"DEATH TAKES AWAY ANOTHER GREAT AMERICAN HERO:REV. FRED SHUTTLESWORTH"

Fred Shuttlesworth was one of the heroes and leaders of the American civil rights movement in the 1950s who survived beatings and bombings in Alabama a half-century ago as he fought against racial injustice alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

He died on Wednesday in Birmingham, Alabama at the age of 89. In 2009, in a wheelchair, he was front and center among other dignitaries in an audience of about 6,000 at the city’s Boutwell Auditorium to watch a live broadcast as the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, was sworn in.

“Without Fred Shuttlesworth laying the groundwork, those demonstrations in Birmingham would not have been as successful,” said Andrew M. Manis, author of “A Fire You Can’t Put Out,” a biography of Mr. Shuttlesworth. “Birmingham led to Selma, and those two became the basis of the civil rights struggle.”