National

D’Army Bailey, National Civil Rights Museum Promoter, Dies

Published

10 years ago

July 13, 2015

This Nov. 12, 2011, photo shows Adrienne Bailey and her husband Judge D’Army Bailey, civil rights activist and a founder of the National Civil Rights Museum, walk on the red carpet as they arrive with other dignitaries and guests to the 2011 Freedom Awards at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts in Memphis, Tenn. (Mike Maple/The Commercial Appeal via AP)

Adrian Sainz, ASSOCIATED PRESS

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — D’Army Bailey, a lawyer and judge who helped preserve the Memphis hotel where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and turn it into the National Civil Rights Museum, died on Sunday, his wife said. He was 73.

Adrienne Bailey said her husband died after a long illness, surrounded by family at Methodist Hospital in Memphis.

Bailey led the fight to preserve the crumbling Lorraine Motel, where King was slain while standing on a balcony on April 4, 1968. King had stayed at the hotel while marching and making speeches on behalf of striking sanitation workers who were protesting low wages and unsafe working conditions.

Bailey assembled donors to buy the hotel, which ultimately became the National Civil Rights Museum in 1991. The museum has since undergone an extensive renovation.

Bailey also had small acting roles in several films, including “The People vs. Larry Flynt” and “How Stella Got Her Groove Back.”

Former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Sr. called Bailey an “unwavering advocate for justice.”

“Our community was made better by his years of service, his stunning intellect and a deep appreciation for the rule of law,” Ford said in a statement. “We should all be thankful for his tireless efforts and leadership.”

Bailey received his law degree from Yale and practiced civil rights law in New York before moving to California. He served on the Berkeley, California, city council from 1971 until 1973.

He later returned home to Memphis, where he practiced law before he was elected for a Circuit Court judgeship in 1990.

In 2007, Bailey was a finalist to fill a vacancy on the Tennessee Supreme Court, but he was not appointed by then-Gov. Phil Bredesen. He left the bench to enter private practice in 2009 before being re-elected to a Circuit Court judgeship last year.

He is the author of “The Education of a Black Radical: A Southern Civil Rights Activist’s Journey, 1959-1964” and “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Journey.”

Adrienne Bailey said her husband helped countless people during his life as a public servant.

“D’Army never thought that anything was impossible,” she said.

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Oakland Post: Week of March 12 – 18, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 12 – 18, 2025

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March 16, 2025

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Fighting to Keep Blackness

BlackPressUSA NEWSWIRE — Trump supporters have introduced another bill to take down the bright yellow letters of Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., in exchange for the name Liberty Plaza. D.C.

Published

2 weeks ago

March 7, 2025

Oakland Post

By April Ryan

As this nation observes the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, the words of President Trump reverberate. “This country will be WOKE no longer”, an emboldened Trump offered during his speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. Since then, Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell posted on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter this morning that “Elon Musk and his DOGE bros have ordered GSA to sell off the site of the historic Freedom Riders Museum in Montgomery.” Her post of little words went on to say, “This is outrageous and we will not let it stand! I am demanding an immediate reversal. Our civil rights history is not for sale!” DOGE trying to sell Freedom Rider Museum

Also, in the news today, the Associated Press is reporting they have a file of names and descriptions of more than 26,000 military images flagged for removal because of connections to women, minorities, culture, or DEI. In more attempts to downplay Blackness, a word that is interchanged with woke, Trump supporters have introduced another bill to take down the bright yellow letters of Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., in exchange for the name Liberty Plaza. D.C. Mayor Morial Bowser is allowing the name change to keep millions of federal dollars flowing there. Black Lives Matter Plaza was named in 2020 after a tense exchange between President Trump and George Floyd protesters in front of the White House. There are more reports about cuts to equity initiatives that impact HBCU students. Programs that recruited top HBCU students into the military and the pipeline for Department of Defense contracts have been canceled.

Meanwhile, Democrats are pushing back against this second-term Trump administration’s anti-DEI and Anti-woke message. In the wake of the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, several Congressional Black Caucus leaders are reintroducing the Voting Rights Act. South Carolina Democratic Congressman James Clyburn and Alabama Congresswoman Terry Sewell are sponsoring H.R. 14, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Six decades ago, Lewis was hit with a billy club by police as he marched for the right to vote for African Americans. The right for Black people to vote became law with the 1965 Voting Rights Act that has since been gutted, leaving the nation to vote without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. Reflecting on the late Congressman Lewis, March 1, 2020, a few months before his death, Lewis said, “We need more than ever in these times many more someones to make good trouble- to make their own dent in the wall of injustice.”