Institute Named for Lawyer Fred D. Gray

Fred D. Gray is a lawyer with great vision. As a college student riding segregated buses across Montgomery, Alabama, in 1950 he could envision an end to segregation. An end he would later help speed with his work during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, his representation of Rosa Parks, and his work as lead counsel in Browder v. Gayle, the case that integrated the Montgomery city bus system.

Gray’s vision served him well as he argued and won landmark civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court four times before he was 30 years of age and as he represented clients like Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin, John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr. and the victims of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis study.

“When I saw the treatment of our people on the Montgomery buses,” Gray says, “I made a personal commitment to finish college, graduate from law school, and return to Alabama and destroy everything segregated I could find.” He points to his work with the Montgomery Improvement Association and his partnerships with the NAACP and Thurgood Marshall as examples of the help he needed to fulfill his commitment.

“There was a problem, and I just thought that if I could help solve the problem then I had a responsibility to do the work.”

For many of his civil rights clients, he says, “the matter of pay was never a consideration.” Gray was known to never turn down a client with a good cause, doing many cases pro bono.

Filing Suit Against Lipscomb

Gray came to Nashville in October 1942 as an 11-year-old to attend the Nashville Christian Institute (NCI), an all-black boarding school associated with churches of Christ. Despite sharing a faith heritage, there was little contact between NCI and David Lipscomb College. Students at NCI were allowed on campus only to work in the yards of faculty members, which young Fred Gray did.

He went on to meet his goal of going to law school, graduating from Western Reserve University, now Case Western Reserve, in 1954.

Years later, when NCI was closed and its assets sold, Gray filed suit on behalf of NCI alumni against Lipscomb to stop the transfer of NCI assets to a college that had excluded them and other NCI graduates for decades solely on the basis of their skin color.

But Gray had not envisioned that Lipscomb University would name its Institute for Law, Justice and Society after him.

“I never thought, when I was a student at the Nashville Christian Institute,” he says, “that I would be asked to participate in or have an academic program named after me.”

As Gray says, “It is not often that you are honored by an institution that you have filed suit against.”

The Fred D. Gray Institute is Born

But on Nov. 12, Lipscomb University will host a dinner to launch the newly renamed Fred D. Gray Institute for Law, Justice & Society. As part of the Institute, the school has also committed to funding minority scholarships for students interested in the legal field.

Fred Gray accepting an honorary degree from Lipscomb University, June 2012.

Earlier in the day, the University will host a number of legal clinics to honor Gray’s career and his lifelong commitment to pro bono work. As part of the Gray Institute, the University has also committed to funding minority scholarships for students interested in the legal field.

The Institute, commonly referred to as “LJS” by its 65 to 80 majors, is an undergraduate major that focuses on socio-legal issues in order to encourage critical thinking, good writing and a passion for justice. LJS began its 10th year this fall and has produced two Fulbright scholars and scores of graduates who are now professionals working in the fields of law, public policy and non-profits.

In addition to the academic work of LJS, the Institute has hosted conversations involving immigration, civility and free expression, human trafficking, Christian/Muslim/Jewish relations, social justice and water, non-profit management, health care for low-income families and the merit selection of judges. LJS coordinates with the Faith-Based Committee of the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission to host a monthly free legal advice clinic and also partners with the Tennessee Bar Association to host a summer Law Camp for high school students interested in a career in the legal field.

Gray will provide the keynote address for the Nov. 12 dinner to launch the Institute, and money raised from the event will be used for minority scholarships and to continue the work of the Institute fostering interest in the legal field in underserved populations and raising up the next generation of Fred Grays.

Dr. Steve Joiner, dean of Lipscomb’s College of Leadership and Public Service, is proud of the past work of the Institute and welcomes the challenges of its renaming.

“LJS students have done and continue to do good work,” Joiner says, “but I believe that taking on the career and legacy of Mr. Gray will push these students even further. Very few people in American history have had a career like Mr. Gray’s, and by renaming the Institute, I hope we are making it clear what we want our students to aspire to.”

Now 85, Gray says he wants the students of the Gray Institute to learn three simple things:

• I hope the students will be able to identify a problem when they see it exists.
• I hope they will be willing to talk with others, anyone and everyone, about what it takes to solve the problem.
• And I hope they will realize that they can’t be successful by trying to do it by themselves.

Gray says he also hopes “the student will learn that while we can’t change the past, we are accountable to what we do now.”
 

RANDY SPIVEY is academic director for the Fred D. Gray Institute for Law, Justice & Society. He is a graduate of the University of Alabama School of Law.  ELIZABETH SLAGLE TODARO participated in the interview with Fred Gray and helped with this article. Todaro, a graduate of the City University of New York Law School, is programs director and access to justice coordinator for the Tennessee Bar Association.

For information about the launch and dinner celebrating the Fred D. Gray Institute for Law, Justice & Society, including table and sponsorship opportunities, contact Randy Spivey, (615) 966-2503, randy.spivey@lipscomb.edu.

Photos by Kristi Jones, manager of University Photography Services, Lipscomb University.