Loren Miller Bar Assoc. Annual Philip L Burton Memorial Scholarship Gala, 2009

Philip L. Burton Memorial Scholarship Gala, May 15, 2009, Grand Hyatt Seattle. The keynote speaker was famed civil rights attorney Fred Gray. Veteran civil rights attorney Fred Gray's legal career began in the midst of America's modern day civil rights movement. With a quiet demeanor, strong determination and secret commitment made in college, he vowed, "to become a lawyer, return to Alabama, and destroy everything segregated I could find." Gray began his legal career as a sole practitioner, less than a year out of law school, and at age twenty-four, he represented Mrs. Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus, the action that initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Gray was also Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s first civil rights lawyer. This was the beginning of a legal career that now spans over forty-five years.

Originally formed in Seattle in 1968 as the Loren Miller Bar Club, and officially renamed as the Loren Miller Bar Association in 1997, LMBA is at its core a civil rights organization, focused on addressing the issues of race, and social and economic disparities that affect the African-American community. LMBA was named after Loren Miller, the famed civil rights attorney who successfully argued Shelley v. Kramer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948).

LMBA is a statewide organization and local affiliate of the National Bar Association (“NBA”), which is the oldest minority bar and the largest organization of African-American attorneys in the United States. For more about the LMBA see: http://www.lmba.net/