Rosa Parks was only Fred Gray’s second case. Gray represented Claudette Colvin, a teenager, who nine months earlier had been the first to refuse to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus - and in turn inspired Rosa Parks.
When Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 for violating the segregated seating ordinance, 26-year-old Martin Luther King was chosen to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and 24-year-old Fred Gray became his and the movement’s lawyer. Gray’s legal victory in the federal courts ended the boycott 381 days later.
Fred Gray won scores of civil rights cases in education, voting rights, transportation, and health. He represented the Freedom Riders, the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers, and the victims of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
It was a Republican and former employee of the United States Public Health Service, Peter Buxtun, who blew the whistle on the Tuskegee study. Poor black sharecroppers were led to believe they were being treated, while in reality the study recorded the progression of untreated Syphilis.
In 2009 Buxtun was the events coordinator for the Republican Roundtable. He invited Fred Gray to speak – and allowed TUC Radio to attend and record the event.
UPDATE: Sadly, Peter Buxtun passed away in May of 2024. Fred Gray, now age 94, still maintains a law office in Montgomery, Alabama. I was told that he goes to work almost every day.
DATE RECORDED: July 28, 2009 LOCATION: Republican Roundtable, San Francisco
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