Fred Shuttlesworth

Reverend Shuttlesworth was the real leader of the civil rights movement in Alabama,” says attorney and former UA trustee Cleo Thomas.

He was tougher than dynamite. A powerful blast tore apart his Birmingham home, but he emerged from the rubble even more determined to fight for justice. He was brutally beaten by a mob when he tried to enroll his children in an all-white school. Seriously injured when slammed against a wall by the terrible force of a water cannon, he rose from his hospital bed to re-energize the Birmingham movement at its crucial hour. His unyielding quest for justice made him one of the most hated men by those who hid under white robes or behind tarnished badges.

Born in Birmingham and educated at Selma University and Alabama State, he was known as “the cussin’ preacher,” partly because of the fire and passion he brought to his churches. In 1956, he created the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, and the following year he joined Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

When the movement’s leaders became indecisive or faltered, he prodded them into action. He was an irresistible force that could not be contained, either by Bull Connor, who jailed him for going too far, or by other black leaders who felt he was going too fast. Dr. King called him “the most courageous civil rights fighter in the South.” If King was the movement’s Moses, Shuttlesworth was its Lion of Judah.

The bravest preacher in Birmingham moved to Cincinnati in 1966 where he continues to serve as pastor of the Greater New Light Baptist Church and remains involved in progressive social initiatives.

“He really sets a high standard for the moral life, for what we can do together,” says Cleo Thomas. “And he did it with such spirit and such zeal and such confidence, such absolute knowledge for the rightness of what he was doing, and fearlessness. And so he stands for goodness. He stands for leading the examined life.”