In 1957, he took two of his daughters to enroll in an all-white high school in Birmingham. More than a dozen men with chains, brass knuckles and baseball bats were waiting for him when he drove up. One of the men stabbed his wife, Ruby, in the hip. Shuttlesworth was beaten until he passed out, but he regained consciousness and managed to clamber back into the car, calmly telling the driver not to break any traffic laws as they rushed away.
That year he joined with King and Abernathy to launch the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which became the guiding force of the movement.
Shuttlesworth constantly prodded King to take more aggressive action. "King's attention was pulled in a lot of different directions," McWhorter said. "His public appearances were crucial to raising money for the movement. Shuttlesworth was always trying to bring him back into the work and get him focused on the real campaign."
In 1963 their collaboration culminated in massive demonstrations in Birmingham to pressure downtown department stores to desegregate. Later that year when President Kennedy introduced to Congress the legislation that became the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he told King and Shuttlesworth, "But for Birmingham, we would not be here today."