Historical Marker unveiling honoring Civil Rights Attorney Bro. Fred Gray

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PRESS RELEASE FROM ALABAMA TOURISM DEPARTMENT
AND THE TUSKEGEE HISTORY CENTER
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Historical Marker Ceremony for Civil Rights Attorney (Bro.) Fred D. Gray
Unveiling on Rosa Parks’ Birthday, February 4, 2015 at Noon -

WHAT: Historical Marker unveiling honoring Civil Rights Attorney Fred Gray.
WHEN: Feb. 4 at Noon
WHERE: Dexter Avenue and Hull Street in downtown Montgomery.

A historic marker will be unveiled February 4 at noon to illuminate key events in the life of one of Montgomery’s most prominent natives, civil rights attorney and activist, Fred D. Gray. Gray is being immortalized on a historic plaque to be erected on Dexter Avenue in downtown Montgomery at the southwest corner of Dexter Avenue and Hull Street, where Gray once had law offices. The site is now home to the Heflin-Tolbert Judicial Building.

The unveiling is scheduled on the birthday of Rosa Parks, one of Gray’s most famous clients. In 1955 Gray represented Parks and Claudette Colvin, who were both charged with disorderly conduct for refusing to give up their seats on Montgomery city buses to white passengers. The action of Colvin and Parks led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955.

The marker will remind citizens and tourists of other memorable cases in Gray’s career. These cases include seeking protection for protesters in the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march and filing a suit on behalf of survivors of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in which the federal government withheld treatment from hundreds of African American males, many suffering from syphilis.

Sponsored by the Alabama Tourism Department and the Tuskegee History Center.
Media contact: Richard Bailey, 334-224-2346; scholarship111@bellsouth.net