Birmingham, AL - Civil Rights pioneer James Armstrong has died at the age of 86. The Birmingham barber and Foot Soldier will be remembered for helping to integrate Birmingham City Schools. Armstrong was a Civil Rights Institute volunteer and board member for many years, and every year he would attend the march in Selma. ABC33/40 first talked to James Armstrong in 2001 about the Civil Rights Movement.

"I had all kinds of threats night and day," he told reporter Kevyn Stewart, "and I had to have guards protect me."

The barber who cut Martin Luther King, Jr's hair would tell his story to us again in 2004.

"Reverend Shuttlesworth was our leader in Birmingham. So we was breaking down segregation in lunch counters and whatever was discriminating. So when we got down to the school, he called for volunteers."

Nelson Mauldin (Montgomery barber for Dr. King), James Armstrong, and Zariff (the Presidential barber.)  Fisher-Hall says Zariff came to the BCRI back in the summer to meet the two barbers who cut Dr. King's hair.

He answered that call in 1957, filing a lawsuit to allow his children to integrate Birmingham City Schools. It took six years to get a ruling, but Armstrong won, and his younger sons Dwight And Floyd enrolled in Graymont Elementary a day later. It was an historic event that left a lasting legacy. And In 2008, after another historic event, Armstrong sat down with ABC33/40's Roy Hobbs one last time this time to discuss the nation's first African-American presidential candidate, a candidate who would go on to become the first African American President. That's something so many others like Dr. King had only dreamed of.

"When he said, 'I may not get there with you. I may not get there with you.' He said that real loud, 'but you will get to the Promised Land,'" Armstrong said recalling Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" Speech. Roy hobbs asked him then, "'Have we got to The Promise Land?"

"That's a good sign right there was last night," he said with a smile. "That's the way I see it."

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