Legendary civil rights attorney Fred Gray honored with statue in Alabama

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By Safiyah Riddle

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Legendary attorney Fred Gray — once deemed the “chief counsel” of the Civil Rights Movement by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — was honored with a statue outside the Alabama State Bar Association on Thursday.

“Growing up in Montgomery on the west side, I never thought that one day my image would be in stone to honor my professional career,” the 94-year-old said in an impassioned speech at the statue unveiling in downtown Montgomery.

Gray represented prominent civil rights leaders like King, Rosa Parks and John Lewis throughout the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, allowing activists to intentionally leverage mass arrests and civil disobedience to push for equal rights. Gray also represented participants in Selma-to-Montgomery marches in March 1965, which led to the Voting Rights Act in August later that year.

On Thursday, Gray emphasized his gratitude for the countless other people he represented who aren’t often recognized — including Claudette Colvin, who was arrested in 1955 when she was a teenager after she refused to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus, months before Parks earned worldwide appreciation for doing the same.

“I humbly accept this award for all those unknown heroes and clients whose names never appear in print media, whose faces never appear on television. They are the persons who laid the foundation so that you can honor me here today,” Gray said.

The statue is engraved with the words “lawyers render service,” a phrase coined by Gray that is now championed by the Alabama Bar Association. Gray was the first Black president of the statewide organization in 2002.

Gray’s role in the Civil Rights Movement was the first of many accomplishments in his 70 years practicing law.

In 1970, he became one of Alabama’s first Black state legislators after Reconstruction.

Around the same time, Gray represented Black men who filed suit after the government intentionally let their illnesses go untreated in the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study. His work eventually led to an official apology from President Bill Clinton on the government’s behalf in 1997.

Gray is currently involved in a lawsuit seeking to remove a Confederate monument from a square at the center of mostly Black Tuskegee.

In 2022, Gray received the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Gray, who is an ordained minister, attributed his successful career to his faith in God and the support of his family, many of whom were in the audience as he spoke.

He acknowledged Thursday that the court “system doesn’t always deliver justice” but said that he would continue to keep working “until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a stream.”

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Riddle is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.