Concord Monitor: “Those words could describe the Alabama lawyer Fred Gray. On my recent trip south organized by the Nation Magazine, our group had an opportunity to meet with Attorney Gray in Tuskegee. He is now 93. He became a lawyer in the 1950s when there were hardly any African Americans able to be in that role. Back then it was very dangerous to be a Black lawyer in the South, especially one devoted to civil rights.
Gray has had a remarkable career. He grew up in segregation, opened his law office in 1954 and his early goal was “to destroy everything segregated I could find.”
Dr. King once called Gray “chief counsel of the protest movement.” For years, he was counsel to both Dr. King and Rosa Parks whenever they needed legal help. Along with a university professor, Jo Ann Robinson, Gray planned the Montgomery Bus Boycott. He became a lawyer for 15-year-old Claudette Colvin and for Rosa Parks. Both were arrested for refusing to obey a bus driver’s orders to relinquish their bus seat…
In Gray’s varied and effective efforts to end segregation, it must be noted he was a lawyer for the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers on Bloody Sunday in 1965. The publicity from that march led directly to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Gray also successfully litigated the systematic exclusion of Black people from jury service and his cases ended up integrating all state institutions of higher learning in Alabama. On July 7, 2022, President Biden awarded Fred Gray the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”