On Christmas night in 1956, a bomb exploded beneath Fred Shuttlesworth’s bedroom in Birmin

On Christmas night in 1956, a bomb exploded beneath Fred Shuttlesworth’s bedroom in Birmingham, Alabama. Sixteen sticks of dynamite had been placed under his window by the Ku Klux Klan, aiming to silence a preacher who refused to accept segregation. The explosion destroyed his home. Neighbors rushed outside, fearing the worst. Instead, Fred Shuttlesworth emerged from the debris on his own two feet, with hardly a scratch on him. A police officer, who was a Klansman himself, leaned in and cautioned him to leave town while he had the chance. Shuttlesworth looked him straight in the eye and replied that he wasn’t raised to run. He didn’t run. Not that night, nor in the years that followed. He was instrumental in founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He provided shelter to the Freedom Riders after they were brutally beaten. He marched, organized, faced beatings and jail time, yet continued to rise again. Segregation threw everything it could at one man in one house on one Christmas night, and it still lost.