On the same day two weeks ago, we lost two pioneers who made an indelible imprint on our national landscape. Much has been written about Steve Jobs, the iconic founder and CEO of Apple. Less has been shared about the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a formative leader of the civil rights movement. Yet both men offer inspiring examples of the leadership and resolve we need today.
At a time when the many imposing challenges around us are matched by a collective inability to problem solve, we are in desperate need of what Apple ads challenged us to do - Think Different.
But we shouldn't wait for somebody brilliant from somewhere else to show us how to do it. Rather, the innovative spirit needed to flip problems into opportunities can and should bubble up from within our communities. Further, it can be led by individuals restless for change and it is not bounded by privilege or titles.
Fred Shuttlesworth was born poor in rural Alabama to a family of eight siblings that scraped by on sharecropping and running moonshine. Shuttlesworth became a truck driver but was called to the ministry - and later joined the NAACP until it was outlawed in his home state.
Undeterred, Shuttlesworth helped found the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights in 1956. It began to challenge the white-led status quo on many fronts. A year later, he joined the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in launching the Southern Christian Leadership Conference - an effort to unify black clergy and their congregations to fight Jim Crow laws. The SCLC quickly became a strong organizing force in the civil rights movement.
In 1963, Shuttlesworth invited King to join him in Birmingham for two weeks of nonviolent protest and then helped organize the famous march from Selma to Montgomery. The goals were lofty. As Shuttlesworth later said, "We were trying to launch a systematic, wholehearted battle against segregation, which would set the pace for the nation."
It worked. Following the protests, met by a violent reaction including a Ku Klux Klan bombing of a black church that killed four girls in Sunday school, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. Following the march to Montgomery, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 came to be - fundamentally altering our society and relationship with race.
Shuttlesworth later received the Presidential Citizens Medal from President Bill Clinton and was pushed across the bridge in Selma in a wheelchair by the man who would become the first black U.S. president. Upon learning of his death, President Barack Obama said, "(Shuttlesworth) was a testament to the strength of the human spirit. Today we stand on his shoulders, and the shoulders of all those who marched and sat and lifted their voices to help perfect our union."
Steve Jobs' path was as different from Fred Shuttlesworth's as his contributions. An adopted child, Jobs would later drop out of college, live in an ashram in India and return to the States, where he ultimately helped start Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studios. But he shared several key traits with Shuttlesworth: an ability to buck the status quo, to reframe the way we look at the world and to introduce innovations that transformed the way we interact with the world and one another.
Integrity, moral courage, optimism, faith in the human spirit, an inner belief in one's ability to create change, and resilience in the face of setbacks. These are themes we see from these two men's stories. They also are the traits we are in need of today in North Carolina.
Often we hear the question, "Where is our leadership?" The answer is deceptively direct: It's all around us. We are it, whether we're ready or not. Leading does not necessarily mean getting thrown in jail 40 times (Shuttlesworth's estimate) or reinventing at least three industries (computers, music and animation in Jobs' case). But we do need to step up in our own ways.
Throughout the state, we are crippled by poverty, high obesity rates, wide disparity in academic achievement, persistent unemployment, and perhaps most problematically, a growing political divide.
Positioning our state for future prosperity, especially when times are hard, will require innovative, bold, courageous thinking - not from merely a few dazzling leaders but from all of us pulling together, often through modest actions far outside of the spotlight. We can honor the spirit of Shuttlesworth and Jobs by taking one concrete step in that direction today. What will it be?
Let's take some inspiration from those who have come before us, stand on their shoulders, and reach into a new and better future for our state and country.
