BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) – Those who toiled alongside Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth through the beatings and bombings of the civil rights era were among the hundreds who gathered to celebrate his legacy.
Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, a native of Alabama, recalled meeting Shuttlesworth in May 1961 during the Freedom Rides.
Lewis called the preacher “one of the founding fathers of the New America,” who put his body on the line to end segregation and discrimination.
“Real fear, smothered the air, not just throughout Birmingham, but throughout the American South,” Lewis said. “America is different today, because this man passed our way.”
Shuttlesworth’s fire and faith brought international attention to the brutality of legalized discrimination in the South. For decades after the 1963 campaign in Birmingham, Shuttlesworth continued to fight racial injustice in the city.
Shuttlesworth died Oct. 5. His funeral followed a memorial held in his honor. Members of the family of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. attended, along with the Revs. Joseph Lowery, Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson, and the widow of Rev. Ralph David Abernathy.
Republican Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley spoke about his own experiences with segregation. He thanked his fellow Alabamian for undoing “the teachings of a misdirected society.”
Five decades ago, when King took the helm of the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott in 1955, Shuttlesworth was already in Birmingham trying to start a movement. But hardly anyone was paying attention.
Until King came to Birmingham, Shuttlesworth couldn’t get the national press to recognize his city as the embodiment of the horrors of the segregated South.
He was just another Black preacher getting beat up, said former Atlanta mayor, congressman and United Nations ambassador Andrew Young, who worked alongside King and Shuttlesworth in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. All three men helped establish the organization in 1957.
“They were sued together, they helped organize SCLC together,” Young said of King and Shuttlesworth. “He wanted the spotlight, but there wasn’t but one Martin Luther King.”
Though he died nearly three weeks ago, Shuttlesworth is only now being buried. The reason for the delay: The dedication of the King Memorial on the National Mall, sending most of Shuttlesworth’s civil rights colleagues to Washington.
Shuttlesworth survived a Christmas 1956 bombing that destroyed his home, an assault during a 1957 protest, chest injuries when Birmingham authorities turned the hoses on demonstrators in 1963 and countless arrests. He moved to Ohio to pastor a church in the early 1960s, but returned frequently to Alabama for key protests. He came back to live in the Birmingham area after he retired a few years ago.
