Photo by Glynn Wilson

The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth at Don Siegelman's sentencing

The Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth, 85, a major civil rights pioneer from Birmingham, Alabama, was hospitalized Wednesday after suffering a mild stroke, according to a hospital spokesman in Cincinnati.

He was in intensive care and listed in fair condition.

"He's improving, he's responding," Ruby Bester, one of Shuttlesworth's four children, told the Associated Press Friday. "God has been good to him."

The length of his hospital stay has not been determined, his daughter said, but he canceled a planned weekend trip to Birmingham, where he was a leader in the fight against racial segregation in the 1950s and worked with the late Martin Luther King Jr. in the cause of civil rights.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Shuttlesworth was beaten by a mob and had his house bombed, although he walked out of the flame-charred house alive and ready to continue the fght.

He moved to Cincinnati in 1961 and retired as pastor of the Greater New Light Baptist Church in 2006.

He was last seen in Alabama in June lending moral support to former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman during the sentencing phase of his case in Montgomery.