On Thursday Joe Biden will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Fred Gray. Mr. Gray had an outstanding career as a civil-rights leader. He represented Rosa Parks in the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott case and Vivian Malone and James Hood as they became the first black students to enroll at the University of Alabama. Gov. George Wallace made his infamous “stand in the schoolhouse door” to prevent their entry.
Martin Luther King Jr. once described Mr. Gray as “the brilliant young Negro who later became the chief counsel for the protest movement.”
