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EEW Magazine Profiles In Black History: Attorney Arthur
Davis Shores
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Article By EEW Magazine // Black History
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Posted February 24, 2017
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Arthur Shores was a prominent African American civil rights attorney, born on September 25,
1904.
Shores graduated from Talladega College and began to study law at the University of Kansas in
1934. After a year in the University, Shores moved on and quickly completed his studies in the
LaSelle Extension University.
He passed the Alabama State Bar exam in 1937, and immediately began his law career as the
only practicing black lawyer in the state.
Shores joined the NAACP in 1938, and was an integral part of the organization’s civil right work in
the South.
In 1955, Shores successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, when he represented
Autherine Lucy, an African American woman who had been denied admission to the all-white
University of Alabama due to her race. The Court ruled in Lucy’s favor, and she was admitted in
1956.
However, the victory was short-lived, as the University suspended Lucy under the pretense of her
protection after a mob assembled on the third day to prevent her from attending. Shores and the
NAACP saw this as a thinly veiled disguise for the school’s own bigotry, and pressed charges,
resulting in Lucy’s expulsion from the university.
After the Lucy case, Shores became a notable figure in civil rights litigation in Alabama. His
involvement in the Birmingham Campaign in 1963 made him notorious among whites opposed to
the movement, and his house was bombed twice that year.
The dynamite explosions went off two weeks apart, in August and September, a deadly time for
blacks. On September 15, the bombing at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church killed four girls who
were friends of the Shores family.
It was devastating.
The bombings at the Shores' home, though never resulting in human fatalities, were not without
damage. The first explosion killed the family dog. The second time, Theodora, Attorney Shores’
wife, was knocked unconscious and hospitalized with a concussion.
In the midst of it all, Attorney Shores, also a devout Christian, Sunday school superintendent,
deacon and trustee, was never deterred. His daughters Helen Shores Lee and Barbara Shores
say he was a praying man who did not waver in his faith.
During the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56, Shores represented Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
when the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church was indicted for leading the boycott.
Later, in 1968, Shores broke new ground as he became the first African American appointed to
the Birmingham City Council, a position he held until 1978.
In 1975, Shores received an honorary degree from the University of Alabama, and in 1977, the
NAACP honored Shores by awarding him the William Robert Ming Advocacy Award.
Arthur Shores died on December 16, 1996, at the age of 92.
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