Longtime pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Norwood, Birmingham, Bishop Calvin Woods Sr., a civil rights activist who marched alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth during the Civil Rights Movement, passed away today, according to his family.
Woods, 91, passed away this morning, according to a social media post made by his grandson, Pastor Mike McClure Jr. of Rock City Church. Woods was ninety-one. September 13 would have been his 92nd birthday.
My heart feels heavy today. McClure made a post. Bishop Calvin Woods, my grandfather, has returned home to be with the Lord. To me, he was more than just family. He was a pioneer, a champion of freedom, and a devoted follower of God who sacrificed his life for the sake of justice and the Kingdom.
Twenty Black demonstrators were detained on April 3, 1963, for occupying lunch counters reserved for white people in downtown Birmingham. This event marked the beginning of the city’s large protests that would eventually lead to the repeal of the city’s racial segregation laws sixty years later.
In an interview with AL.com in 2023, Woods, who was 29 at the time of the sit-ins, discussed the protests.
He claimed that we were attempting to win over the white population. They didn’t want us to be regarded like first-class people, even if we were acting out how we could spend our money there.
Woods spent the majority of his life in leadership roles within the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and marched alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
According to McClure, his voice embodied the sound of bravery during the Civil Rights Movement. Generations were lifted by his prayers. His devotion to God and humanity left a lasting impression.
Woods completed Parker High School in 1950 after being born in Birmingham on September 13, 1933.
Alongside his older brother, Calvin Woods fought against the city’s racial segregation laws, and his brother, the Rev. Abraham L. Woods Jr., co-founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights in 1956 with Shuttlesworth.
In 2023, Woods told AL.com that you couldn’t drink from the same water fountain or use the same restroom. It was shameful. It needed to be brought up. Many people were unable to recognize its ugly nature since it was so customary.
After meeting King and Ralph Abernathy in 1962, the Woods brothers collaborated with them to combat segregation in Birmingham.
In 1960, Calvin Woods was appointed pastor of East End Baptist Church. In 1956, he was arrested and found guilty of protesting against the segregated city bus system in Birmingham. He became the first member of the Woods family to be jailed for their involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and received a six-month jail sentence.
He participated in public protests in 1963, which led to his imprisonment and physical assault by the police. Woods served as the strategy chairman for a demonstration against the shootings of five Black demonstrators at a grocery in Birmingham and participated in the March on Washington.
Following his brother Abraham’s passing, Woods took over as president of the SCLC’s Birmingham branch, a role he maintained until 2021. In addition, he was SCLC’s national vice president. He presided over the New Era Baptist State Convention as its president.
Woods believed that action was necessary in the struggle for racial justice.
In 2023, he stated, “You have to dramatize the situation.” You attempt to elicit a response. If they refused, we would have to go ahead and take another action, making sure that the public knew what we were doing and why.
According to Woods, the civil rights movement’s strategies of Christian nonviolence were still relevant in 2023.
Woods asserted that love would triumph over all. We thought that blacks and whites could coexist peacefully. You must continue to use nonviolence as your weapon. There will be difficulties, but that is the path we must follow. They will occasionally not get along. Here is love. There it is.
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