‘Never Give Up’: Iconic civil rights attorney Fred Gray Sr. receives Presidential Medal of Freedom

By Rhonda Sonnenberg, SPLC

President Joe Biden today bestowed Montgomery, Alabama-born attorney Fred D. Gray Sr. with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his titanic contributions to civil rights in the United States.

The country’s highest civilian honor acknowledges “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

Once described by Martin Luther King Jr. as “the chief counsel for the protest movement,” Gray, 91, has a client list that reads like a Who’s Who of the civil rights era: King; John Lewis; Rosa Parks; the NAACP; Charles G. Gomillion, the lead plaintiff in a Supreme Court case that ruled gerrymandering unconstitutional; Vivian Malone and James Hood, the first two Black students to successfully enroll at the University of Alabama; and many others.

While Gray may not be a household name like Thurgood Marshall – the civil rights lawyer who became the first Black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court – over the course of Gray’s 65-year legal career he won many of the civil rights era’s signature legal cases, altering the national landscape not just for Black people, but for all Americans.

Learn more about Fred Gray.

Other recent recipients include Denzel Washington and Simon Biles. Discover more about the Civil Rights Era and other freedom fighters.

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