 One of the issues at Hampton was that her friend, Louise Thompson, also a teacher there, had written anonymously to W. E. B.Du Bois, co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), complaining about conditions at the college under the predominantly white administration.Although Bailey was suspected of writing the letter after Du Bois published it in the NAACP's journal "The Crisis", she did not betray Thompson but instead invited Langston Hughes to Hampton for a poetry reading and moral support.