Shores-Lee Law Offices/Post Office Garage

Shores-Lee Law Offices/Post Office Garage. National Register of Historic Places Destination. Built 1924 (remodeled for offices in 1995), 413 16th St. N. , Judge Helen Shores Lee bought this one-story building, a garage from the U.S. Post Office, in 1995 and turned into a law center to honor her father, pioneer civil rights lawyer Arthur Shores. He filed dozens of NAACP lawsuits from the 1940s and 1950s challenging unequal pay for Black teachers and racial segregation laws. Many of Shores' lawsuits were in defense of Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, who broke those laws saying they were unconstitutional. In 1955, Shores 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. The case became the first major constitutional challenge to segregated public facilities in the U.S. Supreme Court. Shores worked closely with the NAACP's chief lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first African American U.S. Supreme Court Justice. As a result, their client Autherine Lucy, pictured here with Shores, became the first African-American to attend the University of Alabama. Shores' house was bombed on Center Street in 1963. (See Dynamite Hill Trail Route). He later became Birmingham's first African American city councilor., "Bombings failed to intimidate civil rights activist lawyer Arthur Shores." , Oral History with Arthur Shores , Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, July 17, 1974., LESSON C11: Learn more about Attorney Shores in "The Gentle Giant of Dynamite Hill: The Untold Story of Arthur Shores and His Family's Fight for Civil Rights," written by his daughters Helen Shores Lee and Barbara Sylvia Shores.