By Jim Nieman
President Joe Biden lauded Fred Gray as “one of the most important civil rights lawyers in our history” during a ceremony Thursday before presenting Gray with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Gray, 91, a longtime minister and elder with the noninstrumental Churches of Christ, was honored along with 16 other individuals, including Gabby Giffords, gymnast Simone Biles, and John McCain (posthumously), during the event in the East Room of the White House.
“When Dr. [Martin Luther] King, Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin, John Lewis, and other giants of our history needed a lawyer for their fight for freedom, you know who they called? They called a guy named Fred Gray—that’s who they called,” said Biden, to the applause of those who were gathered.
“Fred’s legal brilliance and strategy desegregated schools and secured the right to vote,” the President continued. “He went on to be elected as one of the first African American Alabama state legislators since Reconstruction. An ordained minister, he imbued a righteous calling that touched the soul of our nation.
“And at 91 years young, he’s still practicing law [more applause] . . . and he’s still keeping the faith in the best of America.”
Moments later, as President Biden placed the medal around Gray’s neck, this citation was read:
When Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, Fred Gray represented her in front of the courtroom, just as he did for Martin Luther King Jr. and countless marchers for justice. Risking his own safety, he helped secure voting rights, desegregate schools, and win other battles for the soul of our nation. A patriarch of a family and a movement, Fred Gray is a lawyer by trade and a preacher at heart who follows the command to hate evil, love good, and establish justice.
Christian Standard featured Fred Gray as our cover story in January 2019. In that article, publisher Jerry Harris wrote: “He’s among the last remaining champions of the earliest days of the civil rights movement; he is the one who brought the heavy weight of the law to bear on that movement, helping to change the nation forever.”
Gray spoke of his mother’s influence in that article; her advice was to “keep Christ first in my life.” He also shared memories of leaving Alabama in 1943 at age 12 to study for ministry at the Nashville Christian Institute. At NCI, he became one of Marshall Keeble’s “boy preachers, [which] gave me the opportunity to travel and meet a lot of people.”
Gray served as a preacher in Churches of Christ while litigating civil rights cases.
“There were some church folks who didn’t think that lawyers could be preachers,” Gray said in our 2019 article. “They didn’t even think [lawyers] could be Christians because they were liars, but I had no problem with it. As a matter of fact, I felt that they complemented each other because whatever I did in the legal profession, I always looked first at what I was doing and whether it would be acceptable with Christ.”
Also honored Thursday with a Presidential Medal of Freedom was Diane Nash, a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Nash worked closely with Martin Luther King, who described her as the “driving spirit in the nonviolent assault on segregation at lunch counters.”
Read “Christian Standard Interview with Fred Gray: Preacher, Lawyer, and Civil Rights Warrior” from January 2019.
Jim Nieman serves as managing editor of Christian Standard.
Paul was a lawyer, so really what Fred Gray did was put Christ first, and is still doing so today. I commend Mr. Gray and believe he is my brother in Christ. Thank you, Brother Gray, from a grateful nation.