William Gray (Washington County)
State Senate: 1870-1875
Born: March 2, 1841 in St. Louis, MO
Died: February 14, 1919 in Chicago, IL
Baptist minister. Appointed Brigadier General by Gov. Adelbert Ames. Gray was a strong proponent of civil rights legislation.
Unfortunately, Gray’s life seems to have been marked by scandal and corruption. He was indicted in 1876 for embezzling funds from a Baptist church in Fayette County, Kentucky. Later newspaper articles imply other questionable incidents.
Gray is the only child recorded with free parents John Nelson and Sarah Washington on the 1850 (the family is listed as white) and 1860 census in St. Louis. He is listed on the 1870 census in Greenville with wife Hester and on the 1880 census in Lexington, KY with wife Selena (see below) and mother Sarah. By the late 1880s, Gray was a minister in St. Paul, Minnesota. At some point, he served as keeper of the gallery in the Minnesota state senate. Gray eventually moved to Chicago, where he spent the last years of his life.
His second wife was Selena J. Walker. She was born free on August 17, 1852 in Columbia, TN, and died March 20, 1919 in Chicago. She appears with her family on the 1860 and 1870 census in Nashville. She attended Fisk University and is listed in 1877 and 1878 Nashville city directories as a public school principal. She married William Gray in 1878 at First Colored Baptist Church (now Spruce Street Baptist Church) in Nashville.
Birth and death dates from the Cook County Deaths Index.
“William Gray of Greenville, was a young Baptist preacher of some education and much natural cleverness. A leader in the demands for civil rights for Negroes, he was lacking in tact, and was probably at times guilty of double-dealing both in politics and in religious affairs.”
(Vernon Lane Wharton, The Negro in Mississippi, 1865-1890, 1965)
This page was last updated on February 5, 2026.