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18 March 1922—5 October 2011

Architect of Project C

Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, was one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization dedicated to nonviolent opposition to segregation. As such, he was both a practitioner and defender of nonviolence. But as a native of a city that had a well-deserved reputation of being one of the most racist in the United States, Shuttlesworth was well aware of just how entrenched was the hatred of blacks by whites. Eugene “Bull” Connor, the city’s longtime police chief, enforced Jim Crow with an iron fist, and Klan intimidation, both overt and thinly disguised, was common. Shuttlesworth’s own home had been destroyed by a bomb in 1956 in retaliation for his involvement with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). One of the investigating officers, himself a Klansman, ominously advised Shuttlesworth to get out of town.

So Shuttlesworth had a pretty good idea of what he was up against when he spearheaded an anti-segregation campaign in the spring of 1963 that he called “Project C.” The “C” stood for “confrontation.” Recognizing that appeals to conscience alone wouldn’t budge the city’s diehard segregationists, Shuttlesworth determined that nonviolent direct action was necessary. His goal was to provoke a situation so fraught with crisis that Birmingham authorities would be driven to the negotiation table.

The primary kinds of direct action launched by Shuttlesworth were protest marches and sit-ins in restaurants, stores, and such public facilities as libraries. Some blacks also volunteered to conduct “kneel-ins” at all-white churches. Bull Connor and his deputies moved in quickly, swinging their clubs. Connor requested and easily received a city injunction against all protests (a move that was later declared illegal by an appeals court), made dozens of arrests, and increased bail for jailed demonstrators, thereby keeping many of them from posting it. Eventually even Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested

Connor’s aim was to quash the demonstrations by eventually throwing all of Shuttlesworth’s followers behind bars. But the strategy backfired, because black high school students began taking their place in the streets and at the lunch counters. Connor, enraged at the youngsters’ participation, turned attack dogs and fire hoses against them and arrested so many that the city jails were filled to overflowing. Film crews from television networks recorded the brutal confrontations. When the scenes were aired, the nation was horrified, costing Birmingham’s segregationists sympathy and support. Finally some of the city’s leading businessmen, worried that the bad press was damaging Birmingham’s reputation, insisted on negotiating with the protesters. By July 1963, most of Birmingham’s segregation ordinances were gone. So was Bull Connor. Shuttlesworth’s Project C had succeeded, showing that nonviolent direct action worked if enough people were willing to take risks in opposing injustice.