Kevin Alexander Gray (July 1, 1957 – March 7, 2023) was an American political activist and author, based in
South Carolina. Gray was involved in community organizing, working on a variety of issues ranging from racial politics, police violence, third-world politics & relations, union organizing & workers’ rights, grassroots political campaigns, marches, actions & political events.[1]
Early life
Spending his early years in
Spartanburg, South Carolina, Gray and his younger sister Valerie were among the first blacks to attend the local all-white Fairforest Elementary School in 1969.[2]
Gray served as a national board member of the
American Civil Liberties Union for four years and was past nine term president of the South Carolina affiliate of the ACLU.[4]
He was a founding member of the
Rainbow Coalition in 1986, and former co-chair of the Southern Rainbow Education Project—a coalition of southern activists. He was also a former contributing editor of the Independent Political Action Bulletin.
Gray organized the
Harriet Tubman Freedom House Project which focused on community based political and cultural education. He was Organizer of the National Mobilization Committee Against the Drug War. Advisory board member of DRC Net (Drug Policy Reform Coalition). Gray gave a featured speech at public rallies held after the 2015
Charleston Church Shooting at [Mother]
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.[9]
Gray served as South Carolina coordinator for the 1988 presidential campaign of
Jesse Jackson,[10] 1992 southern political director for the presidential campaign of Iowa Senator
Tom Harkin and the 2010 US Senate campaign of Green Party candidate
Tom Clements.[11]
In 1997, Gray was an organizer for the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition’s anti-
Proposition 209 marches in San Francisco and Sacramento, California.
In 2002, Gray was a gubernatorial candidate representing the South Carolina
United Citizens’ Party &
Green Party. He did not have the required signatures to be on the ballot, and consequently ran as a write-in candidate.[12]
Written works
Gray authored/edited the following books:
Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics: Selected Essays on Politics & Culture. 2008. AK Press.
ISBN978-1-904859-91-8
“A Call for a New Anti-War Movement” appeared in How to Legalize Drugs: Public Health, Social Science and Civil Liberties Perspective, edited by Dr.
Jefferson Fish of
St. John’s University in 1998. The book is a collection of works by US drug policy experts. Gray's essay examined cultural and ideological aspects of the impact of the “war on drugs” on African Americans.
ISBN978-0-7657-0151-0
“Soul Brother?
Bill Clinton and Black America” in
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair’s Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils, published by CounterPunch, 2004.
ISBN978-1-904859-03-1
“What Malcolm Might Say” in Peace Not Terror: Leaders of the Antiwar Movement Speak Out Against U.S. Foreign Policy Post 9/11, edited by Mary Susannah Robbins,
Lexington Books, 2008.
ISBN978-0-7391-2497-0
Gray was a weekly guest on
Dave Marsh’s Sirius XM satellite radio show “Live From the Land of Hopes and Dreams” and a frequent panelist on Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Sunday radio broadcast, and NewsTalk on Irish National Radio. Other essays by Gray on race and politics appeared in The Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy – “The Intensification of Racial Solidarity in the 1990s under the guise of Black Nationalism” (1996); The Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, The
Washington Post Outlook Section, Emerge, One Magazine, The Nation, The New Liberator, The American University Graduate Review & numerous other international, national, regional & local publications.[13] Gray’s essays on race, politics, cultural and world affairs were found online at Counterpunch.com, The Black Agenda Report, “Holla If You Hear Me” blog and The Black Commentator. Gray was a frequent columnist for the national monthly magazine The Progressive, a contributing writer for The Charleston Chronicle and The Free Times of Columbia and a former managing editor and contributing editor of Black News in Columbia.
Later life and death
In 2020 Gray opened Railroad BBQ on Hampton Street in Columbia, a restaurant and repository for the hundreds of civil and human rights ephemera he collected over the years.[14][15]