Reverend Fred Lee Shuttlesworth was born in Montgomery County, Alabama, on March 18, 1922. However, he was raised in Jefferson County. During World War II, he served as a truck driver at Brookley Air Force Base in Mobile. Responding to what he believed was a ministerial calling, Shuttlesworth enrolled in a small Baptist college in Mobile and later transferred to Selma University. He graduated from Alabama State College in 1952 and became pastor of the First Baptist Church of Selma. By 1953, he was pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in north Birmingham.
After Rev. Shuttlesworth’s move to Birmingham, he became very active in the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) to assist people in registering to vote. He supported the Civic League’s attempt to clean up saloons in Birmingham and supported the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Montgomery in 1955, which he attempted to replicate in Birmingham in 1956. Segregationists bombed his home in response to his work to desegregate the bus lines in …
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