[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 149 (Thursday, October 6, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6320-S6321]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 TRIBUTE TO REVEREND FRED SHUTTLESWORTH

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I rise today to honor Rev. Fred Lee 
Shuttlesworth, an American civil rights hero who lived much of his 
adult life in Cincinnati who passed away this week at the age of 89. I 
come to the floor in support of a resolution with Senator Portman, my 
colleague from Cincinnati, where Reverend Shuttlesworth lived for many 
years, and also from Senator Shelby and Senator Sessions, both 
representing Alabama, where Reverend Shuttlesworth lived his earliest 
several decades and then the end of his life.
  Much is known about his life--the beatings, the bombings, the arrests 
and protests. He was born in 1922 in Alabama. He was a truckdriver who 
studied theology at night. He became an ordained minister in his 
twenties. By the 1950s, in his thirties, he was the pastor of Bethel 
Baptist Church in Birmingham, the pulpit from which he became the 
powerful, fiery, outspoken leader against racial discrimination and 
injustice.
  When the Alabama NAACP was banned in the State, Reverend 
Shuttlesworth established the Alabama Christian Movement for Human 
Rights. Churches held weekly meetings, membership grew month by month--
in large part because of Reverend Shuttlesworth's leadership skills--
and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights became the mass 
movement for Blacks in the South.
  He fought Birmingham's racism in the courtroom, bringing suits to 
desegregate public recreation facilities. He protested segregation of 
buses in Birmingham. He was beaten with chains and brass knuckles when 
he tried to enroll his children in a Birmingham school, even though he 
was, of course, a taxpayer. He would lead Freedom Riders to safety--a 
critical voice imploring Attorney General Robert Kennedy and President 
John F. Kennedy to get the Federal Government to show leadership as 
Freedom Riders were jailed and attacked. Reverend Shuttlesworth was 
often jailed and later left bruised and bloodied from firehoses and 
police dogs, the brutal force of Bull Connor's lynch mob. His life and 
his family were threatened by Connor's ignorant hostility--or 
indifference more often than hostility.
  His words:

       They would call me SOB, and they didn't mean ``sweet old 
     boy. . . . '' [T]he first time I saw brass knuckles was when 
     they struck me . . . they missed me with dynamite because God 
     made me dynamite.

  So his direct action campaigned continued. He mobilized students to 
boycott merchants with Jim Crow signs in their storefronts. He worked 
and he marched with Dr. King, affiliating the Alabama Christian 
Movement for Human Rights with the Southern Christian Leadership 
Conference, organizing bus boycotts and sit-ins and marches and acts of 
civil disobedience. He persuaded Dr. King to bring the civil rights 
movement to Birmingham, where Dr. King would write his famous ``Letter 
from a Birmingham Jail.'' In the letter, Dr. King writes of the 
necessity of Reverend Shuttlesworth's direct action campaign, fighting 
``broken promises'' and ``blasted hopes.'' The two words ``broken'' and 
``blasted'' meant so much to them personally because both were attacked 
so frequently.
  In September 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed, 
murdering four little girls, and the movement's grief and responsive 
resiliency helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
  The next year, he helped organize the historic march from Selma to 
Montgomery, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, to fight voting 
discrimination in Alabama and across the South, galvanizing meeting 
after meeting with his fiery words. He soon arrived in Cincinnati, 
coming across the Ohio River, as pastor of the Greater New Light 
Baptist Church in Avondale.
  He trained Freedom Riders in nearby Oxford, OH, at the Western Campus 
for Women then, now affiliated or absorbed by Miami of Ohio, one of our 
great State universities. He trained those Freedom Riders, thousands of 
activists who would travel south to register Black voters.
  Reverend Shuttlesworth fought for racial equality in Cincinnati 
schools, in city councils and police departments, empowering low-income 
families through education, jobs, and housing for decades to come.
  I would like to read from and ask unanimous consent to have printed 
in the Record the editorial from the Cincinnati Inquirer from October 
5, 2011.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I would like to share a couple of words from the 
Cincinnati Inquirer. This is the beautifully written Cincinnati 
Inquirer editorial about Reverend Shuttlesworth:

       He once told the Tampa Tribune it helped to have a ``little 
     divine insanity--that's when you're willing to suffer and die 
     for something.''


[[Page S6321]]


  They also wrote:

       Perhaps nowhere is his ultimate triumph more evident than 
     in the renaming of the Birmingham airport to the Birmingham-
     Shuttlesworth International Airport--a public tribute in a 
     city where once a Ku Klux Klan member who was a police 
     officer warned him to get out of town as fast as he could.

  Needless to say, the airport was named after Reverend Shuttlesworth, 
not after the KKK police officer.
  It was an honor to get to know Reverend Shuttlesworth and to learn 
from him. In 1998, I first met this historic figure of the civil rights 
movement--unknown to far too many people--in Selma, AL, during a 
pilgrimage with Congressman John Lewis, who was beaten perhaps more 
than anybody in the civil rights movement. It was an opportunity to 
spend some time with Reverend Shuttlesworth in Selma in the late 1990s.
  I visited his church in 2006. I heard him preach, and then, at his 
retirement party a while after that--not too many years ago--I heard 
him preach again and got the chance to get a tour at his retirement 
party, a tour of the small museum in his modest church celebrating his 
life but more set up to honor and commemorate the civil rights movement 
in the most personal kind of way. It is impossible for me to really 
describe the feelings I had as he talked to a small group--Connie, my 
wife, and me--a small group of us as we toured this very small museum 
in a room at the church. It was just packed with all kinds of mementoes 
and commemorations of the civil rights movement and Reverend 
Shuttlesworth's fight in those days in Alabama. From those pictures and 
his memory, you learn not just about a man's life but about our 
Nation's history.
  The passage of the most basic civil rights laws would not have 
occurred without his vision and fortitude. We honor his legacy in his 
passing, but we are also charged with upholding a sacred duty to take 
his lead, and that is because progress in our Nation is never easy. 
Passage of voting rights or civil rights was not the result of one 
man's great speech in Washington or one famous march across the Edmund 
Pettus Bridge.

                               Exhibit 1

    Shuttlesworth `Truly a Man of Courage, Conviction and Integrity'

              Cincinnati Enquirer Editorial, Oct. 5, 2011

       In 1955, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was a young pastor in 
     Birmingham, Ala., preaching sermons on equality and working 
     in his segregated city on the issues before him, such as 
     adding street lights to African-American neighborhoods.
       But after he petitioned the Birmingham City Council to hire 
     African-American police officers, a larger calling took hold 
     of him.
       He saw his role as helping to lift African Americans--and 
     the rest of his countrymen--from another sort of darkness: 
     that of racial bigotry.
       He became a restless, outspoken advocate for integration, a 
     co-founder of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human 
     Rights, and a leader of the Civil Rights movement.
       His death Wednesday in Birmingham left a sense of national 
     loss, strongly felt in Cincinnati, where he spent most of his 
     adulthood and served as pastor of two churches.
       We feel that sense of loss, recognize the depth of his 
     accomplishment and give thanks for the example he set.
       In Birmingham and Cincinnati, the eloquent Rev. 
     Shuttlesworth appealed to moral conscience and championed 
     everyday causes. He sat at lunch counters with young 
     protesters in Birmingham, held ``wade-ins'' at segregated 
     beaches in St. Augustine, Fla., and later in life established 
     the Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation to help low-income 
     Cincinnatians afford a home.
       He was focused, undeterrable, bold. He challenged 
     Birmingham's white power structure at every turn. He refused 
     to flinch at bombings of his church and home. He urged civil 
     rights leaders to be more assertive, labeling the 1963 
     campaign to desegregate Birmingham ``Project C''--for 
     confrontational.
       He once told the Tampa Tribune it helped to have ``a little 
     divine insanity--that's when you're willing to suffer and die 
     for something.''
       But instead of becoming a martyr, the Rev. Shuttlesworth 
     lived to become one of the movement's elder statesmen.
       The sound of his name alone revived memories of Freedom 
     Riders and police fire hoses, of the relentless drive of 
     young civil rights leaders and the stubborn resistance of the 
     Old South. Perhaps nowhere is his ultimate triumph more 
     evident than in the renaming of the Birmingham airport to the 
     Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport--a public 
     tribute in a city where once a Ku Klux Klan member who was 
     also a police officer warned him to get out of town as fast 
     as he could.
       He replied that he didn't run. And, in Birmingham and 
     Cincinnati, he never did. And he never stopped.
       As the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote to him, ``May 
     God strengthen your spirit and uplift your heart that even 
     your accusers will be forced to admit that truly you are a 
     man of courage, conviction and integrity.''

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. The fight for women's rights and fair pay and 
protections for the disabled, none of those fights were easy, yet in 
the last few years, we celebrated the 90th anniversary of the 19th 
amendment, the 75th anniversary of Social Security, the 45th 
anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, the 20th anniversary of the 
Americans with Disabilities Act.
  What have we done here this year? How will we show the march toward 
justice is the mark of our Nation's progress? We do so by marching with 
his spirit rather than standing in his shadow.
  Dr. King said of Reverend Shuttlesworth, he ``proved to his people 
that he would not ask anyone to go where he was not willing to lead.'' 
That is a testament to his courage.
  Four years ago, then a candidate for President, Senator Obama 
escorted a wheelchair-bound Reverend Shuttlesworth across the Edmund 
Pettus Bridge in Selma. It was symbolic. It showed yet again Reverend 
Shuttlesworth leading us across another bridge.
  On behalf of a grateful State, Ohio, and in partnership with Senator 
Portman from Ohio, Senator Shelby from Alabama, and Senator Sessions 
from Alabama, I offer my deepest condolences to the Shuttlesworth 
family and to all of his friends and to all of his loved ones.
  Mr. President, I will offer this resolution, and I think we will be 
looking at it later today, offered by Senators Portman, Sessions, 
Shelby, and myself. I will ask for passage later.

                          ____________________