David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

Home, she describes what happened as the police and neighbors came running toward the smoking ruins of Shuttlesworth’s house. It was late at night. Shuttlesworth had been lying in bed. They feared he was dead:
    A voice rose from the wreckage: “I’m not coming out naked.” And, after a few moments, Shuttlesworth emerged in the raincoat someone threw into the parsonage’s rubble. He was not crippled, not bloodied or blind; he was not even deaf, though the blast had blown windows out of houses a mile away.… Shuttlesworth raised a biblical hand to the concerned neighbors, and said, “The Lord has protected me. I am not injured.”…
    A big cop was crying. “Reverend, I know these people,” he said of the bombers. “I didn’t think they would go this far. If I were you, I’d get out of town. These people are vicious.”
    “Well, Officer, you’re not me,” Shuttlesworth said. “Go back and tell your Klan brothers that if the Lord saved me from this, I’m here for the duration. The fight is just beginning.”
    That’s a classic remote miss. Shuttlesworth wasn’t killed. (A direct hit.) He wasn’t maimed or badly injured. (A near miss.) He was unscathed. Whatever the Klan had hoped to accomplish had gone badly awry. Shuttlesworth was now less afraid than he had been before.
    The next morning, members of his congregation pleaded with him to call off the protest. He refused. McWhorter continues:
    “Hell, yeah, we’re going to ride,” the cussing preacher said and addressed his board. “Find you any kind of crack you can to hide in if you’re scared, but I’m walking downtown after this meeting and getting on the bus. I’m not going to look back to see who’s following me.” His voice deepened into the preacher register. “Boys step back,” he ordered, “and men step forward.”
    A few months later, Shuttlesworth decided to personally take his daughter to enroll at the all-white John Herbert Phillips High School. As he drove up, a crowd of angry white men gathered around his car. Here is McWhorter again:
    To the child’s disbelief, her father stepped out of the car. The men lunged at Shuttlesworth, baring brass knuckles, wooden clubs, and chains. Scampering west across the sidewalk, he was repeatedly knocked down. Someone had pulled his coat up over his head so that he couldn’t lower his arms.… “We’ve got this son of a bitch now,” a man yelled. “Let’s kill him,” the crowd screamed. From a white female cheering section came advice to “kill the motherfucking nigger and it will be all over.” Men began smashing the windows of the car.
    So, what happened to Shuttlesworth? Not much. He managed to crawl back into the car. He went to the hospital and was found to have minor kidney damage and some scratches and bruises. He checked himself out that afternoon, and that evening from the pulpit of his church, he told his congregation that he had only forgiveness for his attackers.
    Shuttlesworth must have been someone of great resolve and strength. But when he climbed unscathed out of the wreckage of his house, he added an extra layer of psychological armor. We are all of us not merely liable to fear, we are also prone to be afraid of being afraid, and the conquering of fear produces exhilaration.…The contrast between the previous apprehension and the present relief and feeling of security promotes a self-confidence that is the very father and mother of courage.
    And then what happened at Phillips High School? Another remote miss! Upon leaving the hospital, Shuttlesworth told reporters, “Today is the second time within a year that a miracle has spared my life.” If one remote miss brings exhilaration, we can only imagine what two bring.
    Not long afterward, Shuttlesworth brought a colleague, Jim Farmer, to meet with Martin Luther King at a church in Montgomery, Alabama. Outside, an angry mob had gathered, waving Confederate flags. They began to rock the car. The driver reversed and tried an alternate route, only to be blocked once more. What did Shuttlesworth do? Just like at Phillips High School, he got out of the car. Here again is McWhorter:
    Coke bottles shattered car windows around him as he paused to register a strange smell, his first whiff of tear gas. Then he beckoned Farmer out of the car and strode into the mob. Farmer followed, “scared as hell,” trying to shrink his bon vivant’s ample body into Shuttlesworth’s thin shadow. The goons parted, their clubs went