Dream for an Ethnic Bridge Is Parked on Crenshaw Lot

A few years ago, when the state had wads of taxpayer money for parks, museums and swimming pools, the Rev. Willie J. Bellamy had a vision.

Bellamy, a part-time golf coach at Crenshaw High School, wanted to create a museum on the campus that would honor Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez. The museum would bridge the ethnic divide between African American and Latino students.

After seeking money for the project for years, Bellamy persuaded California lawmakers in 2002 to grant $250,000 to his nonprofit corporation, Colour Me Freedom Foundation, though he drew only $221,625.

As of Monday, however, the museum is a trailer with a few framed photographs and other items. Crenshaw High’s principal doesn’t want it. And Bellamy has been unable to account for the money despite state auditors’ repeated requests that he do so.

State Controller Steve Westly sent Bellamy a letter Monday demanding that he repay most of the money “immediately.” If he fails to do so by Nov. 29, Westly will refer the matter to the state attorney general’s office, the letter said.

“You’ve got to have receipts and a paper trail when you take taxpayers’ money,” Westly said. “If you don’t, we’re going to be coming to talk to you.”

In California’s $100-billion budget, $221,625 is a pittance. But between 1999 and 2002, California spent billions on parks and recreation projects, some of it general tax money, funneled through the Department of Parks and Recreation to 80 nonprofit entities, including Bellamy’s.

There were no criteria for giving out the roughly $25 million in general tax money. Much of it went to politically connected organizations. The controller, the parks department and the Bureau of State Audits are reviewing the grants in the wake of a scandal involving San Francisco fundraiser and community activist Julie Lee, another recipient of state money during that period.

Lee, who failed to use a $492,500 grant to help build a community center as promised, is under federal criminal investigation. Through her attorney, Lee has denied any wrongdoing. She and others associated with her gave $200,000 in campaign donations in 2002 to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, who as a San Francisco assemblyman helped secure the grant.

There are no such implications involving Bellamy, who was ordained in the 1990s at First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles and maintains an affiliation there. But at the door of his Panorama City apartment on a recent weekday, he declined to be interviewed. He vowed to open the museum Nov. 15 and tell his story. On Nov. 15, however, and again Monday, Bellamy declined to discuss the matter in any detail.

“This is not about trying to take money from the state and put it in my pocket,” Bellamy said, adding that he has none of the money left. Part of it went to “salary” -- his own and that of an associate, he told state auditors.

“The building is up,” he said. “The museum is there.”

There is a portable classroom in the Crenshaw High parking lot, bought by Bellamy for $35,255 in 2002. Bellamy has receipts showing he spent an additional $32,105 for utility hook-ups, though no electric lines run site. Earlier this month, Bellamy placed pictures and posters inside the classroom highlighting moments in the lives of King and Chavez.

Crenshaw Principal Isaac Hammond said that the exhibit contains no original artifacts, and said the display is “nowhere near detailed enough for high school students, maybe not even for elementary school students.”

“He kind of left us with a monster,” Hammond said.

No legislator today takes credit for getting Bellamy this money. But in 2001 and 2002, the African American and Latino legislative caucuses championed his effort.

Richard Polanco, then a Democratic state senator from Los Angeles and the most influential Latino lawmaker at the time, pushed for it, people familiar with the grant said. Polanco did not return repeated calls.

Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Culver City), whose district includes Crenshaw High, submitted the formal request to fund the project. Murray, among the lawmakers most successful at procuring pork-barrel funding for their districts, said he sought the money largely because the project had backing from Crenshaw High.

“This guy was maybe more dogged than some,” Murray said recently, only vaguely recalling the matter. “But this was not something I would have fought for.... There were frankly other things that were higher priority.”

Bellamy has sought money for other centers and museums in the past. He has befriended Los Angeles officials, though not by donating to their campaigns; in fact, it is they who have given to his causes.

In the late 1980s, Bellamy was a lecturer at Cal State Northridge. In a widely reported episode, Bellamy’s job came to an abrupt end when some students complained that he and a professor who was his mentor told them that course requirements included selling $5 raffle tickets. The proceeds were to have been used to build a community center in Pacoima.

Bellamy denied wrongdoing.

In the mid-1990s, Bellamy worked to create a center in Hollywood dedicated to South African leader Nelson Mandela -- an idea embraced by the Church of Scientology.

A Scientology publication featured a photo of Bellamy presenting a “humanitarian” award to Scientology President Heber Jentzsch. The accompanying article said the award carried an inscription lauding Jentzsch as “an outstanding developer of character in men and women, and freedom for all.”

In 1997, Bellamy established the Colour Me Freedom Foundation. It would, its articles of incorporation stated, provide “child care, job training, food and clothing giveaways, family life counseling, substance abuse counseling.”

It would “participate in the research and development of educational programs and management of affordable housing” and create an “Anti-Apartheid Center” to “preserve, collect and display current presentations of Africa’s contributions to the world.”

Bellamy put together a photo exhibit during travels in Africa, and Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-North Hollywood) sponsored a display of the work in the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building in Washington in 1997. Berman issued a proclamation declaring that Colour Me Freedom was “educating all of us about the struggle for Africa and the African diaspora.”

Bellamy has held fundraisers in Los Angeles for his projects -- and politicians dipped into their campaign accounts to make donations.

Murray gave him $1,000 for the Crenshaw High museum, campaign finance reports show. Polanco gave him $1,250. Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke donated $2,350. At each event, Bellamy handed out plaques attesting to the politicians’ good intentions.

In 1999, Bellamy honored state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sun Valley) at a luncheon in Sherman Oaks, giving him a “diversity award.”

Bellamy said at the time he was creating a museum in Mississippi to document the struggle for human rights. Polanco gave the keynote speech.

Alarcon, a candidate for mayor, sits on the Legislature’s audit committee, which has called on the Bureau of State Audits to review grants such as those given to Colour Me Freedom. Alarcon cannot recall the specifics of Bellamy’s grant, but said he would probably not have pushed for it.

“I would never steal anybody’s dreams,” Alarcon said. “But for me, it is how do you get from Point A to Point B.... This was a big project. If he could pull it off, it would be a wonderful thing. But going from a traveling photo exhibit ... to a museum is a big step.”

Bellamy received the first installment of his state grant in March 2002. He received a final payment of $164,894 on June 24, 2002. Bellamy delivered the portable classroom in 2002, held a ribbon-cutting and then “kind of disappeared,” Crenshaw High’s Hammond said.

Having heard that Bellamy had died in a car crash in Italy, Hammond was surprised when Bellamy appeared at Crenshaw High in September with state auditors.

They were demanding canceled checks, invoices and bank statements documenting how the $221,625 was spent.

Bellamy promised to deliver the records by Oct. 11, then by Oct. 15. Auditors again urged him to deliver records, first by Nov. 12, then by Nov. 19.

If Westly turns the matter over to Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, the state could seek a civil order seizing Bellamy’s assets.

Whether Bellamy has assets is unclear. In Bellamy’s 2001 divorce, his estranged wife described him as having offered “dozens of reasons why he shouldn’t, couldn’t and doesn’t work.” Bellamy answered in an affidavit that he had worked -- at Cal State Northridge and part time as a golf coach for the Los Angeles schools -- and was an AME church elder.

“Although my pay is minimal,” Bellamy said in the affidavit, “my personal and spiritual development is complete and satisfying.”

Bellamy gives the address of his own All People’s AME Church as the second floor of a musty office in Panorama City. On a recent Sunday morning, the door was locked. A note dated in May and taped to the door asks that the janitor not clean the space.