Biography of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth
Fred Shuttlesworth was born in Alabama on 18th March, 1922. After graduating from Selma University (1951) and Alabama State College (1952), Shuttlesworth became pastor of the Bethel Baptist Church in 1953.
In May 1956 Shuttlesworth established the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR). In December, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation in Montgomery was illegal. Immediately, Shuttlesworth announced that the ACMHR would test segregation laws in Birmingham. On Christmas Day, 1956, Shuttlesworth home was bombed but he escaped unhurt.
In 1957 Shuttlesworth joined Martin Luther King, Ralph David Abernathy and Bayard Rustin to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Based in Atlanta, Georgia, the main objective of the SCLC was to coordinate and assist local organizations working for the full equality of African Americans. The new organization was committed to using nonviolence in the struggle for civil rights, and SCLC adopted the motto: “Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed.”
Shuttlesworth’s civil rights activities made him a target of white racists and on the evening of 25th December, 1956, Shuttlesworth survived a bomb blast that destroyed his house. The following year a white mob beat Shuttlesworth with whips and chains during an attempt to integrate an all-white public school. During this period Martin Luther King described Shuttlesworth as “the most courageous civil rights fighter in the South”.
In 1960 Shuttlesworth participated in the sit-in protests against segregated lunch counters and in 1961 helped Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) organize its Freedom Rides. He also led the mass demonstrations against segregation in Birmingham and this resulted in him being hospitalized in May, 1963, after being slammed against a wall by water from fire hoses.
In 1966 Shuttlesworth became pastor of the Greater New Light Baptist Church. He has also served as director of the Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation, an organization which helps low-income families to buy their own homes, that he established in 1988.
Shuttlesworth still works at the Greater New Light Baptist Church and so far his Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation has assisted 460 low-income families.