Resource For Pastors Independence Day Sermon! Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth(center photo above )was a civil rights leader from Birmingham, Alabama. Shuttlesworth grew up in a rural, black community and was educated at Selma University and Alabama State Teachers College. He became a Baptist minister and served a church in Selma and later in Birmingham. In 1956, he founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and the following year, along with Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy(left photo above)organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He also helped the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organize the Freedom Rides, two interracial bus rides through the South that tested the enforcement of recent Supreme Court rulings A fearless advocate of racial equality, King called Shuttlesworth "one of the nation's most courageous freedom fighters." Shuttlesworth was often subjected to violence as a consequence of his actions. In 1956, Shuttlesworth announced that unless the Birmingham city buses were desegregated, black residents would begin sitting in the front of the buses on December 26. On Christmas night, a bomb blast destroyed his home. Incredibly, Shuttlesworth emerged only slightly injured, and the demonstration took place as planned. Over the years, he was assaulted by police dogs and knocked unconscious by a high-pressure fire hose. In 1957, three years after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools were unconstitutional, Shuttlesworth and his wife escorted their children to Phillips High School in Birmingham in an attempt to integrate the all-white public school. A white mob that gathered beat him with brass knuckles and chains, and stabbed his wife. Although he was nearly killed by the mob, Shuttlesworth did not strike back at his attackers, but instead moved through the hostile crowd as best he could. At a mass meeting that evening, Shuttlesworth used the incident to teach a lesson on nonviolence. He asked everyone who was angry about the attack to stand. Everyone stood. Then he asked everyone who had been beaten that day to remain standing. Everyone sat down. He said, "That's strange, I was beat up and I'm not angry." He went on to say, "You got to suffer for what you believe in. . . . It's going to better the lives of people around you and behind you. That's what we are fighting for. . . . That's what the movement is all about." Over the years, Shuttlesworth was instrumental in organizing bus boycotts, student sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, and boycotts of segregated businesses, and he initiated lawsuits attacking segregation ordinances. In March 1965, he helped organize the march from Selma to Montgomery to protest voting discrimination in Alabama. Today, Reverend Shuttlesworth is a pastor in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he continues to fight injustice. In 1981, he organized the Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation, which provides grants to help poor families in Cincinnati become homeowners.Teacher's Domain In 1961, Rev. Shuttlesworth moved to Cincinnati to become pastor of Revelation Baptist Church. While continuing his activism in Birmingham, Shuttlesworth fought for human rights in Cincinnati as well, joining other black ministers in a campaign to make William Lovelace the city’s first African American Municipal Court judge. He also advocated changing city council elections to increase minority representation and pushed for the hiring of minorities by the police department. In 1966 he became the pastor of Greater Light Baptist Church in Avondale and with that echo of “What would you have me do?†still ringing, Rev. Shuttlesworth continued to look into his community for opportunities to improve conditions for the poor. He established the Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation to provide low cost housing for the needy. When he was honored by leaders of the civil rights movement on his 80th birthday two years ago, he said “I have seen us come so far, but we have so much farther to go.†The Greater Cincinnati Area Chamber of Commerce named him a "Great Living Cincinnatian" in 2000. The following year, President Clinton awarded him the President's Citizens Medal. Horstman, Barry M. 100 Who Made a Difference: Greater Cincinnatians Who Made a Mark on the 20th Century. General f920.07714 H819 R.R., Cincinnati Historical Society Library, Cincinnati Museum Center.
