BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — When a little-known Black Baptist preacher named Martin Luther King took the helm of the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott in 1955, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was already in Birmingham trying to start a movement, but nobody was paying attention.
Shuttlesworth was from a small church. His credentials and pedigree made it easy for local whites to dismiss him as a radical. 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 very much, but there wasn’t but one Martin Luther King.”
It was King who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and went on to become the icon of the civil rights movement. Shuttlesworth, who was overshadowed in life by his comrade in the movement, was again eclipsed by King in death.
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 last weekend.
Had they not been there, they would have likely been in Birmingham remembering Shuttlesworth.
“His friends and Martin’s friends were the same,” Young said. “But you don’t have two memorials at the same time if you want your friends to come.” Shuttlesworth’s funeral will be Monday.
Among the scheduled events this weekend to remember Shuttlesworth were a pastoral remembrance at the historic 16th Street Baptist Church — where four Black girls were killed in a bombing before Sunday services on September 15, 1963 — and a candlelight vigil across the street in Kelly Ingram Park, made famous the same year when news footage of policemen and firemen unleashing dogs and blasting water hoses on defenseless civil rights marchers was broadcast to a shocked international audience.
Long before the television cameras arrived, Shuttlesworth was there, organizing many such nonviolent protests.
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.
“He was able to see how the civil rights struggle kept reinventing itself in different forms,” said Diane McWhorter, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution.”
“He was always there to make it clear that this was a continuous struggle.”
McWhorter said she never got the sense that Shuttlesworth was bitter about King overpowering the narrative of the movement, and that he never badmouthed King to her.
“He had a huge ego … but he never said anything like, ‘Oh, I should’ve been the leader of the movement,'” she said. “He kind of recognized that he couldn’t have done what King did. But he was just such a key ingredient that it couldn’t have happened without him, either.”
In his 1963 book “Why We Can’t Wait,” King himself called Shuttlesworth “one of the nation’s most courageous freedom fighters.”
After Shuttlesworth’s death on Oct. 5 — the same week the Rev. Joseph Lowery turned 89 and the Rev. Jesse Jackson turned 70 — Alabama lowered its state flags to half-mast.
“I really do feel like he has sort of gotten his due more and more over the last number of years,” McWhorter said. “Partly because he’s outlasted everybody, with distinction and class.”
Young agreed that Shuttlesworth ultimately received his due, and is recognized as one of the true heroes of the movement. Besides, he pointed out, attention is no substitute for longevity.
“Yes, Martin overshadowed him,” Young said of Shuttlesworth. “But he got to live to 89. Martin didn’t make it to 40.”
Click here to read “Fred Shuttlesworth – Civil Rights Pioneer Dies at 89”
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
From the Archives:
Baltimore AFRO-American Newspaper, Sept 3, 1957:
They call Rev. Shuttlesworth “A voice crying in wilderness”
Baltimore AFRO-American Newspaper, Apr 16, 1963:
Dr. King and Bull Connor Locked in Bitter Struggle
Baltimore AFRO-American Newspaper, Nov 16, 1965:
Supreme Court Reverses Ala.-Shuttlesworth Case
Baltimore AFRO-American Newspaper, June 14, 1966:
SNCC To Use March as Vehicle For “Power”
Shuttlesworth Plans to Retire From SCMHR
