Civil rights leader Rev. Shuttlesworth dies
05.10.11
Although not as well known as King and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy — his compatriots in the civil rights movement's "Big Three" — Shuttlesworth brought the struggle into the living rooms of white America through a series of combustible showdowns with the Ku Klux Klan , Southern segregationists and Birmingham's infamous commissioner of public safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor.
"A guest at Bull's house" — more commonly known as the Birmingham jail — on more than two dozen occasions, Shuttlesworth was viewed by King himself as the person who, because of his confrontational boldness and willingness to put himself in harm's way, was likely to become the movement's first major martyr.
"We're determined to either kill segregation or be killed by it," Shuttlesworth said in the 1961 CBS program. To achieve the goal, he nearly suffered the consequence, coming close to proving King's premonition true through numerous narrow escapes from death during the civil rights movement's most volatile and dangerous years.
Source: USA Today