Birmingham’s Iconic Civil Rights Attorney Arthur D. Shores Featured in New Documentary

By Michael Sznajderman | Alabama News Center A new documentary about pioneering Alabama civil rights attorney Arthur Shores explores his life and legacy over the decades he fought for racial justice – a mission that often put him and his family in physical danger. “Defending Freedom: The Arthur D. Shores Story” premieres Feb. 15 at 8 p.m. on Alabama Public Television (APT). The one-hour film received its initial showing last week at the historic Carver Theatre in Birmingham, just across the street from where Shores maintained an office during the city’s darkest day of Jim Crow segregation. The documentary is the seventh produced by Longleaf Studios at Jacksonville State University (JSU). Longleaf Studios offers JSU film and communication students the chance to work on projects with professional filmmakers. In all, 11 students worked with Nashville-based Illuminate Films on the Shores documentary, which will be available for streaming on the APT website after its broadcast premiere. Among those interviewed in the documentary is Shores’ daughter, Barbara, who still lives in the same Smithfield neighborhood in Birmingham where she grew up and where the Shores family home was bombed twice in 1963 by anti-integration terrorists. Because of multiple racial bombings, the neighborhood...