The Price of Freedom

The Price of Freedom. March Route for Fair Housing. August 1963 , The Shores daughters said their father handled civil rights cases across Alabama and across the South. As he advanced the African American struggle against unfair segregation through the courts, angry White militants turned their threats and violence toward him. Though he carried his pistol everywhere for protection, Attorney Shores taught his daughters not to be violent. They learned to pray for their own protection and to forgive their many tormentors. Often, the girls were driven to school for their safety and their parents changed the home phone number frequently to avoid threatening phone calls. Their mother, Theodora, often urged Shores to move the family to Michigan, but he refused, saying he had to stay in Birmingham and Alabama to help “his people." , "You shouldn't hold on to hate because it will eventually destroy you." , Arthur Shores , To his daughter Barbara, from the book “The Gentle Giant of Dynamite Hill.", Black neighborhood patrols regularly guarded Shores' home, especially while he worked on high-profile cases. On the night of August 20, 1963, one day after a federal judge ordered the school board to admit its first Black students to three all-White schools, a bomb explosion damaged Shores' home. No one was injured, but the blast left a four-foot wide crater in his yard. On September 4, a second bomb injured Mrs. Shores and killed one of the family dogs. Strangely, the police were on the street before the second bomb exploded. On September 15, a powerful blast at 16th Street Baptist church killed four girls. One of the girls, Cynthia Wesley, lived on Dynamite Hill., Lesson H22: What price are you willing to pay for your chance to live in a free society?