Fred David Gray

Fred David Gray, a native of Montgomery, Alabama, was born on December 14, 1930. He was a pivotal player in the civil rights movement, with a legal career spanning more than 59 years. One of Gray’s most notable cases was Williams v. Wallace, in which the Court ordered the state of Alabama to protect marchers from Selma to Montgomery after protestors were beaten on Bloody Sunday. Other notable cases include City of Montgomery v. Rosa Parks, State of Alabama v. Martin Luther King, Jr.; and Malone v. University of Alabama. He served as counsel in the case of Pollard, et al v. United States of America, preserving and protecting the rights of persons involved in the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study in 1972.

Gray was educated at the Nashville Christian Institute in Tennessee, earned a Bachelor’s Degree from Alabama State University, and a Juris Doctor degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. His first civil rights case was the representation of Claudette Colvin, a 15-year old African American high school student who refused to give up her seat on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama in March 1955. He was also Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s first civil rights attorney. Gray is admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of Ohio, Supreme Court of Alabama, U. S. District Court for the Middle, Northern & Southern Districts of Alabama, U.S. Court of Appeals for Fifth, Sixth and Eleventh Circuits, and the Supreme Court of the United States.

Many of the cases Gray won may be found in most constitutional law textbooks. These cases include those listed above as well as Aurelia A. Browder, et al v. WA. Gayle, et al (integrated buses in the City of Montgomery); Gomillion v. Lightfoot, (laid the foundation for the concept of “one man, one vote”); William P. Mitchell, et al v. Edgar Johnson, et al (one of the first civil actions brought to remedy systematic exclusion of blacks from jury service); Lee v. Macon County Board of Education (integrated all state institutions of higher learning under the Alabama State Board of Education, and 104 of the then 121 elementary and secondary school systems in the state); NAACP v. Alabama, ex rel. John Patterson, Attorney General, Dixon, et al v. The Alabama State Board of Education, and Franklin v. Auburn University.

One of the first African Americans to serve in the Alabama Legislature since Reconstruction, Gray is also the first African American elected as president of the Alabama State Bar Association (2002-2003). Gray also served as the 43rd president of the National Bar Association. He is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, American College of Trial Lawyers, and International Society of Barristers. He served on many court-appointed committees, including the Merit Selection of Appellate Judges Committee in 2007.

He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Charles Hamilton Houston Medallion of Merit from the Washington Bar Association; Harvard University Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Medallion; American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award, and the Federal Bar Association’s Sarah T. Hughes Civil Rights Award. Gray has also been featured in many publications, radio and television interviews, and serves on many boards and organizations. Gray is the recipient of many honorary degrees.

Gray is an accomplished author. Bus Ride to Justice was released in February 1995, and The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was released in May 1998. He also wrote The Sullivan Case: A Direct Product of the Civil Rights Movement, an article for the Case Western Reserve Law Review.

Gray is the senior partner in the law firm of Gray, Langford, Sapp, McGowan, Gray, Gray & Nathanson PC., with offices in Montgomery and Tuskegee, Alabama. He is the principal founder of the Tuskegee Human and Civil Rights Multicultural Center, in Tuskegee, Alabama, which serves as a memorial to the participants of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and educates the public on the contributions made in the fields of human and civil rights by Americans of African, European, and Native American descent.