Prime time for activist

QUANELL X stared confidently into the television camera and told a heart-tugging tale about the frail man sitting by his side:

Dennis Garnier was roughed up and disrespected, all because police didn’t have their facts straight. A SWAT team burst into his house and hogtied him. It had the wrong address; the drug dealer lived a few doors down.

Garnier has suffered memory loss and has become so scared of guns that he can’t work as a security guard anymore. Yet police sent him a letter saying that an internal probe found nothing wrong. Houston Mayor Bill White should apologize. The city should also cut Garnier a check.

“The message this sends to all black people is that at the end of the day, you are still a black man in America!” Quanell X shouted into the camera, his indignation mounting. “When the chips are down, the system will show you.”

Another camera crew stepped up, and when it was satisfied, Garnier, 58, muttered his thanks to Quanell X for taking his injustice to thousands of Texans through Fox and CBS newscasts. Houston’s most televised activist then told the reporters he’d be in touch. He’d heard about an even bigger outrage, and the story might be ripe soon.

Quanell X was once just Quanell Evans, a Houston street urchin from a shattered home who was slinging crack and staring at a future he knew would put him in prison or a coffin before age 25.

He sought a new start through the Nation of Islam, but his hate-filled diatribes against white America -- which have included anti-Semitic remarks and exhortations to “mug you some good white folks” -- proved too much even for a black Muslim organization used to helping angry hoodlums out of the gutter.

So he left to join a splinter group of gun-toting black separatists, and he advocated racial justice by any means necessary in a misguided fantasy that he was the new Malcolm X -- a self-aggrandizing pose that brought him more ridicule than respect.

Now 36, Quanell X is morphing again, this time into a self-appointed spokesman for the black underclass that he came from, and his services are in high demand.

“They come to me because they know I am not afraid to challenge the powers that be,” he said. “I’m not tiptoeing through the tulips and pussyfooting around. I’m saying what other people think but don’t have the courage to say.”

He has also carved out a reputation as the man to see in Houston if you want to confess to something terrible but don’t trust police.

More than two dozen suspects have surrendered to Quanell X in the last five years, including the perpetrator of one of Texas’ most sensational crimes of 2007 -- a jealous man who killed his former girlfriend, a Texas A&M; student, and barbecued her in his backyard.

Investigators interrogated Timothy Wayne Shepherd for 10 hours and got nothing. The same day, a despondent Shepherd had a frank talk with Quanell X that brought the suspect to tears, and he confessed: He killed Tynesha Stewart in a fit of rage. Then he took Quanell X to the trash bin where he had dumped her remains, while news crews alerted by the activist filmed everything.

Quanell X’s critics see his flair for flamboyance, and they write him off as a hustler who promotes himself at the expense of others.

A flashy man who’s still obsessed with projecting a revolutionary mystique, he rolls around Houston in a white Range Rover with wide chrome rims, wears an enormous diamond-studded ring in the shape of a star and crescent, and travels with bodyguards dressed in dark fatigues and red berets who constantly scan the perimeter, hardly ever uttering a word.

“We certainly would not want to give him any more notoriety,” Houston police spokesman Nathan McDuell said. “When Quanell is involved he notifies the media and makes himself out to be the central figure.”

But in Houston’s poor black neighborhoods, worlds far removed from the Italianate mansions and pricey boutiques that petroleum prosperity brought here, Quanell X is revered. Women stop him to say they want to have his baby. Elderly men roll down car windows and holler praise. One shouted, “Young brother, I love what you do!”

Quanell X may be a camera hog, many African Americans here say, but his rabble-rousing gets results. People like Garnier are convinced that Quanell X can accomplish more in a sound bite than they could in months of pleading to an indifferent bureaucracy -- though in that case, nothing came from the publicity and Garnier wound up filing a federal lawsuit alleging that police violated his civil rights.

“It takes a soldier, someone big, to get out of here without a scholarship to play sports,” said Maurice Bailey Jr., 27, who snapped pictures of Quanell X when he saw him walking by. “It lets you know your brains don’t have to be wasted out on the street.”

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QUANELL X is a handsome, broad-shouldered man with almond-shaped eyes and a smile made for television. He hits the gym hard to make sure he fills out his handmade suits -- donated by a local haberdashery -- in all the right places.

He is still a tangle of contradictions. A foe of interracial marriage whose ex-wife is half-Asian. A maker of anti-Semitic statements whose lawyer is Jewish. An advocate for black men taking parental responsibility who has fathered children out of wedlock and fallen behind on child-support payments.

But as Quanell X toured his old southeast Houston neighborhood, South Acres, and pointed to the places where his friends died amid dingy apartment houses and decaying postwar shacks, he said his imperfect story gave him authenticity. He described his life as a metamorphosis: Quanell Evans grew up in a killing field, and was set to die in it. Then God touched him, and turned him into Quanell X.

He was born in Los Angeles into a family active in the Nation of Islam. One night his mother, Labeullah Muhammad, found out her husband was sleeping with her best friend. The next morning, “I kissed him and said, ‘See you later darling, have a beautiful day,’ ” she recalled. She grabbed her three boys, including 5-year-old Quanell, and boarded a bus to Houston.

She descended into drugs and left the raising of the children to their grandmother, who cleaned for a Jewish family in a well-to-do part of town -- a servant relationship that Quanell X admits shaped his negative view of Jews. When his mother came around, Quanell X said, she was abusive, an account that was verified by a former neighbor.

By his teens, Quanell X was selling drugs in the street. He was arrested for dealing crack when he was 19, did a brief jail stint and got 10 years’ probation. But that was not what woke him up. One afternoon, he was smoking a joint while watching “The Phil Donahue Show” when he was moved by a magnetic guest: Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam.

“I was so mesmerized by what the man was saying that I forgot I had the weed in my hand, and it burned my fingers,” Quanell X said. He had never heard a black man stand up to the white establishment with so much verve. He found it empowering.

He gave away his drug stash and in 1990 joined the Nation of Islam, where he quickly gained prominence for his provocative rhetoric. His brash attacks often ridiculed mainstream African American leaders: He called one of them “Reverend Pork Chop” and dismissed others as sycophants sucking up to “white devils” for scraps from their dinner table.

He also took a job as a spokesman for an old weed-smoking partner: Scarface of the Geto Boys, who pioneered gangsta rap with graphic tales of life in South Acres. Quanell X had cameos on rap records and music videos.

Then something horrible happened: His younger brother, who never left the drug-dealing life, was killed in a quadruple homicide. Quanell X found the bodies in his brother’s apartment, the safe open, the crack gone.

“I kissed my brother for the last time that day: July 17, 1992,” he said, choking back tears as he retold the story outside the cinder-block apartment where his brother died. “I had a choice: plot my revenge or try to make a positive change. Change was the choice I made.”

That positive side took a while to emerge, however. First came anger.

Quanell X’s vitriolic speech escalated to a pitch that made some in the Nation of Islam uncomfortable. During the Million Man March in 1995, he told a Chicago Tribune reporter, “I say to Jewish America: Get ready ... knuckle up, put your boots on, because we’re ready and the war is going down.”

He left the Nation of Islam in 1997 to start his own paramilitary squad and a year later joined the New Black Panther Party, a group then led by another Nation of Islam dissident that pushed a strident brand of black separatism.

When James Byrd was dragged to death by whites in Jasper, Texas, in 1998, civil rights leaders preached unity. Quanell X showed up in the town with armed guards and a trunk filled with guns.

Those later shenanigans convinced former supporters in the Nation of Islam that the parting of ways had been inevitable.

“We know the Nation of Islam does not preach the use of weapons,” said Deric Muhammad, a Nation of Islam minister in Houston. “So of course when we saw Quanell X riding down the street surrounded with armed men, we thought, This brother has to know better than that.”

Though he still styles himself a revolutionary, Quanell X has since ratcheted down his rhetoric. Deric Muhammad, who remains a friend, said he has matured.

Quanell X said he had fallen under the spell of black Muslim dissidents who had led him astray, and has begun to see that he doesn’t need weapons or shock talk to shake up the establishment.

Two years ago, he broke away from the New Black Panther Party, which was regarded as a hate organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and started the New Black Panther Nation, a smaller activist network. Watchdog groups continue to monitor what he says.

“He has sought to exaggerate differences rather than build on commonalities,” said Martin B. Cominsky, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Houston office. “If you give a sound bite on TV, that does not really help a community come together.”

Quanell X does not regret his angry past. But he longs for recognition from the world at large -- and one person’s adoration remains especially important to him. His tour of South Acres ended in an apartment complex turned convalescent home. He sat in a folding chair, and a caretaker brought out his mother.

She was just 57, but her mind was destroyed by drugs. One second she corrected Quanell X on what brand of shoes he wore as a child: Stacy Adams. Then she blurted out, “I’d whoop his ass, to make a long story short.” Later she said something that made him smile: “I think he’s one of the greatest young black men in the world, I really do.” He kissed her and walked out.

“I can’t fault her,” said Quanell X, as his Range Rover rolled out of South Acres. He’s in the business of redemption now.

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QUANELL X remains a frustrating mystery to many. In the blogosphere, critics question why the news media never ask how he affords his outwardly opulent lifestyle. He says he serves as a consultant to rap artists, helping mediate their beefs, and receives assistance from entrepreneurs who “make sure that Quanell X never goes hungry.”

Court records suggest he has struggled financially, and he concedes he has had difficulty meeting his obligations. A former girlfriend with whom he fathered a son sued him for failing to pay child support; they settled out of court. A former landlord evicted him.

“You’re not going to get rich in my line of work,” Quanell X said.

But the work, he made clear, is who he is.

At the end of a recent day that had already featured two news conferences aimed at evening newscasts, Quanell X’s chauffeur drove him to a candlelight vigil on the southwestern tip of town. It was to commemorate Cornisha McCowan, a 13-year-old girl who was killed in a tragic case of mistaken identity. Her uncle, who had picked her up from a skating rink, drove a car similar to one driven by some black gang members. Some other black youths pulled beside them and opened fire.

Cornisha died beside a freeway access road.

The chauffeur pulled into an asphalt lot flanked by the skating rink and a dollar store with a large 20% off banner. Quanell X got out and made small talk with a pregnant television reporter, asking her when the baby was due. Cornisha’s mother, Brenda, arrived with a large photograph. It showed a smiling girl, with a pink Dora the Explorer backpack, gazing over her shoulder.

About 50 mourners -- teachers, students and relatives -- drove to the spot where Cornisha died. They cupped their candles in the breeze and huddled together to hear Quanell X speak. He called on “brothers from the streets, and brothers from the suites” to stand against urban genocide. Staring at some boys, he said he understood the urge to retaliate. He cautioned against it.

“We know this little girl is standing at the feet of the Lord. She was a dancer, God, and now she is dancing with you,” he said. “But this girl was too young to die.”

Men wept like children, and boys gazed blankly at the pavement. The camera crews packed up and left, and Cornisha’s mother hugged Quanell X.

“I want her death to mean something,” she said.

For a few fleeting seconds on the 10 o’clock news, it did.

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miguel.bustillo@latimes.com