Fred Shuttlesworth: Civil Rights & Eco-Justice Visionary & Activist

In Saturday’s DM, I carried on GG’s theme from last week about Jesus and the New World Order by invoking some of the wisdom of Dr. Howard Thurman, the spiritual genius behind the Civil Rights Movement.

With SCOTUS seeking to drag America back to Jim Crow times, and racists eager to lead the charge to gerrymander districts to expel a maximum number of black representatives from Congress, it seems fitting to tap into the wisdom and bravery of leaders who made the civil rights law of 1965 happen.

One such leader was Fred Shuttlesworth (1922-2011). One of the great honors of my life was to be invited to Birmingham, Alabama in May, 2004 to do a public dialogue with him about “Racism and Ecology.” He was 82 years old and had been a leader in the civil rights movement in Birmingham. It was he who convinced Dr. Martin Luther King to fill the jails with young people. Fred argued that the adults in jail had to get back to work so they must keep the pressure on by filling the jails with teenagers. King reluctantly agreed. Fred was proven right and many young people who volunteered for that assignment grew up fast and learned much in the process.   

Fred was not an educated minister like King was; he was a street minister. He was jailed 36 times; he was beaten by the Klan three times with chains; his 8- and 10-year-old child were arrested by sheriff Bull Connor. His home was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan—the roof and floor caved in, yet he walked out alive. And he persisted. 

I asked him: “Where did you get your courage?” He replied: “You can call it courage; I call it trust. When they blew up my home and I walked out okay, I knew they could not kill me. Maybe my body, but not my spirit. And not the movement. And I trusted God was overseeing things.”

In May, 2004, at 82 years of age, Fred was engaged on two fronts (in addition to pastoring a parish in Cincinnati, Ohio). First, he was registering voters in Florida. He said he may have to return to jail—“I’m out of practice.”

Second, he connected the civil rights movement to the ecology movement. The state of Alabama had the most polluted county in the entire nation—it was 70% black and 98% poor. It was very striking that he invited me to speak with him at the Civil Rights Museum there in Birmingham. As I recall, it was right across the street from the black church that was blown up on a Sunday morning where four little girls lost their lives.

What was so significant about this man’s prophetic instinct (plus his courage and vision) was that, at that time, many people on the left were saying, “ecology is a white man’s concern; it has nothing to do with the needs of the poor; it’s for the comfortable.” Fred knew otherwise. He had heard of this new movement called “creation spirituality” and wanted to share the podium with me.

I remember emphasizing in my talk how studies of black children in south central LA showed that children there had one-third the lung capacity of the average American child. And of course, that would affect their brains and ability to think and grow and create. Why? Because they lived in such polluted areas of the city.

If the six so-called Christian SCOTUS judges were to come to me for confession for their recently dastardly decision to kill the Civil Rights Act, I would tell them first to read the life and witness of Fred Shuttlesworth. 

To be continued. 

To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE. 

Banner Image:  Fred Shuttlesworth, far right, during the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery AL, March 21, 1965. Marching with him are John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Bunch, and Abraham Joshua Heschel. Photographer unknown. Wikimedia Commons.

Queries for Contemplation

Do you see a deep connection between courage and trust? Does hearing stories like that of Fred Shuttlesworth encourage you to continue to resist the injustices of our time with courage and trust and imagination?

Related Readings by Matthew Fox

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality. 

Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth. 

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice. 

Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations. 

Sins of the Spirit, Blessing of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society. 

Trump & the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ. 

Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation.