Alabama v. King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Criminal Trial That Launched the Civil Rights Movement

The defense lawyer for Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, the Selma marchers and other civil rights heroes reveals the true story of the historic trial that made Dr. King a national hero.

Fred D. Gray was one of only two Black lawyers in Montgomery, Alabama, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus. The ensuing Montgomery bus boycott led Gray to become Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s defense lawyer and later, chief counsel for the protest movement. This trial—with eighty-nine indictments for violating the state’s anti-boycott statute—was not going to be just any trial. It would be an attempt to launch a movement in a city fighting to preserve segregation.

With Gray’s memories of the extraordinary events, as well as the transcribed words of King’s vivid courtroom testimony, this book transports readers to the trial that sparked the Civil Rights Movement and introduced Martin Luther King Jr. to the world.

“Poignant, sometimes harrowing.” —Wall Street Journal