Fred David Gray, Civil Rights Attorney and Legislator -- Tuskegee AL - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on Waymarking.com

This state historic marker stands across W Montgomery St from Tuskegee Institute, in a former Savings and Loan building where Fred David Gray, noted Civil Rights Attorney and Legislator, had an office.

Gray's list of clients reads like a Who's Who of the American Civil Rights era, but he is also famed for a filing a landmark lawsuit that exposed the US Government's disgraceful and unethical experiments on black men with syphilis, who were lied to about their medical care and left untreated for decades while the Government studied the effects of untreated syphilis on them.

In 1970, Gray and Thomas Reed became the first African-American legislators elected to the Alabama Legislature since Reconstruction ended in 1877.

The marker reads as follows:

"[front]

Born in 1930 in Montgomery, Gray was among the foremost civil rights attorneys of the 20th century. Forced by segregation to leave Alabama to attend law school, he vowed to return and "destroy everything segregated I could find." Over a six-decade career, his cases desegregated transportation, education. housing, law enforcement, public accommodations, and government. In the U.S. Supreme Court, Browder v. Gayle won the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Gomillion v. Lightfoot ended gerrymandering of Tuskegee and set the stage for "one man, one vote." Lee v. Macon desegregated all Alabama public elementary and secondary schools. Dixon v. Alabama extended the rights of college students. His clients included Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Vivian Malone, Harold Franklin, Freedom Riders, Selma-to-Montgomery marchers, and Tuskegee Syphilis Study victims. In 1970, he and Thomas Reed were the first African Americans since Reconstruction elected to the Alabama Legislature. In 2002, he was the first African American president of the Alabama Bar Association.

(continued on other side)

[back]

Advocate for Victims and History

(continued from other side)

Gray represented the 623 victims of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which the U.S. Public Health Service experimented from 1932-1972 on the effects of untreated syphilis, using African American men from rural Macon County as unwitting research subjects. Available medical treatment was withheld from the men in the study. In 1975, Gray negotiated a settlement for the victims and their survivors. In 1997, President Bill Clinton apologized on behalf of the nation to survivors in a White House ceremony during which he called Gray "a great friend of freedom" and thanked him "for fighting this long battle all these long years." That same year Gray initiated – in honor of the victims and in memory of Bernice Hill Gray – the Tuskegee Human and Civil Rights Multicultural Center, a museum dedicated to the history of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and to the roles of the Native, European and African American peoples who have lived in what is now Macon County, Alabama."

Visit Instructions:
To visit a waymark in this category, use a handheld GPS receiver to physically visit the waymark. Upload an original photo of the waymark, keeping your GPSr and yourself out of the photo. Write additional information about the site to contribute to the quality and depth of the waymark. Cite any sources and avoid plagiarism.

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log   07/29/2017 Benchmark Blasterz visited it