Staff Report
Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, Inc. is proud to announce the annual Brewer-Torbert Public Service Award Luncheon to be held on Thursday, April 10. Alabama Appleseed will present its award to nationally recognized civil rights attorney Fred David Gray at a noontime luncheon at The Harbert Center in Birmingham, Ala. The featured award presentation speaker will be Bryan Stevenson, Founder and Executive Director, of the Equal Justice Initiative. The media is invited to attend.
The Brewer-Torbert Public Service Award is given annually to an individual in Alabama who has demonstrated a substantial commitment to public service. Fred Gray is a person of great courage and commitment whose legal career in civil rights in Alabama spans six decades and has been instrumental in achieving justice and equality for African Americans everywhere.
Fred Gray, nationally recognized civil rights attorney, former Alabama State Bar President and one of the first African Americans to serve in the Alabama Legislature since Reconstruction, is Alabama Appleseed’s 2014 Brewer/Tolbert Public Service Award recipient. Raised in a humble Montgomery neighborhood and unable to attend law school in Alabama he obtained his law degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and returned to his home state determined to work toward ending discrimination.
Fred Gray has produced a noble and distinguished legal career achieving national distinction for representing Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Montgomery Bus Boycott and later representing victims of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. He also served as counsel in numerous civil rights cases that ended discrimination in transportation, voting, education, and peaceful assembly.
Spanning almost six decades, Fred Gray’s legal career in civil rights in Alabama has been instrumental in achieving justice and equality for African Americans everywhere.
He did just that and in the process produced a noble and distinguished legal career achieving national distinction for his representation of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Montgomery Bus Boycott and later his representation of the victims of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Throughout his legal career he has served as counsel in numerous civil rights cases that ended discrimination in transportation, voting, education, and peaceful assembly.
Fred Gray is currently the senior managing shareholder in the law firm of Gray, Langford, Sapp, McGowan, Gray and Nathanson with offices in Montgomery and Tuskegee.
Alabama Appleseed is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest legal advocacy organization. We work for systemic policy reforms that achieve justice and fairness for low-income, unrepresented and other vulnerable populations that usually have little, or no, voice in developing or changing policies that impact their lives.
