Fred D. Gray, Esquire

Fred D. Gray is the Senior Managing Partner of the law firm of Gray, Langford, Sapp, McGowan, Gray, Gray & Nathanson, P.C., with offices in both Montgomery and Tuskegee.  He is a pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement, a native of Montgomery, Alabama and resides in Tuskegee with his lovely wife Carol. At the age of 93 he continues to practice law since 1954, specializing in civil rights and other civil litigation.

He has been a cooperating attorney with the NAACP and Legal Defense Fund Inc. since 1956. He represented many civil rights icons and organizations including the victims of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin, Congressman John Lewis, the Freedom Riders and Walkers, Selma to Montgomery Marchers, NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and others. 

Attorney Gray is the recipient of many honorary degrees and awards. On July 7, 2022, President Joseph Biden awarded Mr. Gray the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the highest award a civilian can receive. In 2023, he received the American Bar Association’s Medal, which is its highest award given and was also awarded the Legal Defense Fund’s Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award.  He has served as president of the National Bar Association and Alabama Bar Association.

He is president of the Tuskegee Human & Civil Rights Multicultural Center a non-profit corporation, which is a memorial to the participants in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and educates the public on the contributions made in the fields of human and civil rights by various ethnic groups.  Its founding was announced by Herman Shaw, a participant, at the White House Apology on May 16, 1997 made by President Clinton to the participants. Visit the Center’s website at www.tuskegeecenter.org.

During his 69-year legal career Attorney Gray filed suits to end discrimination in public transportation, voting rights, rights of members in non-profit organizations, right to public education without discrimination from kindergarten to graduate schools, right of students to obtain an education and not be expelled without a hearing, equal access to farm subsidies, health care, the right to serve on civil juries and many others.

Mr. Gray’s life mission has been to destroy racial segregation wherever he finds it, and that is what he continues to do.