Fred Gray

Scholar

With a quiet demeanor, strong determination and secret commitment made in college, Fred Gray 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,  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 55 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.

Fred David Gray, a native of Montgomery, Alabama and who lives in Tuskegee is in the general practice of law specializing in civil rights litigation. He was educated at the Nashville Christian Institute, in Nashville; Alabama State University and Case Western Reserve University. He is the senior partner in the law firm of Gray, Langford, Sapp, McGowan, Gray, Gray & NathansonP.C., with offices in Montgomery and Tuskegee, Alabama.

Heis admitted to practice in the following Courts:  Supreme Court of Ohio, Supreme Court of Alabama, and U. S. District Court for the Middle, Northern & Southern Districts of Alabama, Supreme Court of the United States, and U. S. Court of Appeals for Fifth, Sixth and Eleventh Circuits.

Certain of his notable cases include City of Montgomery v. Rosa Parks; State of Alabama   v. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Many others may be found in most constitutional law textbooks including, but not limited to: Aurelia A. Browder, et al v. W.A. Gayle, et al (integrated the buses in the City of Montgomery); Gomillion v. Lightfoot, (laid the foundation for the concept of “one man one vote”); NAACPv. Alabama, ex rel. John Patterson, Attorney General;  Dixon, et alv. The Alabama State Board of Education; Williams v. Wallace (Court ordered State of Alabamatoprotectmarchers from Selma to Montgomery after being beaten on Bloody Sunday); William P. Mitchell, et alv. 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 schools systems in the state); Malone v. University of Alabama; Franklin v. Auburn University. He was counsel in preserving and protecting the rights of persons involved in the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study in 1972, the case of Pollard, et al v. United States of America.