Cheryl A. Gray Evans


Cheryl Artise Gray Evans is an American lawyer and politician. She represented District 5 in the Louisiana Senate prior to her resignation in 2009. She formerly served in the Louisiana House of Representatives.

Background

After finishing Eleanor McMain Magnet Secondary Senior High School in New Orleans, Cheryl A. Gray proceeded to Stanford University, where she was a member of the track team and Delta Sigma Theta, receiving her baccalaureate degree in 1990. She then returned to New Orleans and received her juris doctor from Tulane University's law school in 1993.
She practiced law with New Orleans' Gray & Gray Law Firm, which was started by her parents, her mother Ernestine S. Gray rising to the position of judge in the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court.

Political career

Cheryl A. Gray Evans is a confidant with the reform faction of the Orleans Parish Democratic Party—the element frequently identified with the Black Organization for Leadership Development political organization which inexorably competes against William J. Jefferson and his Progressive Democrats. Gray Evans defeated one of Jefferson's daughters, Jalila Jefferson-Bullock, for the Senate District 5 seat vacated by the term-limited Diana Bajoie, Jefferson's successor in the state Senate. She is a critic of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's handling of recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

Personal life

Cheryl A. Gray Evans' official state senate résumé lists a host of achievements, activities, awards, and memberships. She attends Asia Baptist Church in New Orleans and is married to former New Orleans television and radio news anchor/reporter Patrick Evans, who once served as Communications Director to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.
Toward the end of 2009 Cheryl Gray Evans resigned from the legislature to join her husband, who had begun serving on active duty in Connecticut as a public affairs officer in the Navy.