Fred Shuttlesworth died Wednesday morning. Even if you’ve never heard of him, if you are an American, that news means more to you than you might imagine.
Separated by a few years, Shuttlesworth and I both grew up in Birmingham, Ala. Separated by race, he negotiated the black side of the color line in the town known as “Bombingham,” while I lived on the other side of the line, in what the white folk called the “city of churches.” That our hometown had such an ironic pair of nicknames was a fact I didn’t know and wouldn’t have understood even if I had. After 30 years of studying race and religion in America, I am still trying to understand such realities.
Eventually, Shuttlesworth became a Baptist minister on the north side of town, while I studied for the Baptist ministry on the south side. Along the way, my education brought Shuttlesworth to my attention as I learned about the civil rights movement that changed America and, at least during a crucial few years, was centered in our hometown.
Shuttlesworth repeatedly prodded “Bull” Connor to obey the Supreme Court’s Brown ruling and reject Jim Crow. Shuttlesworth repeatedly pestered Martin Luther King Jr., to join forces with him and his own organization, and launch a double-barrelled nonviolent assault on segregation....
