Leonard Bailey was an African American innovator and businessman in Washington, DC, during the 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born in 1825 with a physical inability to an impoverished free black family. However, through his business adventures and ambitious dreams, he overcame and defeated his impediments and had a substantial positive impact on the broader Black community.

Bailey ascended in status by turning into an understudy barber. Through this achievement, he eventually came to own and run a chain of other barbershops in different parts in the District of Columbia during the Civil War period.

Bailey’s first noteworthy appearance came in 1869 when he was one of the members of the jury for the scandalous Millie Gaines Trial. The defendant Gaines, a black woman, had executed her white lover and was acquitted on the grounds of transitory madness. The preliminary hearing was administered by the state house’s originally coordinated Jury, comprised of six black men and six white men.

By the 1880s Bailey was a recognized pioneer of Washington’s black business network. In 1884, the year New York Governor Grover Cleveland became the principal Democrat elected President since the 1850s, many in the African American community dreaded their rights would be limited. Bailey and other white collar class black experts approached Congress to protect those rights.

Bailey’s desire to help the African American community prompted his establishing the Capitol Savings Bank on October 17, 1888. Bailey and seven other black entrepreneurs encouraged the bank to give increasingly moderate credits and protection for low-income family units in the District of Columbia.

Bailey served as the bank’s President for a while before becoming head treasurer and an executive of its financial board. By 1893, amid one of the nation’s most awful financial crises, the Capitol Savings Bank was one of the few banks in Washington, DC to remain open for business. Due to this flexibility, Capitol Savings turned into a trusted bank for both blacks and whites in the DC region.

Besides his achievements as a businessman and community member, Bailey is additionally celebrated for his creative inventions. In 1883, Bailey patented one of his most significant devices; a truss-and-bandage intended to support patients with lower-body hernias. The structure was later embraced by the US Armed Forces Medical Board, which in turn gave subsidies to Bailey’s business adventures and future innovations.

Among these were a gadget for moving railroad trains and a speed stamper for mail, the last being utilized most by the U.S. Postal Service. On July 18, 1899, Bailey protected a collapsing bed for simple stockpiling. Again, the US Army respected the advancement and the creation is one of Bailey’s claims to fame today.

Throughout his career, Bailey carefully maintained his position as a member of the black upper middle class. He became a director of the Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth in Virginia, was a board member of the Berean Baptist Church in the District of Columbia and was a famous Freemason.

Leonard C. Bailey died suddenly on September 1, 1918.  He was 93 and is interred at National Harmony Memorial Park in Largo, Maryland.