Unsung heroes of the civil rights movement

FRED GRAY ON THE MONTGOMERY BUS PROTEST _93, living in Tuskegee, Alabama_ _A preacher and a civil rights attorney who argued some of the most important cases regarding race in American

history_ When I was growing up, there were two professions a Black man could take up: a preacher or a teacher. I studied to become a preacher in Nashville, Tennessee, and when I returned to

my home state of Alabama, I enrolled at the Alabama State College for ­Negroes (now Alabama State University). There were serious problems with how Black people were treated on the buses,

including one man who had been killed. E.D. Nixon, a Black leader and president of the local NAACP branch, told me they needed lawyers and I didn’t know any. So when I graduated college, I

enrolled at Case Western Reserve [then Western Reserve] University law school in Cleveland, Ohio. I passed the Alabama and Ohio Bar exams in the summer of 1954. Six months later, on March 2,

1955, a 15-year-old girl named Claudette Colvin was arrested for refusing to give up her seat [on a public bus] to a white person. Claudette lived in an area in the northern part of

Montgomery. There were two or three streets of Black families surrounded by whites. The Black schoolkids had to take two buses to get to Booker T. Washington High School. On the day

Claudette was arrested, the students had been let out early from school because of a teachers’ meeting. When they got downtown, a lot of white people were getting on the bus and they asked

Claudette to get up from her seat. She was not sitting in what was called the white section, and so she told the bus driver she was not going to get up. She was arrested, and I agreed to

represent her in juvenile court. Claudette’s was my first civil rights case. The judge was very polite, but he still found her a ​delinquent. “I am now 93 years old and still fighting.” Nine

months later, Rosa Parks did the same thing. I had known Mrs. Parks from the time I was an undergraduate at Alabama State. When I opened my law office in late September of 1954 to the day

of her arrest on Dec. 1, 1955, she would come to my office and talk about problems, about how even after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954, no schools in Alabama

were desegregated. We had talked about how a person should conduct themselves if they were asked to give up a seat on a bus. I had gotten the impression that, if the opportunity presented

itself, she would not give up her seat. Which is what she did. She retained me to represent her. I met with Edgar Nixon of the NAACP and Jo Ann Robinson, an instructor at Alabama State

University, who was the president of the Women’s Political Council, an organization in Montgomery to help Blacks get registered to vote and to generally improve conditions. At her house, we

planned the Montgomery bus boycott. [Black people stopped riding buses, threatening to financially cripple the city’s transportation system.] An exhibit dedicated to attorney Fred Gray shows

Gray (center) after he was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives in 1970. Rory Doyle Jo Ann Robinson said, “We will need a spokesman. My pastor, Martin Luther King, hasn’t been

here in Montgomery long, but he can move people with words. We can get him to be the spokesman.” I had never met Dr. King. Few knew who he was at that time. He was selected to be the

spokesman, and I to do the legal work. We held a meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church. When the people heard Dr. King speak, we were convinced that important things were about to happen.

And when the buses rolled on Monday morning, very few Blacks were on them. Dr. King and I were in contact almost on a day-to-day basis for the 382 days of the bus boycott. Only we did not

call it a boycott because it wasn’t a boycott. We called it a protest. During that time, the world came to know his name. Three months after the Montgomery bus protest began, Alabama

indicted 89 persons. The prosecutors then decided that instead of trying 89 cases, they would select one, and of course they selected Dr. King. I had the responsibility of getting a legal

team together. We tried that case for four days. We were able to get Black people to describe how they had been mistreated on the buses, including the wife of the man who had been killed.

Notwithstanding, the judge found Dr. King guilty. For the rest of my life, I have fought to ­destroy everything segregated I could find. I have fought for education rights, for Black voting

rights. ... Inequality and the struggle for equal justice continues. I am now 93 years old and still fighting. Clarence Jones, former personal attorney, adviser and speechwriter for Martin

Luther King Jr., at his home in California. Gabriela Hasbun CLARENCE B. JONES ON WRITING SPEECHES FOR MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. _93, living in Palo Alto, California_ _A former speechwriter,

adviser and personal attorney for Martin Luther King Jr., who assisted MLK in the writing of his “I Have a Dream” speech_ I tell everybody, for the record, I had nothing to do with anything

that Martin Luther King Jr. wrote when he was preaching from the pulpit in his church. He was highly educated. He didn’t need me to write sermons. The problem was practical and logistical.

There came a time when there were some big speaking opportunities. He was perfectly capable of doing it himself if he had the time, but as his stature grew, he didn’t have time. That is how

I got into being his speechwriter. He would turn to people like Stanley Levison, his dear friend, and to his personal lawyer, me. I went to the Juilliard School of Music before I was a

lawyer. One of the things that I learned was something called ear training, which you can learn but some people are naturally gifted at — what is called perfect pitch. Translated to a

nonmusician, this means that you have the ability to hear or reproduce with your voice or your instrument a note that is supposed to be sung or played. I had the ability to internalize Dr.

King’s voice in my mind, so I could write the text in perfect pitch with his voice. It would be right on the money. Sometimes I would even write things like “pause and repeat.” He said, “You

are freaky, man! Pause and repeat? It’s like you’re inside my head!” I said, “That’s what I am trying to do.” He gave a lot of speeches. He gave a hell of a speech five days before he was

assassinated, at the Washington National Cathedral, called “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” Magnificent! He gave a hell of a speech the night before he was assassinated — at the

Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. Of course, that was the speech in which he says, “I’ve been to the mountaintop … [and] I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I

want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!” That was sadly prophetic. He was almost speaking as if he knew he was not going to be alive for very long.

Clarence Jones holds a photo of him sitting next to Martin Luther King Jr. at a press event. Gabriela Hasbun But if someone forced me to choose two of his speeches or writings that would

bookend his life, I would choose “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and his speech opposing the war in Vietnam. [These were two works that MLK composed on his own.] The circumstances of his

writing “Letter from Birmingham Jail” are well-known. During the five-day period starting from Good Friday, April 12, 1963, I visited him twice a day as his lawyer in the Birmingham jail. He

was using blank spaces of old newspapers, paper towels, anything that he could use as a writing surface. I took what he was writing in that cell out under my shirt, so the guards would not

see. What he wrote became “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” At the time, I was so busy I didn’t read it right away. When I read it for the first time, I said to myself, “Oh my God, this is

absolutely incredible!” He had no access to books or any third-party sources. Yet he quoted apostles, poets and philosophers, word for word. Everything in that letter came from Dr. King’s

academic memory. He blew me away. His speech opposing the Vietnam War — called “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” — was given on April 4, 1967. I regard the legacy of Martin Luther

King Jr. to be something very sacred to me. I was not surprised when he was assassinated. It was not a question of whether or not, it was a question of when. Gordon “Gunny” Gundrum was

working for the National Park Service during the March on Washington. STEPHANIE MEI-LING  GORDON “GUNNY” GUNDRUM ON THE 1963 MARCH ON WASHINGTON _85, living in Grafton, New York_ _A retired

New York State Trooper and former Ranger for the National Park Service_ I had just returned from the Marine Corps and I ended up in Washington, D.C. I needed a job, and the National Park

Service hired me. I was assigned to the March on Washington, to be positioned on the stage at the Lincoln Memorial. That is how I happened to be there. Until I got to Washington, I had never

had any in-depth contact with Black people. Not even in the Marine Corps. I came from a family of poor, rural farmers and there were no Black people where I grew up.  At the time, the riots

were going on. The Park Service thought this March on Washington [the full name was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom] may turn into a riot, rather than the peaceful march it was

intended to be. My job was to stand next to the podium in my uniform, to protect the speakers and try to maintain order. “I had never been involved in something so spectacular. The way the

speech moved; it was like watching a rosebud bloom in fast motion.” Gordon “Gunny” Gundrum On Aug. 28, 1963, there were thousands and thousands of people in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

The sight from the stage made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Bob Dylan played. At the time, I did not know who he was. Peter, Paul and Mary sang. Joan Baez was amazing. I met

Charlton Heston and shook his hand. Next to him was Marlon Brando. I saw a Black man coming closer. You were supposed to have a ticket to get up on the stage, so I asked. He smiled and said,

“I left my pass in the hotel room.” It was Sammy Davis Jr., and I let him through. When I first saw Dr. King walk on stage, he wasn’t as big as I thought. You would see him on the

television news, and in the newspaper stories about the demonstrations, the demands for freedom, Dr. King getting arrested and spending time in jail. He seemed nervous. But as hot of a day

as it was, he wasn’t perspiring like most of us. The crowd saw him and really came alive.