Jesse Gray

Jesse Gray (1923 – January 2, 1988) was an American community organizer and politician.

Born near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Gray later moved to New York City. There, he was a housing rights activist who helped organize multiple rent strikes, notably in 1963 and from 1965 to 1968. On multiple occasions, he was arrested for his activism. Alongside his housing rights activism, he served in the New York State Assembly from 1973 to 1974, and ran for New York City elections such as ones for City Council and Mayor.

Jesse Gray was born in 1923,^[1] in a small town near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the youngest of ten children.^[2] He grew up in Gert Town^[3] and studied at Southern University and the Xavier University of Louisiana.^[4] During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine^[2] and was a member of the National Maritime Union.^[5] He later moved to New York City, first working as a tailor there.^[6]

In 1952, Gray joined the Harlem Tenants Council and began organizing.^[2] Gray may have organized the Communist Party USA in Harlem. In February 1960, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee;^[7] in his testimony, he denied being an active member of the Communist Party, but pled the 5th when asked about his prior membership. He worked on Benjamin J. Davis Jr.'s Senate campaigns in 1952 and 1958,^[8] with him later saying he did so because he felt Davis had a right to run for office. Following his 1963 rent strike, anonymous people wrote to newspapers claiming Gray was a communist.^[2]

In 1958, Gray founded the Lower Harlem Tenants Council, the predecessor to the Community Council on Housing.^[2] He adopted the rent strike as an organization method after he awoke one morning to find the heating in his apartment did not work.^[9] Heunsuccessfully attempted to organized one in 1959.^[8] In November 1963, he led a successful widespread rent strike, involving 30,000 Harlen tenants.^[4] To emphasize bad conditions and infestations, tenants caught rats in their tenements and showed them to the judge of the New York City Civil Court.^[10] Between 300 to 500 buildings and 15,000 tenants participated in the strike,^[11] with Gray unsuccessfully attempting to make the strike citywide.^[9]

During the Harlem riot of 1964, Newsday named Gray and Bill Epton as key figures in the riots, as they organized and spoke to the public at the time.^[8] According to journalist Junius Griffin, Gray, on July 18, entered Mount Morris Ascension Presbyterian Church with a bandaged face, which he claimed to be caused by a police beating, and called for at least 100 people to participate in guerrilla warfare;^[12] Griffin stood by these claims in a testimony to the New York Supreme Court on July 28, 1964.^[13] Gray also led protests in Jersey City, New Jersey at the time.^[14] In 1966, he testified before a court, with him being ordered by the New York Supreme Court to give all of what he knew about the riot.^[15]

In 1964, Gray was given a 60-day suspended sentence after being found guilty of interfering with an officer who was attempting to evict a resident.^[16][17] During the event, he and ten other people were arrested, including photographer Don Hogan Charles.^[18]

For a time, Gray was chairman of a black power organization.^[19] In December 1964, he founded the Federation for Independent Political Action (FIPA), a black political organization.^[1] Between 1965 and 1968, he worked for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in the Tulare labor camps rent strike,^[20] after which he founded the National Tenents Organization (NTO).^[21] For a time, he led the City-Wide Coordinating Committee on Housing,^[22] and from June to August 1971, led the Harlem Tenents Union.^[23] He also founded Harlem Back Street Youth Incorporated, which received funding from the Office of Economic Opportunity. He pushed for United States Congress to pass the Rat Extermination Act of 1967, which would have allocated funding to control rat infestations in slums.^[24]

Gray was an associate of Malcolm X, with Gray stating that Malcolm taught him to "be mean and black, and hate the white man". In 1964, he helped draft the charter for the Organization of Afro-American Unity.^[25] With FIPA, he called for stores on 125th Street to close for the mourning of Malcolm following his assassination.^[26]

On June 23, 1966, Gray organized a group of approximately 35 people, of which included philosopher Maxine Greene, to perform a sit-in at New York City Hall to protest a lack of jobs for teenagers. At the same time, a group of landlords were protesting rent regulation there, and the two groups fought. Gray, Greene, and 21-year-old Robert Vaughan were arrested; Gray was charged with disorderly conduct, interfering with an arrest, and resisting arrest. By his request, he was paroled until July 13 of that year.^[27] On July 13, he testified before the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, with him saying he was beaten by eight police officers during his arrest.^[28] On March 19, 1970, he was removed from a City Council meeting for heckling, which caused about 200 tenents to leave with him.^[29] On June 23, 1973, he was evicted from his aparment for nonpayment.^[30]

Gray did not believe that tenents should resist within pre-existing systems, such as in 1969, when he advised tenents to "move against the establishment" and to "not let lawyers lead the struggle". He argued for solidarity among the poor and the middle class,^[31] and among the slums in all parts of New York City. He stated the end goal of his organizing was for the government to seize and operate housing.^[2] An opponent of the Harlem slums, he focused his efforts on fighting for improving the living conditions of tenents.^[32][33] He was described as a militant of housing rights^[9][34] and a militant black nationalist in a Federal Bureau of Investigation file.^[24]

Besides housing rights, Gray organized against other injustices. His role in the Harlem riot of 1964 regarded police brutality.^[19] In 1964 and 1965, he protested police brutality,^[35] in the former protesting in front of the Headquarters of the United Nations.^[36] In 1966, he led a protest against segregation at IS 201.^[37]

Gray ran for elections as a member of the Democratic Party. He unsuccessfully ran for New York City Council in 1961,^[8] then ran again in 1969, winning the Democratic primaries in the latter but losing the general election.^[38] He attempted to run in the Democratic primaries of the 1965 New York City mayoral elections, but his place in the primaries was challenged by the New York Supreme Court, for some of the signatures which got him there were believed to be forged.^[39] He withdrew from the election.^[40]

From 1973 to 1974, Gray represented the 70th district in the New York State Assembly,^[41] losing the following primary.^[6] In 1970, he challenged the seat of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., losing the election.^[6] In 1973, he entered into the Democratic primaries in the New York City mayoral elections, as the seventh politician to do so that year; he lost.^[42]

Gray lived in the Queensbridge Houses. He was married to Rosalee Gray,^[43] who he separated from c. 1964. On March 15, 1966, he was accused of assaulting his wife and arrested, with the case later being dismissed.^[44] He had a daughter, Gail,^[6] and had a son, Jesse Gray Jr., who was a heroin dealer. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) stated that he had been an active dealer since at least the 1970s. In 1973, he was added to the NYPD's list of "100 major narcotics violators".^[45] He was arrested in 1972^[46] and 1982, both times being charged with drug possession with intent to distribute. During the latter arrest, authorities estimated that he earned $1,000,000 per week.^[47]

Gray fell in a coma in 1983,^[48] dying on January 2, 1988, aged 64, at the Beth Abraham Center in the Bronx.^[6][4] His funeral was held on April 9, at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and during the funeral, jazz musicians Wilber Morris and Claude Lawrence played a composition in his honor.^[21]

During the 100th United States Congress, John Conyers introduced the Jesse Gray Housing Act in his honor. An amendment to the Housing Act of 1937, it would have allocated $5,000,000 annually for 10 years in order to build 500,000 public housing units. It did not pass.^[49]