Love & Marriage

Love and Marriage. March Route Towards a Purposeful Life. While working his first job after high school at the Southern Club in Birmingham, he fell in love with a fellow co-worker, Ruby Lanette Keeler (b. May 30, 1922). He was smitten with her beauty, complete with dark brown skin and long wavy hair. She was born into a middle-class family, but raised by her aunt and uncle. The pair's stark differences made them inseparable. He wooed her by walking her home every day and engaging her in conversation. They married on October 20, 1941. , Paired marker , 1940 , The young couple worked to stabilize the family after the birth of their first child, daughter Patricia (b. 1941). Fred took odd jobs to earn income and Ruby worked in doctors' offices. Fred moved his young family to Mobile, Alabama, in April 1943. He worked as a truck driver at Mobile's Brookley Field Air Force Base during World War II. Raised as an African Methodist, he joined Corinthian Baptist Church. After experiencing what he believed to be a call to church ministry, Shuttlesworth began to occasionally preach at the church., "They walked together and suffered until freedom was won." , Majorie White , Executive Director, Birmingham Historical Society, Author of A Walk to Freedom: The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, 1956-1964., Lesson E3: Glenn Eskew, author of But for Birmingham, wrote, "The African Americans' deep faith in a righteous God helped them to defy segregation." Why were so many young African American ministers willing to participate in the civil rights movement?