Fred Gray, Esq.
Civil Rights Attorney, Author and Speaker
Gray, Langford, Sapp, McGowan, Gray, Gray & Nathanson P.C.
Fred David Gray, a native of Montgomery, Alabama, is a landmark-setting civil rights lawyer. Educated at the Nashville Christian Institute, Alabama State University and Case Western Reserve University, Gray's legal career spans a time period of over 60 years.
Enthusiastic, energetic and out of law school less than a year, he began a dynamic civil rights career in 1954. His first civil rights case was representation of Claudette Colvin, a 15-year old African American high school student who refused to give up her seat on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1955. In December 1955 he represented Mrs. Rosa Parks who was arrested because she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, igniting the Montgomery Bus Boycott, City of Montgomery v. Rosa Parks. He was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s first civil rights attorney.
As an author, Gray wrote Bus Ride to Justice first released in 1995, Revised Edition released in 2013, was previewed at the Jimmy Carter Center and broadcast on C-Span Book TV. Upon receipt of a copy, President Barack Obama wrote in a letter to Gray, “Today, we stand on the shoulders of giants who helped move us toward a more perfect Union, and I appreciate your sharing your story.” The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was released in May 1998. He also wrote The Sullivan Case: A Direct Product of the Civil Rights Movement, a review for Case Western Reserve Law Review.
An Alabama State University (ASU) graduate, Class of 1951, Gray has made substantial contributions to his alma mater. He was the first President of the National Alumni Association of ASU when it was reorganized in approximately 1964 and the first person of color to serve as General Counsel for Alabama State University. He was inducted into the National Black College Alumni Hall of Fame in 2003.
Under the ASU Trust for Excellence he has established an endowment trust in the name of his late wife, Bernice H. Gray, a 1956 graduate of ASU. He is a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity and Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity. An elder of the Tuskegee Church of Christ, Gray is married to Carol Porter of Cleveland, Ohio. He is the father of four, grandfather of six and stepfather of three.
About Fred Gray, Esq.
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Civil Rights Attorney, Author and Speaker
Gray, Langford, Sapp, McGowan, Gray, Gray & Nathanson P.C.
Devon Carbado, Esq.
Professor
UCLA Law
Professor Carbado is the Honorable Harry Pregerson Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law and the former inaugural Associate Vice Chancellor of BruinX, a multidisciplinary research unit, in the UCLA Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. He teaches Constitutional Criminal Procedure, Constitutional Law, Critical Race Theory, and Criminal Adjudication. He has won numerous teaching awards and in 2005 was named an inaugural recipient of the Fletcher Foundation Fellowship. Modeled on the Guggenheim fellowships, it is awarded to scholars whose work furthers the goals of Brown v. Board of Education. In 2018, he was named an inaugural recipient of the Atlantic Philanthropies Fellowship for Racial Equity.
Professor Carbado writes in the areas of employment discrimination, criminal procedure, implicit bias, constitutional law, and critical race theory. He is the co-author of Acting White? Rethinking Race in “Post-Racial” America (Oxford University Press) (with Mitu Gulati) and author of Unreasonable:
Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment (The New Press). A board member of the African American Policy Forum, Professor Carbado was the Shikes Fellow in Civil Liberties and Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School in 2012. Professor Carbado graduated from Harvard Law School in 1994. At Harvard, he was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Black Letter Law Journal, a member of the Board of Student Advisors, and winner of the Northeast Frederick Douglass Moot Court Competition.
https://law.ucla.edu/faculty/faculty-profiles/devon-w-carbado
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Professor
UCLA Law
Osamudia James
Professor
University of North Carolina School of Law
Professor James is a Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where her writing and teaching interests include education law, race and the law, administrative law, and torts. Professor James is an expert in areas of race, education, and civil rights and discrimination, and the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and popular press commentary exploring the interaction of law and identity in the context of public education. Her work has appeared in the NYU Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Minnesota Law Review, among others, with forthcoming publications
including Superior Status: Relational Obstacles in Law to Racial Justice & LGBTQ Equality, 63 B.C. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2022), and White Injury and Innocence: On the Legal Future of Antiracism Education, 108
VA. L. REV. (forthcoming 2022). Her work has also appeared in the pages of publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Ms. Magazine.
Professor James graduated with honors from the Georgetown University Law Center, and also earned an LL.M. from the University of Wisconsin where she was a William H. Hastie Fellow. She practiced law at King & Spalding in Washington, DC before joining the faculty at the University of Miami,
where she taught for 13 years prior to joining Carolina Law. Professor James was a 2014 co-recipient of the Derrick A. Bell, Jr. Award, a national award presented to a junior faculty member who makes an extraordinary contribution to legal education, the legal system, or social justice through activism, mentoring, teaching and scholarship. She was awarded the Hausler Golden Apple Teaching Award from Miami Law in 2017, and was also selected as a University of Miami Public Voices Fellow in 2020.
https://law.unc.edu/people/osamudia-james/
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Professor
University of North Carolina School of Law
Angela Onwuachi-Willig
Dean
Boston University School of Law
Angela Onwuachi-Willig is the Dean and Ryan Roth Gallo & Ernest J. Gallo Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law. She is an expert in critical race theory, employment discrimination, and family law who joined the law school as Dean in 2018. Dean Onwuachi-Willig
previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, the University of Iowa College of Law, and at the University of California - Davis, School of Law.
Dean Onwuachi-Willig is a co-editor of the book Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and Law (Cambridge University Press 2022) and author of the book According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family (Yale
2013). Her articles have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Virginia Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Texas Law Review, UCLA Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review.
Dean Onwuachi-Willig was one of five black women deans to receive the inaugural AALS Impact Award in recognition of their work in collating the Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project in 2021. She has also won numerous teaching awards and other national awards. Dean OnwuachiWillig serves on numerous boards and national committees. She served as the chair for the AALS Committee on the Recruitment and Retention of Minority Law Teachers and Students. She also is the founder of the Lutie A. Lytle Black Women Law Faculty Workshop, which has resulted in the production of many books and hundreds of articles and essays by its participants and has assisted
dozens of women on the path to tenure.
Dean Onwuachi-Willig graduated from Grinnell College, Phi Beta Kappa, and received her JD from the University of Michigan, where she was a Clarence Darrow Scholar, a Michigan Law Review note editor, and an associate editor for the founding issue of the Michigan Journal of Race and Law.
After law school, she clerked for US District Court Judge Solomon Oliver of the Northern District of Ohio and for US Sixth Circuit Judge Karen Nelson Moore. She received her PhD in sociology and African American studies from Yale University. Prior to teaching, she practiced law as a labor and employment associate at Jones Day in Cleveland, Ohio and Foley Hoag in Boston, Massachusetts.
https://www.bu.edu/law/profile/angela-onwuachi-willig/
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Dean
Boston University School of Law
Honorable William Trezvant
Associate Judge
RI State Courts
About Honorable William Trezvant
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Associate Judge
RI State Courts
Tobey Daluz, Esq.
Attorney
Ballard Spahr's Bankruptcy and Restructuring Group
Tobey M. Daluz is a litigation partner and Practice Co-Leader of Ballard Spahr's Bankruptcy and Restructuring Group. She focuses on corporate restructuring, workouts, and general bankruptcy litigation. Tobey represents debtors, secured and unsecured creditors, insurers, indenture trustees, and
official committees in chapter 11 bankruptcy cases. She also represents buyers of assets in the context of sales under section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code. Tobey is a member of the American Bankruptcy
Institute and she is the founding Chair (now member) of the Delaware Network of the International Women’s Insolvency and Restructuring Confederation (IWIRC). She is a member of the Bankruptcy Law 7 Section and Multicultural Judges and Lawyers Section of the Delaware State Bar Association. Tobey was
appointed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to serve a three-year term on its Lawyers Advisory Committee, which comments on proposed rules of the Circuit and serves as a liaison between the court and legal community. Over the past two decades, she has served on the Third Circuit's Merit Selection Panel and participated in the review and recommendation of candidates for five Eastern District of Pennsylvania bankruptcy judge positions. More recently, she was appointed to chair the Third Circuit's Merit Selection Panel, which led to the appointment of two bankruptcy judges for the District of Delaware.
Tobey is the founding partner of the firm's office in Wilmington, Delaware, and served as Office Managing Partner from 2003 to 2011. From 2011 to 2016, Tobey served on the firm's Executive Management Committee as the Partner-in-Charge of Attorney Career Advancement and was
responsible for the recruitment, training, professional development, compensation, evaluation, and promotion of nearly 300 non-partner lawyers. Effective July 1, 2016, she was elected by her partners to
serve a three-year term on the firm's Board and was reelected for a second three-year term that concluded on June 30, 2022. For nearly twenty years, Tobey has been a contributing member of the firm’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council. Tobey lectures both locally and nationally on the topics of bankruptcy and diversity, equity and inclusion in the legal profession.
https://www.ballardspahr.com/people/attorneys/d/daluz-tobey
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Attorney
Ballard Spahr's Bankruptcy and Restructuring Group
Dr. Stefanie Johnson
Author & Professor
Doerr Institute for New Leaders & Rice University
Dr. Stefanie K. Johnson is an acclaimed author, professor, and keynote speaker who studies the intersection of leadership and diversity, focusing on (1) how unconscious bias affects the evaluation of 11 leaders and (2) strategies that leaders can use to mitigate bias. Her 2020 Wall Street Journal bestselling
book, “Inclusify: The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams,” shares the surprising ways leaders can undermine inclusion and provides actionable ways they can pivot to build more inclusive teams.
Dr. Johnson is a member of the MG 100 Coaches and was selected for the 2020 Thinkers50 Radar List, comprising 30 international management scholars whose work will shape the future of how organizations are managed and led. Dr. Johnson is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review
and an in-demand keynote speaker. She presented her work at the White House in 2016 during a National Equal Pay Day summit on diversity in corporate America and to top organizations at over 200 global
speaking engagements. Dr. Johnson has served on expert committees and shared her thought leadership with NASA, the NFL and the World Economic Forum. She currently serves as director of the Doerr Institute for New Leaders and as a professor in the department of psychological sciences at Rice University. Most recently, Dr. Johnson held the rank of associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business, where she taught students focused on leadership and inclusion.
https://drstefjohnson.com/
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Author & Professor
Doerr Institute for New Leaders & Rice University
Representative Leslie Herod
Legislator
Colorado General Assembly
Leslie Herod was elected in 2016 as the first LGBTQ African American in the Colorado General Assembly. Since then, she has passed 150 bills, addressing criminal justice reform, mental health, addiction, youth homelessness, and civil rights protections. Some of her more significant contributions
include: ending cash bail for minor offenses; de-felonizing drug possession; passing a comprehensive police accountability bill following the highly public murder of George Floyd and the nationwide movement that followed. In addition to winning reelection in 2018, Rep. Herod championed a ballot
initiative - Caring for Denver - that raises $35 million annually for mental health and substance abuse treatment and services for children and adults. Rep. Herod serves as Chair of the House Appropriations Committee and is a member of the powerful Joint Budget Committee.
https://leg.colorado.gov/legislators/leslie-herod
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Legislator
Colorado General Assembly
Professor Karen Blum
Professor
Suffolk University Law School
Karen Blum is a Professor Emerita and Research Professor of Law at Suffolk University Law School where she has taught for over forty years in the areas of Federal Courts, Police Misconduct Litigation, and Civil Procedure. She received her B.A. from Wells College, a J.D. from Suffolk University
Law School, and an LL. M. from Harvard Law School. Professor Blum has been a regular faculty participant in Section 1983 Civil Rights Programs and Institutes throughout the United States. Since
1990, she has served as a faculty member for workshops sponsored by the Federal Judicial Center for Federal District Court and Federal Magistrate Judges. She has authored numerous articles in the Section
1983 area, including a piece entitled Qualified Immunity: Time to Change the Message, 93 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1887 (2018). She is co-author, along with Michael Avery, David Rudovsky, and Jennifer Laurin of the treatise POLICE MISCONDUCT: LAW AND LITIGATION.
https://www.suffolk.edu/academics/faculty/b/l/blum_karen_1595233
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Professor
Suffolk University Law School
Jay Schweikert, Esq.
Attorney & Research Fellow
Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice
ay Schweikert is a research fellow with the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice. His research and advocacy focuses on accountability for prosecutors and law enforcement, plea bargaining, Sixth Amendment trial rights, and the provision and structuring of indigent defense. Before joining Cato, Mr. Schweikert spent four years doing civil and criminal litigation at Williams
& Connolly LLP. He holds a JD from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor for the Harvard Law Review and chaired the Harvard Federalist Society’s student colloquium program.
Following law school, Mr. Schweikert clerked for Judge Diane Sykes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. He holds a BA in political science and economics from Yale University.
https://www.cato.org/people/jay-schweikert
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Attorney & Research Fellow
Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice
Cara McClellan
Professor
University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law
Cara McClellan is Director and Associate Practice Professor of the Advocacy for Racial and Civil (ARC) Justice Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law. The ARC Clinic provides students with hands-on experience working in civil rights litigation and policy advocacy around systemic
racism. She previously served as Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., where her work focused on education equity and ending the criminalization of Black people. McClellan
has represented students and families in school desegregation cases, such as Sheff v. O’Neill, and students and alumni as amici in SFFA v. Harvard, defending Harvard’s affirmative action admissions policy.
She earned her undergraduate degree from Yale College, an MS.Ed from Penn’s Graduate School of Education, and a JD from Yale Law School. Following law school, she clerked for the Honorable
Gregory M. Sleet, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court and the Honorable Andre M. Davis, Senior Judge for the Fourth Circuit.
https://www.law.upenn.edu/faculty/caralm
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Professor
University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law
Honorable Leslie Abrams Gardner
U.S. District Judge
U.S. Courts
https://www.gamd.uscourts.gov/leslie-abrams-gardner
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U.S. District Judge
U.S. Courts
Professor Suzette Malveaux
Professor
University of Colorado Law School
Suzette Malveaux is Moses Lasky Professor of Law and Director of the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado Law School. She is a member of the American Law Institute and Chair of the American Association of Law Schools Civil Procedure Section. She has taught in the areas of Civil Procedure, Complex Litigation, Employment Discrimination, Civil Rights, and Constitutional Law for almost two
decades. Her scholarship explores the intersection of civil rights and civil procedure, and access to justice issues. She is co-editor of A Guide to Civil Procedure; Integrating Critical Legal Perspectives (NYU Press, forthcoming 2022) and co-author of Class Actions and Other MultiParty Litigation; Cases and Materials (West, 2006, 2012).
Malveaux was a class action specialist and civil rights attorney prior to becoming a professor. For six years, Malveaux served as pro bono counsel for the plaintiffs in Alexander v. State of Oklahoma, a
constitutional lawsuit filed against Tulsa by victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. As co-counsel, she represented the victims before the U.S. federal courts, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
(Organization of American States) and the U.S. House of Representatives. Malveaux also represented 12 over 1.5 million women alleging gender discrimination against Wal-Mart, the largest employment
discrimination case to date. Professor Malveaux graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University. She earned her J.D. from NYU School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden Scholar, Associate Editor of the Law Review and Center for International Law Fellow.
https://lawweb.colorado.edu/profiles/profile.jsp?id=884
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Professor
University of Colorado Law School
Honorable John J. McConnell, Jr.
U.S. Chief District Court Judge for the District of Rhode Island
U.S. Courts
John J. McConnell, Jr., is the Chief judge in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island. President Barack Obama nominated him to the bench on January 5, 2011 and the United States Senate confirmed his nomination on May 4, 2011. Prior to becoming a judge, Judge McConnell was a trial attorney for 25 years during which time he represented persons injured by exposure to asbestos, persons in suits against the tobacco industry, and children poisoned by lead paint. He clerked for Associate Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court Donald F. Shea. Judge McConnell is a chairperson of the Board of Crossroads Rhode Island, the state's largest provider of services to the homeless; he serves on the Board of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Non-Violence; and he is on the Board of Trinity Repertory Company. He has received many awards and honors, including the Judicial Merit Award, Rhode Island Association for Justice in 2013; Major's Special Recognition Award, "A Celebration of Housing- Together We Achieve Our Goals" in 2007; The Best Lawyers in America - Mass Tort Litigation (2007-2010); Childhood Lead Action Project "Above and Beyond the Call of Duty" Award (1998-2006); Rhode Island Department of Health, Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program Award for Public Health Partnership in 2006; Rhode Island Public Health Association, Bertram Yaffe Award in 2006; and Trial Lawyer of the Year finalist, Trial Lawyers for Public Justice in 2006. Judge McConnell was born in Providence, Rhode Island and received his A.B. from Brown University in 1980 with a concentration on Urban Studies and his J.D. from Case Western Reserve University School of Law in 1983, where he was the recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Award.
https://www.rid.uscourts.gov/judges/john-j-mcconnell-jr
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U.S. Chief District Court Judge for the District of Rhode Island
U.S. Courts
Honorable William Smith
U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Rhode Island
U.S. Courts
William E. Smith is a United States District Judge for the District of Rhode Island. He was nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed in 2002. Judge Smith became Chief Judge of the District of Rhode Island in 2013, serving as the Chief until 2019.. Judge Smith is active in federal judicial administration, having served on several U.S. Judicial Conference committees, and in federal judicial education, serving on the Federal Judiciary Center's Committee on District Judge education, and as a mentor for newly appointed judges. He serves on numerous community boards and is the chair of the board of the Roger William University School of Law in Bristol, Rhode Island, where he is also an Adjunct Professor teaching several courses. Prior to assuming the bench, Judge Smith was a partner at Edwards & Angell in Providence, Rhode Island, the firm he had joined after graduating from law school. His private law practice years were interrupted by his service as Staff Director of the Rhode Island Office of United States Senator Lincoln Chafee. Judge Smith was born in Boise, Idaho and received B.A. and J.D. (cum laude) degrees from Georgetown University.
https://www.rid.uscourts.gov/judges/william-e-smith
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U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Rhode Island
U.S. Courts
Honorable Mary S. McElroy
U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Rhode Island
U.S. Courts
Mary S. McElroy is a District Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island. She was nominated by President Donald J. Trump and confirmed on September 30, 2019. Judge McElroy clerked for the Honorable Donald F. Shea of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island from 1992-1993 and was in private practice until 1994. She served as an assistant public defender for the Rhode Island Public Defender from 1994-2006, as an assistant federal defender with the Federal Defender for the Districts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island from 2006-2012, and as the Rhode Island Public Defender from 2012-2019. Judge McElroy was born in Providence, Rhode Island and received her B.A. from Providence College in 1987 and her J.D. from Suffolk University Law School in 1992.
https://www.rid.uscourts.gov/judges/mary-s-mcelroy
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U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Rhode Island
U.S. Courts
Honorable Lincoln D. Almond
U.S. Magistrate Judge for the District of Rhode Island
U.S. Courts
Lincoln D. Almond graduated "with distinction" from the University of Rhode Island in 1985 and with "high honors" from the University of Connecticut School of Law in 1988. He was admitted to the Connecticut Bar in 1988 and the Rhode Island Bar in 1990. Judge Almond clerked for United States District Judge Peter C. Dorsey in the District of Connecticut from 1988 to 1990. He worked in private practice from 1990 to 2004 concentrating primarily in litigation/labor and employment law. Judge Almond was appointed Magistrate Judge in the District of Rhode Island on September 10, 2004.
https://www.rid.uscourts.gov/judges/lincoln-d-almond
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U.S. Magistrate Judge for the District of Rhode Island
U.S. Courts
Honorable Patricia A. Sullivan
U.S. Magistrate Judge for the District of Rhode Island
U.S. Courts
Patricia A. Sullivan has served as United States Magistrate Judge, U.S. District Court, District of Rhode Island since 2012. Prior to serving in this capacity she practiced law at Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP (formerly Edwards & Angell, LLP and Edwards Angell Palmer Dodge, LLP), Providence, Rhode Island from 1978 until 2012. She has served on the Adjunct Faculty at Roger Williams University School of Law and as the Chair and Co-Chair of numerous court, community and Bar Association Committees including serving as President (2000 – 2003) and Member, Board of Directors, Federal Bar Association, 2000 – 2019; Member, Board of Trustees, Rhode Island Bar Foundation, 2005 – 2020; and Member, Board of Trustees, Roger Williams University School of Law, 2013 – present.
She graduated from Wellesley College, B.A. with honors, 1973; and Georgetown University Law Center, J.D., magna cum laude, 1978 where she served as Articles Editor on the Georgetown Law Review.
https://www.rid.uscourts.gov/judges/patricia-a-sullivan
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U.S. Magistrate Judge for the District of Rhode Island
U.S. Courts
