Andrew M. Manis @ Macon Telegraph (Georgia) - Fred Shuttlesworth died this past Wednesday morning. Even if you’ve never heard of him, if you are an American, that news means more to you than you might imagine. Separated by a few years, Shuttlesworth and I both grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. Separated by race, he negotiated the black side of the color line in the town known as “Bombingham,” while I lived on the other side of the line, in what the white folk called the “city of churches.” That our hometown had such an ironic pair of nicknames was a fact I didn’t know growing up and wouldn’t have understood even if I had. After 30 years of studying race and religion in America, I am still trying to understand such ironies.  Read more.

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