[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 154 (Friday, October 14, 2011)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1875]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            HONORING THE LIFE OF REVEREND FRED SHUTTLESWORTH

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                            HON. STEVE COHEN

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, October 14, 2011

  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Reverend 
Fred Shuttlesworth, one of the great, unsung leaders of the Civil 
Rights movement, and a major figure in the historic fight for justice 
and equality. Fred Shuttlesworth was born Fred Robinson on March 18, 
1922 in Mount Meigs, Alabama. He was raised in Birmingham, Alabama by 
his mother, Alberta Robinson who married William Nathan Shuttlesworth 
at which point Fred Robinson took the last name Shuttlesworth.
  Fred Shuttlesworth was the eldest of eight siblings. His family 
survived by sharecropping and making moonshine liquor. In the early 
1940s, Fred Shuttlesworth became a truck driver before joining the 
Baptist Church in 1944. He then studied ministry at Selma University 
and began preaching at Selma's First Baptist Church. He graduated from 
Selma in 1951. In 1953, Shuttlesworth became pastor of Bethel Baptist 
Church in Birmingham. His life as a social activist peaked that 
following year, when his attention was captured by a newspaper headline 
announcing that the U.S. Supreme Court had outlawed school segregation 
in Brown vs. Board of Education. ``I felt like I was a man, that I had 
rights,'' Shuttlesworth said, recalling his reaction.
  In 1955, he supported the Montgomery bus boycott, led by Rev. Martin 
Luther King Jr. Shuttlesworth became a Birmingham activist, joining the 
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 
their voter registration efforts. When the state of Alabama essentially 
outlawed the NAACP in 1956, Shuttlesworth found and led the Alabama 
Christian Movement for Human Rights to take direct action to end racial 
segregation.
  Reverend Shuttlesworth was no stranger to adverse racial situations 
and always emerged strong and undefeated. On Christmas night in 1956, 
Shuttlesworth survived a bomb blast that blew out the walls and floor 
of his home, destroying his residence. In response to being told by an 
officer that he should leave town, he replied, ``Officer, you're not 
me. You go back and tell your Klan brethren if God could keep me 
through this, then I'm here for the duration.'' The next day he led 200 
people onto Birmingham's buses.
  In 1957, he undertook integrating Birmingham's schools by attempting 
to enroll his daughters in an all-white high school. Outraged by his 
act, Klansmen attacked him with brass knuckles and chains. He 
miraculously survived without a concussion and said to the doctor, 
``Doctor, the Lord knew I lived in a hard town, so he gave me a hard 
head.'' Dr. Martin Luther Jr. described Shuttlesworth as ``the most 
courageous civil rights fighter in the South.''
  Later that year, Shuttlesworth joined Dr. King, Ralph Abernathy and 
Bayard Rustin to launch the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 
which became the leading force of the civil rights movement. 
Shuttlesworth served as the organization's first secretary from 1958 to 
1970. He later served briefly as its president in 2004.
  During the early 1960s, Shuttlesworth participated in numerous sit-in 
protests, mobilized marches, helped Congress on Racial Equality 
organize its Freedom Rides and had already been arrested more than 30 
times in his fight for equality. In 1963, this collaboration culminated 
in colossal demonstrations in Birmingham to pressure downtown 
department stores to desegregate. A few days after being hospitalized 
due to being slammed against a wall by water from a fire hose, the 
local leaders of Birmingham announced that fitting rooms and lunchroom 
counters would be desegregated, signs on restrooms and drinking 
fountains would be removed and that there would be further steps to 
advance African-American employment. When President Kennedy introduced 
to Congress legislation that would later become the Civil Rights Act of 
1964, he told Shuttlesworth and King, ``But for Birmingham, we would 
not be here today.''
  In 1966, Rev. Shuttlesworth became pastor of the Greater New Light 
Baptist Church. In 1988, he founded and served as director of the 
Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation, an organization that helped low-
income families buy their homes. In 2001, President Bill Clinton 
awarded Rev. Shuttlesworth a Presidential Citizens Medal--the nation's 
second-highest civilian award--for helping found the SCLC and for his 
``leadership in the ``non-violent'' civil rights movement of the 1950s 
and 60s, leading efforts to integrate Birmingham, Alabama's schools, 
buses and recreational facilities.''
  Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth passed away on Wednesday, October 5, 2011 
in Birmingham, Alabama at 89 years of age. Reverend Shuttlesworth is 
survived by his wife, Sephira Bailey Shuttlesworth, four daughters, 
Patricia Massengill, Ruby ``Ricky'' Bester, Carolyn Shuttlesworth and 
Maria Murdock; a son, Fred Jr.; a stepdaughter, Audrey Wilson; five 
sisters, Betty Williams, Truzella Brazil, Ernestine Grimes, Iwilder 
Reid and Eula Mitchell; 14 grandchildren; 20 great-grandchildren; and 
one great-great-grandchild. He will be remembered for his leadership 
and commitment to the Civil Rights Movement. His was a life well-lived.

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