Danny Bakewell

Danny Joseph Bakewell (born 1946) is an American civil rights activist and entrepreneur. He is the owner of The Bakewell Company, which includes among its holdings the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper. He is currently^[when?] Chairman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA).

Early life and career[]

Bakewell was born and raised in New Orleans, graduating from St. Augustine High School.^{[citation needed]}

Bakewell is the co-founder of the National Black United Fund.^[1] He also served as President of The Brotherhood Crusade, a civil rights advocate organization, for over 30 years,^[2] before stepping down to focus on his other projects.

During the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1995, Bakewell was one of numerous civil rights activists who supported Simpson despite the presence of physical evidence pointing towards his guilt, after Johnnie Cochran's defense theory that all of the evidence had been planted by the LAPD in a racism-based conspiracy to frame Simpson for the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman, which was based primarily on the discovery of the tapes of Mark Fuhrman's interview with Laura Hart McKinny for a fictional screenplay which focused on corrupt LAPD officers targeting African-Americans and in which Fuhrman boasted of beating and framing black suspects for fun. Though there was no evidence to prove any wrongdoing on Fuhrman's part, Bakewell and his fellow activists threatened to push for more race riots across the country if the tapes were not released for the jury to hear and Simpson was convicted of the murders. In O.J.: Made in America, Bakewell was interviewed by Ezra Edelman, who asked Bakewell if he regretted his actions which turned Simpson into a civil rights cause despite Simpson's apathy towards the African-American community, to which Bakewell responded "absolutely not" and admitted that he was using Simpson as a vessel to help African-Americans in general after Edelman accused him of doing so. While talking about Simpson's acquittal, Bakewell told Edelman that he had addressed the white population who were mourning Brown and Goldman, "Now you know how it feels." Ironically, in earlier parts of the documentary, Bakewell himself had dismissed Simpson as a lost cause who had forgotten his roots and was deliberately trying to ingratiate himself with the white community and abandon the African-American community for his own benefit.

In recent years, Bakewell has been focused on expanding and diversifying his firm The Bakewell Company, which is the largest minority-owned development firm on the West Coast.^[3] He purchased the Los Angeles Sentinel, the city's oldest and largest Black newspaper, in 2004.^[4] Soon after, in 2007, he purchased the New Orleans radio station WBOK.^[5] He later sold WBOK to a company owned partly by Wendell Pierce.

In 2009, Bakewell was elected Chairman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association.^[6]

Personal life[]

Bakewell and his wife Aline have two adult children and four grandchildren.^[7] Bakewell and his family currently reside in Bradbury, California.^[7]

He is Catholic.^[8]

References[]

External links[]

• Bakewell Co. website
• Danny Bakewell's Huffington Post blogs
• "Compton: Corruption, Incompetence, or Just Business As Usual?"

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