Editorials

The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth didn't merely take part in the civil rights movement. How wrong it would be to consider him as a simple participant. In Birmingham, he was the movement, a driving, unwielding force who withstood beatings, bombings and death threats to help change our world for the better.

There may be a more appropriate way to honor this man's bravery than adding his name to the marquee of the Birmingham International Airport. But it's difficult — and inappropriate — to challenge the decision.

Shuttlesworth lived most of the last 47 years in Cincinnati, where he pastored his church. But he's now 86 and rehabilitating after a stroke, and wholeheartedly deserves this recognition from Alabama's largest city.

Historian Wayne Flynt, writing in Alabama: The History of a Deep South State, describes in eloquent detail how dogged the vibrant Shuttlesworth was in the early 1960s about registering black Alabamians to vote. That theme — using the vote as a method of black empowerment and change — ran through the reverend's words, both on the street and in the pulpit.

"I didn't want any deacon wearing out the carpet on the floor praying to the Lord who couldn't get up and walk to the polls," Shuttlesworth said.

His belief in the rightness of equality — and blacks' right to demand it from modern-day America — rests at the heart of his legacy.