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I hv not even changed out of my pajamas today and was most definitely not planning on doing a Twitter thread, but after seeing this, I must, because Fred Gray is a national hero. A street renaming is the least he shld get. He deserves the Medal of Freedom. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/25/us/politics/fred-gray-rosa-parks-montgomery.html
I first met Fred Gray in 2013 when I was reporting on school resegregation in Alabama. Gray was more than responsible for meaningful desegregation in Alabama -- there was no desegregation in Alabama before Fred Gray. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/segregation-now/359813/
Nearly a decade after Brown v Board of Education, Alabama was one of just two states in the nation that had not desegregated a single school. Gray would file the lawsuit, Lee v. Macon County, which would desegregate every educational institution in Ala. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/231/743/1444970/
Gray is a reminder of 1) How recent is the history of racial apartheid in this country and 2) How many of the perfecters of our democracy never became household names. Gray was born into a completely apartheid state in Alabama.
He had desires to go to law school, but though Black people paid taxes in Alabama that funded its public colleges, Black people could not attend the state's only public law school at the University of Alabama.
So, Alabama did what many Southern states did to subvert the fact that they were not complying with the "equal" part of the Supreme Court's Plessy doctrine: It paid for the Black students like Gray to attend law school out of state. In this case, Gray went to Case Western.
Now, of course, this was always a cynical ploy by white Southern lawmakers. Most Black kids, stuck in segregated and inferior schools, would never have an opportunity to get into Northern graduate schools, & most couldn't afford to go out of state to do so anyway.
White racist officials were also banking on the fact that those Black folks who somehow managed to get an education outside of Alabama would get those law degrees and never return to the caste system of the South. Boy, were they wrong.
Gray was one of a cadre of brilliant Black folks who somehow managed to twist the illogical laws of segregation to their advantage. He got his law degree and then was determined to come home and destroy segregation everywhere he saw it.
This is how Gray in 1955, at the tender age of 24, right out of law school, took his first case, representing a teenager named Claudette Colvin who had challenged Alabama's segregated buses months before Rosa Parks.
He got this job and later represented the Montgomery Bus Boycott and MLK because he was one of just a handful of Black lawyers in the entire state of Alabama. His work would help open up Black judgeships, public schools and public accommodations across Alabama.
This man, as much as anyone, helped democratize Alabama & helped lay a legal template for fighting apartheid across the South. He was incredibly brave -- he lived right there where the battles were taking place. We should all know his name and he deserves this honor while alive!
I've long thought about what this country owes Black civil rights activists. Most forfeited earning potential, many lost property, opportunities, & of course, lives, fighting to democratize this nation. They're owed national recognition, and I'd argue, financial compensation.
Some folks get excited to meet celebrities. I could care less. The part of my job where I feel the absolute luckiest has been being able to sit with the Black Americans who fought against their own countrymen and women in order to make this country a democracy.
