More on Chauncey Bailey

His killer was a member (a "good soldier," he says) of Your Black Muslim Bakery, a black Muslim splinter group with a violent streak. It's the worst-case scenario: He was murdered because he'd written critically about the group, and at least one member wanted to silence him.

Here's some background on the group, and a scathing essay on its founder, Yusuf Bey, printed shortly after he died in 2003. (In a weird twist, it turns out Bailey wrote Bey's obit for the Oakland Tribune, and this essay accuses Bailey of going soft in that story.)

According to this story, this is the first time a journalist has been assassinated in the United States since 1993.