LESSONS LEARNED ON DEATH ROW

By James Willwerth

The author's message was headlined APOLOGY and inserted in 250 fresh-off-the-press children's books given to guests at last week's Congressional Black Caucus Foundation luncheon in Washington. "I apologize to you all for the atrocities which I and others committed against our race through gang violence," wrote Stanley ("Tookie") Williams, who in 1971 co-founded the nation's largest and arguably most violent street gang, the Crips. "I pray that one day my apology will be accepted."

The founder's atonement, of course, is overdue. By current law-enforcement tallies, Crips colors fly in 42 states, and the gang is linked annually to thousands of murders, robberies and drug deals. But if Williams, 42, has much to regret, he has also done more than apologize. Writing with stubby pencils from San Quentin's death row in California, the convicted murderer published this month the first half of a 17-book series titled Tookie Speaks Out Against Gang Violence. "You can learn from my mistakes," Williams advises readers in simple, effective prose. "It's the best set of books I've ever read on this subject," says Franklin Tucker, director of Washington's National Center to Rehabilitate Violent Youth. "And it's coming from the choir."

Not the church choir, admits Williams, who was condemned to death in 1981 for fatally shotgunning four unresisting victims during motel and convenience-store holdups. But his transformation, he insists, should be judged separately from his crimes. Arriving at San Quentin in 1981 as a feared gangsta godfather, Williams was content for years to watch sullenly from death row as gang violence spread--and with it, an urban nightmare.

Fiercely resistant to authority, Williams spent nearly seven years in solitary confinement and turned to exotic self-help works, including a text on ancient Egyptian philosophy. "I slowly realized I was living a lie," he says. "The respect I cared so much about was based on intimidation, not self-respect. I had been involved in madness." Interviewed in 1993 by author Barbara Cottman Becnel for a history of the Crips and Bloods, Williams asked a favor in return. Becnel carried a videotaped speech by Williams condemning violence to a 1993 gang "summit" in Los Angeles. The audience responded with a standing ovation. Next, Williams told Becnel he wished to write children's books. "I hear this rhetoric about helping one child," he explained. "That's not enough. I wanted to help thousands."

Becnel agreed to collaborate, and negotiated a contract with Rosen Publishing Group, a small New York house specializing in supplemental reading for "at risk" children. "The power of his writing was very clear from the beginning," recalls publisher Roger Rosen. "He has a wise and compassionate voice."

Williams' slim first volumes, dictated to Becnel on the prison telephone, are aimed at kindergarten through fourth grade. Next he will write nine longer volumes for young teens. "Prevention is everything," he explains. "By the time I was 12, it was too late. "

"I can't think of a more powerful message to kids," says Judy Briscoe, director of the Texas Youth Commission's Office of Delinquency Prevention, "than the originator of the Crips saying how wrong I was." Making street rounds, Sandra Davis, founder of the mediation service Mothers Against Gang Wars, has begun showing Williams' books to gang members. "I almost have to get physical with them to get the books back," she says. But some publishing professionals are less impressed. "These books dumb down the issue so much that I don't think they respect the situation as it really is," says Roger Sutton, editor in chief of the Horn Book Magazine in Boston. "Kids know that life is more complex than these books would have you believe." And Sergeant Wes McBride, a Los Angeles County sheriff's department gang expert who has followed Williams' street career, is muted in his support. "We accept help from all quarters," he says, "but if you kill four people, you still have to pay for it."

Williams, who has donated his royalties to inner-city activist groups such as Mothers Against Gang Wars, will not discuss his legal future. Court records show that his case recently reached the federal appeals system after an unusually lengthy entanglement over key testimony from a prosecution witness, now deceased, who was an active jailhouse snitch. "I simply don't believe that I am going to be executed," Williams says calmly. Death-row federal appeals commonly run a three-to-four-year course, and for Williams, whatever time remains has a clear purpose. "As much as you might want to fit in, don't join a gang," he writes in Gangs and Wanting to Belong. "You won't find what you're looking for. All you will find is trouble, pain and sadness. I know. I did."