November 3, 1970

Fred Gray and Thomas Reed were elected to the state House of Representatives on this day to become the first black Alabama legislators since Reconstruction. Gray is a civil rights attorney, preacher and activist who has litigated several major civil rights cases in Alabama. Gray represented Rosa Parks when she was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, and played a prominent role in dismantling segregation. He served as the president of the National Bar Association in 1985 and in 2001 was elected as the first African-American president of the Alabama State Bar. Reed once served as the president of the Alabama National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Fred Gray, Montgomery civil rights attorney, addressing a small audience seated at the side of an auditorium or gymnasium, c. 1965-1968. (Alabama Department of Archives and History)

Group photograph of Attorney Fred Gray, Rosa Parks and Martin King III (the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s oldest son), 1955. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.