Alabama civil rights attorney Fred Gray will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, President Joe Biden announced today.
Gray, 91, built his legendary career at the forefront of battles to end segregation, representing Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin, the victims of the Tuskegee syphilis study, the NAACP, among many others. Parks called Gray “the chief counsel for the protest movement.”
Gray, a Montgomery native, represented the plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the case that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 1956 outlawing segregation on city buses, the case growing out of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. He litigated other landmark cases on school desegregation and racial gerrymandering of political districts.
Gray was one of 17 winners of the Medal of Freedom announced by the president today. The award is presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal public or private endeavors, according to a press release from the White House.
The awards will be presented at the White House on July 7.
U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, had urged Biden to choose Gray for the Medal of Freedom last year.
“His litigation in groundbreaking cases like Browder v. Gayle can be seen as not only directly responsible for integrating institutions in Alabama, but all across America,” the congresswoman wrote in a letter to Biden. “An iconic figure and pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement, I can think of few people more deserving of the Presidential Medal of Freedom than attorney Fred Gray.”
This story will be updated.
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Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., left, and Tuskegee attorney Fred Gray break into laughter at a joke told by a speaker at a political rally in Tuskegee, Alabama, April 29, 1966. King was on a whistle-stop tour through Alabama to encourage block-voting by blacks in the May 3 Alabama primary. Gray, who represented King as his attorney, was a candidate for a seat in the Alabama House of Representatives at the time. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell)ASSOCIATED PRESS
