Before Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks were household names, a Black man named Hilliard Brooks was shot and killed by a white police officer.
The incident took place after he tried to board a city bus. Thomas Gray, the father of author Karen Gray Houston, was outraged by the unjustifiable shooting. Gray protested, eventually staging a major downtown march to register voters and standing up to police brutality.
He led another protest years later, this time against unjust treatment on the city’s segregated buses. On the front lines of what became the Montgomery bus boycott, Gray withstood threats and bombings alongside his brother, Fred D. Gray, the young lawyer who represented Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and the rarely mentioned Claudette Colvin, a plaintiff in the case that forced Alabama to desegregate its buses.
In Karen Gray Houston’s book "Daughter of the Boycott," she reflects on her family's actions and the important role they played in the civil rights movement. Now located in South Carolina, she joins us for the hour.
GUEST:
Karen Gray Houston, award-winning journalist and author of Daughter of the Boycott
