Topic: Danny Bakewell and WBOK
Walking the Talk
Danny Bakewell Sr., Danny Bakewell Jr., and the New WBOK
A leading activist/entrepreneur spearheads an investment in the rebuilding of his home town
By J.B. Borders
Danny Bakewell Sr.’s life appears to have come full circle. When he was a star football player at St. Augustine High in the mid-‘60s, the stocky teenager lived for the mornings when he would be invited to discuss his athletic triumphs on the late Champ Clark’s weekly sports-talk show on WBOK-AM radio. The appearances gave Bakewell – a working-class boy from the streets of Tremé – an opportunity to have his voice heard throughout the community.
Today, Bakewell, 61, owns WBOK and has changed its format from gospel to talk in order to give other New Orleanians an outlet to have their voices heard. The move has paid off dramatically.
Since Bakewell’s new WBOK emerged in November 2007 with its “Talk Back, Talk Black” marketing slogan, the station has been the buzz of the town. It’s the only spot on the radio dial where African American journalists, elected leaders, issue-experts, business people and regular citizens discuss the pressing topics of the day from frank, intelligent, black perspectives.
Whether it’s the state of public housing, health and education in New Orleans or the various ripples caused by the Obama presidential campaign, WBOK is the place to hear straight talk free of the large doses of racist jibberish found too often on white-owned media, both the left- and right-wing varieties.
“WBOK is the voice of our community speaking for itself,” Bakewell says. “We’re unapologetically black. You can talk about things on ‘BOK that you talk about at the barbershop.”
With witty veteran radio personality C.J. Morgan anchoring the morning-drive program and savvy commentators Paul Beaulieu and John Slade moderating the afternoon conversations, WBOK-AM 1230 is steadily recapturing the glory it once enjoyed in the 1960s as “the big boss sound” of New Orleans.
The resurgence of WBOK can only be chalked up to fate. Bakewell, now a resident of California, had been in the market for a west coast radio station to complement his 2004 acquisition of the Los Angeles Sentinel, the oldest and largest black newspaper west of the Mississippi. He had no interest in a New Orleans station until the WBOK opportunity presented itself in mid-2006. Even then, he wasn’t convinced the deal made good business sense.
Post-Katrina flooding had inundated WBOK’s Gentilly Boulevard headquarters and ruined everything in it. In addition, the station’s broadcast antenna had been snapped in half. At that time, large swaths of the city were still in ruins and it wasn’t clear if there would be enough advertisers to support the kind of format Bakewell had in mind.
One the other hand, he reasoned, the dire state of affairs called for someone to demonstrate leadership and invest in the city’s rebuilding.
“Everything going on in New Orleans is against us,” Bakewell points out. “We need a vehicle where black people’s voices can be heard. I had a moral obligation to buy the station.”
That phrase pops up repeatedly in conversations with Bakewell. He says that sticking to his principles has been one of the keys to his success in business and in life. “Undertakings that are morally and ethically sound are generally financially profitable, too,” he says.
With Bakewell, the point is not just to talk the talk, but also to walk the walk.
Despite the challenges surrounding the WBOK purchase, Bakewell concluded, “I can do it, therefore I should, and I will.”
Though Bakewell is not primarily a media mogul, he is a successful activist/developer who was described by Time Magazine as one of the “leading proponents of urban bootstrap economics” and "one of the most dynamic leaders in America today" by the L.A. Times.
He currently serves as chairman of the Bakewell Company, one of the largest black-owned development companies in the United States. The Bakewell Company brokers and leads revitalization efforts in Los Angeles, Compton, Pasadena and other California communities. Since its founding 26 years ago, the company has developed, built and managed over 3.5 million square feet of retail, office, industrial and commercial space for such nationally known corporations as Albertsons, Pizza Hut, Hollywood Video, International House of Pancakes, McDonald’s, Rite Aid, Starbucks and others.
The Bakewell Company is also a housing developer. Most notably, it has partnered with KB Homes, one of the nation’s largest residential builders, to construct 380 homes in Seaside, California, on the Monterey Peninsula. The project is heralded as the first major private development on the site of the now-shuttered Fort Ord Army Base.
Bakewell’s son, Danny Jr., 41, is the company president. He’s taller and leaner than his father, but ideologically, he’s a spitting image of his dad. A licensed contractor and graduate of University of Southern California (USC) Real Estate Development and Finance Program, Danny Jr. is equally resolute in his commitment to empower the black community “because we know that what’s good for black people is good for everyone.”
Noel Foucher, the senior Bakewell’s best friend since kindergarten, serves as vice president of the operation. He’s the person in charge of the WBOK project.
“Noel is a seasoned and valued executive,” Bakewell told the Los Angeles media last year. “We know we can rely on his knowledge, experience and demonstrated resourcefulness to drive our most recent acquisition to its maximum earning potential and to do whatever is necessary to make the Bakewell Company a major force in helping the restore the quality of life for so many black families and small businesses that have been displaced.
“I trust Noel’s business judgment implicitly,” he continued, “and I have no doubt that his leadership, expertise and loyalty to the Bakewell Company, coupled with his knowledge and love of New Orleans, will serve both the company and New Orleans residents well. He is not only a valued executive, but my most trusted friend.”
Foucher, who earned all-state honors in four sports at St. Aug before graduating in 1966, also has a soft spot in his heart for ‘BOK. He, too, was a frequent guest on Champ Clark’s show.
Regardless of his success in the business world, Danny Bakewell Sr. is still better known as the long-time president and CEO of the Brotherhood Crusade, a Los Angeles-based civil rights and community development organization he led for nearly 40 years.
By its own account, the Brotherhood Crusade provides direct services to more than 120,000 underserved and disenfranchised South Los Angeles residents annually. It provides scholarships and youth mentoring programs along with community health services and economic development training and support.
The Brotherhood Crusade was founded in 1968 by a group of activists led by Walter Bremond, then an African-American program officer at the Cummins Engine Foundation. Bremond created the new organization to promote charitable fundraising in the black community for black empowerment and social change.
In 1972, the Brotherhood Crusade created the National Black United Fund (NBUF) to help direct African-American philanthropy to black-led organizations. The NBUF immediately established affiliate organizations in Detroit, Boston, Los Angeles and Fort Worth and began spreading to other communities.
After years of struggle, in 1980 the NBUF won the right to be included in the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC), a workplace giving program that previously had granted the United Way sole access to that fund-raising opportunity. When the NBUF finally secured the legal right to enter the CFC campaign, it was a breakthrough that allowed several other ethnic and “alternative” charitable organizations to benefit as well.
These kinds of precedent-setting moves became almost commonplace for the Brotherhood Crusade during Bakewell’s tenure.
It was the Brotherhood Crusade that opened the first shelter for battered women in south Los Angeles and successfully confronted drug dealing and gang violence with their Taking Our Community Back campaign.
It was also the Brotherhood Crusade that financed the launch of the first black-owned grocery in south L.A. after the infamous insurrection of 1992. Additionally, the Brotherhood successfully picketed construction sites in the black community that had no black workers or contractors in their ranks. Its troops also shut down two Korean-owned businesses in Los Angeles after African-American customers were killed there by store owners.
And the Brotherhood Crusade led the battle to integrate the Rose Bowl Executive Committee in the early 1990s just as it had led efforts in the 1970s and ‘80s to force institutions to divest their South African interests during the apartheid era. In the 1990s, Bakewell co-chaired the Million Man March, a move which solidified his status as part of the upper echelon of national black leadership.
Ironically, this career-crowning achievement was spawned by Bakewell’s reaction to the racial prejudice he experienced as a young man in New Orleans.
After graduating from St. Augustine in 1965, Bakewell headed off to college on a football scholarship. A couple of years later, however, he married his childhood sweetheart, the former Aline Moret, welcomed the first of their three children to the world, and dropped out of school to work and support his family. He had secured a job waiting tables at the Royal Orleans Hotel, he recalls, and applied for a promotion to a desk job. The manner in which he was turned down convinced him that he had to leave – both the hotel and the city.
Like countless other Afro-Orleanians before and since, Bakewell moved his family out to Los Angeles in search of greater opportunities. In Danny’s case, opportunity came in the form of a job as a community organizer with the Neighborhood Adult Participation Project (NAPP). Though he had stumbled his way into the position, it didn’t take him long to realize he had found his life’s calling.
“I loved it. It was really rewarding work. I discovered that I had a gift for organizing people,” he says. “I could work with them to identify problems in the community, develop strategies to address them and, for some reason, people would follow me when it was time to take action.”
“When Danny believes in something, there is nothing that can stop him,” says Foucher. “He’s relentless.”
Bakewell’s success at NAPP led Walter Bremond to invite him to join the Brotherhood Crusade while the organization was still in its infancy. Soon, Bakewell was asked to lead the organization. He jests that he didn’t have enough sense back then to turn the offer down.
“The Brotherhood Crusade was $140,000 in debt when I took charge. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to overcome that deficit.”
But he managed to do so. And by the time he resigned the presidency of the Brotherhood Crusade in 2006 – to assume the role of board chairman – Bakewell had helped create $5 million in reserves for the organization. Along the way, the Brotherhood had also invested $50 million back into the community in the form of grants, loans, technical assistance and other services.
Like any successful person, Danny Bakewell has harsh critics. In California, he has been characterized as a race-baiter, a poverty pimp and as “The Godfather of South Central Los Angeles.” While he disagrees with the criticism, he doesn’t let it deter him.
“Everything I have and everything I have achieved is due to my having the courage to fight for what black people need,” he says. “I won’t ever abandon that.”
One of the keys to his success, says Bakewell, is an impenetrable inner circle that includes his wife Aline, an attorney, his son Danny Jr., and Foucher. In addition, Bakewell continues to have strong relationships with many of the nation’s other major black leaders and their supporters. Some of that clout was evidenced when presidential candidates, Congress people, and major civil rights leaders began calling in to WBOK shortly after it came on the air.
Danny Jr. is taller and leaner than his father, but ideologically, he’s a spitting image of his dad. “We’re creating business opportunities for and about the black community,” says the younger Bakewell, a licensed contractor and graduate of University of Southern California (USC) Real Estate Development and Finance Program, “because we know that what’s good for black people is good for everyone.”
A bricklayer’s son, a janitor’s grandson, and a Charity Hospital baby who grew up on North Prieur Street around the corner from St. Peter Claver Church, the senior Danny Bakewell says the positive support he got from the people in his neighborhood – along with his teachers and coaches at St. Augustine – gave him the confidence and belief that he would be successful.
That success, he says, has now “contributed to my being able to come back home and invest in my community.”
Bakewell Media of Louisiana LLC bought WBOK for $550,000 from Willis Broadcasting Corporation, according to radio industry sources. Bakewell has invested an even greater amount in the renovation of the station’s offices and studios. The company has outfitted the operation with state-of-the-art equipment and installed a new 250-foot antenna atop a transmitter building that is raised 12 feet above ground.
Foucher and the Bakewells are extremely proud of the fact that 90 percent of the rebuilding was done by African-American workers and contractors.
They are also proud of the veteran team they have assembled at WBOK, a 20-person staff headed by General Manager Cheryl Charles and Program Director Gerard Stephens. In addition to their talk jockeys, the station also features sports reporter Ty Green and blues DJ Sandra Jemison.
WBOK is too new to be listed in the Arbitron Radio Ratings for New Orleans. However, Arbitron’s “Black Radio Today 2008” report points out that nationally the News/Talk/Information format has increased its listenership from 3.6 percent to 3.9 percent in the past year.
More important, “N/T/I’s African-American listeners ranked No. 1 among all (nine major radio programming) formats in higher education, as 72% had attended or graduated from college in spring 2007,” according to the report.
“In household income, 81% of News/Talk/Information’s Black listeners earned $25,000 or more per year,” the report continues. “Almost 30% lived in households generating $75,000 or more, ranking N/T/I No. 1 in that category. N/T/I was No. 2 in the percentage of those in households earning $50,000 or more.”
The polling data also show that black folks who listen to talk radio are more likely to vote in local, state and federal elections. National trends also show that African Americans are spending more time listening to talk radio. The increases are led by “an impressive 45-minute jump” among the 12-24 age group.
Bakewell says unofficial preliminary reports indicate that WBOK’s listenership is growing rapidly. “We’re the #1 black talk radio in the city.”
And the recent addition of Internet streaming has now allowed New Orleanians throughout the diaspora to listen to WBOK’s broadcasts in real time.
Future plans also include remote broadcasts from HBCU campuses and popular community gathering places like Lil Dizzy’s restaurant.
Even with the promising start and all the planned growth, Foucher said he expects it to take two or three more years before WBOK becomes profitable.
Several locally-owned businesses like Metro Disposal stepped up early on to advertise on WBOK, Bakewell points out, “But we still need increased and continued support.”
In the meantime, the Bakewell Company is also in the market for additional media acquisitions. Bakewell says he always had tremendous respect for the black press. “It’s always been the black press that enabled every major movement and business in our community to flourish.”
And Bakewell says we need another mass movement now more than ever to grapple with the growing inequities affecting the black community.
Thanks to his company’s investment, WBOK is now among the ranks of those committed to the struggle.
