Civil rights leader Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth has died in Cincinnati, according to reports. He was 89. In the 1950s, Shuttleworth’s activism resulted in beatings and attempts on his life in Birmingham, where he established the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights in 1956.
The Birmingham News has put up a slideshow of the civil rights leader, along with some highlights of his life-long struggle against racism and discrimination:
The Rev. Shuttlesworth, who was brutally beaten by a mob, sprayed with city fire hoses, arrested by police 35 times and also blown out of his bed by a Ku Klux Klan bomb during his struggle against segregation in Birmingham, said he never feared death. “I tried to get killed in Birmingham and go home to God because I knew it would be better for you in Birmingham,” he once told an audience of students at Lawson State Community College.
In an obituary that will air on All Things Considered this afternoon, Debbie Elliott reports that Shuttlesworth was known for pushing for change in what had come to be called “Bombingham.”
And Shuttlesworth was also essential to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as Rep. John Lewis tells Elliott:
“Fred Shuttlesworth had the vision, the determination never to give up, never to give in,” Lewis says. “He led an unbelievable children’s crusade. It was the children who faced dogs, fire hoses, police billy clubs that moved and shook the nation.”
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