Fred Gray kept his personal promise, took the protests to the courtroom and won again and again – Montgomery Advertiser

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In July 1963, Wendell Gunn appeared in the registrars office of Florence State College requesting an application from a bewildered secretary.

He was confused, too.

Gunn had seen James Hood and Vivian Malone admitted to University of Alabama the previous month. Autherine Lucy had been admitted in 1956. He thought the matter of Black folks attending white schools had been formally settled.

It had not.Gunn was taken to an office where the colleges president and dean awaited him.

The dean stared at me with those steely eyes and said, Who sent you here?

Gunn received his application with a warning from the president. He could not admit him without a federal court order. His mother phoned civil rights attorney Fred Gray.

He asked me if I really wanted to go. After saying we couldn't afford [litigation], he said, That's not what I asked you, Gunn recalled with a laugh. Gray sued and Gunn enrolled.

Civil Rights Attorney Fred Gray talks about representing Alabama State University students that were expelled for taking part in the 1960 lunch counter sit-in in Montgomery, during a press conference at the ASU campus in Montgomery, Ala., on Monday February 25, 2019. (Photo: Mickey Welsh / Advertiser)

The case was one of many for Gray. Throughout his career Gray filed suits that desegregated 105 of the 119 school systems in the state including everything under the control of the State Board of Education, which followed from Lee v. Macon. The students who had gained admission to UA in 56 and 63? Gray represented them, too.

After Gov. John Patterson ordered the president of the historically Black university, then Alabama State College, to expel students who led a sit-in demonstration in 1960, Gray won their reinstatement in St. John v. Dixon. The case enshrined all higher education students right to due process.

More: 'Unwilling to just wait': Alabama State sit-in brought change, cost protesting students dearly

As the civil rights attorney approaches 90 this December, Gunn is leading a renewed effort to honor Graywith the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among the highest awards granted civilians.

If anybody deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Fred does, said Gunn.

For Gray, it began with a simple declaration: destroy everything segregated.

But he couldnt let it slip.

Black lawyers were hard to find when he graduated from Alabama State in 1951. It was why he had changed course, decided against a career as a preacher and instead enrolled at a law school in Cleveland. He had no choice but to leave the South.

African Americans were barred from white Southern schools. But he would return to Montgomery to complete his secret pledge in a place some proudly called the cradle of the Confederacy, no less by using the law to reclaim the rights denied to Black people through its unjust application.

Now, for a black boy in his upper teens to even think about that in Alabama was almost unheard of in the 1940s and 1950s. Nevertheless, that's the commitment I made to myself, Gray said in a 2014 interview at his alma mater Case Western Reserve University.

Civil Rights Attorney Fred Gray discusses his work in the civil rights movement at his offices in Tuskegee, Ala. on Tuesday February 7, 2017. (Photo: Mickey Welsh / Advertiser)

What proceeded was a legal career that has spanned more than half a century and yielded countless civil rights suits that have profoundly impacted American democracy. He played a significant role in four landmark Supreme Court cases in his first 10 years of practice, an outrageous feat rulings university students now study as case law.

How wide is the scope of litigation that Gray touched? If it had to do with segregation or civil rights in Alabama between the mid-1950s and today, Gray likely had a hand in it.

It's just astounding, said Jonathan Entin, a constitutional expert and professor emeritus of law at Case Reserve Western. He was involved in virtually every important civil rights case in Alabama for decades.

Gray took on these high-profile cases at a time when overt racial animus drove public policy and clotted even cordial attempts at race relations. There were signals that communicated the nature of this work: disturbing late-night calls; bomb threats; a draft letter.

He was there with his life, his body and his family on the line. He showed an extraordinary amount of courage that even today I have trouble getting my head around, said Entin.

Fresh out of law school in 1954, Grays first major client was Rosa Parks after her arrest off a city bus on Dec. 1, 1955. He became her lawyer at the age of 24. He would go on to represent the Montgomery Improvement Association, which launched the bus boycott that kicked off a national movement. Soon after, he became the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.s private counsel.

When the New York Times refused to retract a 1960s advertisement soliciting donations for Kings defense in a perjury trial brought by the state, Montgomerys public safety commissioner, citing some minor factual inaccuracies, sued them for libel. He sued the local Black ministers who were mentioned in the ad, too. Gray represented the clergymen.

Fred Gray(Photo: Advertiser file)

I think that New York Times against Sullivan is probably the greatest of all First Amendment cases in American history. That case made clear that ordinary citizens, we have a right to criticize the government without being harassed by the government. The nation would look very different today if it had come out the other way, said Entin.

After John Lewis and civil rights foot soldiers were beaten in Selma on Bloody Sunday in 1965, it was Gray who filed the federal lawsuit that allowed the march to Montgomery to take place, and required the state to protect the marchers from attacks by hostile white spectators.

It's extraordinary, said Entin. You couldnt make up a story like this.

In NAACP v. Alabama, he blocked the states attempt to compel the organization to furnish its membership lists, a move that wouldve undoubtedly put its associates in grave danger; it became a landmark freedom of association case that enshrined the right of assembly as essential to first amendment free speech.

Gray worked with distinguished lawyers such as Constance Baker Motley, Robert Carter, Arthur Shores and Clifford Durr. Together, they argued cases before jurists and juries who were disinclined to agree with them.

They believed at some point these jurors would be more faithful to the Constitution of the United States than the segregation laws of the South. That was a big leap of faith, said Derryn Moten, chair of history and political science at Alabama State University.

The effort to secure Grays Medal of Freedom nomination has been in progress since President Obamas first term in 2008. Why it hasnt yet been successful is as unclear as the process itself, which requires a combination of persistence, political savvy and sheer luck.

So far letters of recommendation have come from Secretary of State John Merrill and Bryan Fair, an Alabama law professor who sits on the board of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Fred Gray, left, and U. S. Rep. John Lewis talk after the 2011 Alabama Academy of Honor ceremonies in the old House chamber of the Alabama Capitol on Monday, Oct. 17, 2011, in downtown Montgomery, Ala.. (Montgomery Advertiser, Lloyd Gallman)(Photo: MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER, Advertiser file)

Gunn, the former student Gray secured admission to Florence State, has been working to seek national recognition of his legacy since late 2016. He said he intends do the impossible, secure a nomination for the medal from the Alabama Republican Congressional delegation. And after that, a resolution recommending Grays nomination from the state Legislature.

Grays mission has had personal effects. His son, Stanley Gray, attended UA Law School, the college his father was barred from. Alabama preferred to share the costs of Fred Grays out-of-state tuition rather than admit him to any of its white schools. It was an abundant investment.

Stanley Gray remembers examining the actual maps his father used as a lawyer in the Gomillion v. Lightfoot case to illustrate how officials had attempted to gerrymander Tuskegees majority-Black electoral district to suppress its political power. One justice called the shape an uncouth twenty-eight-sided figure.

One of the things that really impressed me about the work of my father, said Stanley Gray, is that he worked on cases that affected the everyday lives of individuals. Where someone goes to school, whether someone is able to vote, whether or not they're able to take public transportation in an equal way.

The man who set out on a secret mission almost 70 years ago is still at it. He takes cases out of his second office in Tuskegee.

Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Safiya Charlesat (334) 240-0121or SCharles@gannett.com

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Fred Gray kept his personal promise, took the protests to the courtroom and won again and again - Montgomery Advertiser