Fred Shuttlesworth

Freddie Lee Robinson was born in Mount Meigs, Alabama, on March 18, 1922. Born to a large family that eventually moved to Birmingham when he was a toddler, Freddie took the surname Shuttlesworth from his stepfather, who worked as a farmer and coal miner.

Graduating valedictorian from his high school, Fred Shuttlesworth worked assorted jobs before finding his calling to the pulpit, studying at the ministerial institution Selma University and earning his B.A. in 1951, later earning his B.S. from Alabama State College.

Shuttlesworth became pastor of Birmingham's Bethel Baptist Church in 1953. After the “Brown v. Board of Education” ruling, he was inspired to actively participate in the growing Civil Rights Movement. He called for the hiring of African American police officers and, with the outlawing of the NAACP in his home state, Shuttlesworth established the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights in 1956.

Shurttlesworth also co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with other leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Bayard Rustin. Shuttlesworth, with Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy, would later be seen as one of the movement's "Big Three."

After the desegregation of Montgomery busses due to the citywide boycott inspired by Rosa Parks, Shuttlesworth was organizing efforts in his city to implement bus desegregation as well when his residence was bombed on Christmas, with him inside. He nonetheless persistently proceeded with plans. Later, he and his wife took their children to integrate a white school, the couple were brutally attacked by a Ku Klux Klan mob. His assailants included Bobby Frank Cherry, who six years later was involved in the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing. The mob beat Shuttlesworth with chains and brass knuckles in the street while someone stabbed his wife. He drove himself and his wife to the hospital where he told his kids to always forgive.

Shuttlesworth held fast to his firm belief in direct action and was a key leader throughout the history of the movement, though he had relocated to Cincinnati in the early 1960s and hence routinely travelled back to the South. After the May 14, 1961, attacks on the Freedom Riders, Shuttlesworth provided refuge for the activists, with outreach made to Attorney General Robert Kennedy for assistance. He also convinced Dr. King to have Birmingham become a focal point of the movement and organized youth-driven marches and protests. Shuttlesworth was also an organizer of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights march. He was arrested many times over the course of his activism.

Shuttlesworth later established the “Greater New Light Baptist Church” in the middle of the 1960s in Cincinnati. In the 1980s, he founded the “Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation”, providing grants for home ownership. Shuttlesworth received the “Presidential Citizens Medal” (reserved for citizens of the United States who have “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens”) from Bill Clinton in 2001.

In 2007, Fred Shuttlesworth moved back to Birmingham, where died on October 5, 2011, at 89 years old. The minister at one point had thought he wouldn't live to see 40. The “Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport” was named in his honor in 2008.