The Intrepid William E. Shortridge, Leader in the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham
W. E. Shortridge’s obituary, a major figure in civil rights in Birmingham.
Sixty years ago, on April 28, 1964, the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham, Alabama, lost a fearless and tenacious leader with strong ancestral ties to Montevallo. On that day, William Eugene Shortridge, director of the Shortridge Funeral Home in Ensley, suffered the heart attack that ended his long career as a prosperous businessman and devoted public servant who worked to secure equal and equitable justice for his people.
His father, Charles Eugene, was born to Jack and Narcissus Shortridge in Montevallo, where he was raised. Charles founded the Ensley funeral home in 1908 and was known as Birmingham’s first Black funeral director and undertaker. After graduating from Howard University’s Commerce and Finance Department and serving as an officer in the United States Reserve Corp, William worked alongside his father in the funeral home and later succeeded him as director.
“Shortridge Funeral Home is now closed. It was the funeral home that buried my grandmother, Mary Eliza Brazier Cunningham.”
In addition to running the funeral home in Ensley, William Shortridge served for several years as president of the NAACP’s Birmingham Branch and became treasurer of numerous community and church-related organizations. It was Shortridge’s gift and penchant for fundraising that inspired the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, to select him as the first treasurer of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), a grass-roots organization launched in 1956 by Shuttlesworth with the bold mission of dismantling segregation in Birmingham by coordinating boycotts, lawsuits, and massive nonviolent protests.
“Funeral homes and undertakers were one of the first businesses that African Americans invested. . . . Never lacking customers within their exclusively Black clientele, the capital made by funeral directors afforded them the freedom to speak out on situations that plague the African American community.”
In many ways, William Shortridge served as the right-hand man to Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. When mass meetings were called to launch a new boycott or protest, Shortridge would help get the audience primed for the speeches that Rev. Shuttlesworth delivered as ACMHR’s fierce and indefatigable leader. He served on the executive board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization founded by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Rev. Shuttlesworth. Shortridge traveled with Rev. Shuttlesworth to Washington, D.C. when he met with Attorney General Robert Kennedy and later President John Kennedy. And as treasurer of the ACMHR for eight years, Shortridge persistently raised money to bail protesters out of jail and respond to crises such as the bombing of Rev. Shuttlesworth’s home on Christmas day 1956.
After the ACHMR announced plans to desegregate Birmingham buses, an explosion shattered every window in the Shuttlesworth house, blew the massive porch pillars into the street, and created a huge hole in the wall of the children’s bedroom. Miraculously, Rev. Shuttlesworth and his family escaped serious injury, and William Shortridge went to work raising the funds needed to build a new parsonage by seeking donations from Black business owners in Birmingham and his statewide network of Black funeral directors.
“As was often the case, prominent funeral directors, this time William E. Shortridge, who worked on the front lines, and A. G. Gaston, who negotiated behind the scenes with the city’s white power structure, were key figures in the Birmingham campaign.”
In 1962, Birmingham’s police commissioner, Theophilus “Bull” Connor, hatched a plot to assassinate William Shortridge. It is said that Connor believed that Shortridge was the brains of the ACMHR and Connor had grown weary and angry about Shortridge’s ability to consistently bail protesters out of jail and in other ways advance the cause of the Black Freedom Movement in Birmingham. He hoped that contracting to kill Shortridge would deliver a fatal blow to the organization.
The assassination attempt occurred as Shortridge was returning home from an ACMHR meeting. He was just about to enter his front door when he heard a car approaching, making a racket that he mistook as backfiring. As the car passed, he saw fire emanating from a gun barrel and realized someone was trying to kill him. Three or four bullets were fired. None struck Shortridge as he dropped to the porch floor, but one of the bullets entered the house and narrowly missed his wife, Pinky Shortridge, who was holding their baby while talking on the phone. The bullet ricocheted off the phone, causing Mrs. Shortridge and the baby to fall to the floor, but neither were seriously injured.
The Shortridges had a strong suspicion about the would-be assassin’s identity. Mrs. Shortridge prepared a three-page report, documenting what happened that night, and sent it to the FBI. She never received a response.
Despite this and other threats to his life, William Shortridge was unflagging in his commitment to the Black Freedom Movement in the South. During the last year of his life, he helped organize the Children’s Crusade which inspired 1,000 children to leave school on May 2, 1963, and march peacefully through downtown Birmingham, singing and calling for an end to segregation. Seeking to halt the demonstrations, Bull Connor ordered the police and fire departments to blast the children with high-pressure fire hoses and attack them with police dogs and clubs.
It was the Children’s Crusade and Bull Connor’s brutal violence that convinced President Kennedy to deliver a televised address to the American people on June 11, 1963, calling for federal civil rights legislation. Just weeks after William Shortridge’s unexpected death at age sixty, Congress passed the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing segregation in public accommodations and making employment discrimination illegal.
My great thanks to Richard Shortridge Cain for sharing documents about his Shortridge ancestors. Richard, who lives in Phoenix, Arizona, is a descendant of Jack and Narcissus Shortridge.--MSM
Sources:
A Fire You Can’t Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham’s Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth by Andrew Manis (The University of Alabama Press, 1999).
“Mrs. Pinky Shortridge interview” by Andrew M. Manis, Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections (https://cdm16044.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15099coll2/id/87).
Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWorter (Simon & Schuster, 2001).
“W. E. Shortridge, African American Leader, Passes Away,” The Montgomery Advertiser, May 1, 1964, p. 29.