Gail Horne Ray

Gail Horne Ray

Attorney Gail Horne Ray was born in Birmingham, Alabama. She graduated from Ramsay High School, received a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Alabama in 1974 and was awarded a Juris Doctorate from Louisiana State University in 1977. She was admitted to the Louisiana Bar in 1978 and is in solo practice in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she specializes in criminal defense, civil rights and personal injury.

She formerly served as an Assistant Professor of Law at Southern University Law Center, as the Louisiana state social action chair for Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and as an East Baton Rouge Assistant Public Defender. She is a Silver Life member of the NAACP, on the Board of Directors for the J.K. Haynes Elementary Charter School, on the leadership council for Citizens for Second Chances and serves as President of the Southern University 6th Man Club.

Born with Brown v. Board of Education decision

On the day that I was born on May 18, 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama, the newspaper headlines around the country announced that the Supreme Court of the United States had outlawed public school segregation in the case entitled Brown versus Board of Education. Relatives used to tease me and say that when my mother, Quintella Dobbins Horne, a high school teacher, heard that the schools were going to be desegregated, she went into labor. However in 1963, nine years after that decision, after having skipped the second grade, I was in the fourth grade at all-Black Center Street Elementary School.

Until I was approximately eight years old, our family attended Westminster Presbyterian Church. It was pastored by Rev. John W. Rice who was the father of Condoleezza Rice. Condoleezza and I, only a few months apart in age, were in the same Sunday School class. Mrs. Rice was a music teacher and Condoleezza began playing the piano at a very early age. Soon the mothers of other young girls in the neighborhood decided that we should take piano lessons as well, whether we wanted to or not. My Mom also made sure that my younger sister Janet and I took ballet and tap dance lessons.