Shelby County Circuit Court Judge D’Army Bailey has a piece of experience-based advice for California Gov. Gray Davis, the target of an Oct. 7 recall election.
“He needs to do what I did on election day,” said Bailey, who was ousted by California voters three decades ago in another high-profile recall election. “I would encourage him to go for a long walk.”
Bailey, born and raised in predominantly Black South Memphis, was a young Yale Law School graduate living in the Bay Area of Northern California when he and a friend decided to run for the Berkeley City Council. For two years, he had been working for San Francisco Legal Services after passing the California Bar exam and getting his law license in 1969.
“I had a hard time finding property in San Francisco because of racial discrimination,” he recalled.
He wound up moving into Berkeley 90 days before a 1971 election for City Council – an election that gained national attention because Bailey was one of four young candidates who ran as a “radical” slate. Two, including Bailey, were Black. They won three of the four seats up for grabs on the nine-member council.
“The media said that radicals had taken over Berkeley, when in reality, we had four seats, including the mayor, on the nine-member council,” Bailey said. “The first year, we stalemated on most issues. They felt we were disregarding them and we felt they were trying to tell us what to do.”
Even the “radical” faction on the council began to bicker and fall apart, he said. Berkeley’s legendary radical community was, in fact, stratified and not functioning as a block during the tumultuous early 70s, said Bailey, who played starring roles in the city’s well-known political controversies.
“My first interests were those of the Black community and that wasn’t the politics of Berkeley. In reality, it had the same problems as Memphis or any city in the South at that time,” he said.
Plans to recall Bailey and the others who ran with him were “brewing since the day of the election.” Finally, the recall efforts focused only on Bailey.
“Once they chose a target, they knew they had a solid block of votes. All they had to do then was get 25 percent of voters’ signatures to get it on the ballot,” he said. “Once they forced the issue to the ballot, my goose was cooked. I knew what the score was going to be on election day.”
After he lost his council seat in the 1973 recall election, Bailey left California and returned to
Memphis where he opened a law office with his brother. The judge is grateful to the voters of California in at least one respect because he met his wife Adrienne shortly after coming back to his hometown. The couple has raised two sons, including one who is following in his father’s footsteps as a third year law school student.
Bailey credits his upbringing in South Memphis with motivating him to succeed since the community had a “rich heritage” and exposed him to “people who had ambition.” He attended segregated schools, but said he wasn’t bothered by it within his community.
“It only resonated when I left the Black community – only if I went downtown where there were separate restrooms and drinking fountains that I was aware of the racial divide,” he said. “After the civil rights movement of the 60s, that generation that came after me didn’t have the same privilege of seeing how bad it was or could be or had been and seeing what it took by example for people to work their way through that.”
After graduating from a segregated Memphis high school, Bailey attended Southern University in Baton Rouge, LA, where he became involved in civil rights demonstrations. Bailey said he and others involved in the civil unrest were expelled from the Black public university, which his brother, Walter, also attended on a football scholarship.
“Some students in Massachusetts raised money by having bake sales and car washes to give a scholarship to a student expelled in the South. They offered me the grant to attend Clark University in Worchester, Massachusetts,” he said. “I had to start my junior year over.”
In 1990, Bailey left the practice of law and was elected to the bench in the 30th Judicial District. He was reelected eight years later to a second eight-year term. And while he is proud to be part of the judicial system, Bailey said his greatest achievement since returning to Memphis may be his role in saving the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot and killed. Since 1991, the Lorraine has housed a civil rights museum visited every year by thousands of people from throughout the world.
“I knew that the Lorraine was one of the most famous places in the world and here it was falling down,” he said.
After a 1982 foreclosure, Bailey and others formed a non-profit group to raise money for the civil rights museum. The $9 million project ultimately was financed with loans, gifts and appropriations from the state, city and county. Bailey’s name is on a plaque at the museum’s entrance.
Besides being a judge, he also has fulfilled another ambition – to be an actor. He has appeared in several movies, including “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” and “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” When he leaves the bench, Bailey said his next career choice is to “become a movie star.”
“Then I could be politically active too,” he said.