Fred Shuttlesworth is dead at 89.
The obituary in the Birmingham News – a paper that fifty years ago had very little kind to say about him – doesn’t even begin to cover the enormity of what the man undertook. What the Reverend did in 1956, in starting the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, was to stand up to an entire society with segregation at its very roots and hold them before the eye of God’s judgement. And he did it in the face of bricks, bombs, and a government and police force that was rotten to the core, and he did it for seven years before Dr. King ever showed up in Birmingham.
If you don’t know about Brother Shuttlesworth, Google him. And then thank God for his life.