Meet the civil rights lawyer who keeps forgiving Lipscomb University

Nashville Tennessean
·1 min read

Good morning, friends. This is Tennessean storytelling columnist Brad Schmitt.

Do you remember when, five years ago, the Lipscomb University president served Black students collard greens and corn bread at a dinner with cotton stalk centerpieces?

Yep, that happened. And it happened the night after that same Lipscomb president, Randy Lowry, served fajitas to Latin students.

President Joe Biden awards the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to Fred Gray during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, July 7, 2022. Gray is a prominent civil rights attorney who represented Rosa Parks, the NAACP and Martin Luther King Jr., who called Gray "the chief counsel for the protest movement." (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Lowry, who since has retired, turned to civil rights lawyer Fred Gray, a recent Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, for advice on dealing with the fallout.

Maybe that doesn't sound so unusual, a white university president turning to a civil rights lawyer for help. But this particular civil rights lawyer once sued Lipscomb University.

Religion writer Liam Adams reports on a fascinating, decades-long relationship between the university and Gray in this story, available to subscribers.

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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Meet the civil rights lawyer who keeps forgiving Lipscomb University