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news Rev Shuttlesworth, Civil Rights Icon, dies at Age 89 Leader endured a 1956 bombing, several protest injuries and countless arrests bIrMINGHaM, ala. (AP) -- The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, who was bombed, beaten and repeatedly arrested in the fight for civil rights and hailed by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for his courage and energy, has died. He was 89. Princeton Baptist Medical Center spokes- woman Jennifer Dodd confirmed he died at the Birmingham hospital Wednesday morn- ing. Shuttlesworth, a former truck driver who studied religion at night, became pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., in 1953 and soon was an outspoken leader in the fight for racial equality. "My church was a beehive," Shuttlesworth once said. "I made the move- ment. I made the challenge. Birmingham was the citadel of segregation, and the peo- ple wanted to march." In his 1963 book "Why We Can't Wait," King called Shuttlesworth "one of the nation's the most courageous freedom fight- ers ... a wiry, energetic and indomitable man." He survived a 1956 bombing, an assault during a 1957 demonstration, chest injuries when Birmingham authorities turned fire hoses on demonstrators in 1963, and count- less arrests. "I went to jail 30 or 40 times, not for fight- ing or stealing or drugs," Shuttlesworth told grade school students in 1997. "I went to jail for a good thing, trying to make a dif- ference." He visited frequently and remained active in the movement in Alabama even after moving in 1961 to Cincinnati, where he was a pastor for most of the next 47 years. He moved back to Birmingham in February 2008 for rehabilitation after a mild stroke. That summer, the once-segregated city hon- ored him with a four-day tribute and named It was Shuttlesworth's fearlessness that persuaded King to go to Birmingham its airport after him; his statue stands out- side the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. And in November 2008, Shuttlesworth watched from a hospital bed as Sen. Barack Obama was elected the nation's first African-American president. The year before, Obama had pushed Shuttlesworth's wheelchair across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma during a commemoration of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march. In the early 1960s, Shuttlesworth had invited King back to Birmingham. Televised scenes of police dogs and fire hoses being turned on black marchers, outside Alabama. But he including children, in spring was a key figure in Spike 1963 helped the rest of the Lee's 1997 documentary, nation grasp the depth of "4 Little Girls," about the racial animosity in the Deep September 1963 South. Birmingham church "He marched into the jaws bombing that killed four of death every day in black children. Birmingham before we got Shuttlesworth was there," Andrew Young, the born March 18, 1922, former Atlanta mayor and near Montgomery and U.N. ambassador who was grew up in Birmingham. an aide to King, said As a child, he knew he Wednesday. The Rev. Fred L. would either be a minis- Young said it was Shuttlesworth ter or a doctor and by Shuttlesworth's fearlessness that persuaded King to take the fight for 1943, he decided to enter the ministry. He began taking theological courses at night equality to Birmingham. "We shouldn't have been strong enough to while working as a truck driver and cement take on Birmingham ... But God had a plan worker during the day. He was licensed to that was far better than our plan," Young preach in 1944 and ordained in 1948. It was 1954 when King, then a pastor in said. "Fred didn't invite us to come to Montgomery, came to Birmingham to give Birmingham. He told us we had to come." Referring to the city's notoriously racist a speech and asked to stop by Bethel Baptist safety commissioner, Shuttlesworth would and meet Shuttlesworth. Shuttlesworth tell followers, "We're telling ol' `Bull' already knew the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Connor right here tonight that we're on the who became a key aide to King, as they march and we're not going to stop marching both attended Alabama State College, later known as Selma University. until we get our rights." Meanwhile, in Montgomery, Rosa Parks According to a May 1963 New York Times profile of Shuttlesworth, Connor refused to give up her seat on a city bus in responded to the word Shuttlesworth had late 1955, prompting the boycott led by been injured by the spray of fire hoses by King that gave new life to the civil rights saying: "I'm sorry I missed it. ... I wish movement. they'd carried him away in a hearse." While King went on to international fame, Read the rest of this story online at www.theskanner.com Shuttlesworth was relatively little known September 5, 2011 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 9
