Fred Gray emphasizes service in his talk on the legal profession

Fred Gray

By Franklin Crawford

Caveat emptor, legal eagles: The law is first and foremost about customer service.

"The legal profession is really a profession of helping people, that's what it's all about," said Fred Gray, legendary civil rights attorney, during his talk "Why Do You Want to Be a Lawyer?" Feb. 21 in Anabel Taylor Auditorium at Cornell.

One of the profession's greatest satisfactions, Gray said, comes when "you can see that as a result of something that you did, you were able to help somebody else, who, but for your actions may not have been able to enjoy [certain] rights and privileges."

Gray's talk capped a two-day visit to Cornell that included a sermon at Sage Chapel and a public talk at the Beverly J, Martin Elementary School in Ithaca on Feb. 20. The following day, he led a contracts law session at Myron Taylor Law School and squeezed in a book signing at the Cornell Store before appearing at Anabel Taylor. About 125 people attended.

After a brief introduction, Gray invited Cornell Law School students and potential law school applicants to explain why they wanted to be lawyers.

Shelly Alexander, a graduate student in Africana Studies, said that in her home state of Louisiana, racism is prevalent. She would like to finish her graduate studies, get a law degree and return to Louisiana to correct the situation.

Toby Lewis, a senior in applied economics and management, said he is applying to law school simply "because I want to help people."

"I have family members who have gone through the criminal justice system and haven't exactly received the best of treatment," Lewis said. "So I am thinking of pursuing something along the lines of criminal law."

Sara Greengrass, a third-year law student, said that as a Peace Corps volunteer working with abusive households, she was stonewalled by governmental agencies when seeking assistance for her charges. That experience led her to pursue a career in law.

Gray applauded each student in turn and drove home the idea that lawyers render service. He entered the profession, he said, long before television created an aura of glamour about it. Denied access to a legal education in his own home state, he entered Western Reserve University not knowing a legal brief from a deposition. Vowing "to become a lawyer, return to Alabama and destroy everything segregated I could find," he methodically plied his skills toward desegregating Alabama's public schools and higher education institutions. Gray was at the epicenter of the civil rights movement, serving as attorney for Rosa Parks during the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott and later as Martin Luther King Jr.'s attorney.

Gray fought and won compensation for the men involved in the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study and later served in the Alabama state legislature and as president of the National Bar Association. He was the first African American elected president of the Alabama Bar Association. Gray helped establish the new Tuskegee Human and Civil Rights Multicultural Center, designed to educate the public on the contributions made in the field of human and civil rights by American minorities, and the site of a memorial to participants of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. In fact, Gray donated his entire Cornell honorarium to the Tuskegee center.

"It's an extremely rare gesture for a guest speaker," said Robert Harris, vice provost for diversity and faculty development. "Eventually we'd hope to get Cornell students involved with the human and civil rights center."