Gentle Giant of Dynamite Hill

Gentle Giant of Dynamite Hill. March Route for Fair Housing. As both a lawyer and Smithfield real estate developer, Arthur Davis Shores' story is also the story of Dynamite Hill. He played a central role in African Americans' legal fight to build and buy houses where they wished, including the “White side" of Center Street or any other neighborhood. Housing was one of many legal fronts he fought in the battle for civil rights for Blacks throughout his long legal career. Though short in stature, Shores loomed large in Birmingham for his courage in the face of blatant disrespect, opposition and violence because of his race. His daughters Helen and Barbara wrote their reflections on their father's purpose-driven life in their book, The Gentle Giant of Dynamite Hill. , "The great work of the Negro lawyer in the next generation must be in the south." , Charles Houston , Dean of Howard University's School of Law and chief legal advisor to the NAACP., Arthur Shores was born in 1904 near Birmingham. He received an associate bachelor's degree from Talladega College in 1927. He taught and served as a local high school principal where he met his wife Theodora, a teacher. His peers ridiculed his ambition to be a lawyer in Alabama, but he completed his law degree in an extension course through Chicago's LaSalle University in 1934. Shores passed the Alabama State Bar exam in 1931 to become one of only three Black lawyers in the state at the time. From 1940 to 1950, Shores was the only licensed Black lawyer in the entire state when the two other lawyers retired. In their book, his daughters said their father committed his legal career for the advancement of African Americans' civil and human rights., Lesson H20: Why is the work of lawyers important in American society?