Bus ride to justice 

Dr. Martin Luther King in front of a Montgomery, Alabama bus

By Rev. John Jackson

His name is Fred David Gray. He is a noted civil rights attorney, a former member of the Alabama House of Representatives, an activist, and an ordained minister of the gospel. 

He is most noted for his legal work during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  

If there had not been an Attorney Fred Gray, there would have been no victory for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

We often hear curated voices from the period of the bus boycott to make us believe that Dr. King was the major force behind the protest and that Rosa Parks just sat on the bus because she was physically tired. Not true.

These are curated to narrate a messiah complex or a sense that all the hopes of the oppressed reside in one person’s drive to change a system. In reality, as Dr. Greg Carr points out, “Individuals do not beat institutions; only other institutions can defeat oppressive institutions.”  

He also cogently titles this mindset “The momentum of memory.” As the late Marcus Mosiah Garvey said, “What African people have done before, African people can do again.” 

This is why the African Hebrews of the biblical narrative of the Judeo-Christian religious journey wrote in Exodus 12:26 as they prepared to walk toward deliverance from Egyptian oppression, “…when your children ask you, what do you mean by this observance? You shall say that this is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt…” And again, in Joshua 4:6, after the African Hebrews crossed the swelling Jordan by God’s providence, it says, “So that this may be a sign among you when your children ask in time to come, what do these stones mean to you? Then you shall say to them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark of the covenant of the Lord.”  

That is the justice sentiment of Hanukkah. It commemorates the rededication of the temple in 165 B.C. by the freedom fighters known as the Maccabees after the desecration of that temple by the Seleucid Empire. It is the “momentum of memory.”

And so, in the spirit of the Jali Sundiata who says, “I speak to you what was told to me by my father, and was told to him by his father, and was told to him by his father because the jali cannot lie…”

Attorney and Preacher Fred Gray became a lawyer to, in his own words, “Destroy everything segregated in Montgomery.” He did not become a lawyer to get wealthy or to gain applause or approval. He did not become a lawyer for status or position. He became a lawyer to “destroy everything segregated in Montgomery.”

Therefore, the city of Montgomery filed a lawsuit against Dr. King, the Montgomery Improvement Association, and the leaders of the boycott on November 5, 1956, to stop the carpooling that Blacks had organized to make sure Black people did not ride the bus and were able to get to work and school.  

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Attorney Fred David Gray

And, as they sat during that trial on November 13, 1956, knowing that they would lose the case the city had filed against them, a murmur moved about the courtroom. Attorney Fred Gray excused himself from the trial to see what was going on outside. Outside the courtroom, TV newsman Frank McGee told him they had just received a wire that the Supreme Court of the United States had just affirmed the local federal court order that segregated seating was wrong and unconstitutional. 

The Case was Browder vs. Gayle and its far-reaching effect started the toppling of segregation all over the nation. That case had been brought by none other than Attorney minster Fred David Gray.  When news of the verdict became public, a Black person yelled in that courtroom that “God almighty had spoken from the Supreme Court!!!”

We must tell the story as it has been handed down to us from mouth to ear by those who fought the battle without outside interpreters. When our children ask, in the future, “What do these stones mean?” we can tell them of the countless people who created institutions with the explicit purpose of breaking down the barriers that held us back. 

Fred Gray is just one of the many lawyers whose goal in life was to attack and destroy everything segregated.

As the thirty-ninth anniversary of the Federal Holiday honoring Dr. King approaches, let us remember the great cloud of witnesses he depended on.

By the way, attorney and minister Fred Gray still draws breath at ninety-four years old and is still active in destroying everything segregated by working in his own Black-owned and operated law firm. His book about this struggle in Montgomery is “Bus Ride to Justice.” 

Be well, Be authentic, and stay woke! Uhuru Sassa!  

 Rev. Dr. John E. Jackson, Sr. is the Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ-Gary, 1276 W. 20th Ave. in Gary. “We are not just another church but we are a culturally conscious, Christ-centered church, committed to the community; we are unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian.” Contact the church by email at [email protected] or by phone at 219-944-0500.

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