By Salomon Fuentes

Donald Bakeer has seen it all in South Los Angeles. How could he not? As a teacher at Horace Mann Middle School and Manual Arts High School during the 1980’s, he was on the frontline of what became the most violent and decadent time in the history of South Los Angeles.

One might surmise that the explosion of the gang culture and crack epidemic would have unraveled a man from a humble upbringing in Kansas City. But Bakeer used the experience as a teaching technique and, rather than succumbing to the prevailing sense of fear, he opted to write about what he had seen and turned it into the novel Crips: The Story of the L.A. Street Gang from 1971-1985. It would become the screenplay to the Oliver Stone-produced “South Central” film in 1992.

“I was trying to write a novel that would compel them to read a whole novel, so I wrote the novel Crips,” Bakeer said. “Because the key, I found out, to gangbanging was literacy. The kids that were the least literate were the most violent.”

Bakeer, 67, is tall with a slim yet imposing figure. When he covers his head with a kufi, the only hint of his hair one can make out is his lengthy beard—which carries an almost spectral quality to it.

His youth may be behind him but Bakeer is very much in tune with the machinery behind racial and gang politics even if he is not as involved as he used to be.

Bakeer studied at Howard University and did a stint in Vietnam, a time during which he “was not that human, really.” It was joining the Nation of Islam and becoming politically active through black student unions at Central Missouri State College in 1968 that changed his life.

“I became the leader of the black student union and started a riot. Brought the Black Panthers down and started a riot,” Bakeer said with a bit of a laugh.

It would be through becoming politically active that Bakeer met his late first wife, Sharon. They met at Central Missouri State and soon after got married. Ultimately, they had six children together and were married for 22 years before Sharon passed away from cancer.

Bakeer initially came to L.A., like many others, to be an actor (which he dabbles in). But he found himself doing graduate work at Cal-State L.A. in education and going back to what he always loved: writing and poetry.

“My struggle has always been to uplift, first black people, all people really, with literature, with literacy. That’s always been my struggle. I’ve been a writer since I was 15-years- old…I was a cub reporter for a weekly newspaper when I was 15…I was learning to write on deadline every week and I’ve been writing ever since.”

Bakeer even found time to interview one of his heroes, Muhammed Ali, for a publication later on.

“I used to be in his entourage,” Bakeer said of Ali. “He is the most secure person with himself, of anyone I’ve ever known. He puts you at ease…he knows who he is…He used to come to Horace Mann in a jogging suit, get off a bus with no money and stop all the kids before they go to school, make them late, talking to them, hugging them. No bodyguards. Just totally at ease…It was a great honor to meet him.”

After graduating at Cal-State L.A., Bakeer started looking at why the scores coming out of predominantly African-American schools were so poor and it would eventually turn him into a renowned gang expert; to the point where CNN hired him as its go-to guy on gangs.

“At that time there was no Crips or Bloods,” Bakeer said of the late 70’s, “you know, people didn’t really know those terms. But I began to do research and I determined that I was going to teach these kids that nobody else could teach.”

In a four-year period, Bakeer interviewed almost 500 gang members for his eventual novel.

“I even knew more about Cripping than all the Crips because I cross-referenced stories and so when I start hearing the same stories over (again), I realized what was true.”

In doing his interviews, he began making a curriculum that could better relate to those students who were turned off by “Huckleberry Finn” and “The Grapes of Wrath.”

“I realized that this was a new culture and it was so dynamic, even though it was destructive, that it was going to be the most powerful entity in the 80’s,” Bakeer said.

“I started using poetry by Langston Hughes and some of the great African-American poets of the Harlem Renaissance…and they seemed to take to that better because there’s more rhythm in the writing but they had a culture of anti-literacy.”

For gang members, it was easier to be disruptive in class and cause chaos than it was to be called upon by a teacher to read from a text.

“One of the worst things for a Crip, worst than getting beat down, worse than going to jail almost, is being humiliated trying to read among your peers,” Bakeer said.

Even students who had potential were lost in the struggle because there was easy money to be made on the streets.

“This kid, Ronnie Harvey, he gave up his career, he was all-city tackle — he wasn’t unusual, there were several of them, to become a crack dealer. He wound up getting shot and killed by the police in a fiery shootout.”

Though Bakeer was successful at getting some students to read and write through poetry and through his own novel, it was still a trying period for him and his family. They spent 17 years at a home near Main St. and 74th St. But safety was a concern, given that 20 people died on that block in that time period, so he eventually moved his family.

“I’m telling you, I’ve been to war. [The gang wars] were more intense…I was in Pleiku in [Vietnam). For the people in Pleiku, they were threatened all the time by violence. But they were threatened no more than the people in South Central.”

It wasn’t until 1992 when the L.A. Riots occurred that the gang wars started to ease, according to Bakeer.

“What was going to end the gang wars… was the same thing that ended the gang wars in Los Angeles in the Sixties: the riots. When the gangs all came together and turned on the police, who had become so corrupt that they didn’t respect human life, then after that it’s like a catharsis. Then after that they can heal,” Bakeer said.

Today, Bakeer is retired after 30 years of teaching. He remarried and had another child with his second wife, Anjail, who recently passed away.

He stays busy by writing, having just finished his memoir entitled “I, Too, Can Create Light.” He is still actively involved with his children’s lives and is proud of their numerous accomplishments.

“I have seven kids of my own. One’s in college right now but the other six, they all graduated from college,” Bakeer said.

One of his daughters, Kenyatta Bakeer, is an instructor for West Los Angeles College. She says her father is proudest of being a dad and being an accomplished writer. Part of being a good dad, she says, is the values that he has instilled in his children.

“I have learned the value of hard work, the importance of getting a good education and being an intellect,” she said.

Since “South Central” came out, Bakeer has done many lectures on gangs at schools and universities across Southern California, including USC. He lists his Hajj to Mecca as a major event in his life and was happy to be able to do it with Anjail.

Even as South Los Angeles slowly ascends from the lasting legacy of the gang wars, Bakeer will always remember what he and the residents of South Los Angeles lived through.

“Those times,” Bakeer said with a long pause, “I just had to write about it. It was just so…dynamic.”

Click here to visit Donald Bakeer’s website.
Click here to visit Donald Bakeer’s blog.