Black & White: The Confrontation of Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Eugene "Bull" Connor (review)

The late Rev. Shuttlesworth, who spent much of his early ministerial career directly in the crosshairs of the KKK, has been overshadowed by the civil rights legacies of Dr. King and Mrs. Parks. But, as Brimner ably demonstrates here, Shuttlesworth was the driving force behind the movement in Birmingham at midcentury, and without his face-to-face showdowns with Public Safety Commissioner "Bull" Connor, the growing body of civil rights legislation might never have been enforced. The first two chapters of this title focus on the biography of each man—Shuttlesworth's development of a religious philosophy that "made no distinction between a church member's spiritual needs and that member's social responsibilities"; Connor's shift from a political progressive to an unwavering segregationist. The final section covers the strategies each man used to undermine his rival—fiery preaching, hosts of lawsuits, public demonstrations, and national media coverage versus harassment, Klan threats, and carefully orchestrated city-sanctioned violence. Plenty of black-and-white photographs are included, and the effective page layout balances oversized quotations and excerpts against columns of prose, underscoring the drama while assisting readers in scanning sections of text. A list of further reading (nicely selected for middle-school readers), source notes, and an index are appended.