“Image Ownership: Rollin Riggs” D’Army Bailey, founder of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis Tennessee, was a political and civil rights activist whose career spanned over half a century. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, on November 29, 1941, Bailey was one of three children (including siblings, Walter Bailey and Elsie Lewis Bailey) of parents Walter Bailey Sr., a railroad porter, and Will Ella Bailey, a nurse. Bailey attended public schools in Memphis and entered Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1959. As a junior at Southern, he led student protests against segregation in the city and was summarily expelled. In 1962 he repeated his junior year at Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts, majoring in government but continuing his involvement in student protest activities while completing his undergraduate studies. Bailey enrolled in Yale Law School in 1964 and received his law degree three years later. His first job in 1967 was as the national director of the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council, which recruited law students for civil rights work in the South. In 1968 he moved to San Francisco to practice law but eventually settled in Berkeley, California, where in 1971 he was elected to the city … Continue reading D’Army Bailey (1941-2015)