In a time a social turmoil in the South , Gray was named state Democratic chairman in 1960 . He quickly emerged as a leader in a movement that sought to replace Senator Lyndon B. Johnson as the Southern standard bearer at the 1960 Democratic National Convention . At the convention itself , Southern delegations staged a vain fight to keep the party from adopting its firmest civil rights platform up to then . Mr. Gray was called upon to read the Segregationists ' Minority Report , astonishing fellow delegates with his unmistakable Northern accent . Toward the end of 1960 , he refused a television debate on sit-in demonstrations with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. , asserting that the black leader had " openly defied Georgia laws . " He then thwarted an integration campaign by Dr. King in Albany and even bought a public swimming pool and reopened it for whites only
1960 Democratic National Convention
1960 Democratic National Convention
James H. Gray Sr.