Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Civil Rights Leader Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth Dies

Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, who was a leader in Birmingham's civil rights community through the 1950s and 1960s, has died at age 88. See (or hear) Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Civil Rights Pioneer, Dies, All Things Considered, NPR, Oct. 5, 2011.

The protests in Birmingham organized by Rev. Shuttlesworth and his colleague Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom he invited to the city, were significant in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. See David Benjamin Oppenheimer, Kennedy, King, Shuttlesworth and Walker: The Events Leading to the Introduction of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 29 U. S.F. L. Rev. 645 (1995), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1500045.

For more, see:
Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws That Changed America, E847 .K67 2005 at Good Reads. Publisher's page.
Judgment Days book jacket
Alexander Tsesis, We Shall Overcome: A History of Civil Rights and the Law, JC599.U5 T74 2008 at Classified Stacks (currently checked out, but you could request it). Publisher's page.
We Shall Overcome book jacket
And for a look at the local story, see Joan Singler et al., Seattle in Black and White: The Congress of Racial Equality and the Fight for Equal Opportunity, F899.S49 N464 2011 at Classified Stacks. Publisher's page.


Seattle in Black and White book jacket

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