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

Bailey, D’Army

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807134767 ISBN 13: 9780807134764

Publisher: LSU Press, 2009

Synopsis

"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.

About this title

About the Author

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.

Reviews

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Michael A. Fletcher The age of Obama has touched off all kinds of talk about the country entering a post-racial period, or at least an era when the impact of race has unquestionably declined. That is how it should be, because the nation's racial progress, while no doubt uneven, is also undeniable. But the treacherous road that has brought us to this milestone should not be forgotten. That is part of what D'Army Bailey tries to ensure with his memoir, "The Education of a Black Radical." Bailey offers a story of his life as a cog in what we have come to know as the civil rights movement. His book isn't a tour of the familiar triumphs and tragedies in places such as Greensboro, Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham and Little Rock. Instead, it is the tale of lesser-known battles that made the movement a movement. It is also a revealing story of one man's awakening to the call of his times. Bailey is one of the many foot soldiers of the civil rights movement. He recently retired as a judge on a state court in Memphis and is the founder of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. For many years, he was active in the National Bar Association, the country's premier organization for African American lawyers and judges. But as a college student, this establishment figure qualified as a bona fide radical, simply because he dared to get involved in protests to desegregate his college town, launching him into a lifetime of activism. He was a reluctant student leader at Southern University in Baton Rouge, one of the nation's proudest historically black universities. Like hundreds of other students on such campuses across the South, he was expelled for his activism. He was saved by a scholarship to a school he had never heard of, located in a city whose name he could not pronounce: Clark University in Worcester, Mass., where student leaders had launched a scholarship fund to benefit activists who faced expulsion. The most extraordinary thing about Bailey's story is its ordinary beginnings. He was raised in a segregated but comfortable neighborhood in Memphis, which many African Americans sardonically called the largest city in Mississippi. Despite the harshness that moniker suggests, Bailey led a life that was upper middle class by the standards of the segregated South. His father was a Pullman porter; his mother was a housekeeper who eventually became a nurse; and his grandfather a contractor, storeowner and all-around entrepreneur. Growing up, Bailey listened to rhythm-and-blues music, admired the style of the neighborhood sharpies and had his eye on the cute girls. But, inexorably, the painful realities of American apartheid enveloped his life. First, it was through the pages of the Pittsburgh Courier, the Chicago Defender and the Atlanta Daily World, the black newspapers that closely chronicled the nation's civil rights struggle. Soon enough, the black struggle became his struggle. As a student at Southern, Bailey found his voice as a leader and tried to address the outrage he felt toward the segregation that defined his life. Bailey makes clear that not all African Americans heard the same call he did. In his telling, Southern's black administrators and much of the faculty enabled segregation, content not to rock their quiet corner of the world. Under pressure from white political leaders, the school discouraged activism and did not hesitate to expel and otherwise impede those who ignored their warnings. It is an honest, cringe-inducing piece of history that often goes unacknowledged. After his undergraduate days, Bailey went on to be a stellar student and lifelong activist. He graduated from Yale Law School and practiced law in San Francisco. He served two years on the Berkeley, Calif., City Council until being recalled by voters after his brand of black nationalist politics prompted charges that he led wild outbursts at council meetings and advocated racism. Eventually, he returned to his native Memphis, where he practiced law and emerged as a prominent community leader before winning election to the bench, where he served before returning to private practice. Unfortunately, much of that story is not chronicled in this book. Bailey is saving those experiences for two future volumes of his memoirs, which may or may not be a good idea. This inside look at his student activism would have been even more valuable had he written about his whole career, explaining how his passions have evolved with the times and how they shaped his view of a nation now led by a black president. fletcherm@washpost.com
Copyright 2010, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Bailey, now a Tennessee circuit court judge, was one of hundreds of student leaders expelled from black Southern colleges in the 1960s for political activities. A scholarship for expelled Southern students led him north to Clark University, where his education and activism continued as he realized that the North wasn't miraculously more rational or egalitarian than the South. By his senior year, he was on the front lines at the demonstrations at Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Baltimore (July 1963), participating in the March on Washington a month later, but with reservations (the original idea for the march so dissipated that the final gathering seemed more like a picnic than protest). In focusing tightly on those foot soldier years that shaped his adult convictions, the story of my life as a college student caught up in the movement, Bailey takes the reader inside the student debates and deliberations, the organizing and strategizing activities of the early '60s, adding a valuable dimension to the history of the civil rights movement. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Bailey, currently a judge in Memphis, reflects back on his experience in the formative stages of the student-activist movement of the 1960s, centered in predominately black colleges and universities in the South, where many of the heroes remain unknown. When his activism led to his being expelled from Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Bailey moved on Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he continued and matured in the work of social activism. There he came to recognize that perceptions of white supremacy knew no geographic bounds. In the summer of 1963, he was exposed to the compelling persona of Malcolm X, saw the less-than-progressive posture of then-attorney general Robert Kennedy, and experienced the compromise, if not co-optation, of social activism by the political power structure. Bailey reflects a reluctant leader with a commitment to the movement but not party labels, a unique personality thrust into a complex circumstance where integrity and respect were not given but had to be demanded. --Vernon Ford

Edition details

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807134767
• ISBN 13: 9780807134764
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272