‘The movement was God’s movement’: An interview with Bishop Calvin Woods
Bishop Calvin Woods, at the microphone, when he announced he was stepping down as leader of the Birmingham Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, December 2021. Woods has been closely involved in Birmingham's human rights struggle for decades. (The Birmingham Times)
Bishop Calvin Woods will celebrate his 90th birthday in September. One of the most vocal local activists during the civil rights struggles in Birmingham in the 1950s and 1960s, Woods is former pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Norwood and a former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Birmingham chapter.
The younger brother of the late Rev. Abraham Woods Jr., another civil rights pioneer in Birmingham, the two siblings joined with the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth to help found the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) in 1956, after the NAACP was officially banned from operating in the state. Later that year, Woods was arrested for advocating a boycott of Birmingham’s segregated bus system. He was fined and sentenced to prison for six months. He would be arrested again in 1963 for taking an active role in the protests that year that ultimately led to the abolishment of the legal system of racial apartheid in Birmingham.
The Woods family legacy of achievement runs deep in Birmingham. His son, businessman Chris Woods, is a former mayoral candidate, and his grandson, Clinton Woods, sits on the Birmingham City Council. Another grandson is well-known pastor Michael McClure Jr. of Rock City Church in the Forestdale community.
In 2014 a historical marker recognizing Bishop Woods’ contributions to the human rights movement was installed at Birmingham’s Kelly Ingram Park.
In this exclusive video interview with Alabama News Center’s Joe Allen, Woods recalls the days in April 1963 when he and his brother joined Martin Luther King Jr. and his brother, Birmingham pastor A.D. King, Shuttlesworth and other civil rights leaders in launching the nonviolent, direct-action protests challenging segregation.
“The movement was God’s movement,” Woods told Alabama News Center. “We were standing up for that which was right.”
An interview with Bishop Calvin Woods, Birmingham civil rights pioneer from Alabama News Center on Vimeo.
