Arthur 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". Admitted to the Alabama State Bar in 1937, Shores played a leading role in the fight for civil rights for African-Americans in Alabama and was the first African American to sit on the Birmingham City Council.

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.

Legal career

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 Black school teachers who were denied the right to vote by the Alabama Board of Registrars, which was in violation of the state constitution and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution.

Shores became the first Black attorney in Alabama to represent his own clients in court. Shortly thereafter, Shores' efforts led him to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing for equal pay for Black and White teachers Shores represented Black teachers in the Jefferson County School Board to receive the same pay as White teachers.

Birmingham, Alabama 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 and Constance Mobley of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund 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. 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.

Shores' campaign in 1963 to integrate the Birmingham public schools brought violence to him and other residents. Shores' home was fire-bombed with dynamite on August 20 and again on September 4 in retaliation for Black parents registering their children at White schools. Eleven days later, on September 15, 1963, a bomb killed four Black girls at 16th Street Baptist Church.

Personal life

Shores was married to Theodora Warren Shores, and they had two children, Helen Shores Lee and Barbara S. Shores. Theodora, like many women during this time in the United States, had to give up her job as a teacher because she had gotten married.

The Shores family lived in the Smithfield neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama, an area that suffered nearly 50 unsolved Klan-related bombings between 1948 and 1963. The years of white-supremacist terrorist activity were an effort to stop Black families from buying homes along Center Street, the unofficial dividing line between Black and White neighborhoods in the city. The bombings earned the neighborhood a local nickname: “Dynamite Hill.”

Death Shores died on December 16, 1996 at the age of 92, at his home in Birmingham, Alabama. On the day of his death, Shores was attended at his death bed by his wife Theodora and daughter Helen. In her biography of her father, Helen recalls that in the final moments of Shores' life, he smiled at her, closed his eyes, and died peacefully in his sleep. After his death, his daughters Helen and Barbara wrote a full length work on Shores’ life and legal career, published in 2012.

Honors 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.

In 2004, Shores was inducted into the Alabama Lawyers' Hall of Fame.