The HistoryMakers

Reverend Calvin Wallace Woods, Sr. was born one of eleven siblings on September 13, 1933 in Birmingham, Alabama to Maggie Rosa Lee Wallace Woods, a homemaker, and Abraham Lincoln Woods, Sr., a pipe-making plant worker and Baptist minister. Woods entered Parker High School at age twelve, where he discovered and developed a skill for shoe repair, tailoring and his gift of oratory. He graduated in 1950 with a partial scholarship to Miles College.

Throughout the years, Woods would attend the Universal Baptist Institute, the Universal Baptist Seminary and Birmingham-easonian Baptist Bible College receiving numerous degrees. He holds a B.S. degree in social science, B.D., B.R.E., M.B.S. and D.D. degrees. In 1956, Woods worked alongside his brother, Rev. Abraham L. Woods, Jr., as he and Rev. Fred L. Shuttleswoth co-founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), and participated in the Freedom Rides of 1961. The following year, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was founded and began working closely with the ACMHR, which introduced the Woods brothers to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy.

In 1960, at the age of twenty-seven, Woods was serving as pastor of East End Baptist Church. He was arrested and convicted for advocating boycotts of Birmingham's segregated city bus system. He was sentenced to prison for six months and fined, becoming the first member of the Woods family to be arrested for their participation in the Civil Rights Movement. An appeal was granted and the sentence was over turned, although he would be re-arrested for again preaching boycotts to his congregation.

Woods continued fighting segregation and was heavily involved in the Civil Rights Movement; in 1963, Woods was arrested and beaten by the police for his participation in the public protests. The same year, Woods joined the March on Washington. In 1965, Woods protested Birmingham's voter registration procedures under the leadership of Reverend Edward Gardner. One year later, after the shooting of five black protesters at a Birmingham supermarket, Woods worked as strategy chairman for the resulting protest.

In 2006, at the age of seventy-two, Woods succeeded his brother Abraham as President of the Birmingham SCLC, and one year later, became president of the New Era Baptist State Convention. Woods is currently the leader of Shiloh Baptist Church, where his father was once minister, and leads a group called the Prayer Intercessors.

Woods was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on September 7, 2007.