minority news
OAKLAND, CA – The former leader of an Oakland-based community group was sentenced to life in prison for commiting three murders, including the first american journalist to be killed in 10 years.
Bey was the head of Your Black Muslim Bakery, the black empowerment group his father formed in the 1960s.
At its height, the group aspired to promote healthful dietary habits in the Black community and recruit local blacks, mostly men, for positions of responsibility.
However after the senior Bey’s death in 2003, the group began a downward spiral in a “pattern of thuggery marked the subsequent power struggle won by Bey IV.”
Prosecutors said Michael Wills, 36, was killed randomly after Bey had a conversation about the Zebra murders, a string of racially motivated black-on-white killings in San Francisco in the 1970s. Bey is black, and Wills was white.
Odell Roberson, 31, was killed in retaliation for the murder of Bey’s brother by Roberson’s nephew.
The third victim was Chauncey Bailey, 57, the editor of the Oakland Post who was working on a story about the bakery’s financial troubles.
Bailey became the first American journalist in ten years to be killed on U.S. soil.
A jury concluded that Yusuf Bey had ordered Bailey’s killing to silence his reporting on the bakery’s unraveling.
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