More blacks than ever support vouchers and faith-based initiatives, and side with President Bush on gay marriage. Mr. Hayes recently made the transition himself, ending a long journey for this former leftist who founded Dome Village, an outcropping of pod-like homeless shelters along the freeway in downtown Los Angeles.

A totemic figure in L.A., Mr. Hayes has long emphasized problem-solving and individual responsibility. If you want to stop kids from shooting people, Mr. Hayes has told appalled black preachers and activists, stop blaming cops and "white folks" for urban tragedy and start blaming the lackadaisical inner-city family culture you support.

To illustrate how easily civility can rub off on urban kids if adults take a stand, Mr. Hayes in the 1990s founded a cricket team in rundown Compton, comprised of Latino teenagers and homeless men. The team, called "Homies and Popz," toured Ireland and England, playing at Windsor Castle, where Mr. Hayes chatted with the Earl of Wessex. Mr. Hayes's son, Theo, a co-coach, told an interviewer that none of the cricket-playing kids has become a gang casualty. The Los Angeles Opera commissioned a 40-minute opera on the team by Michael Abels, and the Homies won two victory cups in the L.A. Social Cricket Alliance, a league dominated by Brits, Indians and other googly-bowling expats.

Mr. Hayes can ignite controversy, as when he persuaded L.A. officials to sign a declaration two years ago calling on Muslims to denounce global terrorism more vehemently. City leaders rewrote the declaration, making Mr. Hayes's original wording tougher. When Muslim leaders expressed outrage, city officials quickly apologized. Mr. Hayes still smarts over public criticism of him by Muslim leaders arising from the incident, which he says could be cited by radical Islamists as reason to harm him physically.