Chicago civil rights activist Dorothy Tillman arrested in dispute at Alabama hospital

Former Chicago alderman and civil rights activist Dorothy Tillman was arrested and charged Sunday with trespassing at a hospital in her native Montgomery.

The arrest came after a confrontation with officials at Jackson Hospital over access to medical records for Tillman's 86-year-old aunt.

Tillman, 60, had attended a funeral Saturday morning for civil rights icon Johnnie Carr and took her aunt to the hospital that evening. Security staff were called over the records dispute, and they in turn called police, hospital spokesman Peter Frohmader said Sunday. He declined to comment further.

In a statement, Tillman's family said she was "brutalized by Jackson Hospital Security and Montgomery Police officers as she sought medical attention for her ailing aunt."

Tillman said she was arrested and put in "leg chains and shackles."

"It was really something," she said. "They did the real police thing."

Said Montgomery Police Lt. Ron Cook: "To my knowledge at this time, we did not brutalize her in any way."

Tillman was arrested in the early morning and released less than two hours later, police Lt. Ron Cook said. A pastor posted Tillman's $300 bond, and a March 31 court date was set.

Tillman worked as a teenage civil rights activist for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and was appointed to the Chicago City Council in 1984 by Harold Washington, the city's first black mayor. She is known for having fought to make companies doing business with Chicago disclose past ties to slavery.