When Rosa Parks was cited for disorderly conduct for refusing to sit in the back of a Montgomery, Ala., bus, she asked her good friend Fred Gray (background) to represent her. Although Parks was convicted by an all-white jury, Gray went on to become one of the civil rights movement's most prominent legal voices. Photo Credits: Courtesy of Fred Gray

Growing up in the 1940s in Mont­gomery, Ala., Fred Gray saw segregation everywhere he turned. “We were segregated from the cradle to the grave, from the toilet to the train, from the courtroom to the classroom,” he recalls in his memoir “Bus Ride to Justice” (NewSouth Books, 2002). The sense of inequality that surrounded his daily life followed him to Alabama State University, an all-black institution. There, Gray made a private pledge that would become his lifelong mantra: “destroy everything segregated I could find.” It was a vow that would determine the course of the next 55 years of his life.

The state of Alabama had no law schools willing to admit African-Americans in 1951, thereby forcing Gray to apply to schools far from home. He ended up attending Case Western University School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio, where he spent the next three years honing his legal skills and memorizing the entire Alabama Code in preparation for his return home. 

He returned in 1954 and opened his law practice. In those first few months, Gray had so few clients that he often took a leisurely lunch with a close friend who worked as a seamstress at the Montgomery Fair department store a couple of blocks away from his office. His friend was also a secretary for the NAACP, and their conversations often turned to the many problems that blacks were facing in the segregated south. 

For Gray, December 1, 1955, began like any other day. He kept his lunch date with his friend and departed shortly thereafter for an out-of-town appointment. When he returned to Montgomery that night, he was shocked to learn that his gentle friend had been arrested for disorderly conduct. 

It seems that Rosa Parks thought she deserved a place in the front of the bus.

Gray soon went to visit Parks. She asked him to be her attorney, and a slice of history followed. Parks’ arrest touched off an avalanche of historic events in Montgomery. Civil rights leaders organized a boycott of the Montgomery bus system that lasted 381 days and resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that segregation of public transportation was unconstitutional. The episode marked the symbolic beginning of the civil rights movement and the end of Gray’s quiet days as a private practitioner.

Although Parks was found guilty by an all-white jury in Alabama, the trial cemented Gray’s storied place in the civil rights community. Over the next few years, Gray found himself traveling throughout the country fighting segregation in courthouses that had never before seen an African-American attorney. He never strayed too far from Montgomery, though, and by the end of the decade he was called on to defend the civil rights movement’s most important figure. 

Three years after passage of the Civil Rights Act, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested on bogus tax evasion charges and hauled back to Montgomery, ALA. Gray joined the defense team that exonerated King, allowing him to return to Atlanta to continue his epic struggle for racial fairness in America.

Martin Luther King Jr. had become the undisputed leader of the civil rights movement three years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1957—not to mention, the target of numerous assaults on his character and his person. In January 1960, King was targeted again. He was arrested for income-tax evasion and hauled from Atlanta, Ga., back to Montgomery, where he was indicted by a grand jury a few weeks later. Gray was enlisted as one of the attorneys to defend him. This time the jury actually listened, and King was exonerated. He returned to Atlanta and continued his monumental struggle for civil rights. 

“This was the first time in my career as a lawyer on a racial case that an all-white jury returned a verdict in favor of an African-American,” Gray recalls in his memoir. The case reinforced the vital role the legal system could play in righting the wrongs of racism and correcting the inequalities that plague society. 

Today, nearly a half-century later, Gray is still making history in Alabama. In July, he completed his term as the first African-American Presi­dent of the Alabama Bar Associa­tion. Ever mindful of the challenges still unmet in making the U.S. civil justice system truly accessible for people of all races and backgrounds, Gray sat down with Equal Justice Magazine to discuss his completed term and the work that still lies ahead.

Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat to a white passenger led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped spawn the civil rights movement. What do you recall about the time you spent as Rosa Parks’ attorney?

Rosa Parks was a seamstress by occupation and worked with the NAACP both as a secretary of the Montgomery branch and as youth director. She had a great interest in young people. I met her early on when I was in law school. She was a very understanding and sympathetic person. When I came back to Montgomery and started practicing, she was working with young people, and I began working with some of the same young folks. She worked in downtown Montgomery only a block and a half from my office, so we sat and talked almost daily and had our lunches together usually sitting there in the office. At those times, I only had a part-time secretary so sometimes she would keep the office for me. We were extremely good friends.

Gray (right) formed a friendship with Rosa Parks (left) in law school, which continued when Gray set up his Montgomery practice. "She was a very understanding and sympathetic person," says Gray of Parks, an officer with the local NAACP branch who lunched with Gray almost daily at his office before her historic bus ride.

But you can’t think about Rosa Parks without thinking about the [horrible] conditions of the buses in Montgomery and the conditions that many people had suffered similar to what she suffered. Nine months before I represented Rosa Parks, I represented Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old African American girl who did the identical thing that Ms. Parks did. I represented her in juvenile court in Montgomery County. The same people who nine months later came to Ms. Parks’ rescue went to Claudette’s rescue. We met with city officials, bus company officials, and threatened to launch a bus boycott. But we were eventually talked out of it. 

So Claudette’s case really gave moral courage to Ms. Parks and many others. If this 15-year-old girl had the courage to do what she did, Ms. Parks decided that when the opportunity arose, she would do the same thing. When it happened, we were determined that what happened to Claudette would not happen to Ms. Parks. And the rest is history. 

Here we are, almost a half-century later… When you look at the justice system today, do you see a system that is color-blind?

No, I don’t see it as color-blind at all. We still have serious problems in the justice system, and those problems are based on race. I think a whole spectrum of decisions that are being made are being made based on race. You certainly have the economic disparity in a person’s ability to employ adequate counsel. When you see the numbers and see how minorities are not able to move up the ladder and obtain equal justice, we have to realize racism is still a problem. Many people think that it’s no longer a problem. As long as we refuse to recognize the fact that racism is a problem, it will continue. It’s not just going to go away. It’s going to take resources.

There’s also economic discrimination in terms of the average earnings of minorities, as compared to the average earnings of the majority. Or take kids that go to the same school; when they finish, [non-minorities] usually gets good jobs and many of minorities do not. I think if you really look at it, it doesn’t happen by accident. Some of these kids can’t find decent jobs, so they end up in the criminal justice system and we lose them.

What can legal aid do to address the problem?

I think legal aid is doing a fine job in providing services to those people in need. The problem of racism is far greater than legal aid or any one segment of our society can solve. It’s a national problem and we need the resources of the federal government, the state governments, and the local governments to solve it. Once they begin devoting the resources to solve the problem, they will. 

How did you address this issue as President of the Alabama bar?

One solution is to promote diversity within the profession. On our Board of Bar Commission­ers we have a total of 60 members who are elected, but there is only one [Commissioner] of color and three women. As we established a task force and appointed former [Alabama Supreme Court] Justice Hugh Maddox and former Gov. Albert Brewer as co-chairs of the task force, they came up with detailed recommendations to the Board of Bar Commission­ers, and the Commissioners approved them. There would be various programs set up getting kids in elementary school familiar with the legal profession, all the way up through helping them get in and out of college, in and out of law school, pass the bar, and help in finding good jobs. 

They also introduced legislation that would create 10 additional seats on the Board of Bar Commissioners that would be used for the purpose of improving diversity. Now that bill was introduced and got out of committee, but we had a special session of the legislature and it didn’t pass. The current President and Board of Bar Commissioners are committed to see this to fruition.

Many have commented that the U.S. civil justice system is well-conceived but imperfect in practice. Before the civil rights movement, many African-Americans and other minorities were unable to redress grievances. Some would argue that many low-income minorities face a similar plight today. Do you see any parallels between advocating for civil rights in the ’60s and ensuring equal justice today?

Pursuing equal justice is, I think, a continuation of the civil rights struggle. The initial civil rights struggle was a direct attack on overt segregation and destroying the laws that created it. Destroying segregation was a matter of removing the state laws that enforced it and reversing the constitutional positions that supported it. And the problems that we’re still having—and we still have a lot of them, despite our progress—is simply a continuation of trying to remove these barriers that have existed since our people landed here in Jamestown in 1650.

What role do you think attorneys should play in ensuring the judicial process remains available to people of all backgrounds?

I think we should play the same role that lawyers have always played. When we see persons who are wronged, if there is any possible way of redressing those wrongs then we should use our time and our skills and all our efforts to correct them, whether we receive pecuniary gain or not. I think the important thing should be helping people. That’s what the theme of the Alabama Bar was this year—lawyers helping people. We help clients. We help the community. And we help the profession. That continues to be our greatest focus, and in my opinion, it’s what makes the legal profession so great: We render service to people who really need it.

What pro bono work have you done during your long career in private practice?

Half of all the work I do is pro bono. People come in here every day needing legal help. I do it and don’t charge them and don’t keep any record of it. I had someone in here the other day who I helped with a real estate problem. I don’t remember the details of it. It wasn’t a major matter but it was something that they needed, so I just went ahead and did it. I’ve always done that since the first day I started practicing. Most lawyers who live in small towns have occasion to help people with legal problems free of charge. I don’t know if I’ve ever turned anyone away because they couldn’t afford it. That’s the way I do it, and that’s the way I’ve always done it. 

You’ve talked about how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go. Do you think that “equal justice under law” will ever become a reality in this country? What will it take?

I really don’t know. I know it’s going to take a concerted effort. I still feel that part of the reason why we haven’t achieved equal justice is because too many decisions are being made based on race, and that’s wrong. Until this nation decides that we really want to solve the race problem, only then can we truly bring about equal justice.