Civil rights atty: Injustice remains | dnj.com
Famed civil rights attorney Fred Gray admits much progress has been made
toward ending racial injustices, but said the struggle continues.
Speaking before a small crowd at a lecture at MTSU as part of Black
History Month activities Monday, Gray represented Rosa Parks in
Montgomery, Ala., and was Martin Luther King Jr.'s first civil rights
attorney.
"We still have a ways to go, notwithstanding the progress, the struggle
for equal justice continues," said Gray, who remains a senior partner
for a law practice with offices in Tuskegee and Montgomery, Ala.
Gray explained that he didn't want to be a lawyer early in life, but a
preacher and teacher.
He decided that he would be both, and pursued an education in college
towards that end. But he also noticed racial injustices in his home
town.
"Everything was completely segregated," he said.
"You couldn't get justice. I kept a secret 30 years. I was going to
finish law school and return to Alabama, become an Alabama lawyer and
desegregate everything I could find that was segregated."
He passed the bar in Ohio and Alabama and began practicing law in
Montgomery in 1954.
He spoke of Claudette Colvin, a black 15-year-old high school student
who was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a
segregated bus in Montgomery on March 2, 1955, in violation of local
law. Nine months later, Rosa Parks was also arrested in a similar case
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was organized and began in Dec. 1 , 1955, and
young preacher Martin Luther King Jr. spoke on Dec. 5, 1955.
Gray was the attorney for these moments in history, but gave credit to
other attorneys in his practice and in other parts of the country.
"If there had been no Colvin, there may never have been a Parks," Gray
said. "If there had never been a Parks, there would have been no mass
meeting and Dr. King would not have been introduced to the world. These
were all young people. They didn't start as icons."
Gray pointed to problems that still exist today.
"We've seen a court system not sympathetic to the rights of citizens,"
Gray said. "Minority students are still receiving inferior education and
are returning to one-race schools where students finish last and can't
attend college."
Sophomore Alandrea Cox, a chemistry major from Memphis, told The Daily
News Journal after the speech that rang too close to home.
"There are some family members of mine in Memphis that are going to a
school I went to," Cox said.
"That school is starting to become all African American and the
standards are lower than when I went there."
Gray spoke of the disproportionate number of blacks who are in prison
compared to whites.
"It costs more to incarcerate than to educate and give them good jobs,"
Gray said. "As long as you have economic disparity, you will have more
blacks in prison."
Gray told the audience that if the life and work of Dr. King means
anything, it means the struggle of equal justice continues.
"If we lose it, that means we lose all those who died in vain, including
Dr. King, and our nation loses," he said.
Cox said Gray told it like it is.
"There are a lot of things that need to be done," the MTSU student said.
"He was right on."
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http://www.dnj.com/article/20110215/NEWS01/102150324/1002/Civil+rights+atty++
Injustice+remains%3E
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