Brother Fred Gray, Sr. Receives Presidential Medal of Freedom

By Brother Damon Scott

Fred Gray, Sr. is a name that many Omega Men of a certain age and era know very well. While he may not be a household name for others, citizens of the United States certainly know, and have benefited from, much of his life’s work which has had an enormous impact on American law and society.

He was the first civil rights attorney hired by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who once described Gray as “the brilliant young Negro who later became the chief counsel for the protest movement.” His list of clients reads like a veritable Who’s Who of the civil rights era . . . Dr. King, Rosa Parks, Congressman John Lewis, and even organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

He also has represented some lesser known names who were associated with landmark court cases that set legal precedent: James Hood and Vivian Malone, the first two Negro students admitted to the University of Alabama in 1963, despite Governor George Wallace’s attempt to block their entry by physically standing in the doorway of a campus building; and Charles Gomillion who was the named plaintiff in the Supreme Court decision that ruled gerrymandering was unconstitutional, as the district in question was found to be “drawn with the sole purpose of depriving its Negro residents of any political power.”

And that just scratches the surface of the accomplishments in a storied legal career that most recently has been recognized by President Joseph Biden, who awarded Brother Gray with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor. Medal recipients are “individuals who have made an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

In a ceremony on July 7, 2022, in the East Room of the White House, the President commented that “When Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, Fred Gray represented her at the front of the courtroom. Fred’s legal brilliance and strategy desegregated schools and secured the right to vote. An ordained minister, he imbued a righteous calling that touched the soul of our nation.” Accolades like that do not come along every day.

Like so many of his generation, the well-respected civil rights icon came from humble beginnings. Born in late 1930 in Montgomery, Alabama, he was the youngest of five children whose father died when Fred was only two years old. As a teenager, he attended a Christian boarding school where he became somewhat of a boy preacher, assisting the headmaster in traveling the country to visit churches within the Church of Christ nondenominational fellowship. After graduation, he enrolled in what was then called Alabama State College for Negroes, now known as Alabama State University. It was on Alabama State’s campus that young Fred became interested in seeking Omega, and then entered the Lampados Club. He was initiated into Omega in 1949 through Gamma Sigma Chapter. Two years later, he earned his baccalaureate degree in 1951.

Based on his early preaching experience, and the dreams of his mother, Fred had plans to become a minister, which was one of the few professions open to Negro men at the time. However, during his junior year, one of his college professors encouraged him to consider applying to law school, which he eventually decided to do. But there was one major barrier in his path . . . no law school in the State of Alabama would admit Negro students. So Brother Gray began researching universities in the North, and, based on its reputation for having an excellent law school, applied and was accepted into Western Reserve University, now known as Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, Ohio. There, he also could work part time while attending the School of Law. Reflecting on the reason he had to leave the South to being with, he wrote in his memoir, “In September 1951, with barely enough money to cover expenses, I took a segregated train to Cleveland to begin law studies.”

After earning his law degree in 1954, Brother Gray made the decision to move back home to Montgomery, “determined to destroy everything segregated that I could find” as he described it. There, he would need to obtain five character references from experienced local attorneys just to sit for the Alabama bar exam. He recalls that there were fewer than five experienced Black lawyers in the entire state at the time. But he was able to secure support from several white lawyers, including one who was the brother-in-law of a sitting Supreme Court Justice. Once admitted to practice in Alabama, he faced yet another obstacle . . . no white attorney would hire him. With only one other Black lawyer in Montgomery, Brother Gray decided to rent a small office from a Black minister who would serve as an adviser to him, and also referred clients to him.

Wanting to focus his practice on civil rights matters, he became an active member of the local NAACP chapter. In March 1955, Claudette Colvin, a 15 year old girl, was arrested in Montgomery for refusing to relinquish her seat to a white woman on crowded city bus.

Attorney Gray, who at the time was only 24 years old and less than a year out of law school, decided to represent her. That would prove to be a pivotal decision that launched his young career into the civil rights movement.

Nine months later in December, a young woman by the name of Rosa Parks also refused to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus, and her subsequent arrest would eventually lead to the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Young Miss Colvin and five other women became the original plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed by Attorney Gray, who, in preparation for the case, consulted with attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, including Thurgood Marshall prior to his appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. That case, Browder vs. Gayle, ultimately ended segregation on Montgomery city buses based on the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the 14th Amendment to United States Constitution.

While the Montgomery bus boycott was being waged, another incident occurred in Alabama that also would have an impact on Brother Gray’s career. In 1956, the Attorney General for the state of Alabama effectively prohibited the NAACP from operating in the state. Attorney Gray provided legal counsel to the organization for several years, filing multiple cases in both state and federal courts, until the NAACP was permitted to operate in Alabama. He also protected the freedom of association guaranteed by the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution by preventing Alabama officials from obtaining the membership list of the NAACP.

Beginning in the early 1960s, Gray start-

ed representing young college students who were arrested for staging and participating in sit-in demonstrations to protest segregated lunch counters. And that eventually led to his representation of young students, both Black and white, who became known as “freedom riders” because they demonstrated by riding buses throughout the South to protest segregation on buses and in terminals.

Some of his other noteworthy civil rights cases include Dixon vs. Alabama, which established due process rights for students at public universities in 1961; and Gomillion vs. Lightfoot, which in 1962 prevented the city of Tuskegee from implementing an electoral redistricting plan that excluded, discriminated against, and ultimately disenfranchised residents in Negro neighborhoods, violating the 15th Amendment to United States Constitution. That Supreme Court decision would help lay the groundwork for the legal principle of “one man, one vote,” that governs redistricting after every decennial census. The case also derailed the efforts of other jurisdictions around the country attempting to deny Negroes the right to vote.

In 1963, Gray was the lead attorney in a class action suit filed against Auburn University, which at the time was segregated. The plaintiff was successful and Auburn was forced to desegregate. That same year, Gray filed another suit against the Macon County Board of Education, which eventually led to a court order requiring all Alabama public schools to desegregate. Attorney Gray would eventually file successful lawsuits that helped to desegregate over 100 local school districts, and public colleges and universities, in the State of Alabama.

Two years later, Fred Gray led the charge on another seminal legal battle that would have repercussions for generations to come. In 1965, Negro Alabamians were denied the right to vote and had begun to organize protests and marches in an effort to end that particular form of discrimination. On Sunday, March 7th, civil rights activists, organized by Dr. King, future Atlanta Mayor and U.S. Ambassador Andrew Young, Rev. Hosea Williams, and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) co-founder and future congressman John Lewis, led citizens who could not vote on a march from historic Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma; their intended destination was 50 miles east to the state capital in Montgomery.

However, once the marchers crossed the Alabama River and reached the south side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were met by police with attack dogs and state troopers on horseback wielding tear gas and clubs who beat and gassed them and commanded the unleashed dogs to attach the unarmed citizens. The incident, which became known as “Bloody Sunday,” is one of the worst attacks on private citizens simply attempting to exercise their right to vote during the civil rights movement.

That attack would lead march organizers to enlist the legal counsel of Attorney Gray, who filed suit in district court against Alabama Governor Wallace. Williams vs. Wallace, which was ultimately successful, protected the marchers’ right to assemble and peacefully walk along the public highway from Selma to Montgomery, free from harassment,

threat, interference, or arrest from law enforcement or any state official, such that they would be able to petition their state government for redress of grievances. Those pivotal marches led to the passage by Congress, and signing by President Lyndon B. Johnson, of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Another seminal case with Attorney Gray as counsel was Mitchell vs. Johnson, filed in 1966, to remedy systematic exclusion, limitation, and restriction of qualified Negroes, based solely on their race, from service on civil and criminal juries in Macon County, Alabama. Were it not for this litigation, which was decided in favor of Gray’s plaintiffs, juries might have looked much differently for years to come in the state.

Brother Gray also represented litigants in a class action suit concerning another infamous and controversial incident in American history, the Tuskegee Experiment. This egregious violation of public trust by the federal government was a study conducted to observe the effects of untreated syphilis in almost 400 rural Black men for approximately 40 years dating back to the Great Depression. During that period, more than 100 of the patients died, either directly from, or due to complications caused by, the disease. It additionally infected the wives of more than three dozen of the patients, some of whom also gave birth to infected babies.

Once the experiment was uncovered, Gray filed suit in Pollard vs. U.S. Public Health Service on behalf of more than 70 of the men who were subjects and still alive.

The settlement awarded $10 million and medical treatment to the men and their families who were infected. The discovery of the incident and subsequent legal action led to the enactment of federal laws and regulations requiring ethical standards and protection of human subjects in medical experiments and studies. Those protections might not exist today were it not for the legal prowess of Attorney Fred Gray.

As a result of his advocacy on behalf of the Tuskegee victims, Brother Gray helped to establish the Tuskegee Human and Civil Rights Multicultural Center, which serves as a memorial to those Black men who perished because of the Experiment. The Center also educates the public on the contributions made in the field of human and civil rights by Native Americans, and Americans of African and European descent.

In 1970, Gray decided to try his hand at politics. It resulted in him becoming one of the first two African Americans elected to the Alabama state legislature since Reconstruction. Quite fittingly, his district included Tuskegee and parts of Macon County, both of which were jurisdictions subject to litigation filed by Gray in an effort to protect and expand the civil rights of their residents. He represented the district in the Alabama legislature until 1974.

Brother Gray has received numerous awards and honors throughout his career of “firsts.” He served as the president of the National Bar Association in 1985, and later became the first African American president of the Alabama Bar Association in 2002. In 2004, he received the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award, and also Harvard University Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Medallion, which is named after the first general counsel of the NAACP and former dean of Howard University School of Law who mentored Thurgood Marshall when he was a Howard Law student.

In 2021, the city of Montgomery, Gray’s birthplace, honored him by renaming the street where he grew up, “W. Fred D. Gray Avenue.” It was previously named W. Jefferson Davis Avenue, after slave owner and president of the Confederacy during the Civil War. The name change was proposed by the first African American mayor of Montgomery, Brother Steven Reed (1998 Theta Alpha). And in 2022, both the University of Alabama

School of Law and Princeton University awarded Gray honorary doctorate degrees.

Brother Gray also has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Omega Psi Phi.

The 2022 recipient of the Omega Lifetime Achievement Award is Congressman Brother James Clyburn, the Majority Whip for the United States House of Representatives. In his acceptance speech for the award, he paid homage to Brother Gray. “This is special to be getting an award that also has been given to Fred Gray; I know Fred Gray very well, I know him from the 60s. Just several days ago, the President of the United States gave Fred Gray the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And for me to be getting an award that he has gotten . . . is just outstanding.”

Today, at the age of 91, Fred Gray continues the practice of law, serving as senior partner in his own firm, Gray, Langford, Sapp, McGowan, Gray, and Nathanson, based in Tuskegee, where he lives with his wife, Carol Porter Gray. He also is an author, having written Bus Ride to Justice: The Life and Works of Fred Gray, an autobiography about his life and career as legal counsel at the forefront of the American civil rights movement. Upon reading it, President Barack Obama wrote in a letter to Gray that stated in part, “Today, we stand on the shoulders of giants who helped move us toward a more perfect Union, and I appreciate you sharing your story.”

To say the least, Attorney Fred Gray has had a storied and very consequential legal career. It is one that has impacted and been connected to the NAACP, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., desegregating public schools and universities, gerrymandering and one man one vote, Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, lunch counter sit-ins, freedom riders, the march from Selma to Montgomery over the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, expanding access to jury service, the Tuskegee Experiment, and now, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Accordingly, the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. salutes and congratulates our Brother, Fred Gray, Sr. (1949 Gamma Sigma), a civil rights pioneer, advocate, giant, and icon!

Lest We Forget

43rd Grand Conclave The Oracle - March 1957

Photo: Conclave Speakers With better organization, less politics and other distractions, more time was available at the grand conclave for speeches. There were a number of them and all were really outstanding. Brother Fred Gray, right center, Montgomery, AL—attorney for the bus boycotters—gives out more information to J. T. Brooks, Montgomery; Carl Earles. Los Angeles, grand counselor and Ernest Reeves, Institute, W. Va., Second Vice Grand Basileus, all national officers

Baltimore, MD --Five major addresses were featured on the program of the 43rd Annual Grand Conclave held here, December 27-30, The speakers included: Brother James M. Nabrit, professor of Law and secretary of Howard University, Washington, D. C.; Brother Fred Gray, Montgomery, Ala.; attorney for the defendants in the famed Alabama bus boycott; Brother Warmoth T. Gibbs, president of the Agricultural and Technical College, Greensboro, N. C.; Brother Walter N. Ridley, head. Department of Psychology, Virginia State College, Petersburg, and Brother Edgar A. Love, Baltimore. Bishop of the Methodist Church and founder of the fraternity.

Brother Fred Gray On "The Southern Viewpoint on Segregation" Circa. December 1956 segregation are afraid to speak.

BrotherFred Gray, attorney for defendants in the celebrated Montgomery, AL. bus boycott case, delivered one of the principal Conclave addresses on, "The Southern Viewpoint on Segregation".

He said, "As a result of the Southern tradition, most white southerners have come to believe deeply, sincerely and completely that they have a God-given right to control colored people." Brother Gray who was the center of a storm that brewed in his state when he was found ineligible for the military draft, gave a fiery, but optimistic, view of the racial situation in the deep South.

"At this crucial time in American history," he said, "I believe that there is a great deal of soul searching going on, and that ultimately means that something constructive can and will be done.

"However," he said, "One of the tragedies of the present situation is that in many parts of the South the people of both races who want to discuss the question of justice and "The white man is afraid to say anything even though he knows the colored people are right and that segregation is morally and legally wrong. "He is afraid because of what other die hard, unrealistic whites who are attempting to roll back time a hundred years may say and do to him.

"The segregationist", Bro. Gray said, "is disturbed because he is finally discovering that the colored people will no longer accept the position of second class citizens." Bro. Gray said that the recent laws which some Southern states are passing to circumvent integration "just make us more determined."

"They can legislate until dooms day," he said strongly, “But none of these bills will stop the freedom train as it moves toward the distant station of full integration.”

"We may slow down for a crossing, or it may be necessary for us to reduce our speed so that we can receive the correct signal given by the flagman, but the wrecking crew is at work, and God rides the train with us, and we are going to arrive into the station of full integration in due time."