[1] On May 28, 1963, in Jackson, Mississippi, Gray joined white and black Tougaloo College students in a sit-in at the Woolworth's lunch counter to protest segregation.
Gray, a professor at the college, joined the students sitting at the counter and was viciously attacked by a white mob who struck him with brass knuckles and broken glass.
[2] In Anne Moody's autobiography, Coming Of Age In Mississippi, she said that once Gray sat down he was immediately hit by brass knuckles and with blood gushing from his face salt was thrown into his open wounds.
Just two weeks after the Jackson sit-ins, on June 11, President John F. Kennedy publicly called for a national civil rights bill.
While pursuing his degrees at Arizona State University, Gray organized and volunteered for many student groups including the International Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers.
[1] During an interview later in life he told Loki Mulholland, filmmaker and son of Joan Trumpauer, that "We decided to go south because things were happening".
In addition to the Jackson sit-in, he taught tactics of nonviolence, organized an NAACP youth council, and conducted a study of poverty in Mississippi as well.
In 1988, Gray recalled, without hypnotic regression techniques, that both he and his son were abducted by aliens, an experience he personally viewed as positive insofar as he considered the intentions of his captors as beneficent.