Noting that the group has ceased being seen as effectively fighting for the rights of Blacks, Shuttlesworth told the Cincinnati Enquirer that as far as civil rights are concerned, “We talk about it at meetings, but it’s been a tradition that we talk more and do less.” He expressed little hope in a revival of the organization, saying in a two-page resignation letter, “only God can give life to the dead.”

Shuttlesworth’s departure comes amidst charges and countercharges of mismanagement, financial irresponsibility, and misuse of funds, and a substantial membership decline that has marked the decades-long leadership struggle in the SCLC. “For years, deceit, mistrust and a lack of spiritual discipline and truth have eaten away at the core of this once-hallowed organization,” said Shuttlesworth’s statement. He told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that the leadership struggle in SCLC had brought the 47-year-old group to “the low point in its history.”

Shuttlesworth, along with Martin Luther King Jr., was among the founding leaders of SCLC, as the organization is popularly known. From its beginning in 1957, the SCLC was the most prominent organization in the civil rights movement through the 1960s in the fight to overthrow a system of government-sanctioned segregation against Blacks in the southern United States.

Shuttlesworth was also a founding leader of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights in 1956 and served as the organization’s president until 1969. Along with the SCLC, the group spearheaded the “Battle of Birmingham,” a campaign of protests and civil disobedience in the spring of 1963 that successfully challenged racial segregation in schools and other public facilities in Birmingham, Alabama.  
 
 
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