Shuttlesworth, Frederick Lee
1922-2011 · Contribution: 1953-1969
Baptist minister; civil rights leader
Co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1957 and led the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, organizing the 1963 Birmingham Campaign that Dr. King credited as decisive in securing passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, while surviving multiple assassination attempts including the 1956 bombing of his church parsonage
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Quick facts
- Born
- 1922, Mount Meigs, Alabama
- Active since
- 1953
- Category
- Religious & Spiritual Leadership
- Best known for
- Leading the Birmingham civil rights campaign
Impact on the world
Known as the most confrontational of the movement's 'Big Three,' Shuttlesworth repeatedly put his body on the line to force Birmingham, and the nation, to confront segregation, producing some of the era's most consequential images and outcomes.
Sources
- Encyclopedia of Alabama
1 more sources and references are available to members.
Related visionaries
King, Martin Luther Jr.
1929-1968
Baptist ministry and nonviolent civil rights leadership grounded in Christian theology and Gandhian nonviolence; sermons, speeches, and writings including 'Letter from Birmingham Jail' (1963) and the 'I Have a Dream' speech (1963)
Hall, Prathia LauraAnn
1940-2002
Credited as the originator of the phrase “I have a dream,” spoken during a 1962 prayer vigil that Martin Luther King Jr. attended and later asked her permission to echo in his own preaching, while serving as one of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's first female field secretaries and later becoming a pioneering Baptist minister and womanist theologian
Taylor, Gardner Calvin
1918-2015
Co-founded the Progressive National Baptist Convention in 1961 after a contested National Baptist Convention presidential election tied to support for Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights tactics
Harris, Barbara Clementine
1930-2020
Became the first woman consecrated a bishop in the 500-year history of the worldwide Anglican Communion when she was ordained suffragan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts in 1989, breaking a barrier that had stood across the Communion's more than 165 member countries