Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth: "I went to jail for a good thing, trying to make a difference."

"Birmingham--the world rather, lost a true pioneer. An indomitable spirit that paved many a path for us 'colored' folks. He was the fire, that the movement needed. Thank you Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth" for all that you contributed. --mj 

Photograph/graphics by Marika N. Johnson//original Shuttlesworth photo by S. Schapiro

TROUBLE IN BIRMINGHAM (CLICK FOR FULL ARTICLE WRITTEN BY NPR)

A 1961 CBS documentary called Shuttlesworth the "man most feared by Southern racists."

It was Shuttlesworth who asked Attorney General Robert Kennedy to protect freedom riders, and the last thing Connor wanted was federal intervention.

And trouble was coming. Shuttlesworth was laying the groundwork for something bigger. In 1963, he persuaded the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to bring the civil rights movement to Birmingham after a dispirited campaign in Albany, Ga. Shuttlesworth told Eyes on the Prize he thought Birmingham could make a difference."You know those Kennedys up there in Washington — that ole Bobby Sox and his brother, the president — they'd give anything in the world if we had some trouble here," Connor said at the time.

"I said, 'I assure you if you come to Birmingham, this movement can not only gain prestige, but really shake the country," he said.

He was right — prophetic, some said. King launched Project C, for confrontation.

Connor unleashed police dogs and turned fire hoses on the young demonstrators. When that didn't turn them back, he put them behind bars. More than 2,500 people were jailed, including the children. The shocking images appeared on the nightly news. President Kennedy declared the struggle for civil rights a moral issue.

All the time, the fiery Shuttlesworth kept his troops rallied for the cause.

The Lord knew I lived in a hard town, so he gave me a hard head.

- Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth

"All we've got to do is to keep marching," he's seen telling demonstrators in Eyes on the Prize. "Do tomorrow what we did today, and do it the next day, and then the next day we won't have to do it at all. Because ... day before yesterday we filled up the jails, and then today we filled up the jail yard. And on tomorrow, when they look up and see that number coming, I don't know what they're going to do."