Birmingham Airport Exhibit about Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth

I was at the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth Airport recently picking up my son Amos coming in from Philadelphia. Since I arrived early, I had time to examine the extensive exhibit on the civil rights icon Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth [18 March 1922-5 Oct 2011] located between the baggage claim areas 1-2 and 3-4. 

In the introduction to his Encyclopedia of Alabama entry on Shuttlesworth, Andrew Manis writes, "African American Baptist pastor and the central leader of the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Fred Lee Shuttlesworth (1922–2011) was one of the pioneering figures in the civil rights era. The organization he founded in 1956, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), joined with Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to protest segregation in Birmingham in 1963. Partly as a result of those direct-action demonstrations, the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

The exhibit is a compelling portrait of an important individual and important period in Birmingham, Alabama, and American history. You can read more about Rev. Shuttlesworth here and here. Among the numerous articles and books is Andrew Manis' 1999 A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Fred Shuttlesworth and a 2000 volume edited by Manis and Marjorie White, Birmingham Revolutionaries: The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights.