Birmingham Historical Society

RESEARCH REPORT

Addressing the Importance of Birmingham Civil Rights Leader; Fred Lee Shuttlesworth, Pastor, Bethel Baptist Church (1953-1961) President, Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (1956-1969) Secretary, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1960-1970)

Prepared for National Historic Landmarks Staff Review

By Marjorie L. White

With research assistance from Lauren Bishop, Michelle Crunk, Brenda Howell, Bill Jones, Fred Renneker, Carol Slaughter, Marjorie Lee White and volunteer proofreaders Cathy Adams, Rhonda Covington, Aaron Moyana, Joe Strickland

Draft, August 2, 1997 RESEARCH REPORT

Addressing the Importance of Birmingham Civil Rights Leader: Fred Lee Shuttlesworth, Pastor, Bethel Baptist Church (1953-1961) President, Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (1956-1969) Secretary, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1960-1970)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. On Fred Shuttlesworth's Role in the Birmingham Movement 4 Statement of Significance 28

II. Fred Lee Shuttlesworth: Freedom Fighter — Highlights of His Role in the Civil Rights 30 Movement

III. Comments of Contemporaries and Historians on Shuttlesworth — Opinions and Analyses 42

IV. Shuttlesworth on the Role of the Church and the ACMHR in the Civil Rights Movement — An Anthology of his Sermons, Addresses and Reports, 1957-1969; Reflections, 1977. 47

V. On the Importance of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement — Civil Rights Participants and 57 Scholars' Reflections

VI. Birmingham Churches Active in the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights 69 (ACMHR) and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1963

VII. Bibliography 70 RESEARCH REPORT

Addressing the Importance of Birmingham Civil Rights Leader: Fred Lee Shuttlesworth, Pastor, Bethel Baptist Church (1953-1961) President, Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (1956-1969) Secretary, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1960-1970)

APPENDICES

A. Life, "Blows Against Segregation — Negro Fight for Freedom on Buses Spreads After Montgomery Ruling," Photographs of the Christmas Night Bombing of Bethel Baptist Church, Birmingham, 1956, and of the successful bus ride the next day, Life, 7 January 1957.

B. Harrison E. Salisbury, "Fear and Hatred Grip Birmingham — Racial Tension Smoldering After Belated Sitdowns," The New York Times, 12 April 1960, 1, 28. Photograph of Fred Shuttlesworth, 28.

C. "Integration Group Continuing Trip After Brutal Beatings Here, " The Birmingham News, 15 May 1961, 1, 10, 24.

D. "Shuttlesworth Shouts 'Fire,'" Editorial, The Birmingham News, 18 May 1961, 1.

E. David Lowe, Producer; Howard K. Smith, Narrator, "Who Speaks for Birmingham?" CBS Report, 60-minute Video, 18 May 1961 (filmed, March, 1961, aired 18 May 1961). Testimonials, Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) Members, Mass Meeting, St. John A.M. E. Church, Seventh Avenue North and 15th Street, 13 March 1961, 32.33; Interview with Fred Shuttlesworth, 36.45-42.18.

F. Photograph, SCLC Leaders Martin Luther King, Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth and Ralph Abernathy (left to right) at the Press Conference Announcing the Birmingham Truce, 10 May 1957, The Birmingham News. Caption by Robert Gutwillig, "Six Days in Alabama," Mademoiselle, September 1963, 189.

G. Life, "The Spectacle of Racial Turbulence in Birmingham ~ They Fight A Fire That Won't Go Out," Photographs by Charles Moore, 17 May 1963.

H. "LITIGATION, The Champion," TIME, 26 November 1965. I. On Fred Shuttlesworth's Role in the Birmingham Movement

The history of Bethel Baptist Church is integrally linked to the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, its pastor during the years 1953 to 1961, a time of Civil Rights activism. In turn, the history of Fred Shuttlesworth is linked importantly to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Bethel and Shuttlesworth ministered to a blue collar working-class congregation. Their focus was local. King came from the upper crust, and was a man of the world. The mutually supportive relationship of Shuttlesworth and King, and at times their conflict, was at the center of Civil Rights activism in Birmingham in Spring, 1963. Bethel Baptist Church was the platform on which Shuttlesworth stood to found the organization that marshaled the people who demonstrated in the streets, went to jail, and set the stage and backdrop for King's appeal to the naitonal and the world.

Most historians agree that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s. His leadership began in Montgomery where he led a year-long Montgomery bus boycott to a triumphant conclusion on December 21, 1956.' The hero of Montgomery emerged as a national and international figure.2 Beginning in January, 1957, King worked principally through the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The Birmingham campaign of Spring 1963 cemented the reputation of King and the SCLC. Through his personal acts of courage and charisma, his speeches and his writings, King dominated media coverage of Birmingham events and of the national Civil Rights Movement. Historian Adam Fairclough describes SCLC as not only dominated by King, but built around him, "the black leader of heroic proportions."3

'Shuttlesworth reflected upon King's impact and the Montgomery Boycott, "Dr. King spoke with a new voice. Not only was it a new movement, but it was a new voice. That you must love. You must not hate. The people who hate or who act like they hate you, you must . . . and the best thing to make out of your enemy was a friend. So this was a . . . had a very profound effect upon not only blacks, but whites." Fred Shuttlesworth in "Awakenings 1954- 1956," Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (Boston: Blackside Inc.), 1986. Shuttlesworth's narration begins 00:43:09.

2Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr., (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1987), 41. Fairclough defines the significance of this early Civil Rights victory: "After receiving a mandate from the U. S. Supreme Court, the [Montgomery] bus company allowed black passengers to sit wherever they pleased. During the course of the struggle King had become a symbol of the protest, a figure of national and international significance."

3Adam Fairclough, "The Preachers and the People: The Origins and Early Years of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1955-1959," The Journal of Southern History 7 (August 1986): 3, 430-432. The well-educated, scholarly Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., son of a prominent Atlanta, Georgia minister, represents an important sector of the Southern black clergy who provided leadership for the Civil Rights struggle. King pastored large, well-established churches and belonged to the social elite of the black community. Movement leaders in many Southern cities were similar upper middle class professionals and well connected to both their peers in the African American business and professional communities, as well as to white business leadership. Their style of leadership was often "accomodationist." They knew and could get along with power brokers in both the black and white communities.4 King had other extraordinary talents and leadership capabilities that allowed him to develop a significant appeal to the national media and to historians. His solid position as the leading figure of the Civil Rights struggle has been confirmed thanks to recent scholarship.5

""Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and Sixth Avenue Baptist Church were among Birmingham's socially elite black churches. Their pastors, the Reverend John Cross and the Reverend John Porter, were friends of King. Porter was a former associate at King's Montgomery church. Prominent local black citizens who became members of King's daily strategy committee for the 1963 campaign included insurance executive and King family friend, John Drew, his Philadelphia born wife Deannie Drew and Miles College President Lucious Pitts. Porter also served in this group, as did Harold Long, minister of First Congregational Church, Miles College student leader Frank Dukes and Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ministers J. A. Hayes of First Baptist Church, East Thomas; Nelson Smith of New Pilgrim Baptist Church; Calvin Woods of East End Baptist Church; and the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. Dr. Ruth Barefield Pendleton served as secretary. Dr. A.G. Gaston served as an honorary member. King and Abernathy represented SCLC. Ms. Drew states that during the Spring, 1963 demonstrations, "the steering committee met early every morning to decide strategy for that day, whether we shall march, or whether we shan't march. . . where we shall march. . . and so forth." According to long time ACMHR secretary, Lola Hendricks, Rev. Shuttlesworth "was the man that had the last word." This group also raised funds, as mass protests were expensive. These strategy sessions were secret, as were the names of the committee of principally local citizens. The meetings took place at Room 30 of the A.G. Gaston Motel, at the Drew's residence and at First Congregational Church, the latter two sites both on "Dynamite Hill" in the Smithfield neighborhood of Birmingham. Deanie Drew, Interview with Bill Jones, 5 August 1993, Birmingham Historical Society Files. Lola Hendricks, Interview with author, 24 July 1997.

5 Scholarship on King and SCLC abounds. A recent search of Internet sources revealed that most major King speeches and publications, as well as over 1,000 King-related sources are readily available to an international public. An index to SCLC's papers (Papers of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference) can be accessed on the Internet at http/catalog.upapubs.com: 70/0/990. The web site includes a detailed summary of the papers, instructions for ordering microfilmed papers and the following statement: "It is widely King's popularity obscures the role of other leaders:

In many textbooks, the Civil Rights Movement is portrayed largely as a one man crusade. It does not demean the critical role of Dr. King to recognize the equally essential role of local leaders both before and after the brief moments when their communities became the center of national attention. It was they, those local leaders, who had shaped the struggle in their own communities, bearing both the wrath of outraged segregationists at a time when there was neither the national media nor the interest of a friendly national administration to provide a modicum of protection from the violence that was the ultimate answer to direct challenges of segregation. Nowhere was the role of local leaders more apparent than in Birmingham. . . .6

Fred Lee Shuttlesworth was among the "best and brightest" of black clergy leaders. However, his leadership was different from King's. Of humble and working-class origin, he adopted the name of his stepfather who raised him and his nine brothers and sisters in an ore mining camp near Birmingham. His theological training was at a tiny Baptist college outside Mobile. He played "preacher" as a child and studied the Bible while working a menial job.7 Shuttlesworth's leadership style was aggressive and confrontational.8 Shuttlesworth's home church in Birmingham, Bethel Baptist Church, was a well-established working-class church, apart from the social elite and business communities. Shuttlesworth was, and perhaps still is, outside Birmingham's "magic circle." Shuttlesworth led a local movement. Locally, his leadership and the movement's methods were continually questioned by those outside his ACMHR "circle." Many thought him egocentric and impossible. Shuttlesworth did not become a national and international media star. Nor has he written extensively since the 1960s era, when his press releases, sermons, addresses and annual reports chronicled the activities of the acknowledged that SCLC's Birmingham demonstrations directly influenced the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

6William Barnard, "Introduction," in David J. Garrow, ed., Birmingham, Alabama: 1956- 1963, The Black Struggle for Civil Rights (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, Inc., 1989), xiv. Barnard was Professor of History and Chairman of the Department of History at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1989.

7Lewis Jones, "Fred Shuttlesworth, Indigenous Leader," in Garrow, Birmingham, Alabama, 1956-1963, 117-121. Tuskegee University professor Jones wrote his article in early 1961.

8Andrew Michael Manis, "Religious Experience, Religious Authority, and Civil Rights Leadership: The Case of Birmingham's Fred Shuttlesworth," in Charles Reagan Wilson, ed., Cultural Perspectives on the American South, 5: Religion (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1991), 143. Birmingham Movement. His U. S. Supreme Court cases, involving Civil Rights issues, are now more readily accessible than other information about him.9

In 1956, the Rev. Fred Lee Shuttlesworth launched the Birmingham movement — a nonviolent, Christian movement dedicated to the eradication of segregation in Birmingham, a city considered the South's segregation crucible.10 The Alabama Christian Movement for

9A recent Internet search produced little scholarship on Shuttlesworth. Summaries of his U. S. Supreme Court cases can be accessed on-line. Shuttlesworth is mentioned on web pages for Civil Rights Related Interviews, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the Eyes on the Prize PBS video, Legal Defense Fund, the Index to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Papers, the Index to the Papers of Carl & Anne Braden, two (white) civil rights activists in Cincinnati with whom Shuttlesworth has had a long-time relationship through the Southern Conference Education Fund, and in articles and sites related to Martin Luther King, Jr. The City of Cincinnati web page's "Section on Famous People" includes a citation that Shuttlesworth "earned fame while living here" and is considered in the company of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Shuttlesworth's only published statement accessible via the Internet is an interview funded by the Southern Conference for Human Welfare/Educational Fund, 1983, in the collection of Indiana University, Oral History Research Center, Internet address: www. indian. edu/-ohrc/collect.htm.

}0New York Times reporter Harrison Salisbury in his review of violent reprisals to the 1960 boycott, stated, "Blacks and whites still walk the same streets. But the streets, the water supply and the sewer system are about the only public facilities they share. Ball parks and taxi cabs are segregated. So are the libraries. A book featuring black and white rabbits was banned. A drive is on to forbid "Negro music on 'white' radio stations." Harrison E. Salisbury, "Fear and Hatred Grip Birmingham," The New York Times, 12 April 1960 (story dated April 8) 1. Federal, state and, most restrictive, local laws and zoning prohibited integration in nearly every aspect of human relations: from seats on the buses and at lunch counters, separate water fountains and bathrooms in public accommodations, to prohibition to playing checker games together. Fred Shuttlesworth summed up the absurdity of the situation in this statement to an ACMHR Mass Meeting held during the April 1963 demonstrations. He had been at city hall, looking for a water fountain. Finding the 'Negro' fountain dry, he tried the 'white' one. "Let's use the best that's down there. I think the white water is better than black water anyhow." But all the water in city hall had been turned off, which meant that the toilets were out of action as well. "So I left there and went over to the bus station, to the men's room — one of the few places in Birmingham where blacks and whites could mingle on equal terms. And there we were, all of us there together. But what bothered me most was . . . four or five city policemen come in, and I said, 'What y'all doin' over here? Is segregation hard on y'all too, huh?' You know what one of them said? said, 'Yeah, Reverend, you got this damn town rocking.' Shuttlesworth, in Allison and Watkins to Moore, 15 April 1963 ACMHR Meeting, 8

Human Rights (ACMHR) came into being as a direct response to the suppression of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) by Alabama authorities. ACMHR became one of the strongest local civil rights organization in the nation and a model for other consciously constructed civil rights groups.'' Religious conviction drove Shuttlesworth's and the ACMHR members' dedication to the fight. In a 1959 account, Shuttlesworth stated,

I am engaged in this fight because, first of all, I believe that it is right (we are engaged in a righteous program between the forces of good and evil and I am both led and impelled by the Divine Force to take an active part). I feel that I was destined to play this role and that events (two bombings, mob beatings, etc.) have even now placed me in the possibility of being attacked or killed any day, but I believe that I was saved especially to do this job.12

St. James Baptist Church, 17 April 1963, Birmingham Police Department Inter-office Communication, Eugene "Bull" Connor Papers.

' 'No scholarship appears to have evaluated the role of long term, local Civil Rights organizations that function in both the 1950s and the 1960s. Civil Rights historian David Garrow calls ACMHR one of the "two most notable" Civil Rights organizations of the 1950s. "Along with Montgomery [the Montgomery Bus Boycott], Birmingham in the 1956-1960 period generated one of the two most notable local-level civil rights organizations in the South, The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights." David J. Garrow, "Editor's Preface," Birmingham, Alabama: 1953-1966, ix. William Robert Miller in "Birmingham: Triumph and Tragedy," states that "Martin Luther King once called Shuttlesworth's Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights SCLC's 'strongest affiliate' and Shuttlesworth himself 'the most courageous Civil Rights fighter in the South.'" Miller's source is a King address published in New York's Amsterdam News, June 8, 1963, just after the Birmingham campaign. (BHS has requested copies of this citation through interlibrary loan.) William Robert Miller, Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1967), 130.

12Fred Shuttlesworth, "An Account of the ACMHR," J. J. Clarke, Appendix B, "Goals and Techniques in Three Civil Rights Organizations in Alabama," Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1960, 152. Religious historian Andrew Michael Manis discusses Shuttlesworth's understanding of his divine call to lead the Birmingham Movement. Manis notes that Shuttlesworth's "hearing the voice of God" came at two decisive moments: June 2, 1956, just before the founding of ACMHR and on December 25, 1956, just after the first bombing of Bethel Baptist Church and the parsonage in which he sat. "Shuttlesworth's interpretation of it [the Christmas bombing] is unwavering: God saved him to lead the fight. Further, the response of his following suggests that his experience can be likened to a special "call" to ministry, which, according to religious scholar E. Franklin Frazier, often came through "some religious experience which indicated that God had chosen him as a spiritual leader." Reflecting on the Montgomery bus boycott and other efforts of the 1950s to eliminate segregation in the South, Shuttlesworth commented for Eyes on the Prize viewers,

We thought that you could just shame America. Say now America, look at your promises. Look how you're treating your poor Negro citizens. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Because segregation . . . .you can't shame segregation. You can't. Rattlesnakes don't commit suicide. Ball teams don't strike out. You got to put 'em out.13

Shuttlesworth provided the long-term leadership to get people in Birmingham to stand up for their rights. Constantly intimidated, Shuttlesworth and the ACMHR challenged local segregation laws through direct action and other means. They did it for seven long years until 1963, when with the inspired assistance of Martin Luther King, Jr. and "the SCLC boys," thousands participated in the economic boycott, thousands demonstrated and thousands were jailed for fighting for their freedom. The clashes between blacks and firehoses provided "proof of segregation's ills. ACHMR members, students and children won the moral and legal "battle for Birmingham" and for rights for all Americans.14

A leading proponent of the social gospel,15 Shuttlesworth's Birmingham power base was

Shuttlesworth's Christmas present convinced him and his followers that God had truly singled him out for leadership." Manis, "Religious Experience and Civil Rights Leadership," 147-149.

l3Fred Shuttlesworth, in "Awakenings (1954-1956)," Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years," beginning 00:38:45.

'"Eskew credits ACMHR members with the victory: "The intense religious beliefs of the ACMHR propelled the membership to volunteer for demonstrations and face Bull Connor. Shuttlesworth's followers provided the mainstay of the movement, not the middle class recruited by King. The Birmingham campaign would have collapsed in April had it not been for the ACMHR and the students." Glenn Eskew, "The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and the Birmingham Struggle for Civil Rights, 1956-1963," in Garrow, ed., Birmingham, AL, 87.

15The "social gospel" interprets Christianity as a spirit of brotherhood revealed in social ethics. The minister applies his teaching and leadership abilities to issues of public morality, bringing God's love and justice to all men. Taylor Branch discusses Martin Luther King's study of early social gospel practioners and nonviolence during his ministerial training at Crozer Theological Seminary. Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters — America in the King Years 1954-1963," (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1988), 69-75. Christianity and the Social Crisis, by German Lutheran-turned-Baptist minister Walter Rauschenbusch who worked in the Hell's Kitchen area of New York City in the late 19th century, was one of few books King cited as influencing his own religious beliefs. "George W. Davis, the professor who introduced King to Rauschenbusch, was the son of a union activist in the Pittsburgh steel 10

his church, Bethel Baptist Church, Collegeville, in the heart of the North Birmingham industrial district. From this fiscally conservative, working-class church of 400 members (the majority of them members of the ACMHR), Shuttlesworth built the organization into a network of more than 50 Christian churches, their ministers and dedicated members. Shuttlesworth developed a viable, active, working-class civil rights organization unlike that in any other city. Through legal battles, ACMHR challenged and eventually overturned numerous discrimatory laws. Shuttlesworth and ACMHR operated and confronted local segregation despite violent backlashes. Shuttlesworth's church was bombed three times. He and ACMHR members were beaten, arrested and mistreated on many occasions by the KKK and white officials.16

The unremitting protest and individual and mob violence that met Shuttlesworth and ACMHR evoked black solidarity in direct proportion. ACMHR members bonded with Shuttlesworth. Those bonds began Christmas night, 1956 when the bombing of the Bethel church and parsonage led Shuttlesworth and his followers to conclude that "God had saved him to lead the fight."17 Shuttlesworth's valor became legendary in Movement circles, and his followers stuck with him, even providing guards to protect him and other Movement leaders. Each repressive act strengthened the ties between ACMHR members and their leader. Despite continued intimidation, Shuttlesworth and ACMHR members stood up for their rights, put their lives and physical well being on the line and encouraged others to do so, until rights were won for all Americans and municipal laws were changed.18

In 1971, Shuttlesworth reflected, "The unwritten rule was: 'If the Ku Klux Klan doesn't

mills. He was the only strict pacifist on the Crozer faculty, and the strongest admirer of Gandhi." Branch, Parting the Waters, 74. Direct influences of the social gospel upon Shuttlesworth are not known.

16A tabulation of bombings from 1956 to 1963 across the South lists: Birmingham, 19; Montgomery 9; Alabama, 33; Atlanta, 2; Georgia, 38; Tennessee, 28; Louisiana, 5; North Carolina, 4; South Carolina, 4; Texas, 8; "Southern Bombings, January 1, 1956-June 1, 1963, "New South (Atlanta: Southern Regional Council) May 1963. This account does not include the bombing of Bethel Baptist Church. Other local accounts, still to be located, give the Birmingham total at c. 57-60 bombings, many of which have not been reported.

l7Andrew Manis, "Religious Experience, Religious Authority: The Case of Fred Shuttlesworth," 148-149.

18 Researchers at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute are currently collecting records of the thousands of individuals who participated in "The Movement." Initial oral histories, conducted by the Institute staff with Movement participants, will be open to public access in fall 1997. As financial, membership and other records of the ACMHR do not exist in an archive, it is difficult to identify all of the Birmingham Movement participants. 11 stop you, the police can; and if the police fail, then the courts will.'"19 Nevertheless, although court challenges were not dramatic, they did provide a lawful basis for civil rights reform. Shuttleworth's challenges helped serve as a conduit for reform, when no one else, most notably Birmingham's public officials, took positive action to end segregation. Legal appeals also advanced opportunities for Birmingham's black lawyers, especially Arthur Shores, U. W. Clemmons and Orzell Billingsley. In November of 1965, TIME noted that Shuttlesworth had achieved distinction as being "the most litigious individual in the 176 year history of the U. S. Supreme Court."20

To date there is no book-length biography of Fred Shuttlesworth.21 SCLC historian Adam Fairclough notes that while Martin Luther King's image was being carefully groomed, "establishing the hero of Montgomery as a kind of philosopher-statesman . . .the American Gandhi ... the evangelist of nonviolent resistance . . . , men like Steel and Shuttlesworth [leaders of local organizations in Tallahassee, Florida and Birmingham, Alabama] received little public exposure; there was no attempt to 'build them up' or portray them as figures comparable in stature to King."22 Their stories remain hidden.

19Fre d Shuttlesworth, "Birmingham Revisited," Ebony, 1971, 114.

20 "LITIGATION ~ The Champion," TIME, 26 November 1965, 73-74. This TIME article relates an anecdote on Shuttlesworth's bravery and willingness to confront officials. "Last week the Supreme Court confronted a loitering conviction that Shuttlesworth earned in 1962 when a Birmingham cop ordered him and his companions to move along. 'You mean to say we can't stand here on the sidewalk?' asked Shuttlesworth. 'Yes,' said the cop. As the others dispersed, Shuttlesworth walked into a store, where the cop arrested him for blocking the sidewalk outside. A trial without jury netted Shuttlesworth a sentence of 241 days of hard labor."

21 Andrew Manis has been reported to be working on a full-length biography since 1989. Manis, currently editor of the Mercer University Press in Macon, Georgia, has produced an essay on Shuttlesworth published in 1991 as "Religious Experience, Religious Authority, and Civil Rights Leadership: The Case of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth" in Cultural Perspectives on the American South, Charles Reagan Wilson, ed., v.5, New York: Gordon and Breach, 1991, for which he appears to have interviewed Shuttlesworth on numerous occasions. The University of Georgia Press published his Southern Civil Religions in Conflict, Black and White Baptist and Civil Rights, 1947-1957 in 1987. Fred Shuttlesworth's papers and ACMHR records, other than annual reports and sermons located in the "Shuttlesworth Papers" at the King Center in Atlanta and those collected by the Birmingham Police Department and now part of the Eugene "Bull" Connor and Law Department Papers at Birmingham Public Library, are not known to be in archival collections at this time.

22 Fairclough, The Preachers and the People, 430-432. 12

The best texts on Fred Shuttlesworth include Tuskeegee sociologist, Lewis W. Jones's short and affectionate biography written in 1961, "Fred L. Shuttlesworth-Indigenous Leader"; Emma Gelders' essay "The Man With A Bulletproof Soul" in a collection on Martin Luther King, Jr., 1965; Fred Shuttlesworth's essay in "Birmingham Revisited," an EBONY retrospective on the national movement published in 1971; Anne Braden's 1979 article "The History That We Made — Birmingham 1956-1979," reviewing school desegregation; and former Xavier University theology professor Andrew Michael Manis' 1991 essay, "Religious Experience, Religious Authority, and Civil Rights Leadership: The Case of Birmingham's Fred Shuttlesworth."

Shuttlesworth's sermons and writings in black newspapers and ACMHR documents of the era as well as interviews with many Civil Rights historians published in major movement histories and biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr. provide insights into his character and role in the Civil Rights Movement. Shuttlesworth also narrates two Eyes on the Prize segments, providing significant commentary.23

Sociologist Aldon Morris and historian Adam Fairclough provide the best analysis of black church leaders and their church-based, local movements, including Shuttlesworth's Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR). Their texts "The Preachers and the People — Origins and Early Years of the SCLC, 1955-1959," an essay enlarged in To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Origins of the Civil Rights Movement — Black Communities Organizing for Change discuss Shuttlesworth and ACMHR at length. Jacqueline Johnson Clarke's doctoral dissertation provides a detailed analysis of ACMHR's methods, members and finances in 1959 and compares ACMHR to other Alabama groups.24 Andrew Michael Manis' 1991 essay "Religious Experience and Civil Rights Leadership" analyzes Shuttlesworth's personal and religious orientation as the basis for his unflinching, and often confrontational stands.25 Glenn Eskew's Masters' Thesis, published in 1989, provides a detailed account of the ACMHR.26 Eskew places this summary in Birmingham's socio-economic and political context in his doctoral dissertation

""Awakenings (1954-1956)" and "No Easy Walk (1961-1963)," Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, (Boston: Blackside, Inc., 1986).

24J. J. Clarke, "Goals and Techniques in Three Civil Rights Organizations in Alabama." in J. J. Clarke, These Rights They Seek: A Comparison of the Goals and Techniques of Local Civil Rights Organizations (Washington D.C: Public Affairs Press), 1962. Note: this study of ACMHR, completed in 1959, does not chronicle what happened after 1959!

25Andrew Michael Manis, "Religious Experience and Civil Rights Leadership," Cultural Perspectives on the American South,\99\.

26Glenn T. Eskew, The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and The Birmingham Struggle for Civil Rights (Athens: Master's Thesis, University of Georgia), 1993. 13 of 1993.27 Aside from these, scholars of the Civil Rights Movement "have consistently reached erroneous conclusions about the origins of the Civil Rights Movement because they have dismissed these [local movement] centers [such as Shuttlesworth's ACMHR] as weak and incapable of generating mass collective action."28 Morris further argues,

The concept of 'movement center' suggests that an alternative view best fits the data regarding the civil rights movement. Movement centers [such as ACMHR] provided the organizational framework out of which the modern civil rights movement emerged, and it was organization- building that produced these centers.29

While other early Civil Rights groups in Baton Rouge, Montgomery, and Tallahassee successfully coalesced to boycott buses, Shuttlesworth and the ACMHR organized to fight segregation and second class citizenship. Shuttleworth's recollection of his comments to the throngs who packed Birmingham's Sardis Baptist Church one June night in 1956, when ACMHR emerged, define ACMHR's thrust and its leader: "But I organized to fight segregation. I put this in their hearts and in their minds that night. Now when you organize to fight segregation, that means you can never be still. We gonna wipe it out, or it's gonna wipe us out. Somebody may have to die."30

Morris concludes that ACMHR effectively challenged Birmingham's racist regime, "The historical record confirms that Shuttlesworth and his supporters kept the State of Alabama turbulently rocking with protest activity for more than twelve years."31 Eskew concludes that ACMHR, together with other civil rights activists, actually toppled Birmingham's racist political regime. In the days following the Freedom Rides of May 1961, white business leaders initiated reform of Birmingham's city government, "but the political reform did not address the long-

27Glenn T. Eskew, But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle, Ph.D. diss., (Athens: University of Georgia), 1993.

28Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement — Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: The Free Press, 1984), 74.

29Morris, Origins, 86.

30Morris, Origins, 51

3'Morris, Origins, 50. See "Comments of Contemporary Observers and Historians on Shuttlesworth" and "On the Importance of the Birmingham Movement" included in this essay for other views of Shuttlesworth's role in the Movement and the Movement's significance. 14 standing concern and needs of the black community."32

Shuttlesworth has also summarized ACMHR's accomplishments, reflecting in 1971 on the creation and role of ACMHR:

To stop agitation for rights and voting privileges, the state legislature of Alabama "temporarily" outlawed the NAACP on May 26, 1956.33 Being membership chairman of the organization, I was flooded with calls from Negroes asking "What can we do?" and "Where can we go now?" Having never been more deeply disturbed in my life, I turned with others to God during the next few days for an answer. The sleepless nights culminated at 3 o'clock one morning with the "divinely illuminated" consciousness that "the Truth shall make you free." Taking this to be God's mandate, I held quick discussions with a few persons who would not "bow the knee to Baal," and the historic call was issued on that Friday for Birmingham Negroes to come and organize, Tuesday, June 5, 1956. That night, in unimagined numbers and with a fervor heretofore unseen, Negroes from the city formed the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), vowing to be non-violent and declaring that "they cannot outlaw a people determined to be free." The full history surrounding this event and period cannot be fully told in one article. During seven and a half years before the 1963 demonstrations, with the slogan "The Movement is Moving," ACMHR moved by petition and lawsuit against all areas of segregation in the city.34

Bethel church member Aldrich Gunn recalls the padlocking of the NAACP doors in the

32Glenn T. Eskew, "The Freedom Riot and Political Reform in Birmingham, 1961-1963." Alabama Review (July 1996), 182.

33 Established in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has been a powerful fighter for Civil Rights for African Americans. Today, the NAACP remains one of the largest and most influential Civil Rights organization in the country. In 1956, the Alabama chapter of the NAACP championed the case of Autherine Lucy, the first black admitted to the University of Alabama. Lucy was later expelled due to the unrest that occurred on the campus. Four months after Lucy's registration desegregated the University, the state filed a petition to prohibit the NAACP from operating in Alabama. The state's petition set the stage for an eight-year court battle, a case that went before the U. S. Supreme Court three times. / Shall Not be Moved: The Life and Legacy of W. C. Patton, Study Guide, An episode of The Alabama Experience documentary series, The University of Alabama Center for Public Television & Radio, Webmaster: Max Shores, mshores @sa.ua.edu. Patton had been executive director of the Alabama NAACP since 1947. He continued to operate the office from Memphis, Tennessee during the ban from Alabama.

34Fred Shuttlesworth, "Birmingham Revisited, "EBONY, (1971), 114-118. 15 Colored Masonic Temple on Fourth Avenue (now in the Fourth Avenue National Register Historic District and part of the larger Birmingham Civil Rights District). "That did it. Fred was just not gonna have that."35 36

Fred Shuttlesworth's posture had no place for self-promotion. He continues to dedicate himself to activism, not to the writing of memoirs. Unlike Martin Luther King, Jr. and the SCLC, he did not stage large media-friendly events around the country. He fought local segregation and assisted other communities in their local fights. Most importantly, Shuttlesworth's major civil rights accomplishments were through a local organization of working-class people in a relatively isolated city with little major media exposure and through the courts, a naturally "silent" means of activism spread over years. Shuttlesworth's vital role remains hidden, thus Shuttlesworth's Bethel Baptist Church is rarely discussed in histories of the national movement, except brief mentions of the 1956 Christmas night bombing and the highly successful bus ride of the next day.37

35Aldrich Gunn, Interview with author, 17 June 1997. Aldrich Gunn currently serves on the Birmingham City Council, representing the East and North Birmingham industrial districts. When asked what was nationally significant about Bethel, Gunn responded: "Shuttlesworth's reaction to the banning of the NAACP and the 1956 Christmas bombing that furthered the resolve of black people to stand up for their rights."

36Nationally significant events associated with Fred Shuttlesworth are his response to the State of Alabama's prohibition of the NAACP from operating in the state (the formation the ACMHR several days later on June 5, 1956) and his response to the Christmas night bombing of the Bethel Baptist Church and parsonage which strengthened his resolve to lead ACMHR, despite repression, and strengthened the resolve of Bethel and ACMHR members to follow him in "the fight" against segregation and second class citizenship. The bombing motivated 250 Negroes to ride the buses the next day in the first massive direct action challenge of Birmingham segregation. Shuttlesworth's courageous leadership during the Freedom Rides and the fulfillment of his organizational abilities, delivering "the folks" for the 1963 demonstrations, are likewise of national importance.

""Blows Against Segregation-Negro Fight for Freedom on Buses Spreads After Montgomery Ruling" Life, (7 January 1957), 34-45. Three photographs show the December 25, 1956 bombing of the Bethel Baptist Church parsonage, bus riders and the ACMHR Mass Meeting immediately thereafter. Captions read: "Dynamited Parsonage, in the White Section, Happy Martyrs." 16 Several other factors contribute misinformation on Shuttlesworth's role.38 After Freedom Summer, 1961 and the failure of local law enforcement officials and the federal government to provide protection for Civil Rights activists in Birmingham, Shuttlesworth's high profile led him to move his family to safety in Cincinnati. From his new church, he continued to lead the local Birmingham Movement until 1969 when he resigned after 13 years of service as president of the ACMHR. He resigned just after winning his last United States Supreme Court case, Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham in which the Supreme Court ruled the Birmingham parade permit law invalid, vindicating Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963 Easter Sunday jailing and freeing thousands of protesters from jail terms.39 Most historians think that Shuttlesworth dropped out of the local movement in 1961 or participated as a SCLC leader in the Birmingham demonstrations of Spring 1963. [He was secretary of SCLC until just after King's death.] Press photographs often show King, Abernathy and Shuttlesworth, the three SCLC leaders responsible for the Birmingham campaign.

Few historians link Shuttlesworth to his Bethel Church that served as ACMHR headquarters from June 5, 1956 until after the Freedom Rides of 1961.40 Few have documented the tireless and courageous work that went into building and maintaining the ACMHR as a viable movement organization or the legal cases it fought.

ACMHR differed from other civil rights groups. ACMHR was not an umbrella organization that focused on coordinating the work of other organizations. It was Fred Shuttlesworth's organization of ministers, their churches and their working-class and quasi- professional members.

ACMHR also differed from other local Civil Rights groups in that few of Birmingham's elite and middle class ministerial and business leaders or their churches participated in ACMHR's seven years of legal challenges and other direct action prior to

38Howell Raines, and others, assume that Shuttlesworth dropped out of the Movement after the "Feud at the Top." Raines' 1977 interview reports Shuttlesworth's disagreement with King over terms of the agreement reached to end the Birmingham conflict in May 1963. Howell Raines, My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered (New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1977), 154-161. Taylor Branch reports that "Shuttlesworth's old church" was just down the street from Sixteenth Street. Actually, it is six miles away in an industrial zone.

i9The Legal Defense Fund Web Page, "Time Line of Landmark Cases" includes this citation.

40Birmingham Police Department Inter-Office Communication Files document Shuttlesworth's presence at 45 mass meetings in 1962 (he was jailed in Birmingham for two months early in 1962) and 78 mass meetings in 1963. Eugene "Bull" Connor Papers, Birmingham Police Department Inter-Office Communications Files, Birmingham Public Library Archives. 17 Spring 1963.41 Eskew, and others, argue that the ACMHR's policy of direct action and heightened religious fervor of the mass meetings limited participation from those groups and individuals who preferred "accomodationist" style tactics and a more intellectual religious experience. ACMHR secretary Lola Hendricks stated it more bluntly: "After the 1956 bombing of Bethel, many ministers were reluctant to join [ACMHR]. You knew the consequences."42

Another factor contributing to the minimization of the role of the ACMHR was disunity among Birmingham's activist ministers. Several prominent black ministers did not support ACMHR, nor its joint campaign with SCLC in the Spring 1963 and criticized the campaign in the black press. Among these was the longtime activist minister, Reverend J. L. Ware, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, Smithfield and head of the Birmingham Baptist Ministers Association, the city's largest ministerial association with a membership of 200 pastors.43 Rev. Monroe Whitt, another prominent pastor of the era and leader of Kingston's Harmony Street Baptist Church, would not allow his church to be involved. While blacks worshipped at more than 400 Baptist churches in the greater Birmingham area, only 56 churches, predominately Baptist, participated as ACMHR Mass Meeting sites.44

Most historians credit Martin Luther King, Jr. with rallying the middle class to the

41Jacqueline Johnson Clarke's 1959 study of local civil rights organizations published as her doctoral dissertation at Ohio State University in 1960, does not address the strength of the ACMHR as it grew and evolved in the 1960s. Glenn Eskew concludes that only a handful of churches and a few hundred persons belonged to the "Movement."

42Lola Hendricks, Interview with author, 13 June 1997. During the highly successful economic boycotts of Spring 1962, the Birmingham Movement's base broadened. Many more individuals and groups, particularly students, participated and supported the participation of other Birmingham blacks who protested the downtown stores.

43Wilson Fallin provides an excellent analysis of the local church culture which nurtured activist leaders of the Birmingham Movement of the 1960s, and before this era. Fallin notes that 400. black Baptist churches existed at this time. He also presents the Reverend J. L. Ware's civic activism in the 1940s and 1950s and Ware's reluctance to join the new leadership that emerged in the person of Fred Shuttlesworth in the mid 1950s. Wilson Fallin, A Shelter in the Storm: The African American Church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1815-1963 (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1995), 215-236.

"""Birmingham Churches Active in the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement," 1956-1963, BHS Research Report, 1997. 18

Birmingham Movement during the Spring 1963 campaign."5 Many of Shuttleworth's peers in Birmingham did not acknowledge him as leader of the Birmingham movement and many ministers in the city resented King and SCLC interfering with their affairs on a campaign that appeared destined for violent repercussions. In the early days of the campaign, King met with many ministerial groups, attempting to "include" them and explain the Movement's goals.46 He challenged them to get involved: "I'm tired of preachers riding around in big cars, living in fine homes, but not willing to take their part in the fight ... If you can't stand up with your people, you are not fit to be a leader!"47

Responding to King's pleas, many ministers made announcements of the boycott, distributed literature through their churches and in other ways encouraged participation, particularly after fire hoses and police dogs were used to curtail demonstrations, a move that illicited sympathy for the demonstrators from everyone.48 However, only one new church, Sixth Avenue Baptist Church, pastored by King's former associate, the Rev. John Porter, who assumed this pastorate in December of 1962, participated as a meeting church during 1963. Sixteenth Street Baptist Church is listed as a mass meeting site in the 1958 ACMHR Annual Report.49 Just following the Freedom Rides on June 14, 1961, King also spoke here at a Mass

45Shuttlesworth in an exuberant reflection on the success of the Spring 1963 campaign, thought everybody rallied to "The Movement" by the end. Shuttlesworth, Seventh Annual Address to the ACMHR, 5 June 1963. Andrew Young appears to be a source of the notion that King brought the middle class preachers into the Movement. He mentions this and cites King's associates: Rev. John Cross at Sixteenth Street Baptist, Rev. John Porter at Sixth Avenue Baptist and King's brother, Rev. A. D. King at First Baptist Church, Ensley. Andrew Young, "And Birmingham," SCLC Drum Major, 1971. Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and First Baptist Church, Ensley had been involved with ACMHR as early as 1958. ACMHR Annual Report, 1958, Lola Hendricks Collection, Birmingham, Alabama. However, the majority of Birmingham pastors did not join the Movement from the 1950s through 1963, either because they disagreed over tactics to attain civil rights or were, as Daniel Thompson in The Negro Leadership Class, 1963, suggests, "primarily interested in their pastoral role . . . (with) little interest in the general citizenship status of their own parishioners, to say nothing about that of the Negro masses." Eskew echoes this view. Daniel Thompson, The Negro Leadership Class (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963) 21.

46Martin Luther King, Jr., in David L. Lewis, King - A Critical Biography (New York: Praeger, 1970), 179.

47Martin Luther King, Jr., in Lewis, 181.

48Glenn Eskew, But for Birmingham, 310-315.

^Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights Annual Report, "The Movement is Moving," 1958, Lola Hendricks Collection, Birmingham, AL. Interestingly, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Minute Books do not mention any "Movement" use of church facilities, 19 Meeting. On Lincoln's Birthday, February 12, 1962, King addressed a Mass Meeting called to increase public awareness of the injustice of jailing ACMHR leaders, Fred Shuttlesworth and J. S. Phifer.50 SCLC held their fall conference at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in September 1962 at which time the joint SCLC-ACMHR campaign was formally announced. First Baptist, Ensley, which, since 1962, had been under the leadership of A. D. King, Martin Luther King's brother, had been a regular movement church for many years.

Who marched? Who went to jail? Thousands. Three thousand four hundred were jailed. No one has yet studied from whence they all came.51 However, all Movement volunteers signed ACMHR pledge cards before participating in the non-violent and Christian endeavors.52 The backbone of "the Birmingham Movement" were the ministers and members of the more than 50 working-class churches, many active in and organized by the ACMHR in the late 1950s. The ACMHR faithful helped provide the thousands of people that filled the streets and jails and brought Birmingham to a standstill and the nation to question its moral conscience.

Birmingham Historical Society's study of Bethel Baptist Church and the church culture of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, being prepared for Historic American Building Survey-Historic American Engineering Record (HABS-HAER) documentation of the Bethel Church, appears to be the only study that identifies ACMHR churches and reviews the sustained and long term support that one working-class church, Bethel Baptist Church, gave to ACMHR and to the Birmingham Movement under the leadership of Fred Shuttlesworth. A summary of church participation in ACMHR prepared for HABS-HAER is included in this report as "Birmingham Churches Active in the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement, A BHS Research Report, July 1997" and mapped as "A Land-Use Map of Birmingham Showing the Locations of African American Churches Active in the Civil Rights Movement, c. 1960, and African American

according to current pastor Christopher Hamlin who has read them in detail. Christopher Hamlin, Interview with author, 18 June 1997.

50J. B. Jones and W.W. Self, Birmingham Police Department Inter-Office Communication Files, 14 June 1961 and 12 February 1961, Eugene "Bull" Connor Papers, Birmingham Public Library Archives.

5'One person interviewed stated that the police arrested demonstrators so they could not get to the marches. During the mornings of the major marches, the highway linking Birmingham and Bessemer, an industrial center 16 miles west, filled with automobiles coming to Sixteenth Street Baptist Church to march. According to this interviewee, all his friends and neighbors attempted to get to every march. Earlie Terry, interview with author, 12 June 1997, Birmingham Historical Society Bethel Files, Birmingham.

52Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, "Birmingham Affiliate of S.C.L.C Pledge Card," in Martin Luther King, Jr., Why W, Can't Wait, 1963, 61-62. 20

Housing Within the Context of the City's Industrial Infrastructure."53 Of the 56 Movement "Meeting" churches, all remain as active congregations, several with names amended. Of the 1960s era structures, 35 churches remain. An historic resources survey of these churches and other civil rights sites should be conducted.

From an initial group of several churches at its establishment in June 1956, ACMHR grew by 1958 to a core group of some 48 small, working-class churches scattered throughout the industrial city.54 In the early 1960s, mass meetings moved to larger and more centrally located churches as the Movement gained momentum.55 By the Spring of 1963, 13 churches located near the targets for the marches, the retail district, the jail and city hall, served as public meeting sites. St. James Baptist Church (no longer standing) hosted 12 meetings, more than any other facility used during the campaign. At the height of demonstrations, mass meeting participants filled several churches downtown simultaneously. Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, with its large auditorium and central location on Kelly Ingram Park, close to the retail district and to city hall, hosted seven meetings and served as staging ground for the major marches. Sixteenth Street's educational rooms hosted non-violent training workshops and strategy sessions. SCLC Director Wyatt T. Walker had his headquarters here. King's headquarters were in a meeting room, "Room 30," at the A. G. Gaston Motel, one block away. ACMHR headquarters were at 505 1/2 North 17th Street.56 New Pilgrim Baptist Church (now a day care center) hosted four meetings and a triumphant "walk" to the Birmingham Jail.57 All ACMHR churches and their ministers listed in the BHS Research Report remained

"See "Birmingham Churches Active in the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement, BHS Research Report, July 1997" in Part VI.

54ACMHR Annual Report, 1958, Lola Hendricks Collection, Birmingham, Alabama.

55See the Birmingham Police Department Inter-Office Communication files and compendia of these files prepared by Birmingham Historical Society, Bethel Baptist Church Research Files, Birmingham Historical Society.

56"ACMHR Statement of Rev. F. L. Shuttlesworth," September 30, 1963, City of Birmingham Law Department Collection # 987 Civil Rights and Related Materials, 987.1.1 The same address in the Colored Masonic Temple Building is listed on the ACMHR Pledge Card used to sign up volunteers for the Spring Demonstrations. ACMHR Pledge Card in Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 61-62.

57An injunction banned marches, so participants "walked." Lola Hendricks, Interview with author, 13 June 1997. 21

active in the ACMHR throughout the 1960s.58 ACMHR was a gutsy and feisty, working-class movement.

In Birmingham, a local news blackout squelched the work of the Movement. The local press often portrayed Shuttlesworth as a radical and a troublemaker. After the mob beating of the first bus of Freedom Riders, a Birmingham News editorial on the front page of May 18, 1961 's paper chastised Shuttlesworth for assisting riders and "threatening this city with turmoil." 59 Adam Fairclough comments:

White leaders, dumbfounded by the sudden emergence of hitherto obscure figures, refused to acknowledge their legitimacy. These new men they reasoned, must be radicals, communists, outsiders, self-seeking parvenus whose hold over their followers rested on a clear combination of duress, demogogry, and deceit. But however much whites ignored, denigrated, or persecuted them, the new leaders won respect and support from ordinary blacks and became forces to be reckoned with.60

Shuttlesworth found a more admiring following in the national press. In the early 1960s, his weekly column in the Pittsburgh Courier, together with his many court challenges and courageous deeds, had made him a noted name among African Americans and those following the Civil Rights struggle across the United States. The national press, both white and black, reported Shuttlesworth's crusade against segregation, though not at the same level

58Birmingham Historical Society Research Report, "Birmingham Churches Active in the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1963."

59"Shuttlesworth shouts Fire," Editorial, The Birmingham News, 18 May 1961, 1. On May 15, 1961, The Birmingham News and Birmingham Post Herald broke their policies of silence on racial violence by publishing Post Herald photographer Tommy Langston's image of Ku Klux Klan members assaulting Freedom Rider James Peck at the Trailways station on May 14, 1961. "That photo," says former Mayor David Vann," was the watershed event in Birmingham in the 1960s. It helped convict several Klansmen of attacking the Freedom Riders. And it made local businessmen realize that something needed to be done to stop all that violence." The photograph, published around the world in the days that followed, shows the mob beating Peck with no police in sight. Kathy Kemp, "A Pivotal Image ~ In 1961, Klansmen attacked Freedom Riders at the Trailways Bus Station. Post-Herald photographer Tommy Langston was there," Birmingham Post Herald FEATURES, 30 July 1997. C1,C3.

60Fairclough, The Preachers and the People, 404 and Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America-The Origins of SCLC, 13. 22 as the coverage accorded King.61

Eskew, in his doctoral thesis of 1993 and other summaries of Birmingham events, argues that Martin Luther King's reputation was redeemed in Birmingham, at the expense of Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), the Shuttlesworth's "band of militant Christians."62

Journalist Howell Raines's 1977 interview with Fred Shuttlesworth on King's role in Birmingham and the national movement's success underscores Shuttlesworth's understanding that 'God had chosen King to be the man of the hour:'

One name has to characterize a movement, a time, a period. That doesn't bother me at all. You see, I think the role that I played was so vital and so basic that King's name never would touch immortality had it not been for Birmingham . . . Birmingham really made SCLC. In fact, when we went to the White House, Kennedy . . . used these words. If I ever write a book I'm, gonna use that: 'But for Birmingham, we would not be here today.'

'But for Birmingham,' I think that oughta be remembered. That's a good title. The only thing is, I'm a lazy writer. I'm not a writer. I'm a fighter.'63

SCLC Secretary Shuttlesworth seemed content, as he expressed it in written documents and to his ACMHR followers at their 1966 annual meeting, that they had played a supportive and important role. Shuttlesworth gave them the credit for the success of the Birmingham movement, the movement that shocked a nation's moral conscience, inspired a President to act and gave birth to the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

Some men may little note or soon forget what we say here, but the Nation will never forget what we did here together. We were not satisfied with the few scattering cracks in the Segregation wall and decided to effect a major confrontation with evil. Joining with SCLC, led on by illustrious Martin Luther King, Jr., Negroes filled the jailhouse and streets of B'ham in 1963 until the White House became concerned about the poor houses in America, and the Man of destiny in the White House became an ally of the black men in the streets of

61 Press clips, Shuttlesworth Papers at the King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

62Glenn T. Eskew, "Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and the Birmingham Civil Rights Struggle, 1956-1963," 93.

63 Fred Lee Shuttlesworth, Interview with Howell Raines in My Soul is Rested, 161. 23

B'ham. We 'shook up' the Country and made America conscious of its morality and commitment to the ideals of justice and humanitarianism. The late President Kennedy, God rest his soul and fulfill his vision, opened one of the many hurriedly called White House conferences on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the classic and caustic remark of 'Gentlemen, but for B'ham and what happened there, we would not be here today.'

Birmingham really caused the Federal Government to begin having genuine and legitimate overt concern about the Freedom of Negroes. The Civil Rights Bill expresses legitimate concern and interest in many areas of human existence — schools, hotels, public accommodations, job opportunities and jobs. The Voting Act of 1966 coming after the Selma Demonstration was really an extension and further dimension of what happened here. . . .

I am proudest tonight of an organization that 'took it' and always came back for more; one that suffered all sorts of violence without doing violence in return. I recall days and nights when men and women watched for our safety, and when Klansmen would also meet my planes at the airport. I cannot forget the mobs of this city and the awful smell of dynamite. Seems like I still see blood on the street in front of Phillips High School and still feel the chains and brass knuckles. I can never forget the sight of children being washed down the street with firehoses nor forget myself being dashed against a wall by its pressure.

But the Mass Meetings always soothed us and gave us strength to go on. We believed 'we shall overcome'; and we found out that 'the Lord would see us through.'64

Shuttlesworth was not a party to the negotiated settlement of the Birmingham demonstrations. That fire hose, he mentions in the statement above, broke his ribs and flooded Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.65 The Central Committee and others negotiated the settlement

6"Fred Shuttlesworth, Tenth Annual Address To The ACMHR, 6 June 1966, 17th St. A.O. H. Church. Shuttlesworth Papers, 1.1.

65"Ben Allen and Glenn V. Evans, Two Cops," in Howell Raines, My Soul is Rested, (New York: Penguin Books, 1977) 173-174. Glenn V. Evans: "On one occasion I recall vividly, the police were at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Sixteenth Street . . . where the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church is located. And there had been demonstrations that day and large congregations of black people, and they has assembled back at the Sixteenth Street 24 during his hospitalization. Howell Raines' chapter on Shuttlesworth in "Feud at the Top," chronicles Shuttlesworth's conflict with King over the proposed settlement this group reached. Federal mediator Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall, SCLC leader Ralph Abernathy and Birmingham blacks, businessmen A. G. Gaston and John Drew, attorney Arthur Shores and Miles College President Lucious Pitts, represented the black community. Business leaders represented the white community. (No one represented the City governments.) President Kennedy and King were to announce the settlement, simultaneously in Washington and Birmingham, and end the demonstrations. The proposed settlement cancelled the demonstrations, but did not require concessions from the merchants.66

Shuttlesworth expected concessions.67 Shuttlesworth also expected King to sign a joint ACMHR-SCLC agreement, as King had agreed when he accepted Shuttlesworth's and the ACMHR's invitation to come to Birmingham to assist the local movement.68 69 King

Baptist Church. They were milling all 'round outside, on the sidewalk and on the steps, and the firehoses were brought into play, and they were literally washed into the church. At one point, after it seemed that everything was pretty well over, one of the black leaders, and I believe it was Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, came out of the church on the Sixth Avenue side and walked around the corner and was walking north on Sixteenth Street, and the firehose was put on him and he was knocked awinding, so to speak. His feet was knocked out from under him. And I had the thought at that time, what's the purpose of this, why was this done? . . . Now the practical end result was that the fire department went in and pumped every drop of water out of the basement of the church." Earlier in the interview, Evans noted that the orders to hose demonstrators came from his superiors, including Commissioner Connor. The incident described took place May 7, 1963 and led to Shuttlesworth's hospitalization during the negotiations which led to the truce.

66Eskew, But for Birmingham, 388. "At the insistence of the Kennedy administration, King had joined the local black bourgeoisie — who had opposed the movement all along ~ in announcing the moratorium on marches. A member of his class, he had never strayed far from traditional black leadership methods. Consequently, King struck a deal instead of holding his ground."

67Eskew, But for Birmingham, 382. Untitled notes of the negotiations are located in Box 139, File 7, Southern Christian Leadership Conference Papers, King Center, Atlanta.

68Andrew Manis in "Religious Experience, Religious Authority and Civil Rights Leadership: The Case of Fred Shuttlesworth" states: "Massive demonstrations were planned by leaders of the combined forces of ACMHR and SCLC, with King, Abernathy, and Shuttlesworth agreeing to meet for daily strategy sessions and to make joint statements to the press. They also agreed that demonstrations would continue unabated until they received all of their demands from the white business leaders." Manis, 150. 25 acquiesced in Shuttlesworth's position. At a press conference on May 10, Shuttlesworth announced the terms of the Birmingham truce and then collapsed from his physical injuries and was carried off. Reporters, who had little clue who Shuttlesworth was, wanted to hear the announcement from King who, unruffled, continued the press conference.70 71 The final truce failed to address major local desegregation issues.

The Birmingham Movement became a moral, political and public relations victory for King, and for the national Civil Rights Movement. These national and international victories overshadowed the local issues of merchants not living up to agreements, public officials denying the settlement and failing to assist with school desegregation and problems with municipal officials and the police force.

Historian Glenn Eskew states that because King negotiated with other representatives of Birmingham's black community, Shuttlesworth's local prestige was not increased. While King emerged as the victor on the national scene, the black community's representatives — Gaston, Drew, Pitts, Shores ~ continued to represent black interests in the greater Birmingham white and black communities. Arthur Shores would become the first black to

69Shuttlesworth later interpreted this conflict with King as similar to his conflicts with Birmingham police commissioner Bull Connor, "It's all one and the same thing. I see evil, whether a righteous man does it or not, as evil. And I see when a man compromises with his deepest principles as evil." Again as one might expect, he saw the hand and voice of God at work in his actions: "I had the instantaneous perception that if the power structure could ever say 'You didn't get a victory,' we were dead. I had that understanding ... I think that was God, too, just as much as it was over here [against Connor] .... Because if God had permitted me to say yeah. . . . if the white power structure had ever been able to say, 'Ya'll called it off without a victory,' we wouldn't have a movement. So God uses people for certain purposes, and the greatest of men come very close many times to making fatal mistakes. But I think it was God in it." Andrew Michael Manis, "Religious Experience and Civil Rights Leadership," 151 based on Manis Interview No. 3, October 27-31, 1988. For other discussions of this "Feud at the Top," see David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1986) 256-257; Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 128-129, Glenn T. Eskew, "The Alabama Christian Movement and the Birmingham Struggle for Civil Rights, 1956-1963," 86- 89 and But for Birmingham, 383-391.

70Robert Guttwillig, "Six Days in Alabama," Mademoiselle, September 1963, 169. See Photograph of The Press Conference and a transcription of Guttwillig's comments in Appendices to this report. Shuttlesworth's opening comments included this statement, "The City of Birmngham has reached an accord with its conscience." Eskew, But for Birmingham, 396.

7lBranch, Parting the Waters, 709 and Eskew, But for Birmingham, 394-397. 26 represent his people on the Birmingham city council. However, Bethel Baptist Church and ACMHR movement member, Reuben Davis, would become Jefferson County's first black commissioner.

That Birmingham's segregation ills continued after May 1963 is well documented in the police reports of ACMHR Mass Meetings held during the Fall of 1963 and by the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963. This repressive act was intended to thwart desegregation of the Birmingham schools and other facilities.72

It is ironic that Shuttlesworth and ACMHR did not emerge as national heroes of the Birmingham demonstrations. Certain of the value of their effort, Shuttlesworth and the ACMHR continued the fight. Police reports of the mass meetings from the fall of 1963 demonstrate their activism, when national attention, except the church bombing, had shifted elsewhere. Shuttlesworth's annual reports to the members reflect upon the significance of their roles in the national Movement.73

Shuttlesworth has continued his civic activism in Cincinnati, his work with Anne Braden and the Southern Conference Education Fund and through the establishment of the Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation, a charitable organization that helps low and moderate income households attain home ownership.74

In 1986, Shuttlesworth narrated four sections of Eyes on the Prize and appears in others, demonstrating and preaching at a mass meeting and sections on the murder of Emmet Till, the Montgomery Bus Boycott and opening and closing statements. Among opening scenes are Shuttlesworth confronting a Birmingham police officer on a city street, "We're willing to be beaten for democracy and you misuse democracy in the streets. You beat people." In a comment closing the video, Shuttlesworth reflects on the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Movement:

72Wayne Flynt, "The Ethics of Democratic Persuasion and the Birmingham Crisis," 35:1 Southern Speech Journal, Fall 1969, 40-53. In this article, Flint uses newspaper sources to trace the orations of Alabama public officials, including recently elected Governor George Wallace and its impact upon KKK inspired mob violence that accompanied the opening of Birmingham school in the fall of 1963. Flynt is now chairman of the Department of History at Auburn University.

73 Excerpts from Shuttlesworth annual addresses are included in Part IV: "Shuttlesworth on the Role of the Church and the ACMHR in the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement."

74Established in 1988 with a $100,000 grant from "The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, pastor of Greater New Light Baptist Church and a long-time associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.," the foundation is now administered by the Greater Cincinnati Foundation to help assist in "Home Ownership. The American Dream." Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation, http: //www.cinternet.net/bhl/shuttle.htm. 27

Cause you get to understand that God is with you. That God can take care of you. That this is God's way. And you are here to do it. I think that's the essential drive. That's what many people don't understand about what happened back in the deep South. That here I am. That this is my duty. I've got to do something. And God is with me. And if God is with me, how can you lose, leaning on the Everlasting arm.75

"Shuttlesworth in "Awakenings (1954-56), Eyes on the Prize. 28

Statement of Significance: Fred Shuttlesworth, Bethel Baptist Church, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham

"But for Birmingham we wouldn't be here." This statement of John F. Kennedy at one of many hastily called White House meetings to discuss Civil Rights during the summer of 1963 . . .

"Here" was a meeting at the White House to plan what became the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This Act, together with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, forever changed the moral, social and political climate of the America. The Act was inspired by the Birmingham demonstrations of April and May, 1963. Its passage was made inevitable by the assassination of President Kennedy and the sacrifice of four young lives in the September, 1963, bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, an atrocity motivated by the role of that church as the starting point of the 1963 Birmingham demonstrations that provoked attacks on the demonstrators with fire hoses and police dogs.

That Sixteenth Street Baptist Church is a national historic landmark is a fact acknowledged in the hearts and minds of all who lived through the 1960s or who have studied it since, requiring no scholarly justification or official imprimatur to establish its status. But why Bethel; who ever heard of Bethel?

Bethel started it all and stuck to the last.

In the office of Bill Baxley, the Alabama lawyer who, as Attorney General, successfully prosecuted Ku Klux Klan leader, Robert Edward Chambliss, for the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, there is a plaque that reads, "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of moral crisis, fail to take a stand." (The quotation is attributed to Dante, but apocryphal.) The national significance of Bethel and Fred Shuttlesworth, its pastor and leader, is that they and those whom they inspired, cajoled, motivated and led (including, at the last, the school children who risked expulsion to skip school and face the fire hoses and taunt their oppressors into jailing them), never failed to take a stand, never wavered, never compromised of their own volition. The moral crisis was the refusal of society and government to recognize the Negro's existence as God's child, to accord him basic human rights and economic opportunity.

Bethel, Fred Shuttlesworth and their early partners and followers in the ACMHR were the hard clear mirror reflecting the moral crisis. For seven years, prior to the events of spring 1963, despite three bombings of their church and constant threats and intimidation from the KKK and the police, Bethel and the ACMHR created the strongest Southern civil rights organization and challenged every local segregation law. Martin Luther King was the magnifying glass powerfully projecting the moral crisis for the world to see. Most of white society was opposed to the Negro's basic rights and needs, or in denial. The white power structure in Birmingham was afflicted with a guilty conscience, concerned about economic 29 and political interests, wanting the troubles to go away and the problems to be dealt with another day. Even the black power structure wavered, waffled and compromised. The bourgeois blacks and the bourgeois black churches remained detached from the Birmingham Movement, not leaders, in the great struggle until the very last when King's presence attracted some of them to the cause and they co-opted it. The Birmingham Movement was led by Shuttlesworth's Bethel Baptist Church, the Alabama Movement for Christian Rights and ACMHR's membership of working class preachers, deacons, Sunday school teachers, secretaries, and blue collar workers.

Bethel's claim to be a National Historic Landmark is that in the face of official intimidation and lawless violence, it took a stand. Where else in our history has a group of ordinary men and women risked life and limb so unremittingly for the purpose of achieving liberty and equality? Bethel stood, and still stands, for the sacred rights of the common man. That is its national significance. 30

II. Fred Lee Shuttlesworth: Freedom Fighter Highlights of his Role in the Civil Rights Movement

Montgomery, Alabama, 1955-56

While the United States Supreme Court cleared the way for desegregation with its school desegregation decision in 1954, the Civil Rights Movement literally began when Montgomery resident Rosa Parks would not give up her seat on the bus. At that time, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy and others organized a successful bus strike. Dr. Martin Luther King, the newly arrived pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, became the spokesman for the strike. Thus began a 13-year friendship between these two men. The strike catapulted King into the national limelight. The Montgomery campaign ended with a success in December 21, 1956.

Shuttlesworth attended organizational meetings of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and preached at MIA meetings including the major meeting during the Freedom Rides of May 1961,76 77

Birmingham, Alabama, 1956

By 1956, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had built a strong organization in Alabama with 58 branches and a membership of 14,000 persons. Birmingham served as headquarters for activities in seven Southern states. Since 1954, the NAACP had been leading efforts to integrate public schools. Hoping to thwart its efforts, on May 26, 1956, Alabama's attorney general outlawed the NAACP in the state. The padlocking of the NAACP office propelled Fred Shuttlesworth into action.78 Two weeks later, on June 5, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and others organized the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) as a network of pastors and their churches to continue the fight against segregation.

76Shuttlesworth preaches at the Mass Meeting at First Baptist Church, Montgomery, held just after the mob beating of the Freedom Riders in Birmingham and Montgomery, May 22, 1961, speaking just after Martin Luther King, and recorded in "Ain't Scared of Your Jails," Eyes on the Prize, 00:47:15. This meeting came at the breaking point in the rides. Shortly thereafter, due to federal intervention, the states of Alabama and Mississippi provided armed guards to protect the riders. Working with CORE, Shuttlesworth had coordinated the rides across Alabama, nursing the brutalized victims and assisting in the continuation of the rides to Montgomery. Eyes on the Prize also includes an interview with the riders beaten in Birmingham at Shuttlesworth's residence on c.May 14, 1961, "Ain't Sacred of Your Jails."

"Eskew, "The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights," 18.

78Aldrich Gunn, Interview with author, 18 June 1997. 31

ACMHR's goals were articulated in its incorporation papers: "to press forward persistently for freedom and democracy, and the removal of any form of second class citizenship". . . using "peaceful and lawful means . . . preaching and teaching the principles of Christianity" and promoting "the economic, political, civic, and social development of all people."79

Shuttlesworth, the 34-year old pastor of Bethel Baptist Church, Collegeville and then membership chairman of the NAACP, had been a neighborhood activist engaged in seeking job opportunities for blacks and reform of the Birmingham police force. Bethel became headquarters of "The Movement."

A Christmas night, 1956, bombing of the Bethel Church and its parsonage confirmed Shuttlesworth, who emerged unharmed from the rubble that was his residence, as the messianic leader of the Birmingham movement. Shuttlesworth called it "the fight" and declared that "God had saved him to lead it." The following day, as announced, he led 250 persons on a successful ride to integrate Birmingham's public transit system. Life published a pictorial report on the bombing and the rides.80

The bombing solidified Shuttlesworth's leadership and energized The Movement. Those who were willing to stand up for their rights, "those who would go with you," began to be counted.8'

Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights' Track Record

With headquarters at the Bethel church, from June 1956 until after Freedom summer, 1961, Shuttlesworth led the ACMHR in its efforts to force Birmingham to desegregate. ACMHR used legal methods and direct action to challenge the City's segregation ordinances. ACMHR procedure was to defy local laws and customs and force white officials to arrest the protesters for violating the city ordinances, thus challenging and eventually changing those laws in the courts. Challenges met increasingly hostile response from white groups, including the KKK and the Birmingham police. More moderate groups in the Black community also disapproved of confrontational methods, preferring other strategies.

Throughout the late 1950s, ACMHR conducted weekly mass meetings at more than 40 churches, mostly small working class churches, located across the industrial city. By 1961, "The Movement" had grown too large and Monday Mass Meetings rotated to approximately 23 larger churches strategically selected across the city. Birmingham police attended the

"Certificate of Incorporation, The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, Probate Court Records, Jefferson County Courthouse, 15 August 1956, 105:576.

10Life, 7 January 1957, 34-35.

8'Aldrich Gunn, Interview with author, 18 June 1997 32 meetings from 1957 to the late 1960s and filed written reports.

Terminal Station Desegregation, 1956-57

On December 22, 1956, police arrested two prominent African Americans for refusing to move to the "colored" section of the Birmingham Terminal (train) station. The ACMHR sponsored the legal fight. Failing to win the case, Shuttlesworth and his wife Ruby personally challenged segregated accommodations at the station. Vigilante violence ensued after a white minister sat down and waited for the train to Atlanta with the Shuttlesworths. The Shuttlesworths traveled to Atlanta in the white section of the train. Shuttlesworth's personal acts of courage and bravery were becoming legendary.

Phillips High School Desegregation, September 9, 1957

Just a week after U. S. federal Marshals protected students at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, Shuttlesworth's attempt to enroll his daughters in Birmingham's major high school met with mob violence. The mob was intent on killing Shuttlesworth, who despite significant injuries, appeared at a mass meeting that evening to preach non-violence and quell potential rioting.82

Southern Christian Leadership Conference, February, 1957-1970

Shuttlesworth participated in the formation of this group of Southern clergy. Alabama based pastors, including the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, the Rev. Joseph Lowery and the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, led the new "organization of organizations." By the mid 1960s, SCLC would grow to be a large corporation with a network of more than 85 local civil rights affiliates of which ACMHR would be one of the strongest centers, and a model for others across the nation. Shuttlesworth served as SCLC Secretary (1960-1970) and as a "key aide to King" from SCLC's inception until the late 1960s. He also headed an SCLC nonviolent training center in Birmingham during the early 1960s and coordinated the joint ACMHR-SCLC campaign of the spring of 1963. Shuttlesworth invited SCLC to join the Birmingham struggle at SCLC's May convention in 1962, at which time the organization was deeply committed to demonstrations in Albany, Georgia. SCLC's annual meeting was held in Birmingham in the fall of 1962. SCLC, together with the ACMHR, conducted Project X, its name later changed to Project C ("Confrontation with segregation") in the spring of 1963.

82Shuttlesworth describes his beating to CBS reporter Howard K. Smith in CBS's 60- minute feature entitled Who Speaks for Birmingham? of February, 1961. The feature also includes testimonials by blacks taped at an ACMHR mass meeting and by whites. Eyes on the Prize PBS Video II, also contains an account of the Phillips High School desegregation challenge. Shuttlesworth discusses issues of school desegregation in a retrospective article by Anne Braden, "The History That We Made, Birmingham 1956-1979," Southern Exposure, 1979. 33

During the Birmingham Movement of Spring 1963, the national press often referred to Shuttlesworth as a SCLC leader, knowing that he was courageous, but not of his lengthy involvement in the local movement.83

Prayer Pilgrimage, Washington, May 1957

This major gathering of Negro leaders was organized by the SCLC. One of four Southern Freedom Fighters to present "reports" on desegregation activities, Shuttlesworth spoke of the new Negro church, a church whose youthful leadership spoke out on social issues: "But a new voice is arising all over now ~ the voice of the church of a living and ruling God, unafraid, uncompromising, and unceasing. Led by her ministers, she cries out that all men are brothers, and that justice and mercy must flow as the waters."84

National Columnist, The Pittsburgh Courier, a black-owned weekly, 1958-1961

Shuttleworth reported to thousands of Courier readers weekly on the progress of the Civil Rights movement in Birmingham. (This column appeared for the years listed and perhaps longer.)

Student Sit-ins, 1960

In 1960, students across the South began to sit in at lunch counters and to combat segregation in public accommodations. While the Nashville group under the direction of the Rev. James Bevel and Diane Nash (Bevel) was the most successful, the Birmingham group organized by Miles College student, Frank Dukes, with the assistance of the Rev. Shuttlesworth and the ACMHR also achieved significant success, both in imposing economic hardship on the merchants and in broadening the base of support for The Movement in the larger Birmingham community. Students, who had neither jobs nor mortgages to lose, would play an increasing role in major Movement activities across America, many of them coordinated by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) founded in 1961.

Harrison Salisbury chronicled white reprisals to the sit-ins in his front page article in The New York Times, "The reaction has been new manifestations of fear, force and terror punctuated by striking acts of courage. . . But more than a few citizens, both white and Negro, harbor growing fear that the hour will strike when the smoke of civil strife will mingle

8331Rober t Gutwillig, "Six Days in Alabama, A Business Trip to Birmingham Becomes a Vivid Record," 57, Mademoiselle, September 1963, 5: 116-117, 186-203.

"Shuttlesworth, "Address at Prayer Pilgrimage," Washington D. C, 17 May 1957, Shuttlesworth Papers 4.4. 34 with that of the hearths and forges."85

Freedom Rides, 1961

The Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) organized the Freedom Rides, the rides on Greyhound buses from the North to the South to protest segregation of interstate transportation facilities. The CORE group rode as far as Alabama, where they were firebombed in Anniston and beaten by mobs in Birmingham and in Montgomery. After the violence in Montgomery, the State of Alabama provided armed protection.

Rev. Shuttlesworth's and ACMHR's courageous actions helped make the Freedom Rides a success. Shuttlesworth coordinated the ride across Alabama, and personally rescued and nursed the brutalized riders at his home, the Bethel parsonage, after the mob violence in Anniston and Birmingham.86 He and ACMHR members also helped the injured to get out of the state and assisted a new group to travel on to Montgomery. His Anniston rescue mission and delivery of CORE official, James Farmer, to the mass protest meeting in Montgomery should have earned him every badge of courage.87 Shuttlesworth spoke, after King, to the ^ ^iie Mass Meeting in Montgomery after the beating of the riders. As a result of his assistance to %C the Freedom Riders, Shuttlesworth was served four injunctions in Birmingham and jailed in ^ -^w Montgomery on May 17 and 25, 1961 and condemned by a front page editorial in The & ^^kio Birmingham News.88 /,' •"-

Following tense local reaction to the Freedom Rides, ACMHR members affirmed

85Harrison E. Salisbury, "Fear and Hatred Grip Birmingham ~ Racial Tension Smoldering After Belated Sitdown," 77*e New York Times, 12 April 1960, 1: 28.

86A televised interview by Robert Skakey with the beaten rider James Peck "at the home of a Negro clergyman (Shuttlesworth's)" appears in "Ain't Scared of Your Jails," Eyes on the Prize, 00:31:30. Shuttlesworth, speaking at a Mass Meeting on May 22 at First Baptist Church in Montgomery, appears in "Ain't Scared of Your Jails," Eyes on the Prize, 00:47:15.

87William Roger Witherspoon provides this account in Martin Luther King, Jr. . . . To the Mountaintop (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), 89: "Shuttlesworth drove to town with James Farmer of CORE and parked outside the range of the mob (of whites that stretched three blocks). Shuttlesworth was a legend in the civil rights movement for his absence of fear. Ever since the Christmas bombing of his home in 1956, he has assumed God would protect him and anyone with him. So he grabbed Farmer and walked through Klansmen, telling them to get out of the way so he could go to church. They parted like the Red Sea."

88M Shuttlesworth shouts 'fire,'" Editorial, The Birmingham News, 18 May 1961, 1. 35 Shuttlesworth's local leadership.89 However, he chose to continue to lead The Movement from a new base, Revelation Baptist Church in Cincinnati. The Bethel Church, his Birmingham church, and its members continued to support The Movement, however Bethel was not used for public meetings after November 14, 1961.90 By then, fueled by public outrage over the beating of the Freedom riders, Movement meetings had grown too large. Meetings would be held in larger and more centrally located churches. That Bethel remained in Movement service is well documented by testimony of members and the fact that it was bombed, for a third time, on December 15, 1962, to intimidate members from continued action. Strategy and planning sessions continued to be held here. Rev. Vincent Provitt, Shuttlesworth's successor at Bethel, also participated in Movement activities.9'

Legal and Civil Victories, 1961

During 1961, ACMHR won several court victories, including its suits challenging segregation on Birmingham buses, in the Terminal (railroad) Station and in the City's parks. After the Freedom Rides of May, 1961, segregation signs were taken down in the Greyhound Station also. By February of this year, Shuttlesworth was involved in 14 lawsuits involving civil rights.

The violent beating of the Freedom Riders on Mother's Day, May 14, 1961 (The Birmingham police or federal authorities provided no protection), incensed responsible members of Birmingham's black and white communities. These actions led directly to a white citizens group seeking change in city government, a reform which would oust the existing commissioners and replace them with a Mayor and city council. The reform would be finally implemented in late May of 1963, after the Birmingham demonstrations.92

89"Birmingham's Rev. Shuttlesworth-Most Jailed Rights' Fighter," an unknown national newspaper clip, c. August 1961, Shuttlesworth Papers, 4.8. "But perhaps the greatest victory in Birmingham is that because of Mr. Shuttlesworth's leadership the Negroes of this city are now more united than ever before and are determined to continue their struggle to win first- class citizenship. At a recent anniversary celebration of the Alabama Christian Movement, they [the ACMHR who represented a segment of Birmingham's Negroes] voted full support for Mr. Shuttlesworth."

90J. C. Wilson, V. T. Hart, Birmingham Police Department Inter-Office Communications Files, 20 February 1961, Eugene "Bull" Connor Papers.

91 Aldrich Gunn, Reuben Davis, Interviews with the Author, 18 June 1997.

92Glenn T. Eskew, "The Freedom Ride Riot and Political Reform in Birmingham, 1961- 1963," Alabama Review (July 1996), 181-220. 36 Jailing, January 25-March 2, 1962

The jailing of Shuttlesworth and ACMHR Rev. J. S. Phifer for their 1958 attempt to desegregate Birmingham buses generated significant national press. The ACMHR, Shuttlesworth's Cincinnati church members and others petitioned the Attorney General Robert Kennedy and others to release the Civil Rights leaders. On Lincoln's Birthday, 1962, Martin Luther King addressed an ACMHR Mass Meeting at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.93 The jailing, and the Birmingham City Commission's decision to close City parks rather than submit to an ACMHR inspired ruling requiring their desegregation, motivated large numbers of Birmingham blacks to participate in the Movement by boycotting the downtown retail stores.

The jailing and the parks controversy further underscored the seriousness of the social unrest to white leaders. They stepped up reforms to change the form of city government and oust Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor from office. (Connor was defeated in an election on April 2, 1963, but he and the other two commissioners refused to leave office. Hence, Birmingham had two governments during ACMHR-SCLC Project C).94

Boycotts, Spring 1962

Shuttlesworth, the ACMHR, the students and several other groups organized the highly successful 1962 boycotts of the downtown retail district. A Bethel Church Trustee originated the campaign "Wear Your Overalls [Old Clothes] for Easter" which became the slogan of the highly successful economic boycott.95 Breaking with long-standing Southern tradition of proper attire for Easter, Birmingham blacks, in legion numbers, proudly wore their old clothes and workingmen's overalls to Easter Sunday services. As Black consumers spent an estimated $4,000,000 a week to $40,000,000 a year in Birmingham stores, the month-long boycott of downtown stores — with an estimated effectiveness of 85 to 90 percent— achieved a significant drop in retail sales.96 The Movement was growing in numbers, impact and expectations.

93Birmingham Police Department Inter-Office Communications Files,20 February 1961, Eugene "Bull" Connor Papers. (Note: report date is later than the meeting date.)

94The local adage goes: "Birmingham is the only city in the world to have two governments and a parade every day."

95Charlie Watson, Bethel Trustee Chairman, encouraged everyone to "wear their overalls for Easter services" and the idea caught on throughout the city. Watson was an ACMHR stalwart member, attending nearly every meeting. Aldrich Gunn, Interview with author, 18 June 1997.

96Glenn Eskew, But for Birmingham, 270. 37

Project X, later C (Confrontation)-Birmingham, April 3-May 10, 196397 A Joint Campaign of the SCLC and the ACMHR

Birmingham was a big challenge for SCLC and ACMHR.

Shuttlesworth's network of churches and ministers provided the facilities to organize the boycott and demonstrations and to inspire participants to stand up for their rights. ACMHR members, both adult and student, attended some 45 mass meetings. Here, and in other sessions at other facilities in meetings that were closed to the public, they volunteered to "march for freedom." On May 2, 1963, they were joined by thousands of students in marches, which Newsweek magazine dubbed the Children's Crusade.98 The national press and President John Kennedy followed and participated in the events. Confrontation with the unscrupulous Eugene "Bull" Connor provided proof of egregious segregation and resulted in one of the most spectacular victories of the civil rights movement.

The Birmingham campaign became synonymous with the Children's Crusade, most vividly remembered through the images of children being bitten by dogs, washed by fire hoses and clubbed by police deputies. Pictures of the conflict expressed the needs and cares of the black race in visual records that changed the world, and move us still. The world of the 1960s, as it tuned into the nightly television news and opened its newspapers and magazines, was shocked. Segregation would no longer be tolerable as public, or moral policy. The Children's Crusade won a moral victory. Segregation had been whipped. The Birmingham Movement inspired the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and elevated Martin Luther King, Jr. to the status of a national hero. Later, King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," a document appreciated more with age, also symbolized the Birmingham Movement.

Birmingham was a major win, but King and SCLC got the credit. SCLC delivered their brilliant and inspirational leader, planning (with many course corrections), funding (insufficient to bail out the massive numbers jailed without delays), staff and the national media. But, the local supporters came through too, and in record numbers they stood up for their rights by the thousands. Thirteen churches hosted 45 nightly mass meetings. Scores of strategy meetings and non-violence training workshops were held throughout the 40 day campaign. Thousands participated in the economic boycott of downtown stores. Thousands attended the marches. Birmingham's freedom soldiers, 3,400 of them, old and young,

"Eskew chronicles SCLC Director Wyatt Walker's decision to change the name. On April 7, 1963, Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor first used police dogs to control the crowd gathered for a Palm Sunday march. Walker saw the potential confrontation between innocent people and police brutality as a "key" to generate interest in the protest. He began calling the Birmingham campaign, "Project C" for confrontation. Eskew concludes, the "new name signaled a shift in SCLC thinking." Eskew, But for Birmingham, 308-310.

98Newsweek, 13 May 1963 in Eskew, But for Birmingham, 356-358. 38 marched, in record numbers to the Birmingham jails until, as the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth tells it, "they shook the nation's moral conscience."99

Shuttlesworth's role was to get them to do it. He led by example and by organization building. ACMHR's Birmingham Manifesto, drafted by Shuttlesworth and the Rev. Nelson Smith, stated the reasons they sought "resolution of our just grievances" and issued a call to all citizens to join in "this witness for decency, morality, self-respect and human dignity."100 Other documents drafted by Shuttlesworth, assisted by SCLC staff, stated the objectives of the campaign: to pressure the economic power structure into accepting specific local objectives that included desegregation of public facilities, equal employment opportunities and the establishment of a biracial communication.101 Observers reported ACMHR members on the streets of downtown Birmingham passing out the manifesto. Shuttlesworth was arrested on April 6 and again on April 12. He was severely injured in a May 7 demonstration. Due to his injuries, he participated in limited negotiations, but as leader of the local Birmingham movement, he announced the terms of the truce. He also dealt with all the local problems of trying to implement it and other local segregation issues not covered.102

"ACMHR, "Annual Address by Rev. Shuttlesworth," 1965, Box 1, Folder 1, Shuttlesworth Papers, King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

100M The Birmingham Manifesto," The Birmingham World, 6 April 1963, 2.

101Eskew, But for Birmingham, 296: "The SCLC neither sought a violent confrontation with Bull Connor in a bid to fill the jails nor expected the Kennedy Administration to act on its behalf. It simply organized for a victory over local segregation laws and an end to racial discrimination in local employment. By winning such concessions in Birmingham, SCLC hoped to restore its viability as an organization and salvage King's damaged reputation. It could hardly expect more. As the demonstrations unfolded however, SCLC broadened its scope, changed its strategy and redefined its goals."

102Eskew discusses events in October of 1963 and considerations of new Birmingham demonstrations to force the City to hire black policemen, but concludes that King decided not to demonstrate, as his participation would admit that the spring demonstrations had not successfully resolved local issues. Eskew, But for Birmingham, 33. Shuttlesworth's position as leader of the local organization had been compromised by the white power structure's official recognition of conservative Negro representatives such as businessman A. G. Gaston, John Drew, attorney Arthur Shores and Miles College President Lucious Pitts as leaders of the Birmingham blacks during the settlement of the May demonstration. (At this critical time, Shuttlesworth was in the hospital recovering from fire hose injuries.) Eskew, But for Birmingham, 430. 39 March on Washington, August 1963

The final idea for this march was to consolidate all the sit-in wins and the major Birmingham victory, and to focus on general desegregation issues. Envisioned for years by labor leader A. Philip Randolph and philosopher/strategist Bayard Rustin, SCLC strategist James Bevel modeled the march on Ghandi's March to the Sea. With 250,000 in attendance, King thundered his "I Have A Dream" speech, summing up the aspirations of the age.

Birmingham, September 15, 1963

Tensions were strained in late August and early September. KKK inspired groups protested integration of Birmingham schools. Led by fiery rhetoric of public officials including newly elected Alabama Governor George Wallace and others, thousands of whites rallied to stop desegregation.103 On Sunday morning, September 15, a bomb exploded at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four children. Following the bombing, which again shook the world though international media coverage, Shuttlesworth organized protests in Birmingham, met in Washington with President John Kennedy on September 19, and after two more bombings and two murders in the city, called for federal troops to be sent into the city. King flew in to participate in a highly publicized funeral for three of the children killed.

Media coverage made Sixteenth Street Baptist Church synonymous with the lingering ills of segregation (How could anyone kill four little girls at Sunday school?) and hastened the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Presented to the U. S. Congress in the summer of 1963, the legislation gained passage due to the legislative skills of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Selma Right-to-Vote, 1965

This five day, 50 mile march again shook the world and changed the South. It led directly to President Lyndon Johnson's introduction of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the subsequent election of black officials in the United States.Shuttlesworth and the ACMHR helped organize and participated in the demonstrations. Shuttlesworth also led demonstrations against voting discrimination in the city during 1966.

Supreme Court Victor, 1960s

Between 1958 and 1960, Shuttlesworth was a party in 10 Supreme Court cases involving civil rights. Altogether the Court overturned six of Shuttlesworth's convictions resulting from his role in the 1961 Freedom Rides and in various Birmingham demonstrations. In New York Times v. Sullivan, decided in March, 1964, the Supreme Court also reversed a $500,000 libel judgement against Shuttlesworth, three other black ministers and the New York

103 Flynt, "The Ethics of Democratic Persuasion and the Birmingham Crisis," 40-53. 40 Times. The suit had resulted from a March 1960 advertisement in the Times that criticized Alabama officials and sought to raise funds for civil rights causes.

However, in June 1967, the Supreme Court upheld contempt-of-court convictions stemming from the 1963 Birmingham demonstrations against Shuttlesworth and King. Shuttlesworth served a five-day sentence in Alabama in October 1967. Shuttlesworth's cases before the high court were finally settled in 1969 with a victory in a case stemming from disobeying the injunction that sent Shuttlesworth and King to jail for Easter Sunday, 1963.104

In 1965, TIME magazine had declared Shuttlesworth "the most litigious individual in the history of the court.105

Activist Pastor, Cincinnati, 1961 to Present

During the early 1960s, Revelation Baptist Church prospered under Shuttlesworth's pastorate. It also provided support to the Birmingham Movement. In August 1965, a dispute over Shuttlesworth's leadership developed within the congregation. When Shuttlesworth's opponents accused him of being dictatorial and misusing church funds, he denied the charges and alleged that the opposition to him was part of an effort to discredit him within the civil rights movement. The controversy ended in January 1966 when several hundred of his supporters formed a new church, and Shuttlesworth became its pastor.106 Shuttlesworth serves as pastor to the Greater New Light Baptist Church to this day.

During the riots in Cincinnati in June 1967, Shuttlesworth met with city officials in an effort to reach an agreement on black demands and prevent further violence.

In 1969 and 1970, Shuttlesworth severed his ties with the ACMHR and SCLC. The Supreme Court cases to which he had been a party were settled, and Ralph Abernathy had succeeded King as head of the SCLC.

In Cincinnati, Shuttlesworth continues to serve as a pastor and community leader. He currently co-chairs with Anne Braden, the Southern Organizing Committee, a South-wide grassroots organization for environmental justice. His honors include the SCLC Founders Award, the Rosa Parks Award, the Martin Luther King Civil Rights Award and the PUSH

I04John D'Emilio, The Civil Rights Struggle: Leaders in Profile (New York: Facts on File), 1979, 133. """LITIGATION - The Champion," TIME, November, 1965, 73-74.

106John D'Emilio, The Civil Rights Struggle: Leaders in Profile, 133. 41

Award for Excellence.107

ACMHR

Every Monday night, the ACMHR continues to meet. Longtime ACMHR Vice President, the Rev. Edward Gardner has served as President since 1969.108

107A brief statement on Fred Shuttlesworth's activities since the 1960s accompanies his introduction to Elizabeth/Petric Smith, Long Time Coming -- An Insider's Story of the Birmingham Church Bombing That Rocked the World, (Birmingham, AL: Crane Hill Publishers, 1994) 15-18.

108Polk City Directories, Southern Collection, Birmingham Public Library, Birmingham, AL. 42

III. Comments of Contemporary Observers and Historians on Shuttlesworth

This section presents views on Shuttlesworth from the writers in the 1960s and since. All comments are quotations by the persons named.

Contemporary Accounts

Propelled into leadership two years ago by the barring of the NAACP and a bomb blast that destroyed his parsonage and damaged his church, and since then crowed out of the headlines only by national or international catastrophe, Rev. F. L. Shuttlesworth last week was still the sharp end of the thorn in segregation's side.

Negroes generally were swearing by him; white people, generally, were swearing about him. But whether he was being cussed or discussed, there seemed from both groups a grudging admiration for the man. . . .

Francis H. Mitchell, "A Controversial Minister," unidentified newspaper, 1960, Shuttlesworth Papers, King Center, Atlanta.

The most criticized crusader in the history of the city ... He is the leader of his organization, an optimistic leader of inexhaustible energy and a contagiously happy man .... He is busy, happily .... God's man confident of being about his business even when that business has become a rough and tumble enterprise.

Lewis W. Jones,"Fred L. Shuttlesworth, Indigenous Leader," February, 1961, 115, 150.

"Dixie's Most Fearless Freedom Fighter" . . . "The most abused and arrested Negro minister in modern history" . . . Alabama's greatest and most fearless "Freedom Fighter"

Trezzvant W. Anderson, The Courier, Pittsburgh, 10 June 1961.

Sacrificing his freedom for an ideal, the Rev. Mr. Shuttlesworth has become a national hero to nearly 20 million Negroes. He has also won the respect of thousands of right thinking American whites.

Woody L. Taylor, Cleveland Courier City Editor, The Courier, Pittsburgh, 17 February 1962.

The mystery of the whole situation is how can these simple home folks be talked into going to jail by a bunch of rabble-rousers?

Bull Connor, April, 1963, in Garrow, Birmingham, Alabama: 1956-1963, 7. 43

Martin Luther King once called Shuttlesworth's Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights SCLC's 'strongest affiliate,' and Shuttlesworth himself 'the most courageous civil rights fighter in the South.'

Martin Luther King, New York: Amsterdam News, 8 June 1963, quoted in William Robert Miller, Martin Luther King, Jr., New York: Weybright and Talley, 1967.

I have been advised that a small group of racial agitators under familiar leadership have undertaken to embarrass both the present and the incoming city governments by sit-in demonstrations. . . . The so-called leaders of these sit-in demonstrations, indifferent to the welfare of either their people or the city, have seized this chance to create strife and discord.

Birmingham Mayor-elect Albert Boutwell, Prepared Comments, The Birmingham News, 3 April 1963.

Tall, spare, loose-jointed, exuberant, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth walks the streets of Birmingham as though he has not a care in the world. There is laughter in his deep-set eyes when he recounts his running battle with the city authorities. Bombings, beatings, and the Birmingham jails have left him undaunted. It is only when he considers pain and injustice visited on the thousands of his fellow citizens, that the twisted smile leaves his lips and his eyes darken with pain.

When asked, not long ago, how many years he had been fighting segregation, he laughed, "Ever since I was born. Certainly, ever since I can remember anything, I've been committed."

Commitment is a word that comes up often in his talk with the young people he has gathered around him. "Total commitment to the cause of human rights," he tells them, "doesn't leave any room in your body or your soul for hate or fear."

Emma Gelders Sterne,"The Man With a Bulletproof Soul: Fred Shuttlesworth" In / Have A Dream, 1965.

While leading countless assaults against Birmingham's racial barriers, a Baptist preacher named Fred L. Shuttlesworth has suffered four bad beatings, had his home bombed, and been arrested 22 times for everything from speeding to parading without a permit. Shuttlesworth, 43, believes in fighting every case just as far as he can. His belligerence has already taken him to the Supreme Court eight times-which makes him the most litigious individual in the court's 176 year history. 44

Last week the court reversed a Shuttlesworth criminal conviction for the fifth time, a record that all but makes him a one-man constitutional textbook.

"LITIGATION ~ The Champion," TIME, November 1965, 73.

Historians' Views

Among the lesser-known and relatively unsung heroes of the black civil rights movement, few can compare with Fred Shuttlesworth in either courage or confrontation. As founder of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, which Martin Luther King, Jr. considered the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's (SCLC) "strongest affiliate," Shuttlesworth became legendary among veterans of the movement for his bravado.

Andrew Michael Manis, "Cultural Perspectives on the American South," Charles Reagan Wilson,Ed., New York: Gordon and Breach, 1991,143.

Shuttlesworth became a public and charismatic figure by continuously defying the white power structure . . . [He was] known for his courage and bravery and for his strong-willed, strong character. . . The historical record confirms that Shuttlesworth and his supporters kept the State of Alabama turbulently rocking with protest activity for more than 12 years.

On the other side of the fence from Shuttlesworth was the ideal incarnation of the fighting spirit of the white segregationist. This 'redneck' Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene 'Bull' Connor, locked horns with Shuttlesworth in a classic battle that continued for almost a decade. It must be said that from the beginning history was partial to the 'Bull,' for at his disposal were a large police force, vicious attack dogs, electric cattle prods, the White Citizen's Council, the Ku Klux Klan, and the established institutions of Southern white society. At Shuttlesworth's feet lay the arduous tasks of mobilizing the black community through the ACMHR and staging confrontations with the white power structure.

Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, 1984, 72, 50

All of the bigwigs said, 'Now, Fred's going crazy, he's trying to whip him up some, you know.' But Fred persisted. Because he persisted, he finally got it off the ground. I expect that the Birmingham movement remained strong longer than almost any movement in the South that I know of.

Reverend C. K. Steele, Civil Rights leader and SCLC officer, in commenting upon the strength of the Birmingham movement, quoted in Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, Black Communities Organizing for Change, 1984, 77. 45 But nobody excelled Shuttlesworth ~ whose courage and persistence over the years had made the campaign possible — in his ability to evoke mirth by combining righteous indignation with a sense of the ridiculous.

Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America, 139.

. . . much of the uniqueness and success of the ACMHR's efforts can be traced quite directly to the remarkable and unusual personality of Fred Shuttlesworth, who both in 1963 and since, has received less journalistic and scholarly attention than should have been the case. . . . In time, the local aspects of the dramatically penultimate demonstrations in April and May, 1963, will quite certainly receive extensive and careful treatment. . .

David J. Garrow, Editor's Preface, Birmingham, Alabama: 1953-1966 — The Black Struggle for Civil Rights, 1989, X.

The intense religious beliefs of the ACMHR propelled the membership to volunteer for demonstrations and face Bull Connor. Shuttlesworth's followers provided the mainstay of the movement, not the middle class recruited by King. The Birmingham campaign would have collapsed in April had it not been for the ACMHR and the students.

Glenn Thomas Eskew, "The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and the Birmingham Struggle for Civil Rights, 1956-1963," Masters Thesis, University of Georgia, 1989, 87.

the one that ignited the spark of Freedom for Black People throughout this land.

Reuben Davis, lifelong member of Bethel Baptist Church, Jefferson County Historical Marker Application, Bethel Baptist Church, 1994. Davis served as Jefferson County's first black county commissioner.

Referred to by King as 'one of the nation's most courageous freedom fighters,' Shuttlesworth had set out to change Birmingham's racial situation long before SCLC arrived there. His ACMHR became one of the eighty-five affiliates of SCLC, and he was as instrumental as King in defeating the forces of segregation in Birmingham.

Lewis Baldwin, "Let Us Break Bread Together; Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Black Church in the South, 1954-1968," Cultural Perspectives on the American South, 1991, 133

As the parent organization of A.C.H.R. [ACMHR], the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta had kept a close and admiring watch on Fred Shuttlesworth's uphill 46 fight. We knew that he had paid the price in personal suffering for the battle he was waging. He had been jailed several times. His home and church had been badly damaged by bombs. Yet he had refused to back down. This courageous minister's audacious public defiance of Bull Connor had become a source of inspiration and encouragement to Negroes throughout the South.

In the May, 1962, board meeting of S.C.L.C. at Chattanooga, we decided to give serious consideration to joining Shuttlesworth and A.C.H.R. [ACMHR] in a massive direct- action campaign to attack segregation in Birmingham.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 45.

One of the most articulate and fastest-talking leaders of the Negro drive for equality in the South.

John D'Emilio, The Civil Rights Struggle: Leaders in Profile, 1979, 133.

... the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a man whose combative civil rights style not only confounded Birmingham Police Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor but nearly wrecked King's compromise with Birmingham's establishment. Although Civil Rights historians have celebrated Shuttlesworth's uncompromising courage and intransigence, they have ignored the biblical Fundamentalism and authoritative style of church administration that produced this unique leader.

Wayne Flynt, "Book Review," Cultural Perspectives on the American South, The Journal of Southern History (June 1992) 340-341. Wayne Flynt is chairman of the Department of History at Auburn University. 47

IV. Shuttlesworth and the Role of the Church and the ACMHR in the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement

This anthology of Shuttlesworth's sermons and speeches presents his vision of the Christian church and the ACMHR and their roles in confronting and changing Birmingham and American society.

On the Role of the Church and the Preacher

The Church then has to be the regulating force in society. No government, school, or organization can take the place of the organized Church in teaching spiritual, moral and ethical values and relating these to the lives of men. The Church is the leaven which Jesus said would leaven the whole lump. (Baking powder). It is the salt that will bring season and give meaning to men's lives. Civil Rights is the Church's greatest challenge and greatest opportunity since the middle ages.1

I always have felt that the preacher is God's first man. Part of our struggle is because the ministers of God are not leading the people. The prophets of old give us vivid examples of how the Church stands up and when they stand up the walls must fall. ... I think that's what Christ meant by the 'gates of Hell shall not prevail.' It didn't mean, in my opinion, a man or gambler or wicked institution triumphant over the Church, but it meant the Church triumphant over them, because the people would be inspired to go out and crusade against it.2

God wants the kind of preacher who will preach on Sunday and picket on Monday.3

I have always believed that the minister is God's first line soldier. ... I always believe that a preacher ought to be able to speak out and say what thus say the Lord and then he ought to he acting out thus said the Lord ... I should say I'm a battlefield type general like Patton, I guess. 4

'Fred Shuttlesworth, "The Church an Effective Christian Witness In a Difficult Age," typescript, n.d., texts: 2 Peter 1:16 and 1 John 1:1, 3. Shuttlesworth Papers 4.27.

2Fred Shuttlesworth, 1961, in Lewis Jones, "Fred Shuttlesworth, Indigenous Leader," 132.

3Shuttlesworth, ACMHR Mass Meeting, 23 April 1963, First Baptist Church, Ensley, speech, Birmingham Police Department Inter-Office Communication, Birmingham Public Library Archives.

"Fred Shuttlesworth, 12 September 1978, Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 72. 48 On the Role of the Church . . . and Freedom

But a new voice is arising all over now - the voice of the church of a living and ruling God, unafraid, uncompromising, and unceasing. Led by her ministers, she cries out that all men are brothers, and that justice and mercy must flow as the waters. The Negro Church is taking the lead, and thank God, some in the White Church are at last pleading for justice and reason. 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. We know that the struggle will be hard and costly; some of us indeed may die; but let our trials and death — if come they must ~ be one more sacred installment on this American heritage for freedom and let History and they that come behind us, rejoice that we arose in strength, armed only with the weapon of Love, and stood where men stood, and moved from American society this cancerous infection of Segregation and 2nd class citizenship. . . .This is the real battle for America.5

On the Role of the Christian Church Played in the Civil Rights Revolution

In a real sense, ACMHR and the Civil Rights Organizations of the country have given the Christian Church its greatest opportunity in centuries to make religion real in the lives of men. Thank God for the awakening of the Religion forces! 6

ON "FIGHTING SEGREGATION"

On the Mission of the ACMHR, June 1957

We rather heard and rose up to answer the voice of Destiny June 5, 1956, and began that night a walk with Destiny to Freedom and first class citizenship.7

On the Reason for ACMHR's Success

My philosophy is that we organized to fight segregation, not just to hold meetings; that is the reason for our success.8

5Rev. F. L. Shuttlesworth, Address, Prayer Pilgrimage, Washington D. C, 17 May 1957, Shuttlesworth Papers 4.4. Shuttlesworth was one of four Southern Freedom Fighters who reported at this gathering of Negro leaders.

6Shuttlesworth, "The National Civil Rights Crises and Our Relationship To It," Eighth Annual Address to A.C.M.H.R., 5 June 1964, A.O.H. Church.

7Fred Shuttlesworth, "Progress in Spite of Circumstances," Annual Report to the ACMHR, June, 1958.

8Shuttlesworth, in Jones, "Fred Shuttlesworth - Indigenous Leader," 1961, 147. 49

On Conditions in Birmingham in 1957

Southern hospitality has taken wings, and Southern justice has taken a holiday.9

On Criticism of the ACMHR for Stirring Up Trouble, 1958

Who would dare disturb this vicious giant? Who would challenge this way of life which has sent justice to take an extended holiday, and when angry, knows no mercy? Who would tackle such a foe as segregation, which has strangled state courts, taken over executive functions, and so confused lawmakers' minds that keeping segregation is now more important than either saving the prestige of America or going to Heaven. Small wonder this organization has been branded as 'stirring up trouble!' Small wonder that men of trembling heart and nervous frames have called us 'fools.'10

On His Persecution for Leading the Fight, 1961

We are really breaking the back of segregation when all of the hell and fury of the police force, the city houses and the state houses, are being turned loose upon the Negro leaders. In addition to already being involved in 14 civil or criminal cases, I have been arrested 4 times within the past 2 weeks and have 5 criminal charges against me. So you see it is neither an easy thing nor a play thing to lead in the cause of freedom.

But Jesus is my Director and my Captain; and woe unto me if I preach not the gospel - - the social gospel, of freedom, of peace and justice and humanitarianism. It is mine as your leader to suffer these indignities as a common criminal ~ arrested by the police and persecuted by the courts. But he knoweth the way I take, and when He hath tried me I shall come forth as gold. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. And victory will be ours.''

'Shuttlesworth, "A Faith for Difficult and Critical Times," Sermon, 1957.

10Shuttlesworth, "Progress in Spite of Circumstances," Annual Report to the ACMHR, 1958.

"Shuttlesworth, "Go Forward - Not Knowing, But Trusting," ACMHR 5th Observance of the Founding, 5 June 1961, just after the Freedom Rides. Shuttlesworth reports in this sermon that The Birmingham News had editorialized on the front page "Shuttlesworth should be jailed" and that Bull Connor testified that the freedom riders came to Birmingham only because "Shuttlesworth is here .... My native state would like to disown me. I am wounded here in my own city and state, but I am healed by the wounds in His side." 50 On the Cost and Value of Fighting, 1962

Already, the unjust officials and court costs have caused us to spend over $72,000 in six years for bonds, court cost, transcripts, lawyers fees, etc. — and we are in debt even now thousands of dollars with several more cases which have to be filed.

But we are making great strides toward freedom. The parks [Birmingham Parks and Recreation] decision [to close City parks rather than desegregate them] has spoken plainly to Birmingham that 'It's time to wake up,' . . . The selective buying campaign came about as a result of the parks decision and the jailing of Rev. Phifer and myself. It is led by the students and should be supported by every single Negro in this city and country.12

The Birmingham Manifesto

The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, of which the Rev. F. L. Shuttlesworth is president, has issued what the organization call the 'Birmingham Manifesto.' The document was circulated the day before the sit-in demonstrations were renewed here Wednesday, April 3. An estimated 23 were allegedly arrested. Here is the statement issued by ACMHR:

'Birmingham Manifesto' The patience of an oppressed people cannot endure forever. The Negro citizens of Birmingham for the last several years have hoped in vain for some evidence of good faith, resolution of our just grievances.

Birmingham is a part of the United States and we are bona fide citizens. Yet the history of Birmingham reveals that very little of the democratic process touches the life of the Negro in Birmingham. We have been segregated racially, exploited economically, and dominated politically. Under the leadership of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, we sought relief by petition for the repeal of city ordinances requiring segregation and the institution of a merit hiring policy in city employment. We were rebuffed. We then turned to the system of the courts. We weathered set-back after set-back, with all of its costliness, finally winning the terminal, bus, parks and airport cases. The bus decision has been implimented [sic] begrudingly [sic] and the parks decision prompted the closing of all municipally-owned recreational facilities with the exception of the zoo and Legion Field. The airport case has been a slightly better experience with the exception of hotel accommodations and the subtle discrimination that continues in the limousine service.

We have always been a peaceful people, bearing our oppression with super human effort. Yet we have been the victims of repeated violence, not only that inflicted by the

12 Shuttlesworth, "A Call for Reason, Sanity, and Righteous Perseverance in a Critical Hour," Sixth Annual Message to the ACMHR, 5 June 1962. A.O.H. Church of God. 51 hoodlum element but also that inflicted by the blatant misuse of police power. Our memories are seared with painful mob experience of Mother's Day 1961 during the Freedom Ride. For years, while our homes and churches were being bombed, we heard nothing but the ranting and ravings of racist city officials.

The Negro protest for equality and justice has been a voice crying in the wilderness. Most of Birmingham has remained silent, probably out of fear. In the meanwhile, our city has acquired the dubious reputation of being the worst big city in race relations in the United States. Last Fall, for a flickerink [sic] moment, it appeared that sincere community leaders from religion, business and industry discerned the inevitable confrontation in race relations approaching. Their concern for the city's image and commonwealth of all its citizens did not run deep enough. Solemn promises were made, pending a postponement of direct action, that we would be joined in a suit seeing the relief of segregation ordinances. Some merchants agreed to desegregate their rest-rooms as a good faith start, some actually complying, only to retreat shortly thereafter. We hold in our hands now broken faith and broken promises.

We believe in the American Dream of democracy, in the Jefferson doctrine that 'all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'

Twice since September we have deferred our direct action thrust in order that a change in the city government would not be made in the hysteria of a community crisis. We act today in full concert with our Hebraic-Christian tradition the law of morality and the Constitution of our nation. The absence of justice and progress in Birmingham demands that we make a moral witness to give our community a chance to survive. We demonstrate our faith that we believe that the beloved community can come to Birmingham.

We appeal to the citizenry of Birmingham, Negro and white, to join us in this witness for decency, morality, self-respect and human dignity. Your individual and corporate support can hasten the day of 'liberty and justice for all.' This is Birmingham's moment of truth in which every citizen can play his part in her larger destiny.

THE ALABAMA CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS On Behalf of the Negro Community of Birmingham, F. L. Shuttlesworth, President, N. H. Smith, Secretary.13

13 Shuttlesworth and N.H. Smith, "The Birmingham Manifesto," in The Birmingham World, 6 April 1963. 52

On the Success and National Impact of the Birmingham Movement, June 5, 1963

Birmingham has become no longer a by-word of hate, malice and wicked racism, but the magic word that strikes fire in people's hearts across this nation and the world.

Since April 3 Negroes in Birmingham, Alabama inspired by the majestic presence of men like Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Wyatt T. Walker, and dedicated members of their staff have shaken this nation out of its lethargy; and have spoken with a clear and unmistakable voice: we will no longer endure segregation! We will no longer stand back while the future beckons us on! The eyes of the world have been focused on the spot; and somehow we are led to believe that because of the demonstration in Birmingham Alabama, segregation will end in this country in a short time .... how glorious it is to realize that Negroes in Birmingham, Alabama have not only help[ed] to bring about a change in local government but also a change in the attitude of the National Government about the racial situation ....

Yes, my friends, the New Frontier is trying to catch up with the Negro frontier. Unless the President moves with dispatch, vigor and with a degree of dedication as that which was shown by Abraham Lincoln, Negroes will be demonstrating in every nook and cranny of the nation — North, East and West.

We are closer to Freedom because the Negro in this city is united as never before. Both young and old, students and adults, middle class, low class and no class, all joined together to put on the biggest mass demonstration ever to occur in America.14

On the Success of the Birmingham Movement, November 26, 1963

The Negro in this country is through with Segregation and discrimination; and that this is clearly reflected in the nationwide protests and demonstrations of the Spring and Summer, and in the efforts at readjustments now being sought in all agencies of the federal and state governments, and in business enterprises around the country. It is also reflected in the record of the Courts of the land, and now in the action of religious bodies.

The Congress, in grappling with the C. R. legislation, now understands that the issue is so grave that there can be no justice, no peace, no tranquility, no fulfillment of the promises, unless it acts. The Revolution has so moved America that in your day and mine, politicians will no longer climb and remain in office on the stairs of human poverty and enslavement.

'"Shuttlesworth, "Birmingham - A Little Closer to Freedom," Seventh Annual Address to the ACMHR, Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion Church, 5 June 1963. (ACMHR at 505 1/2 No. 17th Street.) 53

In short, no facet of American life is untouched by the Revolution.15

Gains Accomplished, June 5, 1964

The gains which A.C.M.H.R. has accomplished in this most notoriously segregated strong-hold are numerous, and give us cause for rejoicing, and hope for a brighter future .... It is true that the Negro drive started years ago by aiming at legal prohibitions against Segregation and Discrimination and then in 1960 enlarged itself by grasping at hamburgers and cups of coffee at public lunch counters. But we have long since surpassed this dimension.

Since the Birmingham Demonstrations of 1963, our nation has been in crisis, as its creaking and unequal social structure seeks to strike a balance between a maladjusted past and an uncertain future. At a July White House Conference, one of the many racial meetings hastily summoned by President Kennedy in Washington, the President made the terse but profound statement: 'But for Birmingham, we wouldn't be here today.' What a tribute to be paid to your 7 years of ordeal and hardship! What an acknowledgement that Birmingham through the joint efforts of SCLC-ACMHR, had so stirred itself that it had shaken up the nation. How little did we know or even dream in 1956 that we would carry on and discipline ourselves as a Movement that destiny would use the Birmingham Movement as a vehicle to make America come to grips with its conscience. . . .

But for Birmingham! Sparks from Birmingham fell in Boston, New York, San Francisco, Houston, Texas, Chicago, Detroit, and other cities were catching afire with the flames of freedom! The young and vigorous President saw that there would be open warfare and untold bloodshed unless he, as the Chief Officer of this so-called Christian Country, came up quickly with a law which would be a national expression of our supposedly moral order. Mr. Kennedy, with the voice of a modern prophet told the nation Via-Television that the issue was more a moral one than legal one; and that we must cease being a nation of many creeds and few deeds. . . . 16

But for Birmingham the Civil Rights Bill could not be before Congress today! Let no one be deceived: it was neither church prayers nor conciliating committees which brought about the Civil Rights Bill. It was non-violent demonstrations-marching feet, praying hearts,

15Shuttlesworth-speech, handwritten, The Negro Revolution — Its Impact on American Life, National Guardian Dinner, Hotel Astor, New York, 26 November 1963. Shuttlesworth Papers, 4.36.

l6"President John F. Kennedy's Nationally Televised Speech," 11 June 1963, in The Eyes On The Prize Civil Rights Reader, 159-162. 54 singing lips, and filling the jails, which did it. Mr. Kennedy senses the deep need of the hour and sought to find a lasting remedy for the illness of his nation. . . .

'We shall overcome' has become almost as famous as the 'Star Spangled Banner,' and today's marching feet will be as important to historians as the hoofbeat of Paul Revere's midnight ride. Negroes rose up against a system in which some men who did not hesitate to kiss dogs were allowed to curse and kick Negroes; a system in which demagogues propelled bombs at Negroes while their Scientists were shooting rockets at the moon.

But for Birmingham there would not today be the agonizing reappraisal of the entire structure of the American system; one which was planned without Negroes, built without Negroes-except for their unrequited labor, operated without Negroes, and designed to forever exist without Negroes being a part of its mainstream. . . .

In a real sense, ACMHR and the Civil Rights Organizations of the country have given the Christian Church its greatest opportunity in centuries to make religion real in the lives of men. Thank God for the awakening of the Religion forces!17

On Stirring the Nation's Moral Conscience, June 5, 1965

Let it never be forgotten that ACMHR, together with SCLC provided the vehicle and shock force that shook this Nation's moral conscience in 1963 as never before, resulting in the Civil Rights Bill which will ultimately cause all facets of our society to reevaluate and adjust to the demands of the 20th Century. These 1963 Birmingham demonstrations aided the foundation for the superb and magnificent Selma Demonstrations of 1965 (in which ACMHR played a full and effective role) during which the moral conscience of the land was again stirred until very soon the Nation was fully committed morally and legally to complete support of the concept of full human dignity, justice and freedom.18

l7Shuttlesworth, "The National Civil Rights Crises and Our Relationship To It," Eighth Annual Address to A.C.M.H.R., 5 June 1964, AOH Church.

18Shuttelsworth, Annual Report to ACMHR, 5 June 1965. 55

On the Impact of ACMHR, "the greatest, most consistently Loyal and dedicated Local Civil Rights Organization in the World," June 5, 1966

We struggled alone in the pitch blackness from 1956 until the sixties came on. We had legally challenged all forms and areas of segregation here in Birmingham and were cooperating with local and national groups insofar as we could. The coming of the Sit-ins and Freedom Rides involved us even more in the National destiny of America, and our legal entanglements paved the way for TIME magazine to write in October 1965 that your president had achieved the distinction of having fought and won more cases than any other man in the history of the U. S. Supreme Court.19

Some men may little note or soon forget what we say here, but the Nation will never forget what we did here together. We were not satisfied with the few scattering cracks in the Segregation wall, and decided to effect a major confrontation with evil. Joining with SCLC, led on by illustrious Martin Luther King, Jr., Negroes filled the jailhouse and streets of B'ham in 1963 until the White House became concerned about the poor houses in America, and the Man of destiny in the White House became an ally of the black men in the streets of B'ham. We 'shook up' the Country and made America conscious of its morality and commitment to the ideals of justice and humanitarianism. The late President Kennedy, God rest his soul and fulfill his vision, opened one of the many hurriedly called White House conferences on the Civil Rights Act of 1963 with the classic and caustic remark of 'Gentlemen, but for B'ham and what happened there, we would not be here today.'

Birmingham really caused the Federal Government to begin having genuine and legitimate overt concern about the Freedom of Negroes. The Civil Rights Bill expresses legitimate concern and interest in many areas of human existence — schools, hotels, public accommodations, job opportunities and jobs. The Voting Act of 1966 coming after the Selma Demonstration was really an extension and further dimension of what happened here. . . .

I am proudest tonight of an organization that 'took it' and always came back for more; one that suffered all sorts of violence without doing violence in return. I recall days and nights when men and women watched for our safety, and when Klansmen would also meet my planes at the airport. I cannot forget the mobs of this city and the awful smell of dynamite. Seems like I still see blood on the street in front of Phillips High School and still feel the chains and brass knuckles. I can never forget the sight of children being washed down the street with firehoses nor forget myself being dashed against a wall by its pressure.

But the Mass Meetings always soothed us and gave us strength to go on. We believed

l9TIME, November 1965, 73-74. Shuttlesworth exaggerates a bit. The Time citation stated he was the most litigious, not that he had won the most cases. He may have done so, but Time did not record it. 56 'we shall overcome'; and we found out that 'the Lord would see us through'.20

On the Supreme Court Clearing Him of Convictions and His Desire to Step Down as President of the ACMHR, June 2, 1969

The basis for continued Movement Progress is laid. The danger of State and Local Officials destroying this group is past, and a national symbol of the Movement as Leader is not necessary for its continued existence. This is why I have remained President since October, 1966 at your request. Also, there were criminal cases against me which held the fate of over a thousand local people here; and my commitment would not let me leave them in danger. . . . The U. S. Supreme Court in March wiped clean the slate against me, and in so doing freed 1,500 others. . . . There is now need for [a] wider and more community [oriented] organization. I resign tonight as President of this Organization, and I recommend Rev. Gardner to this Post. But you have the right to select anyone you choose.21

On Martin Luther King's Leadership of the Movement

One name has to characterize a movement, a time, a period. That doesn't bother me at all. You see, I think the role that I played was so vital and so basic that King's name never would touch immortality had it not been for Birmingham. . . . Birmingham really made SCLC. In fact, when we went to the White House, Kennedy . . . used these words. If I ever write a book, I'm gonna use that: 'But for Birmingham, we would not be here today.'

'But for Birmingham,' I think that oughta be remembered. That's a good title. The only thing is, I'm a lazy writer. I'm not a writer. I'm a fighter.22

20Shuttlesworth, Tenth Annual Address To The ACMHR, 6 June 1966, 17th St. A.O.H. Church. Shuttlesworth Papers, 1.1.

2'Shuttlesworth, Thirteenth Annual Address to the ACMHR, June, 1969.

22 Fred Lee Shuttlesworth Interview with Howell Raines, in My Soul is Rested, 1977, 161. 57 V. On the Importance of the Birmingham Movement

The following texts support the view that Birmingham provided a major victory for the fight against segregation and the culmination of the struggle known as the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Movement participants and Dr. Martin Luther King.Jr. often referred to "the Movement" as a revolution of the American democracy.2^1 Sources for the texts quoted are indicated.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

We believed that while a campaign in Birmingham would surely be the toughest fight of our civil-rights careers, it could, if successful, break the back of segregation all over the nation. This being the country's chief symbol of racial intolerance. A victory there might well set forces in motion to change the entire course of the drive for freedom and justice. Because we were convinced of the significance of the job to be done in Birmingham, we decided that the most thorough planning and prayerful preparation must go into the effort.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 1963, 54.

Birmingham may well offer twentieth-century America an example of progressive racial relations; and for all mankind a dawn of a new day, a promise for all men, a day of opportunity and a new sense of freedom for all America.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Press Release, Press Conference declaring the Birmingham Truce, May 10, 1963, in Witherspoon, 129.

23Many scholars have termed the Movement a "fundamental revolution of the American Democracy." Cornell West, Professor of African American Studies, Harvard University, Address, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, 1 April 1995, Birmingham Historical Society Bethel Baptist Church files. In police reports of the ACMHR meetings, movement participants also expressed the thoughts that they were participating in a revolution. Martin Luther King, Jr. used the word revolution continually in commenting on the Birmingham campaign in Why We Can't Wait written just after the Birmingham campaign. Fred Shuttlesworth speaks of the revolution as a "Negro Revolt ~ which has become in truth an American Revolution" in an address, "The Negro Revolution ~ Its Impact on American Life," 11 November 1963, Shuttlesworth Papers: 4.36. The "Series Overview" for the PBS documentary Eyes On the Prize opens: "In the 1950s and 1960s, America fought a second revolution to make 'liberty and justice for all' a reality for black Americans as well as white. The fight was waged by blacks and whites in the streets and the churches, the courts and the schools of the American South. It was a struggle for racial integration and equal rights that changed the fabric of American life, a struggle whose reverberations continue to be felt." The "Series Overview" is available in the Internet at http://breakthrough.blackside.www/blackside/Blackside Films/Eyes lvideotext.html. 58 The signing of the agreement was the climax of a long struggle for justice, freedom and human dignity. The millennium still had not come, but Birmingham had made a fresh, bold step toward equality. Today Birmingham is by no means miraculously desegregated. There is still resistance and violence. The last-ditch struggle of a segregationist governor still soils the pages of current events, and it is still necessary for a harried President to invoke his highest powers so that a Negro child may go to school with a white child in Birmingham. But these factors only serve to emphasize the truth that even the segregationists know: the system to which they have been committed lies on its deathbed. The only imponderable is the question of how costly they will make the funeral.

I like to believe that Birmingham will one day become a model in southern race relations. I like to believe that the negative extremes of Birmingham's past will resolve into the positive and Utopian extreme of her future; that the sins of a dark yesterday will be redeemed in the achievements of a bright tomorrow. I have this hope because, once on a summer day, a dream came true. The city of Birmingham discovered a conscience.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait-The moral leader of America eloquently states the case for Freedom now, 1963, 116-117.

GLENN ESKEW

The most prolific scholar on the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement, Glenn Eskew, calls Birmingham "the climax of the civil rights struggle. " Eskew's Masters Thesis, doctoral dissertation and recent article, 'The Freedom Ride Riot and Political Reform in Birmingham, 1961-1963," deal with the socio-economic and political milieu in which the Birmingham Movement operated. Eskew's Masters Thesis, completed at the University of Georgia in 1987 and published in its entirety as "The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and the Birmingham Struggle for Civil Rights, 1956-1963," in David Garrow, ed., Birmingham, AL, 1950-1963: The Black Struggle for Civil Rights in 1989, is the most succinct, published statement on the local and national Birmingham Movement.

Eskew summarizes its impact:

Civil order collapsed in Birmingham, Alabama on May 7, 1963. Bull Connor's fire hoses and police dogs had failed to control the thousands of African-American activists and school children who converged on the downtown business district shortly after noon on that Tuesday. Singing freedom songs, parading with picket signs, kneeling in prayer, black people swarmed down the streets and sidewalks through the heart of Birmingham at the height of the day. . . . Out maneuvered, out-manned, the jails full, the police could do nothing. As the executives of the city's leading industries adjourned an emergency meeting and exited the Chamber of Commerce board room into the bedlam below, Birmingham's crisis became clear: the city suffered from an impasse among its disparate interests. 59 For five weeks the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) under the direction of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., had conducted protests against racial discrimination in the industrial city. King and the SCLC arrived at the behest of the Reverend Fred Lee Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), Birmingham's indigenous civil rights movement that had struggled against segregation since 1956. Civil Rights activists targeted intransigent Birmingham because of its terrible reputation as the most thoroughly segregated city in America. Shuttlesworth hoped King's prestige would generate enough pressure to force the white power structure to dismantle institutionalized racial discrimination. King wanted to improve his tarnished reputation as a national leader. The movement organized demonstrations to focus attention on racial problems in the strife-torn town. In the process, Bull Connor provided made-to-order legal violence that when packaged by the media as footage, photo and story-line, shocked a disbelieving nation and embarrassed a presidency that touted the American consensus of freedom and democracy.

Glenn Eskew, But for Birmingham.The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle, 2-3.

The aftermath of national protest, international pressure and inner city riot, convinced a reluctant Kennedy Administration to propose sweeping legislation that, once passed as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, marked a watershed in race relations and opened the system to African Americans even in recalcitrant cities such as Birmingham. The Kennedy Administration responded to the national protests over Birmingham and the international condemnation of American racism by drafting legislation that outlawed racial discrimination in the marketplace. Consequently the civil rights movement achieved its goals of gaining access to public accommodations and equal employment opportunities. Hence the climax of the civil rights struggle occurred in Birmingham.

Glenn Eskew, But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle,44S.

ADAM FAIRCLOUGH

Did the protests in Birmingham give birth to the Civil Rights Bill, which Congress eventually enacted in 1964? SCLC, not unnaturally, believed so. 'But for Birmingham,' Shuttlesworth boasted in 1964, 'the Civil Rights Bill would not be before Congress today.' Wyatt Walker was even more emphatic: 'Birmingham brought about the 1964 Civil Rights Act.'

The claim that Birmingham created the Civil Rights Act is difficult to sustain. The bill did not reach the statute books until July 1964, and until Lyndon Johnson became president it looked doubtful that it would pass at all. The assertion that Birmingham prompted the civil rights bill, on the other hand, is more plausible. The political scientist David Garrow, however, has challenged it. The Birmingham protests produced 'no widespread national outcry,' he argues, 'no vocal reaction by the nation's clergy, and no immediate move by the administration to propose salutary legislation.' Garrow suggests two reason for this lukewarm 60 response: the black rioting of May 7 and May 12, which alienated white sympathy and confused the issue; and the absence of the single, clear goal that could be easily conveyed both to and by the press. Birmingham, he concludes, was far less effective than SCLC's campaign in Selma two years later, which led directly to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

But this argument can be faulted on several grounds. Comparisons between Birmingham and Selma must be treated with caution. It is quite true, as Garrow notes, that Birmingham produced a relatively muted response from Congress: Selma prompted nearly two hundred sympathetic speeches, Birmingham a mere seventeen. A simple statistical comparison, however, fails to reveal the fact that the political context of 1963 was very different from that of 1965. Non-Southern congressmen were far more wary about speaking out on civil rights in 1963. Most regarded it as a sure vote loser, and Northern Democrats were anxious to avoid a damaging intraparty dispute that would rebound to the benefit of the Republican party. In 1965, with the Republicans routed in the previous year's elections, they felt less politically inhibited. By 1965, moreover, the nation had become more accustomed to the idea that the government ought to play a central role in combating racial discrimination; far fewer people still maintained that the South's racial problems could be solved through local, voluntary action. Finally, by 1965 the civil rights movement had reached a higher stage of development; it enjoyed greater legitimacy and respectability.

The success of Birmingham should not, in any case, be judged according to its impact on Congress; the initiative for the civil rights bill came from the administration, not the legislature. And the evidence strongly suggests that SCLC's demonstrations played a decisive role in persuading the Kennedy administration to introduce legislation. For two years Robert Kennedy had attempted to deal with each racial crisis on an ad hoc basis. Birmingham finally convinced him that crises would recur with such frequency and magnitude that the federal government, unless it adopted a more radical policy, would be overwhelmed. Birmingham, Edwin Guthman recalled, 'convinced the President and Bob that stronger federal civil rights laws were needed. When Marshall returned from Birmingham on May 17 ... he flew with Bob to Asheville, North Carolina . . . Aboard the plane they worked out the essential elements of the Civil Rights Bill.' Five days later, the president confirmed that he was considering new legislation and that 'the final decision should be made in the next few days.' At the end of May, against the advice of most of his aides and cabinet officers, he decided to endorse his brother's strategy. Outlining the bill in his televised address of June 11, Kennedy noted that 'the events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them.'

There was a direct connection, therefore, between SCLC's demonstrations and the introduction of the Civil Rights Bill. Of course, the Kennedy administration had sponsored civil rights legislation before, only to see it fail in Congress. The difference now lay in the broad scope for the bill and, even more important, in the administration's determination to see the measure through Congress. Contemporaries agreed that Birmingham, and the protests that immediately followed it, transformed the political climate so that civil rights legislation 61 became feasible; before, it had been impossible. Roy Wilkins of the NAACP refused to ascribe the Civil Rights Bill to Birmingham alone: what happened before — the Freedom Rides, the integration crisis at the University of Mississippi, the legal battles over voter registration and school desegregation — had paved the ground and contributed to the political education of the Kennedys on civil rights. T see the Birmingham episodes as clinching the business . . . [and] convincing the President at long last that we had to have legislation.' Even allowing for such qualification, history must regard Birmingham as the decisive factor. As Burke Marshall noted, 'The Negro and his problems were still pretty much invisible to the country . . . until mass demonstrations of the Birmingham type.'

Why did Birmingham have such a profound impact on the administration's thinking? If direct action had died down after May 10, its effects would have been transient and indecisive. But the protests in Birmingham also sent shock waves across the South. The fact that white leaders had made concessions in a city notorious for its racial intransigence gave new hope to blacks in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and other segregationist strongholds. Widely acclaimed as 'the best-organized and most highly disciplined action ever mounted by Negroes,' Birmingham became a model for SNCC, CORE, and local black movements. As James Farmer acknowledged, Birmingham showed the need to involve thousands rather than hundreds. 'A score of Birminghams followed the first. Birmingham thus set the stage for a full-scale revolt against segregation.' By the end of the summer the South had experienced about one thousand demonstrations involving more that twenty thousand arrests. Enthusiasm for direct action swept even the NAACP which, at its annual convention in July, called upon its local branches to employ 'picketing, mass protest actions, [and] selective buying campaigns.' As Meier and Rudwick have written, Birmingham 'both epitomized the change in mood and became a major stimulus for direct-action campaigns.'

To the Kennedy administration, the growth of direct action represented a dangerous and disturbing development. Throughout the summer, the president warned against 'demonstrations, parades and protests' that 'create tensions and threaten violence and threaten lives.' The civil rights bill was designed, in large part, to get blacks off the streets. It gave blacks a legal redress, thus obviating the need, in Kennedy's view, for 'demonstrations which could lead to riots, demonstrations which could lead to bloodshed.' The bill also proposed a professional, full-time federal mediation service, an idea which had been rejected at the time of the Albany protests. The improvised, 'crisis-management' methods of the Justice Department no longer sufficed: the crises were too many and too dangerous.

Did the black rioting in Birmingham — trivial by the standard of Watts and Detroit, but serious in the context of the early 1960s — weaken the effectiveness of SCLC's campaign? Given the administration's deep fear of domestic violence and disorder, it may well have actually helped. The Birmingham riots raised the specter of black retaliation, of a violent black revolt touching off a sanguinary race war. This prospect frightened and appalled the Kennedys. Robert, in particular, feared that nonviolent protest might give way to the violent tactics of irresponsible extremists. As he told a group of Alabama newspaper editors on May 15, 'Remember, it was King who went around the pool halls and door to door 62 collecting knives, telling people to go home and to stay off the streets and to be nonviolent If King loses, worse leaders are going to take his place. Look at the black Muslims.'

That was precisely the argument which King made so forcefully in 'Letter from Birmingham City Jail.' If whites remained obdurate to the reasonable demands of nonviolent leaders, he warned, 'millions of Negroes will . . . seek solace and security in black-nationalist ideologies — a development that would lead to a frightening racial nightmare.' True, black leaders had been saying this for years; indeed, such warnings are a rhetorical commonplace among liberal reformers. But the rioting of early May demonstrated that the alternative posed by King was more than a rhetorical flourish. It forced the administration to acknowledge the importance of rendering positive support to 'responsible' black leaders. Robert Kennedy had this point brought home to him in a dramatic and personally discomfiting manner when he met a group of black artists and intellectuals on May 24. The blacks criticized the administration in angry and emotional terms, subjecting the hapless Kennedy to what Clarence Jones considered 'the sharpest attack that he had seen anyone undergo.' Kennedy was shocked by their aggressiveness and, as he saw it, their irrationality. Yet these blacks were hardly extreme on the widening spectrum of black opinion. 'There is obviously a revolution within a revolution in the Negro leadership,' he reflected in 1964. 'We could obviously see the direction of Martin Luther King going away from him to some of these younger people, who had no confidence in the system of government.' It was essential, he thought, to ensure the confidence of the black population 'in their government and in the white majority.'

Garrow's assertion that SCLC lacked a single, clear goal in Birmingham is surely correct. Burke Marshall formed the impression that King had no specific objective in mind such as the intervention of federal troops or the passage of legislation: 'He wasn't thinking that far ahead. He was reacting, like most people, to the situation.' But did this weaken the campaign's impact? King maintained to the end of his life that it was far more important to dramatize the broader issues and generate the pressure for change than to draft precise or specific legislation. The exact manner in which the federal government responded to the problem of discrimination did not greatly concern SCLC. What mattered was that its response should be determined, vigorous, and thorough.

Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America, 133-137.

JOHN D'EMILIO

The historic events in Birmingham contributed to President Kennedy's decision to seek strong civil rights legislation and created support for the passage of a new federal law. The spring demonstrations also increased the momentum of the civil rights movement. During the summer of 1963, desegregation drives emerged in numerous Southern cities, including Danville, Va., where Shuttlesworth helped lead the campaign.

John D'Emilio, The Civil Rights Struggle-Leaders in Profile, 133. 63

WILLIAM BARNARD

Would the 1964 Civil Rights Act have been possible without the images of police dogs and fire hoses that shocked the nation's conscience and ultimately mobilized the nation's political will to address America's single most difficult and obdurate social ill?

William Barnard, Introduction, in David J. Garrow, ed., Birmingham, AL, 1956-1963: The Black Struggle for Civil Rights,\9%9, xiii.

ALDON MORRIS

The modern civil rights movement broke from the protest tradition of the past in at least two crucial ways. One, it was the first time that large masses of blacks directly confronted and effectively disrupted normal functioning of groups and institutions thought to be responsible for their oppression. The hallmark of the modern civil rights movement is that these mass confrontations were widespread and sustained over a long period of time in the face of heavy repression. Two, this was the first time in American history that blacks adopted nonviolent tactics as a mass technique for bringing about social change.

Aldon Morris, The Origin of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, New York: The Free Press, 1984, xi.

Not only did SCLC accomplish its specific goals in Birmngham, but it also accomplished its long-range goal by setting in motion hundreds of movements designed to destroy segregation and forced the national government to pass the Civil Rights Act, which legally prohibited racial segregation. Indeed, within ten weeks following the Birmingham confrontation, 758 demonstrations occurred in 186 cities across the South and at least 14,733 persons were arrested. As Fred Shuttlesworth put it in his annual address to the ACMHR:

Yes, my friends, the New Frontier is trying to catch up with the Negro frontier. Unless the President moves with dispatch, vigor and with a degree of dedication. . . Negroes will be demonstrating in every nook and cranny of the nation — North, East and West.

Aldon Morris, "A Carefully Planned Exercise in Mass Disruption," The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, 1984, 274.

WILSON FALLIN

For many civil rights historians and scholars, Birmingham was the turning point of the civil rights movement opening the way for the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and the rehabilitation of Martin Luther King's leadership. . . . The Birmingham movement showed clearly the importance of the African American church in the civil rights movement. 64 The church provided the leadership, charisma, funding and organization for initiating the masses. Most of all, the church provided the common religious culture that sustained the movement. Blacks in Birmingham could identify with the ACMHR more than the NAACP and other middle class led organizations. Fred Shuttlesworth was the acknowledged leader and set a tone and direction for the movement. Martin Luther King brought to the movement in Birmingham a national reputation and the national mass media, but equally important was his ability to create a broader base for the movement. In addition, he identified with and enhanced the common church culture that made the Birmingham civil rights movement possible.

Reverend Wilson J. Fallin, The African American Church and the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham, 1993. Wilson Fallin is President of the Birmingham Baptist Bible College.

Between 1956 and 1963 the African American church in Birmingham initiated a movement to free blacks from the rigid segregation that existed in the city. Led by one courageous pastor and buttressed by their unique Christianity, ministers started a movement that ended long-entrenched forms of segregation in the city and gained broader rights for African Americans. The movement mirrored the African American church in every respect. Using direct action and confrontation rather than simply the usual methods of petition and legal recourse, the movement struggled to eliminate segregation in Birmingham. In 1963 the movement brought Martin Luther King, Jr. to the city and organized massive demonstrations that captured the attention of the nation and led to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Reverend Wilson Fallin, Shelter in the Storm - The African American Church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1815-1963, Tuscaloosa: PhD. Dissertation, 1995, 237.

WILLIAM ROGER WITHERSPOON

The Birmingham victory . . . SCLC's first major victory (flawed perhaps as it ignored segregation in the school system and had not been negotiated with the white political leadership) ... It was the first time that a protracted, active, nonviolent campaign bringing a city to a standstill, forced the leading white citizens to sit down and negotiate with blacks. SCLC's mobilization and King's personal magnetism and leadership had forged a successful movement that forced public capitulation in a ferociously segregated Southern city. The Children's Hour had shown King to be not only a moral leader but a great tactician. The decision to allow the children to put their bodies into the movement forced white America to come to grips with its self-proclaimed morality.

Excuses can be made for a clash between white policemen and black adults. But the country simply could not witness an assault by grown men and killer dogs on little boys and girls, regardless of their color, and live with its conscience.

King had pondered in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" just what kind of God these people worshiped. How could they stand silent in the midst of atrocities? The answer, as 65

King knew it would be, was that they all worshiped the same God.

It just took the Children's Hour to remind them.

William Roger Witherspoon, Martin Luther King, Jr. . . .To the Mountaintop, 130.

WITHERSPOON: On Moving President Kennedy to Action

President Kennedy said on May 4, that the sights of the assault in Birmingham made him sick, and now he could 'well understand why the Negroes of Birmingham are tired of being asked to be patient.' He dispatched emissaries, Assistant Attorneys General Burke Marshall and John Doar, to see if they could negotiate the dispute and bring an end to it. . . .

William Roger Witherspoon, Martin Luther King, Jr.. . . . To the Mountaintop, 127.

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY

On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy addressed the nation on national television. Civil rights dominated his message:

The fires of frustration and discord are busy in every city. Redress is sought in the street, in demonstrations, parades and protests which create tensions and threaten violence. We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a county and as a people. ... I am therefore asking Congress to enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public — hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores and similar establishments.

"President John F. Kennedy's Nationally Televised Speech", June 11, 1963, in Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader, 160-162. On June 19, 1963, Kennedy delivered his Civil Rights bill to Congress.

WILLIAM WHATLEY

The members of the Kennedy administration and Northern whites were not the only persons to view defenseless, black school children being knocked off their feet by high- pressure hoses. Black people also observed the inhumane treatment of their racial kin. The brutal treatment of blacks by the Birmingham police and the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was the proverbial 'last straw' for a number of blacks in terms of their commitment to non-violence as a philosophy. As more and more blacks raised questions about nonviolence, a new intensity and impatience became evident in black demands. After Birmingham, the movement that had been basically Southern, moved north, and the major urban centers of the North found themselves embroiled in the surging tide of black dissatisfaction and the quest of black America for true equality. . . . 66

The civil rights movement reached its zenith after Birmingham. Concern for civil rights of black Americans became a priority in the national consciousness as it has not been in this century, either before or since Birmingham. Thus, Birmingham was more than the dawn needed after the dark night of Albany. It was actually the high noon of King's career and of the civil rights movement.

William D. Whatley, Roots of Resistance: The Nonviolent Ethic of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1985, 78-79.

SHUTTLESWORTH: On Stirring the Nation's Moral Conscience, June 5, 1965

Since the Birmingham Demonstrations of 1963, our nation has been in crisis, as its creaking and unequal social structure seeks to strike a balance between a maladjusted past and an uncertain future. At a July White House Conference, one of the many racial meetings hastily summoned by President Kennedy in Washington, the President made the terse but profound statement: 'But for Birmingham, we wouldn't be here today.' What a tribute to be paid to your 7 years of ordeal and hardship! What an acknowledgment that Birmingham, through the joint efforts of SCLC-ACMHR, had so stirred itself that it had shaken up the nation. How little did we know or even dream in 1956 that we (the ACMHR) would carry on and discipline ourselves as a Movement that destiny would use the Birmingham Movement as a vehicle to make America come to grips with its conscience. . . .

Fred Shuttlesworth, "The National Civil Rights Crises and Our Relationship To It," Eighth Annual Address to A.C. M. H. R, June 5, 1964, A.O.H. Church, Birmingham.

SHUTTLESWORTH: On the Success of the Birmingham Movement

Let it never be forgotten that ACMHR, together with SCLC provided the vehicle and shock force that shook this Nation's moral conscience in 1963 as never before, resulting in the Civil Rights Bill which will ultimately cause all facets of our society to reevaluate and adjust to the demands of the 20th Century. These 1963 Birmingham demonstrations aided the foundation for the superb and magnificent Selma Demonstrations of 1965 (in which ACMHR played a full and effective role) during which the moral conscience of the land was again stirred until very soon the Nation was fully committed morally and legally to complete support of the concept of full human dignity, justice and freedom.

Fred Shuttlesworth, Ninth Annual Address to the ACMHR, June 1965.

But for Birmingham! Sparks from Birmingham fell in Boston, New York, San Francisco, Houston Texas, Chicago, Detroit, and other cities were catching afire with the flames of freedom! The young and vigorous President saw that there would be open warfare and untold bloodshed unless he, as the Chief Officer of this so-called Christian Country, came up quickly with a law which would be a national expression of our supposedly moral order. Mr. Kennedy, with the voice of a modern prophet told the nation Via-Television that the issue was more a moral one than legal one; and that we must cease being a nation of many creeds 67

and few deeds.

But for Birmingham the Civil Rights Bill could not be before Congress today! Let no one be deceived: it was neither church prayers nor conciliating committees which brought about the Civil Rights Bill. It was non-violent demonstrations-marching feet, praying hearts, singing lips, and filling the jails, which did it. Mr. Kennedy senses the deep need of the hour and sought to find a lasting remedy for the illness of his nation. . ..

'We shall overcome' has become almost as famous as the 'Star Spangled Banner,' and today's marching feet will be as important to historians as the hoofbeat of Paul Revere's midnight ride. Negroes rose up against a system in which some men who did not hesitate to kiss dogs were allowed to curse and kick Negroes; a system in which demagogues propelled bombs at Negroes while their scientists were shooting rockets at the moon.

But for Birmingham there would not today be the agonizing reappraisal of the entire structure of the American system; one which was planned without Negroes, built without Negroes-except for their unrequited labor, operated without Negroes, and designed to forever exist without negroes being a part of its mainstream. . . .

In a real sense, ACMHR and the Civil Rights Organizations of the country have given the Christian Church its greatest opportunity in centuries to make religion real in the lives of men. Thank God for the awakening of the religion forces!

Fred Shuttlesworth, "The National Civil Rights Crises and Our Relationship To It," Eighth Annual Address to A.C.M.H.R., June 5, 1964, A.O.H. Church. President John F.Kennedy's Nationally Televised Speech of June 11, 1963 in The Eyes On The Prize Civil Rights Readers, 159-162.

SHUTTLESWORTH On the Importance of the Birmingham Movement

Not only did the SCLC accomplish its specific goals in Birmingham, but it also accomplished its long-range goal by setting in motion hundreds of movements designed to destroy segregation and forced the national government to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which legally prohibited racial segregation. Indeed, within ten weeks following the Birmingham confrontation 758 demonstrations occurred in 186 cities across the South and at least 14,733 persons were arrested. As Fred Shuttlesworth put it in his annual address to the ACMHR:

Yes, my friends, the New Frontier is trying to catch up with the Negro frontier. Unless the President moves with dispatch, vigor and with a degree of dedication . . . Negroes will be demonstrating in every nook and cranny of the nation ~ North, East and West.

Fred Shuttlesworth, "Birmingham - A Little Closer to Freedom," Seventh Annual Address to the ACMHR, Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion Church, June 5, 1963. 68 Some Southerners on the Superfluousness of the Movement

Many white Southerners maintained that the demonstrations had been superfluous. As Congressman Richard Sikes of Florida put it: 'It is common knowledge that a moderate city government has just been elected in Birmingham . . . and that concessions would have been forthcoming with neither strife nor rioting under the new city government.' Others contended that the demonstrations delayed rather than accelerated progress. The most obvious objection to such arguments is that fact that the first steps toward desegregation occurred precisely when the demonstrations reached their peak. Would Boutwell have taken similar steps, without pressure, upon taking office as mayor? Most blacks thought not. 'Albert Boutwell was no liberal by a long shot,' observed John Cross. A 'moderate segregationist,' Boutwell had to compete for the segregationist vote ~ and the electorate was nine tenths white — with crude racists such as Connor. The contention that he would have volunteered concessions smacks of wishful thinking.

Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America, 130-131.

JAMES BEVEL: On the Significance of the National Movement

The freedom expressed in the Civil Rights Movement was translated into song, into youth, and into a knowledge that the individual could right a wrong by himself or by a group. The movement . . .'taught us, for the first time in this century, that we are the government. The waves created by these actions have changed the world, and have touched every one of us.

James L. Bevel-The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, Randall L. Kryn, 1984. Birmingham Historical Society Research Report, July 1997 BIRMINGHAM CHURCHES ACTIVE IN THE ALABAMA CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS (ACMHR) AND THE BIRMINGHAM CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, 1956-1963

Church Name Birmingham Meeting Church Mass Meetings Reported by Birmingham Police Total Meetings ACMHR Leader Neighborhood 1956-58 1961 1962 1963 April-May '63 Reported

1 Abysinia Baptist Church * Ensley X 1 1 2 Bethel A ME Church * Ensley X 2 2 3 Bethel Baptist Church, Headquarters 1956-61 • Collegeville X 5 5 Rev. F.L. Shuttlesworth 4, East End Baptist Church * Southside Y 5 First Baptist Church * East Thomas X 1 1 Rev J A. Hayes t. First Baptist Church Ensley X 1 4 6 5 11 Rev. A.D. King 7 First Baptist Church * Hooper City X 1 First Baptist Church * Kingston X 3 2 5 9 First Baptist Church Woodlawn X 1 1 10 First Ebeneezer Baptist Church* Smithfield X 11 First Metropolitan Baptist Church* Southside X 2 2 4 Rev. A. Woods 12 Forty-Sixth Street Baptist Church East B'ham X 2 2 13 Galilee Baptist Church Northside X 14 Groveland Baptist Church Woodlawn IS Hopewell Baptist Church' Acipco X 16 Jackson Street Baptist Church Woodlawn X 1 1 17 Lily Grove Baptist Church Druid Hills X 1 1 18 Macedonia Baptist Church Ensley X 19. Macedonia Seventeenth Street Baptist Church Northside X 2 1 3 20. Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion Church* Northside 1 1 1 2 Rev. G.W. McMurrary 21 Metropolitan C.M.E Church* Ensley WE Shortridge 22 Metropolitan Community Church* Woodlawn X 23. Mt. Ararat Baptist Church* Ensley X 24 Mt Olive Baptist Church Woodlawn Y 2 2 Rev E Gardner 25 New Bethlehem Baptist Church* Bessemer X 26 New Hope Baptist Church Avondale X 3 5 2 10 Rev. H. Stone 27. New Pilirim Baptist Church* Southside X 2 6 9 4 17 Rev. N.H. Smith & Rev. C. Billups 28 New Rising Star Baptist Church* Collegeville Y Rev. G. Pruitt 29 New Salem Baptist Church Acipco X 30. Peace Baptist Church* Northside X 1 1 31 Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Fairfield X 32. Regular Missionary Baptist Church East B'ham X 1 1 2 Rev. C.H George 33 Sardis Baptist Church* Enon Ridge X 1 1 Rev. R.L. Alford 34. St. James Baptist Church Northside X 4 5 22 12 31 35. St. John A.M.E. Church* Northside X 1 3 5 2 9 36 St. John Baptist Church* Powderly 2 2 37. St. Joseph Baptist Church* Smithfield X 31. SL Luke A.M.E. Church* North B'ham X 1 5 I 6 39 St. Luke A.M.E. Zion Church* East B'ham 40. St. Paul A.M.E. Church* Smithfield X 2 2 2 4 41 St Paul C.M.E. Church* Docena X 42 St Paul United Methodist Church* Smithfield 43. St. Peters Primitive Baptist Church* Bessemer X 44. Seventeenth Street A.O.H. Church Northside X 1 2 4 1 7 45 Shady Grove Baptist Church* Collegeville Y Rev. L.J. Rodgers 46. Siiteenth Street Baptist Church* Northside X 2 > 7 10 Rev. J. Cross 47. Sixth Avenue Baptist Church Southside t 7 8 Rev. J. Porter 48 South Elyton Baptist Church* Southside X 49. Tabernacle Baptist Church Vorthside X 1 2 2 1 S SO. Thirty-Secoad Street Baptist Church* Southside X 1 1 1 51. Thirgood CME Church Northside 3 1 I 4 Rev. N. Unary 52 Twenty-Second Avenue Baptist Church* North B'ham X 53 Union Bethel Independent Methodist Church North B'ham X 2 2 54 West End Hills Baptist Church* West End X 55. Zion Spring Baptist Church* Cingston X 56 Zion Star Baptist Church Southside X 4 2 6 Rev. J S Phifer Unidentified Meeting Site 1 1 2

Total » of Identified Churches 56 48 23 18 15 13 32 Touts of Meetings Reported by Police 46 45 78 45 169

Churches included served u mass meeting sites during the Birmingham Movement established June S, 1956 by Birmingham ministers and laymen, under the leadership of the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, 'to press forward persistently for freedom & democracy, and the removal from our society of any forms of second-class citizenship." ACMHR Secretary Lola Hendricks verified the 1950s era churches and added to a list published in the ACMHR Annual Report of 1958 Most of these churches were small. (Those marked with a Y were too small for mass meetings, but are included as their pastors were active in the Movement.) Most are located in Birmingham's industrial neighborhoods. From 1957 until the late 19601, Birmingham Police attended many regularly scheduled mass meetings. Remaining reports of these meetings for the years, January 1961 to December 1963, are now included in the Papers of Eugene ("Bull") Connor and Birmingham Law Dept. Files at the Birmingham Public Library Archives As The Movement' grew, meetings were held in larger and, later, more centrally located churches Bolded churches served as meeting sites during the joint ACMHR-SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) Project "C" (Confrontation with segregation) during April and May of 1963. In 1995, all congregations remained and those marked with an astenck still used their 1960s structure for workshop, Sunday school or day care. ACMHR continues to hold mass meetings each Monday night

Code H ALooaA CHTOTS WK4 7/21/97 ML 70

VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY

MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS

Bethel Baptist Church Files. Birmingham Historical Society, Birmingham, AL.

Birmingham Law Department Files. Birmingham Police Department Inter-Office Communications. ACMHR Meetings Files. September to December, 1963. Birmingham Public Library Archives, Birmingham, AL.

Connor, Eugene "Bull." Papers. Birmingham Police Department Inter-Office Communications. ACMHR Meetings Files. 9 January 1961- May 1963. Birmingham Public Library Archives, Birmingham, AL.

HABS-HAER Histories, Drawings, Photographs and Context Map, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and Bethel Baptist Church, Birmingham Historical Society, Birmingham, AL.

Hendricks, Lola Papers. Birmingham Public Library Archives, Birmingham, AL.

Jefferson County Board of Equalization. Appraisal Files. 1939-1977. Birmingham Public Library Archives, Birmingham, AL.

Jefferson County Historical Commission Files. Jefferson County Marker Application for Bethel Baptist Church. 19 December 1994. Birmingham Historical Society, Birmingham, AL.

Jefferson County Probate Court. Incorporation Records and Deed Books. Jefferson County Courthouse, Birmingham, AL.

NAACP, Papers of the, Part 20; White Resistance and Reprisals, 1956-1965, Editorial Advisers: John H Bracey, Jr. and August Meier, Library of Congess and University Publications of America, Bethesda, MD, 1996. Part 20 includes the bombingof Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, mass arrests of civil rights demonstators in Birmingham, bombings, arrests and acts of brutality against Fred Shuttlesworth and other civil rights activists.

Polk City Directories. 1883- Present. Southern Collection. Birmingham Public Library

Shuttlesworth, Fred L. Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia. Four Boxes contain materials spanning the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth's presidency of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (Box 1), his pastorate at the Revelation Baptist Church, Cincinnati, 1960-1966 (Box 2), National Civil Rights Correspondence (Box 3), and National Speeches (Box 4). 71 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Papers. Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, AL.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS

Baldwin, Lewis V. "Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Church in the South, 1954-1968." Thesis, Vanderbilt University, n.d.

Cassady, Kevin Anderson. "Black Leadership and the Civil Rights Struggle in Birmingham, AL 1960-1964." BA. Thesis, Georgetown University, 1986.

Clarke, Jacquelyn Johnson. "Goals and Techniques in Three Civil Rights Organizations in Alabama." Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1960.

Corley, Robert G. "The Quest for Racial Harmony: Race Relations in Birmingham, Alabama, 1947-1963." Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1979.

Eskew, Glenn Thomas. "But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle." Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia, 1993.

Fallin, Wilson, Jr. "A Shelter in the Storm: The African American Church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1815-1963." Ph.D. diss., University of Alabama, 1995.

Kryn, Randall L. "James L. Bevel-The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. May 1984. Photocopy. BHS Bethel Baptist Church Files, Birmingham Historical Society.

A Deep Look at Our Past. Bethel Baptist Church History, n.d., Bethel Collection.

ARTICLES, PRINT AND BROADCAST MEDIA

Newspapers

Anderson, Trezzvant W. "Negroes Have a New Spirit-The Birmingham Story." The Courier. (Pittsburgh, PA. Feb. 14, 1959): Shuttlesworth Papers 3.50.

Anderson, Trezzvant W., "Dixie's Most Fearless Freedom Fighter-Shuttlesworth Is Leaving Ala.! The Courier. (Pittsburgh, PA. June 10, 1961): Shuttlesworth Papers 4.7.

"Big Ovation for Rights Leader." Bahamian Times. (18 September 1965): n.p.

Birmingham News, 1956-1963. 72 Cleveland, OH. Courier, June 10, 1961

"Is Birmingham's Rev. Shuttlesworth Most Jail 'Rights' Fighter?" Unidentified newspaper. (Summer 1961): Shuttlesworth Papers, 9.8.

Salisbury, Harrison. "Fear and Hatred Grip Birmingham." The New York Times (8 April 1960): 1.

Shuttlesworth, F.L. "Shuttlesworth Thankful for Jailing-It's Glorious! Negroes And Whites Are Being Beaten Up Together!" The Courier. ( 10 June 1961): Shuttlesworth Papers 4.8.

"Shuttlesworth, Phifer Renew Request To City To End Bias; Both Serving Hard Labor Terms." Birmingham Weekly. (17 February 1962): Shuttlesworth Papers 1.51.

Sugarman, Joel. "500 March, Hear Integration Leader." Clipping, (c.1962): Shuttlesworth Papers, 9.8

Taylor, Woody L. "Cincy Church Loyal to Cause-Wife of Martyred Rev. Shuttlesworth Undergoing Ordeal." The Courier. (17 February 1962): Shuttlesworth Papers 4.8.

-—. "Fellow Pastors Fill Pulpit-Thousands Urge U.S. to Intervene for Shuttlesworth," The Courier, February 24,1962. Shuttlesworth Papers 4.8.

"Wide Latitude in the Press's Criticism of Public Officials is Ruled Constitutional." The New York Times. (10 March 1964): 22-23. Clipping in Shuttlesworth Papers, 2.37.

Periodicals

Baldwin, Lewis. "Martin Luther King, Jr. The Black Church and the Black Messianic Vision." The Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center. (1984-85): 98.

Braden, Anne. "Birmingham, 1956-1979 'The History That We Made.'" Southern Exposure, Just Schools: A Special Report Commemorating the 25th Anniversary of the Brown Decision. (1979).

Eskew, Glenn Thomas. "The Freedom Ride Riot and Political Reform in Birmingham, 1961- 1963." Alabama Review (July 1996).

Fairclough, Adam. "The Preachers and the People: The Origins and Early Years of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1955-1957." LIL3 The Journal of Southern History. (August 1986) 403-449.

Flynt, Wayne. "The Ethics of Democratic Persuasion and the Birmingham Crisis." Southern 73 Speech Journal. 35:1 (Fall 1969): 40-58.

Gutwillig, Robert. "Six Days in Alabama-A Business Trip to Birmingham Becomes a Vivid Record." Mademoiselle (September 1963): 116, 186-202.

Life, 1 January 1957 and 17 May 1963.

"Litigation—The Champion." Time. (November 1964): 73-74.

Mitchell, Francis H. "A Controversial Minister-Rev. Shuttlesworth is a Tough Leader for a Tough Town." Unidentified periodical: Shuttlesworth Papers 2.37.

Shuttlesworth, F. L. "Birmingham Revisited Minister Returns to City to View Decade of Change." 26 Ebony. (1971) 114-118.

"The Men Behind Martin Luther King." Ebony. (June 1965): 165-173.

Young, Andrew. "And Birmingham." SCLC Drum Major. (1971).

Young, Andrew. "The Day We Went To Jail in Birmingham." Friends. (9 February 1964): 3- 11.

Other Media

Smith, Howard K. "Who Speaks for Birmingham?" May, 1963. Video. From collection of CBS Museum of TV and Radio, New York, NY. Typescript. Birmingham Public Library Archives, Birmingham, AL.

Public Broadcast Services. Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years. Video series. Boston, MA: Blackside Inc., 1986.

University of Alabama Center for Public Television and Radio. "I Shall not be Moved: The Life and Legacy of W. C. Patton." Study Guide. Location: mshores @ sa.ua.edu 74

SERMONS, ARTICLES & SPEECHES BY SHUTTLESWORTH

Shuttlesworth, Rev. F. L. "Address of Rev. F. L. Shuttlesworth of Birmingham." Alabama Prayer Pilgrimage, Washington D. C. (17 May 1957): Shuttlesworth Papers 4.4.

—. "Voice of the People-Negro Minister on Salisbury." Lettter to the Editor. The Birmingham News, n.d.: Shuttlesworth Papers 4.7.

—. Statement. (1 October 1963) Shuttlesworth Papers 1.11. Also in The Birmingham World, (6 April 1963): 2.

—. "The Negro Revolution and Its Impact on American Life." Speech. (26 November 1963): Shuttlesworth Papers 4.36.

—-. "The Old Book For A New Age." Speech. (1964): Shuttlesworth Papers 4.37.

—-. "A Faith For Difficult and Critical Times." Speech. (1963): Shuttlesworth Papers 4.29.

-—. "The Church-An Effective Christian Witness in A Difficult Age." Speech. (1964) Shuttlesworth Papers 4.27.

—. "Birmingham Shall Be Free Some Day." Freedomways. (Winter 1964): 16-19.

—. "Birmingham Revisited." Ebony. (August 1971): 114-118.

—. "An Account of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights." in J.J.Clarke. "Goals and Techniques in Three Civil Rights Organizations." Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1960.

—. "Introduction." In Elizabeth/Petric Smith. Long Time Coming-An Insider's Story of the Birmingham Church Bombing That Rocked the World. Birmingham, AL:Crane Hill Publishers, 1994.

Shuttlesworth, Fred L. and N. H. Smith. "The Birmingham Manifesto." Freedomways. (Winter 1964) 20-21; Also in The Birmingham World ( 2 April 1963): 2 and "News, Alabama Christian Movement," (4 April 1963). 75

ACMHR PAPERS

Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, They Challenge Segregation at Its Core: A History of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Box 1. Shuttlesworth Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

—. People in Motion: The History of the Freedom Movement in Birmingham, Alabama. Booklet (1966 (the 10th Anniversary of the ACMHR): Box 1, Folder 17. Shuttlesworth Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

—-. "Annual Addresses by Rev. Shuttlesworth." (1958-59, 1961-66, 1968-69): Box 1, Folder 1. Shuttlesworth Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

-—. "Anniversary Celebration Programs." (1957, 1959, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1968): Box 1, Folder 2. Shuttlesworth Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

..... "Newsletter RE ACMHR Objectives." (July 1961): Box 1, Folder 7. Shuttlesworth Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

—. "News Release RE Voter Registration." (11 January 1966): Box 1, Folder 8. Shuttlesworth Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

—. "Statement RE Procedures for Avoiding Violence in Birmingham." (6 September 1963): Box 1, Folder 10. Shuttlesworth Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

—. "News Release RE Bombings in Birmingham." (25 September 1963): Box 1, Folder 12. Shuttlesworth Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

—-. "News Release RE bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church." (1 October 1963): Box 1, Folder 11. Shuttlesworth Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

—. "News Release RE Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth Appreciation Week." (20 October 1966): Box 1, Folder 14. Shuttlesworth Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

Bethel Baptist Church. "Program of the Sixth Anniversary of the Rev. F. L. Shuttlesworth, A.B., B. S., Pastor of the Bethel Baptist Church, Feb. 26-March 2, 1959." Box 1, Folder 23. Shuttlesworth Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

Bethel Baptist Church. Program. (24 April 1960): Box 1, Folder 35. Shuttlesworth Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

Shuttlesworth, Fred L. "The Church an Effective Christian Witness in a Difficult Age." Speech. (1964): Box 4, Folder 27. Shuttlesworth Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia. 76 —. "The Negro Revolution ... Its Impact on American Life." Speech. (26 November 1963): Box 4, Folder 36. Shuttlesworth Papers. The King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

MEMOIRS

Abernathy, Ralph David. And The Walls Came Tumbling Down: An Autobiography. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1989.

Coffin, Jr., William Sloane. Once To Every Man. New York: New American Library, 1977.

Gregory, Dick and Robert Lipsyte. Nigger: An Autobiography. New York: Pocket Books, Inc., 1965.

Hudson, Hosea. Black Worker in the Deep South. New York: International Publishers, 1972.

King, Martin Luther Jr. Why We Can't Wait. New York: Signet Books, 1964.

Morgan, Charles Jr. A Time To Speak. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964.

Peck, James. Freedom Ride. New York: Simon Schuster, 1962.

Shuttlesworth, Fred L. "An Account of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights." In Jacquelyne Johnson Clarke. "Goals and Techniques in Three Civil Rights Organizations in Alabama." Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1960. Appendix B.

Zukoski, Charles Frederick Jr. Voices in the Storm: The Button Gwinnett Columns Written During the Civil Rights Struggles and Other Writings. Birmingham, AL: Birmingham Public Library Press, 1990. 77 SECONDARY SOURCES

BOOKS

Bains, Jr., Lee E. "Birmingham 1963: Confrontation Over Civil Rights," B.A. Thesis, Harvard University, 1964. In David J. Garrow, ed. Birmingham, Alabama, 1956-1963: The Black Struggle for Civil Rights. Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, Inc., 1989.

Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.

Carter, Harold. The Prayer Tradition of Black People. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1976.

Clarke, Jacquelyn Johnson. These Rights They Seek. Washington D. C: Public Affairs Press, 1962.

Coffin, William Sloane, Jr. Once to Every Man. New York: Antheneum, 1977.

Davidson, Margaret. / Have A Dream-The Story of Martin Luther King, Scholastic Inc., New York, 1986.

D'Emilio, John. The Civil Rights Struggle: Leaders in Profile. New York: Facts on File, 1979,132-133.

Eskew, Glenn Thomas. "The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and the Birmingham Struggle for Civil Rights, 1956-1963. In David J. Garrow, ed. Birmingham, Alabama, 1956-1963: The Black Struggle for Civil Rights. Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, Inc., 1989.

The Eyes On the Prize Civil Rights Reader-Documents, Speeches, First Hand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle, 1954-1990. New York: Penguin Books, 1991.

Fairclough, Adam. To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987.

Frazier, E. Franklin. "The Negro Church in America." In C. Eric Lincoln. The Black Church Since Frazier. New York: Schocken Books, 1974.

Garrow, David. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. New York: William Morrow 8c Company, Inc., 1986.

, ed., Birmingham, AL, 1956-1963: The Black Struggle for Civil Rights. New York: Carlson Publishers, 1989. 78 King, Martin Luther, Jr. Why We Can't Wait, The Moral Leader of America Eloquently States the Case for Freedom Now. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.

Lentz, Richard. Symbols, the News Magazines, and Martin Luther King. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1991.

Lewis, David L. King: A Critical Biography. New York: Praeger, 1970.

Manis, Andrew Michael. Southern Civil Religions in Conflict: Black and White Baptist and Civil Rights, 1947-1957. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987.

. "Religious Experience, Religious Authority and Civil Rights Leadership: The Case of Birmingham's Fred Shuttlesworth." In Cultural Perspectives on the American South. Charles Reagan Wilson, ed. New York: Gordon and Breach, 1991.

Miller, William Robert. Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Weybright and Talley, 1967.

Morris, Aldon D. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement-Black Communities Organizing for Change. New York: The Free Press, 1984.

Nunnelley, William A. Bull Connor. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991.

Raines, Howell. My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered. New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1977.

Sikora, Frank. Until Justice Rolls Down: The Birmingham Church Bombing Case. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1986.

Smith, Elizabeth/Petric. Long Time Coming-An Insider's Story of the Birmingham Church Bombing That Rocked the World. Birmingham, AL: Crane Hill Publishers, 1994.

Sterne, Emma Gelders. "The Man With A Bulletproof Soul." In Margaret Davidson. I Have A Dream. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965.

Thompson, David C. The Negro Leadership Class. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963.

Wilson, Charles Reagan. Ed. Cultural Perspectives on the American South. Vol. 5. New York: Gordon and Breach, 1991.

Witherspoon, William Roger. Martin Luther King, Jr. ... To The Mountaintop. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1985.

Watley, William. Roots of Resistance: The Non-violent Ethic of Martin Luther King, Jr. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1985. 79 INTERVIEWS

Davis, Reuben. Interview with Marjorie L. White. 8 June 1995; 14 June 1995; 2 February 1996; 5 February 1996; 6 February 1996.

Drew, Deanie. Interview with Bill Jones. 5 August 1993.

Gunn, Aldrich. Interview with Marjorie L. White. 14 June 1993; 8 June 1995; 2 February 1996; 15 May 1997; 18 June 1997.

Hamlin, Christopher. Interview with Marjorie L. White. 18 June 1997.

Hendricks, Lola. Interview with Marjorie L. White. 5 February 1996; 6 February 1996; 13 June 1997.

Rushing, Hugh. Interview with Marjorie L. White. 17 March 1996; 24 July 1997.

Terry Earlie. Interview with Marjorie L. White. 12 June 1997. RESEARCH REPORT

Addressing the Importance of Birmingham Civil Rights Leader: Fred Lee Shuttlesworth, Pastor, Bethel Baptist Church (1953-1961) President, Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (1956-1969) Secretary, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1960-1970)

APPENDICES

A. Life, "Blows Against Segregation — Negro Fight for Freedom on Buses Spreads After Montgomery Ruling," Photographs of the Christmas Night Bombing of Bethel Baptist Church, Birmingham, 1956, and of the successful bus ride the next day, Life, 7 January 1957.

B. Harrison E. Salisbury, "Fear and Hatred Grip Birmingham ~ Racial Tension Smoldering After Belated Sitdowns," The New York Times, 12 April 1960, 1, 28. Photograph of Fred Shuttlesworth, 28.

C. "Integration Group Continuing Trip After Brutal Beatings Here, " The Birmingham News, 15 May 1961, 1, 10, 24.

D. "Shuttlesworth Shouts 'Fire,'" Editorial, The Birmingham News, 18 May 1961, 1.

E. David Lowe, Producer; Howard K. Smith, Narrator, "Who Speaks for Birmingham?" CBS Report, 60-minute Video, 18 May 1961 (filmed, March, 1961, aired 18 May 1961). Testimonials, Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) Members, Mass Meeting, St. John A.M. E. Church, Seventh Avenue North and 15th Street, 13 March 1961, 32.33; Interview with Fred Shuttlesworth, 36.45-42.18.

F. Photograph, SCLC Leaders Martin Luther King, Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth and Ralph Abernathy (left to right) at the Press Conference Announcing the Birmingham Truce, 10 May 1957, The Birmingham News. Caption by Robert Gutwillig, "Six Days in Alabama," Mademoiselle, September 1963, 189.

G. Life, "The Spectacle of Racial Turbulence in Birmingham ~ They Fight A Fire That Won't Go Out," Photographs by Charles Moore, 17 May 1963.

H. "LITIGATION, The Champion," TIME, 26 November 1965. August 8, 1997

Mr. Roby Lange Ms. Carol Schull National Historic Landmarks National Park Service

Dear Carol and Roby,

Thank you for meeting with me in May to review the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and Bethel Baptist Church nominations. Enclosed are draft materials addressing the significant of Birmingham Civil Rights leader Fred Lee Shuttlesworth, including the following essays, lists and audio visuals:

. On Fred Shuttlesworth's Role in the Birmingham Movement . Fred Lee Shuttlesworth: Freedom Fighter — Highlights of His Role in the Civil Rights Movement . Shuttlesworth on the Role of the Church and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR ) in the Civil Rights Movement . Comments of Contemporary Observers and Historians on Shuttlesworth . On the Importance of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement

. Life Magazine, January 7, 1957, coverage of the Christmas Night Bombing of Bethel Baptist Church, December 25, 1956, and of the successful bus ride the next day.

. The Birmingham News, "Photograph of Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth at the Press Conference, announcing the Birmingham Truce," May 10, 1963.

. Life Magazine, May 17, 1963, "The Spectacle of Racial Turbulence in Birmingham-They Fight a Fire That Won't Go Out," Photographs by Charles Moore.

. CBS Video "Who Speaks for Birmingham?" which includes Howard K. Smith's coverage of a March 16, 1961 ACMHR Movement Meeting. This document speaks poignantly of the work of Shuttlesworth and ACMHR in the Birmingham Movement. We are including a list of 56 Birmingham churches that participated in the ACMHR Mass Meetings and leadership, incorporating new information from the Birmingham Police reports. (See the BHS Research Report, July 1997: Birmingham Churches Active in the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and The Birmingham Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1963). Richard Anderson is revising The Map of African American Churches Active in the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement given to you in May. We are still finishing the Bethel Baptist Church history for final presentation to HABS-HAER and plan to submit a National Register nomination on the Bethel Church to the Alabama Historical Commission by March 1, 1998. We will prepare additional documentation on Bethel Baptist Church and Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, as requested by the Commission and by you all.

On behalf of Bethel Baptist Church and Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, we would like to invite you to Birmingham on a Monday in November of 1998, preferably November 2 or November 9, 1998. At this time, we propose to confirm the roles of these churches and of the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth as leader of the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham. A proposed agenda would include:

. Lunch and a Tour of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church . Brief Tour of Kelly Ingram Park and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute . Symposium at Sixteenth Street-Scholarly Presentations by Civil Rights historians, possibly including Wilson Fallin, Glenn Eskew, Andrew Manis, Aldon Morris, Howell Raines and Howard K. Smith . Supper at the Host Church, Bethel Baptist Church, Collegeville . A Regular Monday Meeting, conducted by the ACMHR with participating pastors including the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, the Rev. Edward Gardner (Vice President, ACMHR, 1956-1969, President, 1969-the present), the Reverend Nelson Smith (longtime ACMHR Secretary) and the Movement Choir headed by Carlton Reese, its Director since "Movement days."

Birmingham Historical Society proposes to coordinate the symposium/meeting and organize a photographic essay and exhibit on the ACMHR Churches. BHS will video the proceedings. Alabama Humanities Foundation is receptive to helping underwrite the Symposium and exhibit. We plan to seek private funding to underwrite other expenses, including those incurred by you to come to Birmingham.

Will you come?

I will call to discuss this with you and to get your comments on the enclosed materials and future directions for the nominations.

Cordially,

Marjorie L. White Director