“A strong, uncompromising voice that dreams of a
better America, Judge Bailey has experienced the ugliness
of both racism and fear. Yet he has not stepped back. What
a wonderful life to share.”—Nikki Giovanni,
from her Foreword
When four black college students refused to leave the whites-only
lunch counter of a Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth’s
on February 1, 1960, they set off a wave of similar protests
among black college students across the South. Memphis native
D’Army Bailey, the freshman class president at Southern
University—the largest predominantly black college in
the nation—soon joined with his classmates in their
own battle against segregation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
In The Education of a Black Radical, Bailey details his experiences
on the front lines of the black student movement of the early
1960s, providing a rare firsthand account of the early days
of America’s civil rights struggle and a shining example
of one man’s struggle to uphold the courageous principles
of liberty, justice, and equality.
A natural leader, Bailey delivered fiery speeches at civil
rights rallies, railed against school officials’ capitulation
to segregation, joined a sit-in at the Greyhound bus station,
and picketed against discriminatory hiring practices at numerous
Baton Rouge businesses. On December 15, 1961, he marched at
the head of two thousand Southern University students seven
miles from campus to downtown Baton Rouge to support fellow
students jailed for picketing. Baton Rouge police dispersed
the peaceful crowd with dogs and tear gas and arrested many
participants. After Bailey led a class boycott to protest
the administration’s efforts to quell the lingering
unrest on campus, Southern University summarily expelled him.
After his ejection, Bailey continued his academic journey
north to Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where
liberal white students had established a scholarship for civil
rights activists. Bailey sustained and expanded his activism
in the North, and he provides invaluable eyewitness accounts
of many major events from the civil rights era, including
the protests in Washington D.C.’s financial district
during the summer of 1963 and the gripping violence and arrests
in Baltimore later that year. He sheds new light on the 1963
March on Washington by exploring the political forces that
seized the march and changed its direction.
Labeled “subversive” and a “black nationalist
militant” by the FBI, Bailey crossed paths with many
visionary activists. In riveting detail, Bailey recalls several
days he spent hosting Malcolm X as a guest speaker at Clark,
hanging out with Abbie Hoffman in the early days of the Worsester
Student Movement, and personal interactions with other civil
rights icons, including the Reverend Will D. Campbell, Anne
Braden, James Meredith, Tom Hayden, and future congressmen
Barney Frank, John Lewis, and Allard Lowenstein.
D’Army Bailey gives voice to a generation of student
foot soldiers in the civil rights movement. Moving, powerful,
and intensely personal, The Education of a Black Radical offers
an inspirational tale of hope and a courageous stand for social
change. Moreover, it introduces an invigorating role model
for a new generation of activists taking up the racial challenges
of the twenty-first century.
D’Army Bailey is a circuit court judge
in Memphis, Tennessee. After graduating from Clark University,
he graduated from Yale University Law School and served as
a radical city councilman in Berkeley, California. In 1991,
he founded the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine
Motel, the site of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, assassination.
He is also the author of Mine Eyes Have Seen: Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.’s Final Journey. |
