| Summary: | Box 3 Folder 28: "This is folder 28 and there are two parts of the same article in here. We have determined it was 1956 by doing our own research except for the fact that the article says “Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth will be asked to take a lie detector test concerning the night, December 25, 1956, that’s Christmas Day, the dynamiting of his home. Police Commissioner Eugene Connor said today,” that’s "Bull" Conner. A fanatical segregationist who had no qualms about initiating violence against Birmingham citizens, young and old.
LWR: Oh, explain about him a little.
BF: Well Bull Connor… anybody who’s studied the civil rights movement in Birmingham knows that he was the police commissioner and he was a city commissioner and he was the man who sic'd the dogs on the marchers. And he was just a screaming… if he wasn’t a klansman he had the same mentality. Some rumors have been circulating. That’s why he was asked to take a lie detector test. What were the rumors? That he blew up his own house?
“Shuttlesworth handed newsmen a statement which said ‘We have been informed by our attorney that an appeal to the US Supreme Court will be made from the ruling by federal panel of judges here on the Alabama School Placement law. The ruling, although it’s not what we believe should have been made, is not entirely negative but our attorney informs that there are still….” Well of course this is about integrations of the schools and he was a huge leader in that capacity. He was the president of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights which predated the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. That’s the one that gave birth to the other. “Connor wrote police chief Jamie Moore a letter and said ‘Since Shuttlesworth seems to be seeking more publicity for the northern newspapers and agitators, some of the detectives who have been investigating the dynamiting of his home and church are not satisfied with the dynamiting of Shuttlesworth’s home and church.’” Are not satisfied, cause they didn’t kill. 1956. Terrible times. Copied from the Bham Library Archives."
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