Meet the Author

16500 Van Aken Boulevard,Cleveland OH 44120

05 November, 2022

Description

Karen Gray Houston, award-winning broadcast journalist, and daughter of pioneering civil rights organizer Judge Thomas Gray will speak about her book, Daughter of the Boycott: Carrying on a Montgomery Family’s Civil Rights Legacy at 2 pm Saturday, November 5 at the Shaker Heights Public Library at 16500 Van Aken Boulevard. Houston will discuss her family’s leading roles in the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, and her father’s efforts to fight housing discrimination in Ohio after her family moved to the Ludlow neighborhood of Shaker Heights. Kirkus Review cited Houston’s memoir as, "a welcome reminder that profound social changes can also result from the quiet heroism of people with unshakable commitment to nonviolence." Houston will be in Cleveland for her father's posthumous induction into the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Hall of Fame at Cleveland State University. Gray helped organize the 382-day Montgomery Bus Boycott, arranging carpools and taxi rides for thousands of black residents who normally took buses; before it ended, her uncle, Fred Gray, had become the lead counsel in Browder v. Gayle, the U.S. Supreme Court case that eventually forced Montgomery to desegregate its buses. A 1968 graduate of Shaker Heights High School, Houston earned her bachelor’s degree in Psychology cum laude from Ohio University and her master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. Her career has spanned 41 years at radio and television stations and networks in Boston, New York City and Washington, DC. Since her retirement, Houston wrote her memoir and spent a year contributing to an opinion page column (Alabama Voices) in the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper. Books will be available for sale and signing thanks to Loganberry Books.