Obituary: D’Army Bailey, Founded Museum at King Killing Site

D’Army Bailey, a civil rights activist who led the campaign to open the National Civil Rights Museum at the Memphis motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, died Sunday of cancer at age 73, The New York Times writes.

A lawyer in his native Memphis and who served for 20 years as a Circuit Court judge, Mr. Bailey launched the museum effort in 1982, when “the site of the crucifixion,” as he called the Lorraine Motel, was derelict and facing foreclosure. As president of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memphis Memorial Foundation, he raised money to buy the motel and oversaw development of the $9.7-million museum, which opened in 1991 and last year completed a $27.5-million renovation.