Kevin Alexander Gray

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.

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.

Gray was a graduate of Wofford College and worked on his doctoral degree in political science at American University.

He served as second in command in Company C, 391st Engineers Combat Corps, United States Army Reserves in Spartanburg in the 1980s.

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).

The Corps won the Lt. General Emerson C. Ischner Award in 1988 for the number one Company grade reserve unit in the Army Reserves nationwide.

The award is presented annually by the Society of American Military Engineers.

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.

Gray spoke out frequently against South Africa's system of apartheid and in favor of support for Palestine.

He participated in protests against the flying of the Confederate flag on the South Carolina State House grounds, burning a Confederate flag in the process.

Gray served as South Carolina coordinator for the 1988 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson, 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.

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.

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.

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.

Gray authored/edited the following books:

Additional publications by Gray included:

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.

Gray gave a featured speech at public rallies held after the 2015 Charleston Church Shooting at [Mother] Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

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.

Gray died on March 7, 2023.

He was recognized by Richland County (SC) Council, the South Carolina Legislature, and by Congressman Jim Clyburn.