Fred David Gray (born December 14, 1930) is an American civil rights attorney, preacher, activist, and state legislator from Alabama.

He handled many prominent civil rights cases, such as Browder v. Gayle, and was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives in 1970, along with Thomas Reed, both from Tuskegee.

In 2012 Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, also affiliated with the Churches of Christ bestowed a doctorate of humane letters honoris causa upon Gray in 2012.

In some of his first cases as a young Alabama attorney (and solo practitioner), Gray defended Claudette Colvin and later Rosa Parks, who were charged with disorderly conduct for refusing to seat themselves in the rear of segregated city buses.

Other notable civil rights cases brought and argued by Gray included Dixon v. Alabama (1961, which established due process rights for students at public universities), Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1962, which overturned state redistricting of Tuskegee that excluded most of the majority-black residents; this contributed to laying a foundation for "one man, one vote") and Williams v. Wallace (1963, which protected the Selma to Montgomery marchers).

Lawsuits filed by Gray helped desegregate more than 100 local school systems, as well as all public colleges and universities in his home state.

Fred Gray, E. D. Nixon, president of the NAACP and secretary of the new Montgomery Improvement Association: and Clifford Durr (a white lawyer who, with his wife, Virginia Foster Durr was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement) searched for the ideal case law to challenge the constitutional legitimacy of the Montgomery and Alabama bus segregation laws.

Gray later approached Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith (activist), and Jeanetta Reese, all women who had been discriminated against by the drivers enforcing segregation policy in the Montgomery bus system.

They all agreed to become plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit (except Jeanetta Reese due to intimidation by the members of the white community), thus bypassing the Alabama court system.

During the Great Depression, the study was changed to review untreated syphilis in rural African-American male subjects, who thought they were receiving free health care and funeral benefits.

Gray filed the case, Pollard v. U.S. Public Health Service, in 1972, after a whistleblower reported the abuses to the Washington Star and The New York Times, which investigated further and published stories.

This nonprofit corporation operates a museum and offers educational resources concerning the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, as well as contributions made by various ethnic groups in the fields of human and civil rights.

In 2006, the NAACP recognized Gray's accomplishments with the William Robert Ming Advocacy Award, citing the spirit of financial and personal sacrifice displayed in his legal work.

The production premiered at Auburn University, was written and directed by Tessa Carr, and dramatizes Gray's involvement in the case of Lee v. Macon County Board of Education.