Fred Shuttlesworth, 1922-2011

Fred Shuttlesworth, 1922-2011

Michael Walzer: Fred Shuttlesworth, 1922-2011

Fred Shuttlesworth was one of the heroes of the early civil rights movement?a good man in a hard place. Birmingham was never easy in the 1960s. I knew him briefly, at the very beginning, and the story of our meeting is worth telling because it reveals something of Shuttlesworth?s character, tough and sweet at the same time.

Jeremy Larner and I came to Birmingham in April of 1960 to write about what was happening there?I for Dissent, Jeremy for someplace else (I?ve forgotten where). We had the phone number of an old leftist in Birmingham, L.D. Reddick, who had written for Dissent. He brought us to Shuttlesworth?s church. We wanted to interview Shuttlesworth; he didn?t want to be interviewed by two white kids he didn?t know. Were we supporters of the movement? Then we should speak at his church that evening?there were weekly meetings in those days that were drawing between 500 and 1000 Birmingham blacks, young and old. We should tell his people that they had friends in the north.

It was a challenge, and it wasn?t possible to say no; we didn?t want to say no?we weren?t journalists, after all, we were political activists. But neither of us had ever spoken to a crowd like that and, obviously, we had none of the oratorical skills of black Baptist preachers like Shuttlesworth. We spoke that night to a very full church. I have no memory of what either of us said, except that I assured the congregation of Harvard University?s solidarity with their struggle. We weren?t the only white people in the church. A couple of plainclothes cops sat in the front row, watching us; they didn?t look friendly.

As soon as we finished speaking, Shuttlesworth came up to us and said that we had to leave immediately. And then he took us to the bus station himself and put us on a bus to Atlanta. We should work for the movement in the north, he told us (which we did). His concern for our safety, I thought, was a kind of reward for speaking in his church, and I have always remembered it. Only a few years later, he had many more visitors from the north, activists like the two of us, and some of them, braver than we were, stayed.