1949–2007
The Oakland Post | Oakland, California | August 2, 2007 | Age 58
Bailey’s murder was the most prominent killing of an American journalist covering a local story since Don Bolles was assassinated in Phoenix in 1976. It exposed how violence could silence accountability journalism even in a major American city.
The Journalist
Chauncey Bailey grew up in Hayward, Calif., during the 1950s and ʼ60s, when segregation still shaped the geography of the Bay Area. Although too young to participate in the civil rights movement, it was the backdrop of Bailey’s childhood, the context that explained why certain neighborhoods existed and others did not, and why certain doors opened and others remained closed. Those stories stayed with him.
At San Jose State University he learned the craft that would define the next four decades of his life. He graduated in 1972 with a degree in journalism and built a career that defied easy categorization. Bailey was a working writer, journalist, communications professional, moving fluidly between roles that others might have seen as distinct.
After graduating from San Jose State, Bailey went to work for the Sun Reporter in San Francisco, a legendary Black newspaper. Ironically, one of Bailey’s first stories was the Zebra Killings, where members of a Black Muslim mosque were killing random white people. Bailey was even stopped by police because he fit the physical description of one of the killers.
Ater the Sun Reporter, Bailey went to the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, a summer program for minority journalists, and then worked at the Hartford Courant before joining the Detroit News in 1982. In 1993 he returned to Oakland, where he was soon hired by the Oakland Tribune. He worked there until 2005 while also freelancing for local radio, cable television, magazines, and other publications.
The Work
Bailey’s entrepreneurial spirit blurred the traditional boundaries of journalism. In 2003, he attempted to buy radio station KSBT. He worked as a publicist and press secretary
alongside his reporting. For him, being involved in his community and writing about it were not separate activities—they were part of the same mission. He wrote, spoke, and commented prolifically, wearing whatever hat the moment required.
In 2007, he became editor-in-chief of the Oakland Post and its five weekly publications—the largest Black newspaper operation in Northern California. The position gave him a platform to pursue the kind of stories that connected directly to Oaklandʼs Black community, stories that larger outlets often overlooked or simplified.
One such story involved Your Black Muslim Bakery, a local chain that had become an institution in Oaklandʼs Black community. The bakery, founded by Yusuf Bey in Santa Barbara in the mid 1960s, moved to Oakland in 1971. It operated multiple locations and employed dozens of people. It represented Black entrepreneurship and self-sufficiency, and its bean pies and whole wheat bread had become community staples.
But behind the success, the Bey family was embroiled in serious controversies.
Yusuf Bey faced allegations of sexual assault involving underage girls within his organization. At the time of his death from cancer in 2003, he was facing multiple charges of rape and sexual assault. His sons took over operations, and the problems multiplied. One of their first actions was to dissolve the board of directors. Bakery employees were involved in real estate fraud, identity theft, and at least one case of kidnapping.
In July 2007, a former board member of the bakery approached Bailey with allegations that the Bey sons had illegally taken over the bakery and were mismanaging it. Bailey learned that Your Black Muslim Bakery was more than a million dollars in debt and that the business was being looted for personal gain. He began investigating, gathering documents, and interviewing sources. His story would expose how an organization that presented itself as a pillar of the Black community had been systematically corrupted from within. Word got back to the bakery about Bailey’s coming story. At the bakery, a decision was made to prevent publication.
The Final Story
On the morning of August 2, 2007, Bailey was walking his regular route to the Oakland Post newspaper office when a white van pulled up across the street. A masked gunman jumped out and shot him three times. He died on the sidewalk at 7:30 a.m., just blocks from his newsroom.
The killing was immediate and brazen—carried out in daylight on a public street in a major American city. The next day police raided Your Black Muslim Bakeryʼs headquarters on a warrant unrelated to Bailey’s death. The investigation and local reporting revealed a complex criminal enterprise that had been operating behind the bakery’s community-focused facade.
The legal aftermath stretched for years. Yusuf Bey IV, who was leading the bakery at the time of Bailey’s death, was eventually convicted of ordering Baileyʼs murder along with three other killings. Antoine Mackey, who drove the white van, and Devaughndre Broussard, the shooter, were also convicted. The motive was straightforward: silence a journalist whose reporting threatened to expose financial crimes and criminal activity that had previously gone unchecked.
Bailey became the first American journalist killed for domestic reporting since Don Bolles was assassinated in Phoenix in 1976. The three-decade gap between those murders had allowed the journalism community to believe that such violence had become a relic of an earlier era. Baileyʼs death proved otherwise.
The Legacy
The city of Oakland renamed the street where Bailey walked to work each day as Chauncey Bailey Way. The small memorial serves as a daily reminder of what happened there and what was lost.
In the wake of his murder, a group of Bay Area journalists formed the Chauncey Bailey Project to complete the investigation he had started. The collaborative effort involved reporters from multiple outlets working together to expose the full extent of Your Black
Muslim Bakeryʼs criminal activities and the failures of local law enforcement to address them despite years of complaints.
Bob Butler, one of the reporters involved in the project, captured why it mattered: “You canʼt let that go unanswered. Because what happens to the next reporter whoʼs investigating a story that somebody doesnʼt want them to report?”
The Chauncey Bailey Projectʼs reporting revealed that Oakland police had long been aware of criminal activity at the bakery but had failed to act, in part because the organization wielded political influence and presented itself as a community institution. The Project documented murders, assaults, and fraud that had been ignored or minimized by authorities who should have been paying attention.
Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, in a statement following the convictions, said, “These verdicts also stand for our abiding conviction that violence against a free voice of the press will not be tolerated in our society or in our community. I would especially like to recognize and acknowledge the Chauncey Bailey Project who worked diligently and tirelessly to ensure that the defendants responsible for these senseless murders were also brought to justice.”
For nearly four decades, Bailey had worked to tell stories about Oaklandʼs Black community from the inside—not as an outsider looking in, but as someone who lived there, understood the context, and knew which questions needed asking. His murder demonstrated that accountability journalism at the local level could be as dangerous as war correspondence, and that the stakes of community reporting could be just as high as covering international conflicts.
Content included in this publication was generously provided by Freedom Forum which hosted the Journalists Memorial for 18 years to commemorate journalists who died reporting the news.
Freedom Forum is a partner with the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation.