This article, written by , was originally published in the Detroit Free Press.
The legendary Aretha Franklin and civil rights attorney Fred Gray regaled a Southfield audience of several hundred people Monday during a nearly three-hour celebration of the life and achievements of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Now 84, Gray was a friend and attorney of the civil rights leader and defended Rosa Parks after she refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Ala.
He is portrayed in the new movie “Selma,” and was a lawyer in the 1965 case that resulted in a court ordering the State of Alabama to protect marchers as they walked from Selma to Montgomery.
The keynote speaker for the day’s MLK Peace Walk Celebration in Southfield, Gray said that although much progress has been made since the start of the civil rights movement, persistent inequalities, legal assaults on affirmative action, as well as recent events in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City underscore how King’s dream is not yet fulfilled.
“There are many people who think that now that we have an African American in the White House, and attorney general and other key positions, that we have made it, and that Dr. King’s dream is all over, and what’s all the fuss about,” he told those in the audience inside Southfield’s Municipal Complex. “But I don’t think we have.”
