Diversity Corner
| Publication year | 2018 |
| Pages | 34 |
2018 National Conference of Bar Presidents Fellow Award Recipient: Mr. Fred D. Gray
by Katherine Lee Goyette
In early February 2018, I had the opportunity to attend the American Bar Association Mid-Year Meeting in my capacity as President-Elect of the Military Spouse J.D. Network, a military spouse bar association. The National Conference of Bar Presidents awarded their NCBP Fellow Award this year to Mr. Fred D. Gray. He was honored with the NCBP Fellow Award on Friday, February 2, 2018 during the NCBP/NABE/NCBP Joint Awards Luncheon in Vancouver, British Columbia. Though I had heard of Mr. Gray, I did not know the extent of his contributions to civil rights law until the ABA meeting—contributions in the law that are certainly worth sharing.
Mr. Gray a native of Montgomery, Alabama and is most known for his work as a civil rights lawyer during the civil rights movement, alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and E.D. Nixon., as well as an author, lecturer, and state legislator (one of the first African-Americans to serve in the Alabama Legislature since 1870's-era re-construction). Currently, Mr. Gray is a senior partner at Gray, Langford, Sapp, McGowan, Gray & Nathanson, of Tuskegee, Alabama.[1]
During the 1950's, the Alabama state attorney general outlawed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for eight years. Mr. Gray served as legal counsel for the organization during the time it was not allowed to operate. Mr. Gray also represented Rosa Parks after her arrest following a refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus. After her arrest led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Mr. Gray served as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s first civil rights attorney. Over the past half century, Mr. Gray has litigated landmark civil rights cases, including:
● Browder v. Gayle, 142 F.Supp. 707 (M.D. Ala. 1956) (holding that bus segregation is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment);
● Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 (1960)(electoral districts with boundaries drawn to specifically disenfranchise black voters violated the Fifteenth Amendment, later leading to the "one man, one vote" concept);
● William v. Wallace, 240 F.Supp. 100 (M.D. Ala. 1965) (ordering the State of Alabama to protect marchers protesting their inability to vote from Selma to Montgomery[2];
● Mitchell v. Johnson, 250 F.Supp....
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