Page 27 - ACTL_Sum23

Recorded at the Tuskegee Cultural Center in Tuskegee, Alabama, Gray graciously thanked the College and accepted the Thurgood Marshall Equality and Justice Award with a soul-stirring acceptance speech, delivered by video at the Spring Meeting in Key Biscayne. Even though prerecorded, his remarks moved many to tears and ended with a rousing standing ovation. tin Luther King, Jr. and as a close friend, lawyer, and counselor to the late Honorable John Lewis, the inaugural recipient of the College’s Thurgood Marshall Equality and Justice Award. Fred Gray argued several cases before the United States Supreme Court, including two well known cases which resulted in significant change in Al- abama: Browder v. Gayle, which resulted in the Supreme Court ordering Alabama to abolish segregation in its public buses; and Gomillion v. Lightfoot, the ground-breaking gerrymandering case that he argued and won at the age of twen- ty-five – and that was not even his first appearance before the High Court. He also represented a number of the Freedom Fighters, the participants in the 1965 March on Selma, and many others in his sixty-eight year ca- reer, a career dedicated solely to establishing and working for equality and justice for those for whom it has been denied. Fred Gray is an authentic American hero; he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Biden in 2022. He began by recounting meeting Thurgood Marshall in December of 1955, after he had been retained by the Montgomery Improvement Association to represent the 40,000 African Americans who were refusing to ride the city buses in Montgomery. Future Justice Marshall intro- duced him to others, including the NAACP and the Legal Defense Fund, which have assisted him in his civil rights cases from that time. Thurgood Marshall was co-counsel with Fred in Browder v. Gayle. Fred spoke of being particularly thankful, humbled and ap- preciative of this Award because, growing up in the Wash- ington Park section of Montgomery as a teenager in the SUMMER 2023 JOURNAL 26