Excerpt
SUMMARY: Naomi McSwain was once a member of the notorious Crips gang in South Los Angeles before leaving that path of violence and drug use to devote her career to helping other young people escape. McSwain sits down with special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault to discuss her solutions for combating gang violence.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Tonight, we have another look at Race Matters Solutions.
PBS NewsHour special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault is examining specific solutions to racial problems in our year-long series.
As we reported earlier, police in Chicago today announced murder charges against a man for killing a 9-year-old boy as part of what they are calling gang retaliation. Charlayne's conversation tonight focuses on preventing gang-related black-on-black crime.
She traveled to South Central Los Angeles to meet Naomi McSwain and learn about a solution that keeps kids out of gangs, and in doing so, is keeping them alive.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (NewsHour): This crime scene, the result of a gang-related shooting, is not unusual here in South Los Angeles. And, recently, police attributed 80 percent of the homicides in South L.A. to gang violence.
No one knows this violence and its consequences better than Naomi McSwain, once a gang member herself. Years ago, she was a member of the notorious Crips, still today one of the largest and most violent street gangs in the country. But, unlike many gang members, McSwain escaped, later finishing college and becoming a journalist who reported on gangs and looked for solutions.
In 2010, McSwain became executive director of the 20-year-old Wooten Center, founded by her late aunt, Myrtle FayeRumph. She set up storefront havens to get children off South L.A.’s mean streets after her 35-year-old son, Al Wooten, was killed on one of them in a drive-by shooting.
Naomi McSwain, thank you for joining us.
NAOMI MCSWAIN, Executive Director, Al Wooten Jr. Heritage Center: Thanks for having me.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: I think most of our viewers will want to know right away, how did you get out of the gang life?
NAOMI MCSWAIN: My mother. She intervened. She saw her daughter changing. I went from a practically straight-A student to a practically straight-F student. This was in high school.
And I was doing drugs. She didn't know all of that, but she saw the signs of it, my belligerence, truancy. She pretty much saw my grades and my attitude changing. But it was because of the gang activity and the drugs that I was doing.
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