2009 Leonard Weinglass In Defense of Civil Liberties Award Recipient
Fred D. Gray
Tuskegee, Alabama
Veteran civil rights attorney Fred D. Gray’s legal career began in the midst of America’s modern-day civil rights movement. With a quiet demeanor, strong determination and secret commitment made in college, he vowed, "to become a lawyer, return to Alabama, and destroy everything segregated I could find."
Gray began his legal career as a sole practitioner, less than a year out of law school, and at age 24, he represented Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus—the action that initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Gray was also Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s first civil rights lawyer. This was the beginning of a legal career that now spans more than 45 years.
Gray has been at the forefront of changing the social fabric of America regarding desegregation; integration; constitutional law; racial discrimination in voting; housing; education; jury service; farm subsidies; medicine and ethics; and generally in improving the national judicial system.
Gray is senior partner at the law firm of Gray, Langford, Sapp, McGowan, Gray & Nathanson, which has offices in Tuskegee and Montgomery. In July 2002, he became the first African-American to hold the position of President of the Alabama Bar Association.
