhand and was furious at the terms, and at being cut out of the room where his own movement was being traded. King talked him into backing the deal in public, and on May 10 he stood beside King and read the agreement to reporters. He believed for the rest of his life that Birmingham had settled too cheaply.

He had already left Birmingham by then — he moved to Cincinnati in 1961, took a pulpit there, founded Greater New Light Baptist Church in 1966, and kept coming back south for St. Augustine and Selma. He started a housing foundation in 1988 to get low-income families into their first homes, and Bill Clinton gave him the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2001. He came back to the city in 2007, and in 2008 Birmingham renamed its airport Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International. He died there on October 5, 2011, at 89, and is buried at Oak Hill. Histories of the movement place him with King and Ralph Abernathy as its Big Three. He is the one whose name most Americans do not know.

Lifespan

15401700180019002030

Fred Shuttlesworth's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights other
Founded to carry on the work after Alabama banned the NAACP 1956
Southern Christian Leadership Conference other
Co-founder and its first secretary 1957
The Birmingham Manifesto other
Issued April 3, 1963 to open the campaign he called Project C 1963
Greater New Light Baptist Church other
The Cincinnati congregation he organized and led into his eighties 1966
Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham other
The Supreme Court threw out his parade-permit conviction as censorship 1969
Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation other
Help for low-income families buying a first home 1988

Life in brief

with age at each point

March 18, 1922 aged 0 Born in Mount Meigs, Alabama Raised in Oxmoor, a poor settlement outside Birmingham.
1953 aged ~31 Called to Bethel Baptist Church in north Birmingham He had just lost a pulpit in Selma after clashing with its deacons.
1956 aged ~34 Founds the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights The state had just barred the NAACP from operating in Alabama.
December 25, 1956 aged 34 Sixteen sticks of dynamite destroy his house and he walks out unhurt He told a policeman to go back and tell the Klan he was not leaving.
September 1957 aged 35 Beaten with chains and bats at Phillips High School He was trying to enroll his daughters. His wife Ruby was stabbed.
1961 aged ~39 Moves to Cincinnati and keeps organizing in Birmingham He sheltered beaten Freedom Riders at Bethel Baptist the same year.
May 7, 1963 aged 41 A fire hose puts him in hospital during the Birmingham campaign Bull Connor said he wished they had carried him away in a hearse.
October 27, 2008 aged 86 Birmingham renames its airport Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International
October 5, 2011 aged 89 Dies in Birmingham at 89 The governor ordered state flags to half-staff until his interment.