The idea of looking at groups that we call gangs is a very important
one, because at this point in history that label has become synomymous
with violence and much of the behavior of those who are unable to
control the environment in which they are part and who try to take
that environment over one way or the other. But if we look at the
emergence and the development of this kind of behavior in Chicago,
we canít confine it to the present. We have to look historically
at the backgrounds of groups who perform acts which we consider
illegal, destructive, disruptive, in order to understand that behavior.
Because if we donít, we consider it irrational, and we consider
it behavior that must be stopped at any cost.
So Iím not pretending to be an expert on this information,
but I have some opinions, and I have some time on my, some time
in my life. I happen to be, my name is Timuel Black, T-I-M-U-E-L
B-L-A-C-K. A Hebrew scholar told me that E-L means Of God, so put
that whichever way you want to put it, but they said Iím
a child of God, and if thatís so, then I embrace all of you
as being children of God, whichever god that happens to be. I would
like to recommend a few things that you might read at some point.
Douglas Massey's American Apartheid, which is more immediate.
William Julius Wilsonís When Work Disappears. The
pioneering work of Sinclair Drake, Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis.
And I forget the author, but it was a pioneering work as well, done
at the University of Chicago, Black Chicago (Allan Spear-ed),
which takes us historically up to 1920. Drake and Cayton go a little
further. Massey is sociologically contemporary....but even more
so, you might read some Charles Dickens, of the earlier period of
the Industrial Revolution in Europe and in England, and you begin
to get a feeling about, this is not new. The tools are different,
but the behavior and the organizational structure is not new. And
so we have to look at then the, begin to look at, and there are
many others, I just recommend these that just came to mind right
now.
Then there, the present work which was done in Washington, D.C.,
a friend of mine who is now down at the University of Chicago, University
of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, a journalist by the name of Leon
Dash, who wrote two books. One is, the first one was When Children
Want Children, dealing with that situation in Washington, D.C.,
specifically. He was working for the Washington Post, at that time.
He had previously been assigned by the Washington Post to look at
the uprise against the Portuguese in Africa, particularly Mozambique
and that part of southern Africa, and the struggles of people there
to overthrow the tyrrany organized in what we might call gangs.
What the Portuguese would have called gangs.
You see, this label on my cap here, Soweto. How many of
you here know where Soweto is? Well, let me tell you. Itís
in South Africa. And some gangs were organized by a man by the name
of Nelson Mandela and his wife Winnie Mandela and many others, to
deal with a government of Africaaners, who happened to be all white.
The ANC, African National Congress, was predominantly black but
with white friends. And their mission was to bring about a better
world for themselves. You could call that gang behavior, because
the Africaaners would literally put those people in jail and kill
them in the name of the law.
Now Iím not trying to justify behavior that is destructive.
You see, I can say that I was in World War. And it was the terriblest
experience for me, because in my own mind, I considered violence
of any kind, and certainly war, I considered that organized insanity.
But how do get into that condition? Thatís my personal opinion.
I had to serve, because I was in a very big gang, called the United
States Army. Very big gang. Very well organized. Legal. But we were
at war with some other gangs. And Iím not, again, Iím
not trying to denounce that kind of activity under certain activity,
but Iím trying to put in into some kind of a perspective.
My mission here today, of course, is to deal with the origins,
and to the extent that I can, history that I know of of gangs in
Chicago. And itís not easy to deal with it out of context.
But let me suggest that to understand this kind of behavior, this
kind of organization better, itís also important to understand
the economic, the political, the social, the cultural context in
which this behavior emerges. And itís important to look at
ethnicity, and race, and gender, not so much gender as ethnicity
and race, because when you look at Dickens' stories of London during
the emergence of the Industrial Revolution in England, and large
numbers of people being displaced from agricultural settings and
brought into the urban cities, without preparation, without protection,
their behavior became very, very unmanageable.
When we look at the displacement of, not the displacement, necessarily,
but the people who came from Ireland in the 1840s, the Irish, I
mean, Potato Famine, and they came to Boston, and they were rejected
by even the Irish, their own kin. They organized into gangs. Eventually,
they became politically savvy, and they took over three basic institutions
in Boston. They took over the police department, the fire department,
and they became the political giants in that area, in Boston. Read
the history. I didnít write it.
In New York, during the Civil War, when there was about to be
a draft, the gangs sought out the blacks, the free blacks who lived
in New York City, and murdered many of them, because they felt that
these are the people who should be going rather than them. That
ís New York City. The juvenile, I'm going to skip forward
a lot, this mike bothers me, but anyway, I'll try.
When we look at Chicago, specifically, and we know that in the
1880s and 1890s large numbers of immigrants came to Chicago from
various parts of Europe, particularly, and because they were in
a new culture, and because they were relatively young, they rebelled
against their families, and against the old culture, and their,
and their relatives. And their behavior was very bizarre, according
to American standards. And they began to go to jail, and they were
jailed just as adult criminals. There was a woman who lived in Chicago
at that time, her
name was Jane Addams. And Jane Addams saw that this was not
helping the situation. And so she did what was going on in London
at the same time, organized a new concept of dealing with young
people and created what we call now, they were then settlement houses.
Jane Addams.
Do any of you, have any of you ever heard of a woman by the name
of Jane Addams? Tremendous, contributed to thinking about this problem.
Way before blacks had begun to come to Chicago, there were these
juveniles on the west side, particularly, the children of immigrants.
Jane Addams established a place called Hull House, and then developed
a whole system, a new juvenile justice system, and created a place
for the young people who were juvenile delinquents to be placed,
called, or a new way for them to be even looked at. Juvenile Court.
Now we call it Family Court. Definitely different kinds of rulings.
Let me deal a bit, then, with the arrival of African Americans
in Chicago. And my somewhat limited knowledge about that. I was--all
of my grandparents were born in slavery. All of them. I happened
to have met, knew my grandfather on my father's side, and my grandmother
on my mother's side. They were born in slavery, and then resisting
and wanting a better life, they were encouraged to come north, as
was true of many, many African Americans at that period of time.
World War I started, and Europeans from certain parts of Europe
were barred from coming to the United States. And the, a very cheap
labor force was necessary to carry on the war effort.
So the Chicago Defender among other encouragements, encouraged
these blacks who were the children of slaves, to come to the Promised
Land. Chicago. It was in that, in that surge, that my mother and
father, my father was working in the steel mills in Birmingham,
Bessmer Steel, right outside of Birmingham. But he and my mother
wanted a better, more free life for their children, an opportunity
to vote, be able to make decisions without harrassment. And they
left the south, and came to the north, to Chicago. What they found
was not a great deal different. But they had the advantages of the
law, that they did not have in Birmingham. They had seen lynchings.
One of the reaons that they left, because one of my father's good
friends was arbitrarily picked off the streets, accused of molesting
a white woman, and was lynched. He was burned. And his bones were
sold in the streets of Birmingham. "The bones of the beast."
It was too much for my father, and the person he was, my mother
was glad that he was too willing to leave. Gangs organized the Ku
Klux Klan. Gangs. For what purpose? Organized to take over whatever
freedom the former children, the children of slaves had been.
And so they came to Chicago in 1919, August of 1919. And a month
before they came to Chicago, there had been a race riot, started
31st and the Lake, Lake Michigan. And the riots were started because
some gangs from Bridgeport had attacked a young black swimmer who
dared to cross the dividing line. There were those who claimed he
did it deliberately. There were those who claimed that he accidentally
swam across that line. But he was stoned to death by the gangs.
I forget, they were called clubs, rather than gangs.
Not to say anything negative about the present mayor, but his
father, who became the mayor of Chicago, was a member of one of
those clubs, from Bridgeport. Gangs. When that happened, a group
of young men returning from World War I broke into the 8th Regiment
Armory, which is at 35th and Giles and is now a military academy.
Men who had served in World War I, and they broke into the armory,
took weapons, and fought back. They were organized. Gangs. Two gangs.
Fighting each other for something that they both, one felt did not
belong to them, and the other felt it did belong to them.
Last night, to jump over a lot of territory, last night I was sitting
with a young woman at a dinner, Jewish Council on Urban Affairs.
Jewish Council on Urban Affairs is a Jewish organization. Itís
organized to try and cooperate and work with their young people,
with other young people all over the city. I happen to be a supporter
of the group, and so I go to their affairs. We have an organizatin
called the Coalition for Criminal Justice, it may not be the most
accurate, but it is an organization where eighty different organizations
dealing with the criminal justice system, this young woman happens
to be a part of that. She's an African American young woman. She
says, I'm afraid to go home. Now she is working to bring about legal
justice, afraid to go home because of the gangs around her house,
constantly shooting. She is trying to bring justice, but afraid
to go home because she may be treated unjustly. I worry about that.
Iím eighty-one years old. Most of my life has been involved
in trying to bring about justice. For everybody. But specifically,
because Iím African American and have felt the injustices
of racism, segregation, discrimination, and all of those factors
that have kept me from being an equal part of the social system,
I stay in the struggle.
But Iím like the young lady. When the sun goes down, and
I'm in the house, it's very unlikely that I'm going to come back
out, unless I get a ride. Somewhere. Because Iím afraid I
may be attacked. Not directly. Accidentally. By gang warfare, that
might come anywhere. So Iím afraid, though I am fighting
to bring justice.
Once upon a time, like the little story, now, I did not worry
about that. I walked the streets, as a young person, wherever I
wanted to go. It was not without some problems with some people,
but I never had any. And my father and mother, who were about my
age when they passed, could do likewise. So it wasnít just
being young. When I look on the streets of Chicago today in almost
any community, what I see are streets that are without many peple
walking. When my son and daughter became sixteen, I very quickly
taught them how to drive, so they wouldn't have to walk through
those streets that I used to walk. What is the difference? Fear.
Fear that something would happen to my loved children, that my mother
and father did not worry about. We had gangs when I was growing
up.
There was the 31st Street Gang, the 43rd Street Gang, the 40...58th
Street Gang, the 54th Street Gang. And I hung out with the 54th
Street Gang. But what did we do? Played basketball, and baseball,
and football. And we had a few hoodlums in the gang, the group.
And so they began to do things that were unlawful. Snatching pocketbooks.
Sticking helpless people up on the streets. But we who were in the
larger part didnít like that, didnít approve of it,
and soon separated ourselves from those young men, and some young
women.
Looking back at those various people that were part of that, most
of them died before they were thirty. And they died from violence.
Or drug overdose. Not dumb. But did not have the guidance, the strength,
or whatever was necessary to see the future. And before I went to
the Army, we used to go to dances, and since I was a single guy,
and the girls in other communities looked very nice to me--pardon
me, young women, I'm sorry. Iím not used to, I'm still a
bit sexist, you know--but the girls in the other communities, I
had some eyes for some of those girls. Yes I did. But when I went
into certain territories, other areas, I had sense enough to realize
Iíd better leave those as we called them in those days ,
"chicks," to leave them alone, even though they would
scurry up and want to dance, I said, No, I can't dance. Because
I have ants in my pants. In other words, I didn't want to offend
these fellows. We got along very well otherwise.
A gang is a group of people organized for a particular purpose,
unified in that purpose; whether it is negative or positive, legal
or illegal, they have a common purpose. It may be protection from
one ano...for one another, protection from something. But it is
a group that has an identity and one identifies with it.
When I was fourteen, we had a group around 54th and Calumet, and
we were very good in terms of softball. There was another group
at 48th and Champlain that went, had gone to Willard School. We
were, most of us went to Burke School, 54th and now, what is now
King Drive. And we beat them. And they came over to show that although
that we could beat them playing softball, they could beat us fighting.
And they came over one night with their baseball bats, and they
confronted us, and we were surprised, and they began to whack on
us. But we were pretty good at fighting and running. And so I singled
out one guy and outran him. He had a baseball bat. And when I caught
up with him at 54th and Indiana, he turned around and swung the
bat; I threw my left hand up. And he hit me. And I went home, feeling
that I might be paralyzed. And I laid down in the bed and I didnít
know what I was going to tell my mother, or father. Because fortunately
for me, they would not have tolerated me being a part of a gang.
This is a long time ago. They would not have tolerated it. I had
no reason. My brother, my sister, had not given any indication of,
though they ran with people, I ran with the tough guys. You know.
They, all the cats with, you know, they struttin'. Wearin' the funny
hats. You know. Oh, they were cool. I wanted to be cool. Them, like
they had, they were, you know, they treated, they knew what to say
to you, Come on, baby, letís go, you know. You know, they
had style. You see, my brotherís group would say, Uh, may
I take you out? You know, You are looking so nice tonight. Ehhh!
Not my group. This other group.
But I realized that something was wrong. I was going the wrong
way. But I was fortunate to have the examples in front of me of
my brother and my sister. It was not that I was a good guy, but
I couldn't make excuses for getting in trouble. Because Mother,
Mama and Daddy was not going to stand for it, and uncles and aunts
and all. So there was a community that embraced me, and helped me
to stay in a certain track. I turned over that night, at age fourteen,
and I said, Iím going to stop this. But I didn't know where
to go. These were my buddies. These were my exciting guys. They
had, you know, cool, they were into something all the time. Exciting,
you know. I didn't know where to go.
But I knew I had to find something to go beyond what I was doing.
I was going to school, Englewood High School. And at Englewood at
that time--Tell me when I'm taking too much time, John--Englewood
at that time was dominantly white. We could not as rightful, regardless
to conditions, regardless to achievement, could not even use the
swimming pool. We were in the middle of what is called the Great
Depression, and my father had lost his job. I was embarrassed. Most
of the blacks who went to Englewood, their parents worked in the
post office or the railroad or some more secure job. Now I am outside.
The parties that I used to get invited to, I could no longer get
invited to, because I was outside. I was no longer (unintelligible).
Then I was dark black, not just black. Pigmentation playing a role.
Some of you read Down These Mean Streets, about the Puerto Ricans
in New York, or go see the play West Side Story, or read West Side
Story. Gangs. The rejectees. In my own community, I was about to
become a rejectee. Isolated. Confused. Angry. Why couldn't my daddy
have just as good an income as those guys and gals that I had graduated
from Burke School? Why did this white teacher look at me like I
was inferior? Why couldn't I go in to the swimming pool? Why would
they not let us go to the prom?
And so I began to associate with the wrong group. And that was
when I began to get into difficulty. Gangs. They gave me comfort.
They gave me a sense of belonging, a sense of being somebody. For
the moment, being important, to myself. My ego is sustained by the
gangs. But realizing that I had another pull in my family. My mother
and father, uncles and aunts. So I'm torn between two gangs. (Laughs.)
(Unintelligible, laughing). I got to make a decision.
So I forged my mother's name, my mother who was a, in spite of
our poverty, she was a very middle class oriented woman. Middle
class is an attitude. It has very little to do with how much money
you have. Itís an attitude, a style, you know, you got to
eat right, you got to walk right, you got to dress right and all
that crap.
Anyway. And so when my mother began to think her baby is going
to go to this school, she was outraged. I had forged her signature,
and gone to this other school, Wendell Phillips High School. And
at Wendell Phillips High School, I was afraid because there were
gangs around Wendell Phillips High School and I was from another
neighborhood, that I would get, if I let them know that I was a
stranger in the new neighborhood, in the new school, that I might
be attacked. But I had friends, I had friends that went to Wendell
Phillips High School. And they directed me to the office. I was
scared to death. And I went into the office, and I was assigned
to a room. And I went to my homeroom, the homeroom, and they seated
us alphabetically. And the guy who was sitting in back of me was
a young man by the name of Nat Cole.
Now some of you have heard of Nat Cole. Nathaniel Cole. His daughter
is Natalie Cole. She's writing her own story. And he was talking
about music, and he was talking about...this young guy, fourteen,
fifteen years old, already an accomplished musician. Then I began
to get some new friends. And we began to do some other things. We
were still a group. Commonly understood each other. Go to the dances
together. Go to the movies together. Go to the Sox Park together.
We were a group. You could call it a gang. But our behavior was
different than that group on 58th Street, which was busy destroying
things. My new group was busy building things, confidence, and I
regained my confidence
. Well, you young people know, when you get fourteen, fifteen,
sixteen, all that, Mom and Daddy, they don't know anything, you
know. How could they know anything? They're too damn old. You know.
How in the world could they know something? You know, they're too
old, you know. Old clothes, old talk, old everything. So when youíre
at that age, you're breaking through. You're learning new things.
So I was able to then begin to look at my life and what I wanted
to be beyond the dangers that I had seen.
I continued to be friends with the old guys, until some of them
were dead. And some of them were tremendous people. One of my good
friends, Red Kelly, who went to prison for a little while, for a
long time. And then when he got out, he couldn't shake it. He got
into...by this time, the gangs are beginning to organize in a different
kind of way, beginning to be more violent. And a new kind of substance
is coming to the community.
When I return from the Army, not only are the neighborhoods changing
a great deal, but something new has come in. Before I went to service,
yes, we had reefer. All of you know what reefers are? Marijuana.
Pot. All that kind of thing? Well, we...that, it was around. I didn't....Iíll
tell you another little story, a little anecdote. And that's so
unusual, you know. And every group has ...When I was ... Because
all of the guys, almost all the guys, the musicians, and there were
a lot of musicians growing up in my neighborhood beside Nat. Nat,
Nat Cole smoked pot all the time. All the time. I mean, he wasn't
embarrassed.
He and that, he and Ray Nance, there was Duke Ellington, Billie
Holliday. He would walk around them. You know. I tell the story,
one day I was coming to...I was standing in front of the Regal,
and Ella Fitzgerald came out of the Regal and she was eating an
ice cream cone. Next week, Billie Holliday was at the Regal. She
came out of the Regal, she was smoking pot. Two young things about
the same age, and Billie influenced a lot of young women, because
they thought if they smoked some pot, they could sing like Billie.
(Laughs.)
So it became kind of a thing around where we were. And so this
new guys, these new guys I was running with, most of them smoked.
The joint, you know. And so, there was a place down on 47th and
S. Park, it was, where you'd go get the stuff. You know, some guy
would go up and get it and everybody would pitch in. So one night,
I'm with these guys, and they all had this stuff, and Iím
walking down the street, and they're all smoking. And I smoked cigarettes
by that time. And we're about nineteen, nineteen or twenty. And
a guy, I wouldn't, I didn't have a reefer. So one of the guys offered
me, and I wanted to be with the group. See, there are weaknesses.
Very difficult to overcome sometimes. I wanted to be with the ga...,
and I wanted to know what this stuff tasted like, what it sm...I
knew it didnít smell good, but I wanted to see.
As I was about to take the stick, the joint, the toughest guy in
the group, who smoked, the toughest guy in the group told this fella
who was offering me this reefer, "No, he doesn't do that."
And I'm saying, what the hell is he talking about. Everybody is
doing it. And the guy offered me another one, now this is the toughest
guy, nobody's going to mess with him, said, "Man, he doesn't
do that shit. Now Iím telling you, he doesn't do that."
Now I'm scared of the tough guy. I want the joint, but I'm scared
of the tough guy. Would the joint be good enough for me to take
that whipping? And I decided, maybe I should forget it. But it was
just amazing. What was it that he saw in me? What was it that he
thought about himself in his experiences, that would cause him to
say, I don't want him, it might be too good, he might not be able
to overcome it, he's a good guy. I don't know what it was, I never
have known. In every group, there's at least one saviour, regardless
of how bad they may seem. He was mine. And after that, because of
him, I didn't want the stuff anyway. I just wanted to be with the
group. I never bothered with it.
But when I came out of the Army, coming back to the story, by that
time a new ingredient had come into the situation, and that was
heroin. And heroin began to be used mostly, then, by entertainers,
people like Dizzy, not Dizzy, but Miles Davis, and others in that
general group around, began to use heroin. And the gangs begin to
see a profit in that. And they begin to organize.
Now they didn't make the heroin. The heroin came into them. And
I had some of my friends who were the victims of that period. They
didn't know how much danger there was in it. And so they began to
use it, to get high, to have a thrill. A little bit of, a little
bit of cocaine began to be introduced. Sniffing. And so one of my
good friends, Louie (unintelligible last name?), good looking guy,
he had women all over him, white women, black women, dark...all
kind of women, Louie would... he was, he was a charmer. He began
to use cocaine, because he wanted to stay a step above everybody
else, and cocaine cost more.
And gangs began to gradually be organized, with a profit motive.
A business. You don't have to work. You don't have to do anything.
And they began to get larger. And then they got a gang called the
Four Corners. The Four Corners were tough. And they began to drag
our territory.
Now because I want to hear your comments...By the way, how many
of you here know somone who has been shot or killed? You see. Again,
in my generation, even given the same ages, that would have been
most unusual. To see that many hands go up. Most unusual. So we
began to get new motives.
Two other things. First, my family came to Chicago, what we call
the first great migration. And jobs were much more easy to get because
we were still in the era where unskilled labor, if they waited long
enough, could find a job. Unskilled labor. Most of that generation,
also, talking about black folk now, most of that generation also
had lived in cities before they came to the big city of Chicago.
And education was very very important for their children, to them.
Birmingham, Memphis, New Orleans, Atlanta, and places like that.
And so most of them had lived in cities, so when they came to Chicago,
they knew something about how you live in the city.
Then after World War II the second great migration began to occur.
And most of the people who came in that period, whether they were
from Mexico or Puerto Rico or... they came from rural agricultural
directly to the big cities, like New York, Chicago, Boston, wherever.
And so they had had less urban experience, and then the jobs began
to go away. The jobs began to go away.
And we begin to get, not, we no longer need unskilled labor, we
don't even need semi-skilled labor. And technology begins to be
important. Education begins to be important. And still we have these
young men and young women whose schooling has not given them the
necessary training to make a living.
I was teaching at Hyde Park High School in the 1960s. There
was a young man in my class, in my class, one of my classes, by
the name of Jeff Fort. Any of you ever hear of a young man by
the name of Jeff Fort? Well, he was in my class. He was alright
with me. To me, he was just another boy. And he respected me as
his teacher. But Hyde Park High School at that time was pretty snobbish.
It was one of the best high schools, public high schools in the
country. And if you graduated from Hyde Park High School at that
time in the upper third of your class you could go to any college
in the country. If you graduated in the other third, the middle
third, more than likely you would go to any public college or university.
So therefore, it was kind of elitist.
Many of the professors from the University of Chicago sent their
children to Hyde Park High School. I had many of them. Jeff Fort
and his group came from that second migration type. They were in
a community called Woodlawn. And Woodlawn rejected, the middle class
Woodlawn rejected these young men, mostly young men but there were
young women, too. Hyde Park rejected these young men. I was fortunate
to keep most of them in the school, because I was like their daddy,
or granddaddy. But they were rejectees.
I had to go to Washington, I could tell this story in more detail,
and I'm seeing people getting tired of me, and I'm going to stop
in a minute ["No, no. Don't stop".] And I was, I was,
I had just, before I went to Hyde Park, I had taught at Farragut
High School on the west side. Now the Farragut High School young
men and women, African American, had, they were the children of
these people of the second, of the second great migration. At Farragut
High School, before that, most of the children were the children
of immigrants. That was, a village, what do you call it? [South
Lawndale?] No, not South Lawndale. Iím trying to think of
where the Mexican population is. [Pilsen?] Pilsen. Little Village.
Pilsen.
But those were Czechoslovakian, of mid-Eastern European before,
who didn't want the blacks at their school. And many of the teachers
did not want the blacks at their school. So you''ve got Marshall,
Crane, Farragut, those schools. And at Farragut particularly, they
would jump on the kids. And the kids began to get organized. Now
there were some south siders, from the lower end of the old black
belt, who have moved to South Lawndale. Sophisticated. They helped
these young people who were being attacked to get organized.
Now I don't know whether those were the Vice Lords or the Cobras,
but they organized to protect themselves against the white aggressors.
I was asked to come to the school to teach, to mediate between these
two warring factions. And it was very interesting to watch it happen.
Now later it became between the Latinos and the blacks, in later
years. But this time, it's...so the Cobras and the Vice Lords, the
emergence of those two gangs on the west side. I left Farragut and
I went to Hyde Park, and here Jeff Fort beginning to emerge in Woodlawn.
And Woodlawn, when I went...I'm just skipping over so much...I had
to go to Washington, to a conference on civil rights. And when I
returned, they had put all of these in quotes undesirable boys out.
And I walked around the corner on 63rd Street, near Blackstone,
and said, "Why don't you guys come on back to school?"
And they said to me, "Oh, Mr. Black, they don't want us there."
I said, "No..." They said, "They don't want us there.
But we gonna take it all over."
And this began the activities, the strong activities, of what
became known as the Blackstone Rangers. Jeff Fort was a natural
leader. Had I been able to continue to have Jeff Fort until he got
to be a senior in high school, he would have still been a leader.
But he would have been a leader going towards some college or some
university. What we find is most of those young men and women who
get into gangs are dropouts. Another factor that we find is so often,
too often, they come from single parent households, usually just
a mother. Usually a relatively young mother, who herself has not
had an equal opportunity in life. Usually they also come from poverty-stricken
neighborhoods. They are...
But the point was, I had all these examples around. And I had these
other tough guys, too, but I had these examples of the possibilities.
In the first migration, we had that. The second migration, the middle
class examples, we're not saying they're perfect people, moved away.
Moved out of the old black belt, moved away from the west side,
moved. And only left those who were less fortunate, who couldn't
move.
So the kind of positive examples that they had seen, they did not
see. And yet they wanted the same thing. They wanted to have nice
clothes. They wanted to have a car. They wanted to go to the same
places. Why shouldnít they? Television was telling them,
just as it was telling the more fortunate, that if you don't have
these material things, you don't have anything. You don't amount
to anything.
And so along comes the gangs which are organized to protect first
the turf, and later, then, those who saw this opportunity, began
to drop into the leadership, the drugs, heroin, cocaine, all the
drugs that were necessary. And of course, the middle class whites,
the other middle class whites, were by far the consumers. But the
distributors became those less fortunate, and very often they became
addicts. They were promoted to use these drugs so that they were
under control. But the big marketplace was not in the ghetto. The
big marketplace was in the suburbs and other places. And then the
gangs began to fight each other.
I remember a big meeting with Jeff Fort and the leadership of
some of the gangs on the west side. We were trying to get them to
reconcile with one another and to do another thing. And by this
time the Blackstone Rangers had become the P-Stone Nation, and then
the El Rukns. And there sit strappiní, big tough guys. Jeff
said, Oh, there's Mr. Black. He's my friend. And I said, Oh, Lord,
I don't want to be this gu'ís friend! By this time, Jeff
has gone on, and I'm, you know, 'ím nearly, ...but I appreciated
the fact that he remembered me as being someone that was his friend.
I was glad about that, to tell you the truth. It gave me a little
protection.
But anyhow, they had hit it big. Now what had happened in the meanwhile?
Two neighborhoods had physically been destroyed. The West Side,
which is now being redeveloped. Woodlawn, north of Kenwood/Oakland.
Grand Boulevard, now being redeveloped. The gangs somehow had cleared
out the resistance and the stability of the old neighborhoods. Now
the land would be much cheaper. Resistance would be much less. Politics
would not play a role, because this was a disorganized group politically.
Organized violently. Organized destructively. But not politically.
And certainly not economically.
Go along those streets. Who wants to shop there? 47th Street. 16th
Street. Just name it. Madison, (inaud.)....The gangs, unwittingly,
may have served a purpose for some others. Where are they now? Jeff
Fort, in prison in Mississippi for the rest of his life. The mortality
rate among the gangs! Young man tells me, I don't know whether I'm
going to live to be thirteen....I mean, I don't know whether I'm
going to live to be twenty, because when I'm thirteen I gotta join
the gang, is what he tells me. I said, why you gotta join the gang?
In order to be safe, Mr. Black.
Now the young man tells me, I've been shot three times, then in
prison. I have seven children by seven different women. All young
women. These young women, what happens to them and those children?
What happens to this young man who lives in Stateway Gardens as
they tear Stateway Gardens down, and he has been kicked out of Wendell
Phillips High School? Twenty-seven years old. His mother and father
addicts. Raised by his grandparents who are now dead. What about
those seven children that he has fathered? And we know those seven
women were not grandmothers, or I mean, were not real old. What
happens to the children that are the products of these relationships?
What happens to this whole generation of, particularly, Latinos,
African-Americans, poor children? What happens to them? These are
the questions that this conference, I think, ought to try to think
about, how we deal with this. They're not going away.
For that period of time that they live, they're going to have
the same appetites, the same hunger that each one of you have, to
live a better life, materialistically. What happens with the churches,
that should be, in my case, my mother. I'm not being particularly
religious in the denominational sense. But when I look back, as
I go to Africa, and I look out over the ocean where my foreparents
were taken as slaves without any consent, put on a boat in chains,
having been separated from their history, their culture, their language,
not knowing what the future would have for them, but somehow having
a sense of the future. The spirit in slaverly. My mother and father,
poor, without very much but a spiritual aspect. In our house, just
as you'd walk into the door, and I'm not preaching now, there were
things that prayer changes things. Gives a sense....
When I was in the army, there were many days that I couldn't see
tomorrow. But I had to reach back into my ancestry, my mother, my
father, my grandparents. What would they have me do, but to keep
on keepin' on. And so as much of the things that the skills that
we must help all people have, in order to fit into this new world,
because it is indeed a new world. I would not pretend to be as smart
as you young people. No way. You've got me. But what I see among
those who are members of the gang is a loss of the spirit of tomorrow,
that somehow there's gonna be a better day. And the other part that
we must do is help that new day have some substance. We have to
have some jobs, we have to have the preparation, and we have to
have the kind of relationships with those who are more successful,
with those who are tempted to be in the gangs.
I don't know whether I have said anything that makes any sense,
but, for me, this has been a very great opportunity. Thank you so
much.
[Applause.]
