December 22, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Pioneering Attorney To Speak at King Day Banquet
DECATUR – The featured speaker for this year’s Martin Luther King Day Banquet has been labeled an “unsung civil rights hero” and once served as the attorney for both Rosa Parks and the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.
Attorney Fred Gray will deliver the keynote address for the event, to be held from 6-9 p.m. Saturday, January 16 at the Decatur Conference Center & Hotel. Banquet tickets are $30 ($300 for a table of 10) and are now available at City of Decatur’s Office of Human Resources on the second floor of the Decatur Civic Center or at the Decatur YMCA located at 220 West McKinley Avenue.
Following Saturday’s banquet, King Day activities will culminate on Monday, January 18 with the traditional march kicking off at noon from Mueller and Hess Parks. The deadline to purchase banquet tickets is Friday, January 8, 2009 and the theme for this year’s King holiday activities is “Pay It Forward.”
Gray began his civil rights legal career in 1954, just one year before being called upon to represent Mrs. Parks when she was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, an action which later sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Gray was also the driving force behind several instrumental civil rights cases over the span of his 55-year career, working tirelessly to integrate Alabama state schools, successfully defending Dr. King on a number of occasions and representing marchers in the 1965 Selma-To Montgomery march for voting rights which helped lead to the creation of the Voting Rights act of 1965.
Gray was inducted into the National Bar Association hall of fame in 1995 and currently senior partner in the law firm of Gray, Langford, Sapp, McGowan, Gray, Gray and Nathanson P.C. For more information on Gray, visit ww.fredgray.net.
Contact Elsie Walters or French Wilson at (217) 424-2805 for more information about the banquet or the march.