For Black History Month, Before You Go presents another interview from host Bryant Monteilh's 2004 archive that he captured while working as a journalist in Alabama. Birmingham's own Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was bombed twice, fire hosed and hospitalized. But he lived well into his late 80s and shared this candid conversation which is quite enlightening to both Bryant and Nicole, and the world.
Host Bryant Monteilh takes listeners for A Rewind In Time with this candid 2004 interview of Southern Christian Leadership co-founder Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth.
In the 1950s and 60s in Birmingham, Alabama, an endorsement from Shuttlesworth's would earn the public's trust when activists came to town to fight for desegregation and voting rights. Shuttlesworth was on the front lines against the Klan and rogue authority figures. He survived two bombings and an incident where he was fire hosed and hospitalized. In Shuttlesworth's own words he gives behind-the-scenes details of some tense moments when he had to cut his hospital stay short in order to challenge Dr. Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy who at one point leaned toward standing down in their demands for change. As Shuttlesworth pointed out quite fervently, thousands of children in Birmingham had already filled the jails in this fight during the historic Children's Crusade of 1963. And the youth along with the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) had been putting their lives on the line for more than a decade. There would be no backing down--even at the request of President Kennedy.
During a march in Selma just two years later, Shuttlesworth, Dr. King and Abernathy had to make an important decision again while facing down state troopers. The men made a choice while kneeling in prayer. That day went down in history as Turnaround Tuesday.
Throughout his life, Shuttlesworth stood his ground and prevailed. The citizens of Birmingham moved the needle toward justice.
This interview first aired on KBLA Talk 1580, Los Angeles, CA