Browder v. Gayle
The People
Aurelia Browder
1919-1971
Aurelia Shines Browder was the lead plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle. As a widow, she raised six children while completing her education, ultimately graduating from Alabama State University with honors. No stranger to the civil rights struggle, Browder worked with voter registration campaigns in Montgomery in the 1950s. Browder was arrested eight months before Rosa Parks on April 19, 1955 for violating the Alabama state law that segregated public buses. After the Boycott ended Browder continued to work with civil rights organizations, including the Southern Christian Leadership Coalition and the Women's political Council. (4) (5)
Claudette Colvin
1939-
Claudette Colvin was the first person arrested for violating Alabama's bus segregation law. She was arrested while coming home from Montgomery, Alabama's Booker T. Washington High School. She was seventeen at the time. Colvin's arrest came nine months before Rosa Parks' famous refusal to give up her seat and one month before Aurelia Browder's arrest. Her case was not as highly publicized because she was pregnant by a married man at the time, but she is thought to be the sparkplug of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Some time after the conclusion of Browder v. Gayle Colvin moved to the Bronx, New York, having experienced difficulty finding work in Montgomery due to the notoriety she had gained from the case. (4) (5)
W.A Gayle. March 21, 1956. AP
W.A. Gayle
1896-1965
William Armistead Gayle Jr. was born in 1896. He attended the U.S Naval Academy in 1915 and the University of Alabama a year later. He served in World War I reaching the rank of Brigadier General. After the war he was appointed Adjutant General of Alabama by Governor Bibb Graves in April of 1935, A few months later, he resigned to become city commissioner of Montgomery, a position similar to that of a city councilman. He would return to military service in World War II, serving as a colonel in the U.S Army Air force. During the war he received the Bronze Star. He was elected Mayor of Montgomery in 1951 and served until 1959. He died in 1965 at the age of 69 (6)
Fred Gray
1930-
Fred Gray Served as the attorney in Browder v. Gayle and many other civil rights cases in Alabama. Born in Montgomery, Gray attended Loveless School until he was in the seventh grade. After seventh grade, his mother sent him to Nashville Christian Institute, a boarding school operated by the Church of Christ. After his graduation Gray attended Alabama State College (now University) and graduated with a Bachelors of Science in 1951. After graduation Gray contemplated becoming a minister and a history teacher. He chose to attend law school after being urged by one of his professors to do so. He graduated from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio in 1954. Afterwards, he returned to Montgomery to pastor the Holt Street Church of Christ and open his own private law practice. His first cases involved the Montgomery Bus Boycott, defending Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin on disorderly conduct charges. After Browder v. Gayle, Gray worked on several other civil rights cases including Gomillion v. Lightfoot. That particular case challenged the state legislature's redistricting of Tuskegee to prevent blacks from voting in municipal elections. He also represented plaintiffs in cases to desegregate the University of Alabama, Auburn University, and Florence State University (now University of North Alabama), as well as a case to integrate the Macon County, Alabama public school system. In 1970 he was elected to the state legislature, becoming among the first African-Americans to do so since Reconstruction. He was nominated to be a judge in the U.S district court for the Middle District of Alabama by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, but asked that the nomination be withdrawn. Fred Gray still practices law in Montgomery today. (7)
Frank M. Johnson
1918-1999
Frank Minis Johnson was one of the three U.S District Court judges who ruled that bus segregation laws in Alabama were unconstitutional. He graduated from the University of Alabama and the University of Alabama School of Law where he was classmates with future Governor of Alabama George C. Wallace. He served in the european theater of World War II. After the war, he returned home to Alabama and became a very active member of the Republican Party, which was very rare at the time. In 1955 he was nominated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to become a federal district judge. The following year he ruled to end segregation of public transit through Browder v. Gayle. He also desegregated Montgomery bus depots (1961) and Montgomery's airport, Dannelly Field (1962). In 1965, he ruled in favor of allowing the Selma to Montgomery march to take place. He would also rule in many other Civil Rights Movement related-cases such as Gomillion v Lightfoot (1961), White v. Crook (1966), and Smith v. YMCA of Montgomery (1970). In 1977 he was nominated to become head of the FBI by Jimmy Carter, but an aneurysm caused him to be removed from consideration. He served as U.S district Judge of Middle District of Alabama until his Death in 1999. The Federal Courthouse in Montgomery is named for him. (8)
Seybourn Harris Lynne
1907-2000
One of the three district judges who ruled on Browder v. Gayle, Lynne was born in Decatur, Alabama in 1907. He received his Bachelor's degree in 1927 from Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University) and graduated from the University of Alabama Law school in 1930. He was nominated to the U.S district court of Alabama in 1945 by President Harry S. Truman and served on the bench until his death in 2000. Lynne dissented in the district court's ruling on Browder v. Gayle. He did so because he believed the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education did not rule segregation outside of schools illegal. In 1960 Lynne would help to desegregate the University of Alabama by allowing Vivian Malone and James Hood to attend the University.(9)
Richard Rives
1895-1982
Richard Rives was the second of the two judges who ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional in Montgomery. Rives was born in Montgomery in 1895. He finished first in his graduating class and received a scholarship to Tulane University in New Orleans. He attended Tulane for one year, returning home after his parents could no longer afford his living expenses. He continued to study law at a law office until he was admitted to the State Bar in 1914 at nineteen years old. He served in the U.S. Army in World War I and returned to Montgomery after the war to go into private practice. He was nominated to become judge in the U.S Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in 1951 by President Harry S. Truman. He is the grandfather of District Judge Callie V.S. Granade of the Southern District of Alabama. (10)
Mary Louise Smith
1937-
Mary Louise Smith was a plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle. On October 21, 1955, the eighteen year old Smith was arrested for violating Alabama's bus segregation law when she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger. Her family kept the arrest secret until Fred Gray approached Smith and her father at a mass meeting. Gray wanted to know if Smith and her father would serve as plaintiffs in the lawsuit that would become Browder v. Gayle. After the case Smith continued to work for civil rights through voting rights campaigns and by participating in the March on Washington. (4) (5)