Thomas Gray established himself as a civil rights leader by joining Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other black leaders to organize the historic 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. Later, blocked by segregation from pursuing law in Alabama, he moved his family to Cleveland. He enrolled at Western Reserve University Law School and graduated from Cleveland-Marshall. A substitute teacher and postal clerk by day, he attended evening classes at CSU|LAW. During an extraordinary, decades-long career, he was recognized for practicing civil rights, fair housing, and poverty law. He used the law to attack pervasive discrimination and to promote better housing opportunities for poor people. He directed an office of the Legal Aid Society and headed up other legal programs, including Lawyers for Housing, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the Cleveland Bar Association’s Law in Urban Affairs. Next, there were 12 years with the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority as assistant general counsel and chief assistant general counsel. In 1991, he returned to Montgomery, Alabama as a Federal Administrative Law Judge in the Social Security Administration. Over the years, he was a trustee of the Cleveland Bar Association, president of the Norman S. Minor Bar Association, and president of the CSU College of Law Alumni Association.