A Dream to Fix the Problems

There was once a boy named Fred with a secret dream to be a lawyer. They were people who helped fix problems, he heard, and his southern town had lots of problems. He kept his dream to himself because young boys with his color skin in the 1930s never grew up to be lawyers. But his mother, a widow who cleaned houses, taught her five children they could be anything if they did three things: keep Christ first, stay in school, and stay out of trouble. 

So Fred worked hard to earn his law degree, even traveling to a faraway state where a school would accept him despite his skin color. Fresh out of law school and back home, he got a call one Friday afternoon. It was Rosa Parks. That morning she had been arrested for her quiet protest – refusing to move to the back of the bus because of her skin color, and she asked 24-year-old Fred to be her lawyer. All weekend he sat in a living room with a few friends plotting out what had to happen surrounding the trial and, from that, the Montgomery Bus Boycott took shape. They needed a leader to help motivate the African American community in town and someone in the living room suggested their Reverend, a young man named Martin. He could move people with his words, they said. Mrs. Parks’ trial commenced Monday along with the planned bus boycott, which lasted not one day, but 388. The young Reverend, Martin Luther King Jr., motivated the people while Fred provided the legal guidance.

Photo from Bus Ride to Justice by Fred D. Gray

Fred kept helping and working and asking God how he should handle each trial that came his way. After Rosa Parks’ trial, his cases included the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the Desegregation of Alabama Schools, and 1965 Selma March. He worked beside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s till the very end, which in many ways was just the beginning for so much change was needed, and as Fred says at 93 years old, is still needed.

Today he’s still working in his southern town to help fix problems. To hear him speak this past weekend was quite a privilege, as he generously offered a glimpse of all that was required behind the scenes to move the needle of progress little by little.

Photo from Bus Ride to Justice by Fred D. Gray