Fred Shuttlesworth was a black preacher and activist in Birmingham, Alabama during the civil rights movement. A brave man, he was a strong opponent of segregation. When news went around that he was planning on riding a segregated bus, the Ku Klux Klan bombed his house. Miraculously, though, Shuttlesworth survived, and this experience made him feel invincible. Shuttlesworth experienced several other close-calls, all of which simply emboldened him even more. Gladwell calls upon these stories to further illustrate the idea of “near misses” and “remote misses,” which suggest that traumatic events can reinvigorate people and make them feel stronger. Later in the civil rights movement, Shuttlesworth worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Wyatt Walker to undermine Birmingham’s racist public safety commissioner, Bull Connor.
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Fred Shuttlesworth Character Timeline in David and Goliath
The timeline below shows where the character Fred Shuttlesworth appears in David and Goliath. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5: Emil “Jay” Freireich
...so tough after all.” To further illustrate this point, he tells the story of Fred Shuttlesworth, a black preacher and activist in Birmingham, Alabama who survived multiple acts of violence during...
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Several months after the close call at his home, Fred Shuttlesworth takes his daughter to enroll at an all-white high school. When he drives up to...
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Chapter 6: Wyatt Walker
...be hauled off to jail. At one point, a police officer by the church asks Shuttlesworth—who has also been involved in the planning—how many more children he has inside the church,...
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Chapter 9: André Trocmé
...because Trocmé is “disagreeable” in the same way as Jay Freireich, Wyatt Walker, and Fred Shuttlesworth. Simply put, he doesn’t care what might happen to him, as long as he honors...
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