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This is Play It Forward. Real people. Real stories. The struggle to Play It Forward. Episode 435 with author Karen Gray Houston
The book is the reflection of Thomas Gray’s daughter, Karen Gray Houston, on how her father and uncle’s selfless actions
helped change the nation’s racial climate and opened doors for her and countless other African Americans. Her father and
uncle, Fred Gray, were leaders in the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, arrested for their activism. Fred was a young lawyer,
representing Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and unsung teenaged civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin. Five years before
the boycott, Karen’s father led a major protest of white police brutality after an officer shot a black man who was trying to
get a ride on a city bus.
Karen is an award‐winning broadcast journalist, whose career has spanned more than 41 years. She covered local politics for
20 years for WTTG‐TV, Fox‐5 in Washington, DC., retiring in 2014. She worked in Boston for United Press International and
WHDH Radio; anchored on the ABC Radio Network; was a correspondent for NBC News, covering the Reagan White House;
worked as an associate producer/writer for WCBS‐TV in New York and as a reporter/anchor for WTOP news‐radio in
Washington, DC.