The Education of a Black Radical: A Southern Civil Rights Activist's Journey, 1959-1964

Images

Walter (left) and D’Army Bailey, ages three and two. Bailey’s Stand, owned by my grandfather, where I spent many afternoons as a child and young man. Drawing by Luther Hampton, reproduced with permission. My grandfather, D. A. Bailey, and my father, Walter L. Bailey Sr., in front of Bailey’s Stand. My paternal grandmother, Mary Bailey. Walter and Will Ella Bailey, my parents. My maternal grandmother, Lureana Robinson. Nurse Will Ella Bailey. My father, Walter L. Bailey Sr., at a checkers tournament. Railroad porter Walter L. Bailey Sr. Booker T. Washington High School principal Blair T. Hunt and his famous bell. Courtesy Special Collections, University of Memphis Libraries. Booker T. Washington High School history professor, writer, and pioneering radio disc jockey Nat D. Williams in W. C. Handy Park on Beale Street. Richard Gardner/The Commercial Appeal, July 1974. Booker T. Washington High School newspaper staff, 1959. D’Army as high school senior. On break from college during my freshman year. At right, E. C. “Suge” Jones, one of Memphis’s first black policemen . Courtesy Special Collections , University of Memphis Libraries. Southern University freshman class president D’Army Bailey. Downtown Baton Rouge S. H. Kress department store, where the first Southern University student sit-ins took place on March 28, 1960. Courtesy Baton Rouge Police Department. Reverend T. J. Jemison escorts two of the jailed Southern students after raising bail funds to secure their release. Morning Advocate, April 15, 1960. Capital City Press, Baton Rouge, La. The two-story house and storefront on Swan Street just off the Southern campus where students rallied to hear protest organizers from the balcony after the rallies were banned on campus. State Times, April 1, 1960. Capital City Press, Baton Rouge, La. Embattled Southern University president Felton Grandison Clark trying feverishly to contain student discontent. Courtesy Southern University, John B. Cade Library Archives, Baton Rouge, La. Some of the two thousand peaceful protestors who marched from the Old State Capitol to the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on December 15, 1961, to protest the arrests the day before of their fellow students for picketing. The demonstrators were tear-gassed in front of the jail, and German shepherds were set upon them. State Times, Dec. 15, 1961. Capital City Press, Baton Rouge, La. Mug shot of Reverend B. Elton Cox taken upon his arrest on December 15, 1961. His case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where his conviction was overturned in 1965 in the case of Cox v. Louisiana. Courtesy East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office. Southern University dean of students Martin L. Harvey. Anxious students crowd the hall outside the auditor’s office to withdraw funds to get home after President Clark abruptly closed the university indefinitely, telling them they had to be off campus by 5:00 p.m. Morning Advocate, Jan. 19, 1962. Capital City Press, Baton Rouge, La. Black-owned Lincoln Hotel in downtown Baton Rouge, where banned student leaders stayed for weeks. Courtesy Southern University Law Center. Baton Rouge civil rights attorney Johnny Jones was fervent in his representation of student protestors. State Times, June 14, 1972. Capital City Press, Baton Rouge, La. As the university reopened on January 25, 1962, three of the ousted students, D’Army Bailey, Thomas Peete, and Willie Bradford , appeared at the registrar’s office but were denied readmission and were later escorted off campus. Morning Advocate, Jan. 26, 1962. Capital City Press, Baton Rouge, La. I began my junior year at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, on September 21, 1962, after sympathetic Clark students raised scholarship funds to back a student expelled for civil rights activities. Courtesy Worcester Telegram & Gazette. From the 1963 Clark yearbook . The caption beneath reads: “The Black man must be a professional Prometheus / Shackled by his skin to a boulder of blasphemy. / I would join his chorus of defiance.” As jeering crowds look on, Baltimore police arrest hundreds of civil rights protestors , including me, at the segregated Gwyn Oak Amusement Park, July 4, 1963. Walter McCardell/Baltimore Sun, July 4, 1963. Allison Turaj of Washington, D.C., continued her march through Baltimore’s Gwyn Oak amusement park...