Ms. Victoria Jackson Gray Adams (1926 – 2006), United Methodist lay leader and co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, was one of the most courageous participants in the southern black freedom movement of the 1960s. Gray Adams was the first woman to run for US Senate from the state of Mississippi. An educator and activist for human rights, she developed models of citizenship education for a variety of organizations nationwide. In 1997, Victoria Gray Adams founded the Tony West Gray Jr. Freedom School, an educational empowerment program for grade school students. The school was named for her son, who died of HIV/AIDS.