Christmas Tales of Alabama (9 page)

Anne Kimbrough and her dog, Pepper, were featured on the front page of the
Birmingham News
in 1959 when a soldier friend sent her a Christmas card addressed to the house with “the silly looking little long-legged dog.”
Photograph courtesy of Anne Kimbrough Burkhalter
.

Fred, who had taken a job in Atlanta after graduation and was waiting for Anne to graduate so they could marry, heard the human-interest story on the radio one day. The announcer, however, reported that the card had been sent by Anne's “fiancé” who was serving in the Pacific. Fred immediately called Anne, who explained the mistake. Anne and Fred married in 1962 and would have three children and four grandchildren.

Tillman Wheeler became an architect. He and his wife, Gail, had a son, also named Tillman Wheeler, who also became an architect. Beloved Pepper lived a long happy life and died in 1974.

The story eventually faded from memory until it was just a yellowed newspaper clipping in the Kimbrough family scrapbook. That is, until a writer went digging in 2011 so she could interview the story's main players for a book about Alabama Christmases. In an interesting twist, the Alabama natives—Anne and Fred Burkhalter and Tillman and Gail Wheeler—lived within a few miles of one another in suburbs of Chattanooga, Tennessee.

After the initial interview, Anne wrote to the author: “Tim Wheeler and his wife Gail met us for lunch last Monday—thanks to you! It was a wonderful time catching up and laughing about the publicity his Christmas card received. Old friendships are the best. Thank you for bringing us together after so many years!”

T
HE
E
GGNOG
R
IOT

It was three days before Christmas and bone-numbingly cold in New York. Two young cadets from Alabama, Samuel Alexander Roberts and William R. Burnley, joined Alexander Center, a cadet from New York, at Martin's Tavern to discuss plans to smuggle liquor into the United States Military Academy for a Christmas-night eggnog party. They would row a boat across the Hudson to get two gallons of illicit whiskey. Later, Cadet T.M. Lewis of Kentucky arrived with a gallon of rum from Benny's Tavern.

Another gallon of whiskey would be added to the party by the time Christmas morning dawned.

Before the year 1826 came to a close, several cadets would be brought up on charges for their parts in what became known as the Eggnog Riot. Seventy would be implicated; nineteen would be court-martialed and expelled. Although classmate Jefferson Davis was a participant and was initially placed under house arrest, he was not among those court-martialed. He graduated from West Point in 1828 and would later become president of the Confederate States of America, which had its first capital in Montgomery, Alabama.

William Burnley was sixteen years and nine months old when he entered West Point on July 1, 1825, according to the 1826 roll of cadets. Sam Roberts had entered the academy a year earlier at the age of fifteen years and five months. They were two of only four cadets from Alabama and made up part of a small group of southern cadets.

But a Georgia cadet who was involved in the riot, John Archibald Campbell, would later move to Montgomery, Alabama, where he was elected to the House of Representatives and offered a seat on the state supreme court, which he turned down. He was later appointed to the United States Supreme Court. Campbell was never charged in the Eggnog Riot.

In the 1820s, entry into West Point was for the privileged. It required sponsorship of prominent people, which would have been unavailable to commoners. One of the items supplied with Burnley's application was a letter from John Caldwell Calhoun, who was secretary of war in 1824 to Andrew Jackson. Within a year and a half of Calhoun's letter of recommendation, he would become vice president of the United States under James Monroe. Andrew Jackson would become president in 1829. Calhoun was a firm believer in West Point's mission and had worked to reform the academy and restore order there.

The 1826 roll of cadets, which included a list of cadets' “merit in conduct,” showed how many demerits students had when classes ended in June of that year. The Alabama boys' behavior was not among the worst of the bunch. The most demerits given to any cadet was 621. Roberts had 148 demerits, and Burnley had 182. Seven cadets received no demerits.

Roberts was born in Putnam County, Georgia, on February 13, 1809, but his family at some point came to Alabama, where Roberts attended schools in Cahaba and Mobile. His father, Willis Roberts, co-owned a general store in Cahaba with family friend Mirabeau Lamar of Georgia. Lamar would later become president of the Republic of Texas and help Roberts in his career.

In December 1826, Burnley and Roberts were teenagers with mayhem on their minds. After hearing rumors that cadets planned a party that included alcohol, West Point Academy superintendent Sylvanius Thayer had issued orders that liquor was forbidden at academy functions. He placed additional faculty members on patrol in the days before Christmas.

But Burnley, Roberts and Center had successfully smuggled the illicit liquor into the north barracks in preparation for the party, which Jeff Davis had a hand in organizing.

On Christmas Eve, the cadets spiked a batch of eggnog and proceeded to get drunk. The original group of nine, including Burnley, Roberts and Jefferson Davis, was joined by several more cadets. As drunkenness spread, the sounds of gunfire, breaking glass and threats against academy officials could be heard as cadets staggered through the halls, some armed with muskets and bayonets. At one point, Jefferson Davis ran ahead of patrolling officers and went to the barracks to warn the revelers. Unfortunately, the officers arrived and immediately put Davis under house arrest. Davis, though, was never punished, likely because he quickly complied with officers and retired to his room during the remaining shenanigans.

Some of the group arrived at reveille still inebriated. It wasn't long before the mischievous group was caught. Thayer told a group of officials that an inquiry would take place during final examination in January 1827. Twenty-two cadets were placed under house arrest in the meantime. During the two months' wait, Burnley was arrested twice on other charges. After the inquiry, Burnley and Roberts were found guilty and expelled.

Roberts, however, would go on to become a wealthy and prominent politician in Texas, where he moved in 1837. He eventually became the secretary of state in Texas.

R
EVEREND
'
S
S
URVIVAL OF
B
OMBING
D
EEMED
C
HRISTMAS
M
IRACLE

December 25, 1956, had been another wonderful Christmas in the cozy parsonage. By evening, everyone was tired but happy. The only thing marring the holiday was the fact that Pat, who was thirteen years old, had been in the hospital since November recovering from burns she had suffered when her nightgown accidentally caught fire. The Shuttlesworth family had spent the afternoon in her room and learned that Pat was doing better and would be home before long.

The other Shuttlesworth children—Ruby Fredericka, eleven; Fred Jr., ten; and Carolyn, seven—were at home, still full of Christmas dinner, too much hard candy and the spirit of the season. Ruby Fredericka, who was called “Ricky,” was watching television that evening, as her mother, Ruby, for whom she was named, talked with Naomi Robinson, the deacon's wife, at the dining room table. Little Carolyn sat nearby.

Fred Jr. was still wearing the red football uniform he had opened that morning, although it was now nearly ten o'clock and past bedtime. The Christmas tree sparkled in the living room. The children's mother was known to leave the tree well past its lifespan because she so enjoyed the holiday.

In a bedroom at the front of the small wood-frame house, the children's father, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, had put on pajamas and lay across the bed, where he continued a discussion with Deacon Charlie Robinson, who sat near the bed.

Into this domestic scene suddenly burst an explosion of wood, glass, flames and horrific noise.

“All of a sudden—BOOM! It was like a war zone,” Fred Jr. recalled in
Freedom's Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories
. Then he realized: someone had tried to kill his family.

Chaos ensued. Neighbors rushed to the parsonage, where the front bedroom had been demolished. Onlookers were filled with the terrible knowledge that surely Brother Fred had not survived. Then, as they watched, the pastor walked through the cloud of smoke and debris, unscathed.

It was a Christmas miracle, indeed.

Fred had no doubt that he had been spared for a reason. Now with his family unharmed by the white men who had set the dynamite bomb beneath his bedroom, he was more determined than ever to continue his nonviolent fight for civil rights.

In the Shuttlesworth home, Christmas was about Christ. The home was next door to New Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, where Fred Shuttlesworth led the congregation. But the reverend also was a leader of his people. He had been involved in the fight for equal rights for black citizens and was the membership chairman of the local NAACP until the organization's existence was outlawed by the State of Alabama. In response, Fred and Ed Gardner formed the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR).

The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth.
Courtesy of the Shuttlesworth family
.

Not long before Christmas, the United States Supreme Court had ruled that the segregation of public buses in Montgomery was illegal. Shuttlesworth announced the intention of the ACMHR to challenge the law on December 26 by riding in white sections on Birmingham buses.

The news didn't set well with members of the local Ku Klux Klan. The Reverend Shuttlesworth was becoming a thorn in the side of members of the white racist group.

KKK members would become even more frustrated that the attempt to kill the pastor was a failure. Somehow the mattress on which the reverend had been reclining was thrown on top of him, shielding him from falling debris. Where the bed once stood, in the spot where Shuttlesworth had been lying, was a large timber that would have crushed him.

The bomb knocked the home from its foundation, and the roof collapsed. Next door, a hole was blown into the basement wall of the church, and the church's stained glass windows were shattered. Some of the more than one thousand people who gathered helped pull Mrs. Shuttlesworth, the children and the Robinsons to safety. They were cut and bruised but otherwise uninjured.

As he stepped from the rubble, the pastor told the shocked crowd, “The Lord has protected me.”

Although onlookers needed no other sign that God had sent them a message, they suddenly noticed that in the center of the rubble stood the Shuttlesworths' Christmas tree, still twinkling with lights.

The next day, Shuttlesworth and members of the ACMHR went through with plans to challenge the law against segregating buses. Twenty-one black passengers were arrested, and Fred sued the city in response.

After congregants rebuilt the parsonage and posted guards outside it, Shuttlesworth continued to work toward peaceful integration. He was a founder in 1957 of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, along with Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy and Baynard Rustin.

In the fall of 1957, Fred decided to enroll his oldest daughters, Pat and Ricky, into the all-white Phillips School. Before they could enter, Fred was beaten by a white mob with whips and chains, and Ruby was stabbed in the hip. Though the children never did enter an all-white school, Martin Luther King would describe Shuttlesworth as “the most courageous civil rights fighter in the South.”

Shuttlesworth continued his work into the 1960s, participating in sit-ins and helping to organize the Freedom Rides. During one well-publicized mass protest against segregation in Birmingham in 1963, Shuttlesworth, along with many other adults and children, was sprayed with a fire hose. Fred was hospitalized after he was slammed into a wall by the powerful spray.

On October 5, 2011, Fred Shuttlesworth died in a Birmingham hospital. His children have recorded their memories so that their children and grandchildren might be aware of the sacrifices made by those who came before them. In Birmingham, the city he fought so hard to integrate, Fred Shuttlesworth was honored with a statue in his likeness that stands outside the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

To this day, the Shuttlesworth family recalls the Christmas they survived a bomb. Their faith in the Lord never wavered, but through tragedy, their faith was renewed that one day children of any race could attend the same school and that everyone could ride any seat on the bus.

C
HRISTMAS
P
AROLES
S
HOWED
“F
AITH IN
H
UMAN
N
ATURE
”

When the doors of Kilby Prison opened and Robert E. Hodges walked out, a
LIFE
magazine photographer was there to record it. The photographer snapped photos as Hodges walked, dressed in a suit and tie, down the dirt road to the small but neat home where Hodges's wife and his stepchildren lived near the edge of the prison property in Montgomery, then sat down for dinner with his family and later killed and dressed one of the hogs raised by the family for income.