Murder Attempts
When Shuttlesworth and his wife Ruby attempted to enroll their children in a previously all-white public school in Birmingham in 1957, a mob of Klansmen attacked them, with the police nowhere to be seen. His assailants included Bobby Frank Cherry,who had been involved in the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing. The mob beat him with chains and brass knuckles in the street while someone stabbed his wife. Shuttlesworth drove himself and his wife to the hospital where he told his kids to always forgive.
In 1958 Shuttlesworth survived another attempt on his life. A church member standing guard saw a bomb and quickly moved it to the street before it went off.
Read more about this topic: Fred Shuttlesworth
Famous quotes containing the words murder and/or attempts:
“Your kind doesn’t just kill men. You murder their spirits, you strangle their last breath of hope and freedom, so that you, the chosen few, can rule your slaves in ease and luxury. You’re a sadist just like the others, Heiser, with no resource but violence and no feeling but fear, the kind you’re feeling now. You’re drowning, Heiser, drowning in the ocean of blood around this barren little island you call the New Order.”
—Curtis Siodmak (1902–1988)
“In modern America, anyone who attempts to write satirically about the events of the day finds it difficult to concoct a situation so bizarre that it may not actually come to pass while his article is still on the presses.”
—Calvin Trillin (b. 1940)