SALUTE ARTHUR DAVIS SHORES:

Long before marches and demonstrations made the civil rights movement a feature of nightly newscasts, attorney Arthur Shores worked for racial equality, despite threats and violence. Shores was one of the first and most successful Black attorneys in Alabama, whose career defending civil rights began in the 1930s. His most notable case was representing Autherine Lucy, a Black woman whose admission to the University of Alabama in 1955 was fought by the white establishment. Change came to Birmingham, albeit slowly. In 1968, Shores became the first African American appointed to the Birmingham City Council, a position he held until 1978. The appointment garnered national attention, coming as it did in a city that only a few years earlier was known as one of the most segregated in the nation. In 1975, Shores was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In Birmingham, where segregationists once dynamited homes with impunity, Shores is now remembered admiringly for his role in bridging the gap between the two races. Arthur Shores died on December 16, 1996, at the age of 92.