Civil rights attorney Fred David Gray Sr. gave a lecture in the Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church auditorium on Jan. 18 as part of Emory University's annual King Week, a series of programs honoring Martin Luther King Jr.
During the speech, Gray spoke about the civil rights movement and gave suggestions for future action, such as noticing the existing problems of inequality, developing plans for fighting for civil rights and being involved in causes for civil rights.
Gray represented Rosa Parks, who was arrested when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man on Dec. 1, 1955, igniting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. He also represented Claudette Colvin, who was arrested for the same charges nine months before Parks.
The next year, Gray filed Browder v. Gayle, which challenged Alabama’s state statutes and Montgomery, Ala. city ordinances requiring segregation on buses. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually heard the case and decided that the statutes were unconstitutional.
Gray, whose legal career spans over 60 years, was later elected to the Alabama House of Representatives in 1970, becoming one of the first two African Americans to serve in the Alabama legislature since Reconstruction.
Acting Associate Professor of African American Studies Crystal Sanders, an event coordinator for this year’s King Week lecture, said she instantly thought to host Gray as a speaker because he is still fighting for racial justice “in his golden years.”
“I wanted someone who could hopefully engage with students and really let them know the triumphs and the trials of really trying to bring about social change,” Sanders said.
During the lecture, Gray said he was motivated to become a civil rights lawyer because of the racial inequality rooted in the establishment of the founding documents of the United States.
Gray added that the Founding Fathers excluded people who looked like him, noting that both the original Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were only concerned with the rights of white men.
“For the past 69 years, I have devoted all my whole life to enforce the rights of African Americans, to redraw the white privileges between the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendment[s] and the Constitution,” Gray said. “I became a lawyer and helped the civil rights movement because I saw problems existing in Montgomery [that] needed to be corrected.”
However, Gray emphasized the recurrence of racial injustice throughout society, stating that racism and segregation still exist in the United States today.
“We need to recognize that racism and any form that is still left in this country is wrong, and it needs to come from the top,” Gray said. “It needs to be from the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, these governmental bodies. The highest institutions need to say any form of racism … is wrong.”
After the event, Abdelaziz Rickard (26C) said that Gray’s speech reminded him of the prevalence of racial discrimination today and the importance of continuing the fight for civil rights.
“Mr. Gray’s presence in the room today is evidence of just how recent the racial and social and economic issues he combated in the civil rights movement are,” Rickard said. “It was really amazing to just get to hear words from him, hear him touch on the fact that in order to make any dream come true, we need to wake up. I couldn’t have said it better myself, and I’m really hopeful to see myself and other people implement what we want to see.”
Gray concluded his speech by emphasizing how the audience should advance civil rights and racial justice.
“Keep pushing, keep going, set the record straight,” Gray said. “Do it a long time and continue to do it until justice is going down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
