Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth: "I went to jail for a good thing, trying to make a difference."

Steve Shapiro: Rev. Shuttlesworth's confrontation with Sheriff Clark at start of Selma March

AP Photo

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth right, escorts Dwight Armstrong, 9, and his brother Floyd, 11, from the Graymont Elementary School in Birmingham, Ala, Sept. 9, 1963. State troopers, on order from the governor, opened the school but turned the African Americans away. 

AP Photo

Seated from left, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. 

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 tenacity, has died. He was 89.    Read the New York Times obituary here.