Leonard C. Bailey (c. 1825 - September 1, 1918) was an African-American

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

, and

banker A bank is a financial institution that accepts Deposit account, deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital m ...

. He founded one of the first African-American banks in the United States. Bailey was born in about 1825 to a free African-American family. Growing up in poverty, Bailey worked as a barber and built up a chain of barbershops in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

Bailey invented and received

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

s for a series of devices, many designed for military or government use. These included a collapsible, folding bed designed for easy storage and portability, an innovation adopted by the U.S. military; a rapid mail-stamping machine used by the

U.S. Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or simply the Postal Service, is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the executive branch of the federal governmen ...

; a device to shunt trains to different tracks; and a

hernia A hernia (: hernias or herniae, from Latin, meaning 'rupture') is the abnormal exit of tissue or an organ (anatomy), organ, such as the bowel, through the wall of the cavity in which it normally resides. The term is also used for the normal Devel ...

truss adopted into wide use by the U.S. Army Medical Board. Bailey had to escape from a military camp after there was an attempt to capture him as a slave while he was dropping off his inventions. These inventions provided him with a sizable income. Bailey helped establish the Capital Savings Bank of Washington, D.C., one of the first African-American owned banks in the U.S. During the

Panic of 1893 The Panic of 1893 was an economic depression in the United States. It began in February 1893 and officially ended eight months later. The Panic of 1896 followed. It was the most serious economic depression in history until the Great Depression of ...

, the bank maintained its solvency by obtaining a personal loan from a national bank. Bailey was a member of the first mixed-race jury in Washington, D.C., which found Millie Gaines not guilty of murder by reason of insanity. He served as a member of the board of directors of the

Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth The Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth, commemorated as the Jennie Dean Memorial Site, was a former school for African-American children in Manassas, Virginia. The current site name honors the school's founder, Jennie Dean, a charismatic ...

where a residence hall was named after him. Bailey died on September 1, 1918, of a sudden illness. He was buried in what is now known as the

National Harmony Memorial Park National Harmony Memorial Park is a private, secular cemetery located at 7101 Sheriff Road in Landover, Maryland, in the United States. Although racially integrated, most of the individuals interred there are African American. In 1960, the 37,000 ...

Largo, Maryland Largo () is an unincorporated area and census-designated place in Prince George's County, Maryland, Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. The population was 11,605 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Largo is located just ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bailey, Leonard C. 1820s births 1918 deaths 19th-century African-American businesspeople African-American inventors 19th-century American businesspeople Businesspeople from Washington, D.C. Free Negroes African-American bankers