Program Directory

 
City Club of Cleveland - Fred D. Gray, Sr., Author and Attorney
City Club of Cleveland
 
 
 
Veteran civil rights attorney Fred 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 twenty-four, he represented Mrs. 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 over forty-five years.
Determined to right the wrongs he found in his native State of Alabama, 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 was born in Montgomery, Alabama, and is a graduate of the Nashville Christian Institute, Nashville, Tennessee; Alabama State University, Montgomery, Alabama; and Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. Currently, he is senior partner at the law firm of Gray, Langford, Sapp, McGowan, Gray & Nathanson; which has law offices in Tuskegee and Montgomery, Alabama. He is currently President-Elect of the Alabama State Bar Association and will become its President in July of 2002, becoming the first African-American to hold the position.

Mr. Gray is the author of two books, Bus Ride to Justice (release Feb. 1995) and Tuskegee Syphillis Study (released May 1998).
October 7, 2011