Charles Douglas Langford

Charles Douglas Langford was born on December 9, 1922, in Montgomery, Alabama.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Tennessee State University and a law degree from the Catholic University.
A civil rights lawyer whose best-known client was Rosa Parks.
Charles Langford died on February 11 at the age of 84.
Mr. Langford was prominent Alabama Democrat, serving five terms in the State Senate and before that in the State House of Representatives. He retired in 2002.
Fred Gray and Charles Langford represented Mrs. Parks after she her arrest on December 1, 1955. The arrest was for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery. At that time, Gray and Langford were the only two black lawyers in Montgomery.
In response the the arrest, blacks boycotted city buses for more than a year, as legal challenges to Jim Crow laws in Montgomery were started. Another ruling on November 13, 1956, Browder v. Gayle, the United States Supreme Court affirmed a district court’s ruling outlawing segregation on the city buses.
Mr. Langford’s also represented Arlam Carr, whose suit in 1964 desegregated Montgomery public schools.
In 1993, representing a group of black legislators, Mr. Langford helped end the flying of a Confederate battle flag over the State Capitol in Alabama.