Fred Gray – Civil Rights Attorney for Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Black History Month 2025
TUC Archive: Fred Gray, just out of law school, made a commitment to destroy everything segregated in his home state of Alabama Rosa Parks was only Fred Gray’s second case. Gray represented Claudette Colvin, a teenager, who nine months earlier had been the first to refuse to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus – and in turn inspired Rosa Parks.
When Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 for violating the segregated seating ordinance, 26-year-old Martin Luther King was chosen to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and 24-year-old Fred Gray became his and the movement’s lawyer. Gray’s legal victory in the federal courts ended the boycott 381 days later.
Fred Gray won scores of civil rights cases in education, voting rights, [ . . . ]
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