On The Civil Rights Trail in Montgomery, AL

Sandra H. Robinson

The Cochran Firm

Immediate Past President, NBL

What an informative and inspiring time it was! 

The National Black Lawyers Top 100 was proud to be a co-sponsor at the 2024 Fred Gray Civil Rights Symposium: Before Thurgood: America’s Forgotten Civil Rights Heroes, presented at the Faulkner University Law School in Montgomery, AL, on Friday, March 18, 2024.  Attorney Fred Gray is a stalwart in the civil rights movement, having been one of the strategist for the Montgomery Bus Boycott and continuing his work up to the present to combat institutional racism. Mr. Gray was in the inaugural class of the NBL Hall of Fame in 2023.

The symposium speakers focused on African American attorneys who were fighting for basic civil rights for African Americans, as well as for their own right to practice law, beginning in the 1800’s.  Highlights of presentations about these highly esteemed lawyers included: 

• John S. Rock:  lawyer, physician, dentist, abolitionist. He was the first African American lawyer to be admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court on February 1, 1865. 

• Cornelius J. Jones:  lawyer, Mississippi House of Representative State Legislator.  He prosecuted the first documented case for reparations for slavery, Johnson v. McAdoo. 

• Charles Hamilton Houston:  lawyer, legal strategist.  He trained and mentored Justice Thurgood Marshall and other lawyers, and developed the legal strategy for fighting racial discrimination in schools and housing. 

• Wendell Gunn:  Mr. Gunn spoke at the symposium.  He became a client of attorney Fred Gray when his application for admission to Florence State College (now the University of North Alabama) was rejected. With Mr. Gray’s help he won the federal court case that desegregated the school, and he was admitted to UNA. In 2018, UNA renamed a building after him.   

These are only a few of the highlights of presentations made.  The Faulkner Law Review will be publishing the papers prepared by the presenters in a forthcoming issue. We are so proud that the event was covered by a local news station! https://www.wsfa.com/video/2024/03/15/faulkner-university-law-school-hosts-civil-rights-symposium/ 

The next day, Saturday, March 19, 2024, we spent time at The Legacy Museum, founded by one of our 2024 Hall of Fame inductees, attorney Bryan Stevenson. The exhibitions there take you through an educational and highly emotional journey through the horrific paths of racism from slavery, then through the Jim Crow laws, lynchings, desegregation, and mass incarceration.   

At the end of this journey we were reminded how strong, resilient, and beautiful African Americans are – and as our beloved poet Maya Angelou wrote:  

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts my ancestors gave,

I am a dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.¹
(Thank you, Ms. Angelou.)

We then ventured to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, also developed by Mr. Stevenson, in acknowledgement of the racial terrorism of lynching, and the need to remember and honor those who were so brutally murdered. The grounds allow you time to hold up those souls in sadness and peaceful reflection.    

On Sunday, March 20, 2024, we attended a glorious and joyous service at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church!  We were welcomed with good Southern hospitality.  To say that it was moving to be sitting in the pews of the church where Dr. King preached and where strategies for the Montgomery Bus Boycott and other civil rights causes were discussed is an understatement.  It was an honor to be in the place. 

I give my whole-hearted thanks to The NBL for organizing this most meaningful journey.