Arthur Shores
{{Short description|American civil rights attorney (1904–1996)}}
{{Infobox person
|name = Arthur Davis Shores
|image = Arthur Shores Salvaged.jpg
|caption = Shores in 1956
|birth_date = September 25, 1904
|birth_place = Birmingham, Alabama, United States
|death_date = {{death date|1996|12|16}} (aged 92)
|death_place = Birmingham, Alabama, United States
|resting_place =
|occupation = Civil rights attorney
|alma_mater = Talladega College
La Salle Extension University
|spouse = Theodora Warren Shores
}}
Arthur Davis Shores (September 25, 1904 – December 16, 1996) was an American civil rights attorney who was considered Alabama's "drum major for justice".{{cite web|url=http://www.alabar.org/members/hallfame/shores.cfm |title=Arthur Davis Shores (1904-1996) |access-date=2010-07-04 |publisher=Alabama State Bar |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070410173944/http://alabar.org/members/hallfame/shores.cfm |archive-date=2007-04-10 }}
Education
Shores graduated from Talladega College where he became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He attended only one year of law school at the University of Kansas and then pursued his law studies through La Salle Extension University’s correspondence school.Pace, Eric (December 18, 1996). [https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/18/us/arthur-d-shores-92-lawyer-and-advocate-for-civil-rights.html Arthur D. Shores, 92, Lawyer And Advocate for Civil Rights.] The New York Times
Legal career
{{external media
| float = right
| video1 = [https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_151-416sx64w2n “Filmed interview with Arthur Shores"] conducted for Eyes on the Prize in 1985. Discussion centers on his civil rights activism and Autherine Lucy's attempt to integrate the University of Alabama.}}
Shores passed the Alabama State Bar exam in 1937 and immediately began using his legal skills to support civil rights issues.
In 1938, Shores successfully sued on behalf of seven school teachers who were denied the right to vote by the Alabama Board of Registrars.
Shores was general counsel for the International Association of Railway Employees (IARE).
In 1941 he took on the case of Steele v. Louisville & N. R. Co. in which B. W. Steele, a member of the IARE executive, argued that an agreement between the railway and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen was illegal. A whites-only railroad union could not exclude blacks and then deny them better jobs because they were not union members. He worked on this case with attorney Charles H. Houston, who argued it successfully in front of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1944.{{cite journal |last=Krochmal |first=Max|author-link=Max Krochmal|title=An Unmistakably Working-Class Vision: Birmingham's Foot Soldiers and Their Civil Rights Movement
|journal=The Journal of Southern History |volume=LXXVI |issue=4|date=November 2010|url=http://professormaxdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/birmingham-article-jsh.pdf |access-date=2013-08-08|pages=933–934}}
Shores represented black teachers in the Jefferson County School Board to receive the same pay as white teachers.
Image:Bomb-damaged home of Arthur Shores (5 September 1963).jpg residents viewing the bomb-damaged home of Arthur Shores on September 5, 1963. The bomb exploded the previous day, September 4, injuring Shores' wife.]]
In 1955, Shores successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Lucy v. Adams to prevent the University of Alabama from denying admission solely based on race or color. This ended the university's three-year legal fight to block the admission of Autherine Lucy and Pollie Anne Myers due to their race, although the university immediately found another excuse to disqualify Myers.{{Cite web |date=2017-10-11 |title=An Indomitable Spirit: Autherine Lucy |url=https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/indomitable-spirit-autherine-lucy |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210504123336/https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/indomitable-spirit-autherine-lucy |archive-date=2021-05-04 |access-date=2020-02-24 |website=National Museum of African American History and Culture |language=en}} Thus in 1956, Autherine Lucy became the first African-American to attend the school. On the third day of classes, a hostile mob assembled to prevent Lucy from attending classes. The police were called to secure her admission but, that evening, the University suspended Lucy on the grounds that it could not provide a safe environment.{{cite news |author=Staff Writer |date=2006-02-26 |url=http://www.al.com/unseen/stories/index.ssf?cutlines4.html |title=Difficult Lessons—Desegregating the Schools, 1962-1963 |work=The Birmingham News |access-date=2008-01-07 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20071225024544/http://www.al.com/unseen/stories/index.ssf?cutlines4.html |archive-date=25 December 2007 |url-status=dead }}
Shores' campaign in 1963 to integrate the Birmingham public schools brought violence to him and other residents. Shores' home was fire-bombed on August 20 and September 4 in retaliation for black parents registering their children at white schools. The bombings—and demonstrations outside Birmingham schools—were used by Gov. George Wallace as a pretext to close the schools in defiance of the federal court desegregation order and to deploy state troopers in the city.{{Cite book|last=Carter|first=Dan T.|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/32739924|title=The politics of rage : George Wallace, the origins of the new conservatism, and the transformation of American politics|date=1995|publisher=Simon & Schuster|isbn=0-684-80916-8|location=New York|pages=172–173|oclc=32739924}} Eleven days later a bomb killed four girls at 16th Street Baptist Church. He argued before the Supreme Court in the same year that the arrests of peaceful demonstrators in Birmingham should be ruled unconstitutional.
During the 1960s, he became the first black member of the Birmingham City Council.
In 1977, the NAACP honored Shores by awarding him the William Robert Ming Advocacy Award for the spirit of financial and personal sacrifice displayed in his legal work.{{cite web
|title=NAACP Legal Department Awards
|url=http://naacp.com/legal/awards/index.htm
|publisher=NAACP
|access-date=2009-07-04
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090619125814/http://www.naacp.com/legal/awards/index.htm
|archive-date=19 June 2009
|url-status=dead
}}
Death
Shores died in December 1996 at his home in Birmingham, Alabama. He was 92.
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20070410173944/http://alabar.org/members/hallfame/shores.cfm Biography–Arthur Davis Shores (1904-1996)]
- [http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/A-0021/menu.html Oral History Interview with Arthur Shores] from [http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/ Oral Histories of the American South]
- [http://repository.wustl.edu/concern/videos/8s45qb603 Oral History Interview (November 1985)] unedited video of the interview done for the 1987 broadcast of Eyes on the Prize
- [http://purl.lib.ua.edu/54340 Oral History Interview with Arthur Shores, 1984] from [http://acumen.lib.ua.edu/u0008/0000003 Working Lives Oral History Project]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shores, Arthur D.}}
Category:University of Kansas alumni
Category:African-American city council members in Alabama
Category:Talladega College alumni
Category:American civil rights lawyers
Category:Lawyers from Birmingham, Alabama
Category:20th-century American lawyers
Category:Activists from Birmingham, Alabama