Former Vice Lord Leader Bennie Lee

Vicel Lords since the 1960s

February 28, 2002

Bennie Lee was a leader of the Conservative Vice Lord Nation in the 1970s and 1980s. When a riot broke out in Pontiac Prison in 1979 where Bennie was incarcerated, he and other gang chiefs were indicted for 15 counts of murder. He spent three years on death row before being acquitted and is now one of Chicgo's most prominent counselors. Here are excerpts from his talk to the Chicago Gang History Project. For the complete text of the talk.

ON JOINING A BLOCK STREET GANG CHICAGO

I came to Chicago in 1963 from Cleveland, Ohio. I was 9 years old and believe it or not in Cleveland I was tied into a little block street gang. 9 years old. We did things like running in stores and snatch the ice cream. We did things like threw rocks at guys on the next block. So I was kinda like coming into poverty stricken area and we had to do things like my father lived in Chicago and me and my mother and my 6 brothers and sisters we live in Cleveland and so we didn’t have too much. And so we kinda get off just like the average gang member gets called up. In a poverty stricken area just trying to survive.

Coming to Chicago I met my crew in Chicago....Met my little crew and we running around on the street and we did things like going in and out of stores. I learned how to pick pockets by the age of 10 years old. You know we would have the people waiting to cross streets, you know women have those big pockets and they have they’re wallets in them. So we learned how to you know help her with her groceries and go in her pockets and get her wallet out at the same time. We learned how to play the til at the time. You know going through the grocery store, we were so small we go through grocery stores and we would you know cash registers up, you know I hit that thing and it opened up. You know it’s called playing the til you get to mine the cash. And we learned how to do those types of games at 10/11 years old.

ON JOINING THE VICE LORDS

And about the time I was maybe 13 that’s when I really did it and got involved in a major street gang on the West Side – Vice Lords. How we got involved is pretty much… it had a lot to do with racism. It had a lot to do with racism. Back in 1967 we were one of the first black families that moved right over Cicero and Jackson, it was predominantly white neighborhood. So we had to fight and go to school, fight and play. But if you know anything about that area even today Columbus Park was the nearest swimming pool. 5500 West. And the next swimming pool was Garfield Park right off of Hamlin and close to Madison, near Lake St. So we were caught between Columbus Park or Garfield Park. Columbus was a little closer. We had to go through the neighborhood to get to school. So we had to fight white guys to get in, we had to fight these white guys to get back and so some guys in the neighborhood, realizing me and my crew we had enough courage to go swimming. So they would claim us just to go swimming.

Now as time went on, whites started moving out and blacks started moving in and at that time they had what they called the Cicero Vice Lords. These were guys 17 and 18 and we were 12, 13, some 14 years old. And one day, they chased us, and I went...running. And they caught me. And they told me I couldn’t go until I boxed this guy named Freddy Fly. Freddy Fly was about 17 years old, had a reputation as a two time golden glove champion. And this Freddy Fly was short so he was our height but he was older than us. So they told me I can’t leave until I boxed Freddy Fly. So me and Freddy fly got to boxing. I got a little comfortable. …..

___ and I remember one night we were coming from a basketball game and a guy sighted us. ... And I asked one of the guys, well what they think they have one of them four corner hustlers and they was on the other side of the valley. So our plan was the next day to go there and retaliate. So we went over across Madison and we whopped at every guy we ran into cause that was our style, whopping and making you join us and all this. And so we went over there and terrorized the other side nicely. Few days later I run into a guy and he said, what are you ___ and they were both from the hustlers. And they were brown ___ ___ and Vice Lords wore gold. Said if you gonna be a Vice Lord you gotta get rid of them brown pants you got there, pick up your gold. And you gotta come up under the name Vice Lords. So they became 4 corner hustler Vice Lords.

...But the thing you hear when you hear about gangs and how gangs form is poverty and racism. Franz Fanon, in his book Wretched of the Earth, he talked about how when you have a group of people that’s being oppressed, you have a oppressor and you have an oppressed. The oppressed try all means to fight back but they find their way is useless and ineffective. So what happens, the oppressed take on the techniques of the oppressor to fight back and what happens is the oppressor who is out of the picture and then the oppressed use those same techniques on his own people. And I’ve seen it over and over and over. When we were young, we fought black guys to go to …... To go to school. And when the whites moved out of the hood we turned and looked at the new brothers coming in and got them ___. When we had to fight whites to go to school and go swimming, then turned those same techniques we used to fight those white guys we end up turning against these other guys. We changed our name from Apache then we became Insane Vice Lords. We became Insane Vice Lords. Wasn’t my homies ___ he couldn’t spell it he put it ink on the wall. <laughter>

And I was one of the youngest recognized gang chiefs of that Vice Lord Nation. Vice Lords considered to be a Nation cause there’s different groups all over the city and that’s what made them what they consider a Nation. And I didn’t realize then what I was getting into. Now keep in mind this was the era of the civil rights movement and I’d never really heard of racism and discrimination and Jim Crow laws and all those things. But I’d experienced it hand on when I was looking back in retrospect. Been called to help these people with their groceries and help them move cars out of snow and get called a lot of names that hurt wondering why it was so. And then we’d get more involved with them and we started realizing they were actually doing some things for our market in the neighborhood, trying to mine the prostitutes off Cicero, trying to, one guy was trying to sell drugs out the neighborhood. They was doing some things but we were too young to appreciate that.

ON THE RIOT IN PONTIAC

I want to talk about how I was once charged with 15 counts of murder, 2 attempted murder mob action. And this stemmed from a prison riot in 1978, at Pontiac Prison. Some of you probably read about it, heard about it. And when this riot broke and they shut us down, and they came maybe months later we were still on dead lock. .... And when I got on that bus being transferred from Pontiac to Stateville and when I seen every high ranking chief in that prison on that bus, and me myself as a high ranking chief in that prison at that time. I knew then that we were getting in bad and we got shipped from Pontiac to Stateville and they kept us at Stateville and they just brought the death penalty back to Illinois, in ’77, this 78. They had just brought the death penalty back so they housed us on death row. And we were on death row. And we stayed on death row 3 years fighting this case.

And I can say that was my alma mater right there, the courtroom. I remember stepping in that court room and we had 10 thousand pages of discovery material, that’s the evidence they have against you. 10,000 pages of discovery material and because I was an 8th grade dropout with limited education I couldn’t understand what I was reading and in that courtroom I couldn’t comprehend the dialogue that was going in that courtroom that was real frightening. So while we had to do that and go back to that tier, we were on, and we had become brothers for real. We had to look past each others opposition.

HONORABLE LOUIS FARRAHKAN AND THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X

...the honorable Louis Farrakhan had come to visit us. And he told us something that brought us together. He said a conspiracy is not right now in that courtroom, the conspiracy happened over 400 years ago in slavery. When they taught black men not to trust each other. And here it is 400 years later you guys still don’t trust each other and looking each other as opposition so y’all gonna have to change. So that stuck with us, so we kind of had to throw our flags off. We had to become brothers for real...t. And we made some history. Where if you spend time in the county jail they didn’t have phones on your tier. We demanded right to have access to our attorneys. We get a phone put on our tier. So they made it retroactive, they put it on all the tiers throughout the county jail. So we made some history.

So as time went on I got acquitted on that case and I came home. Was out maybe 5 months and went back again. Cause I couldn’t handle being out at 27 years old. Been gone since I was 19. I was never really prepared to come back to society. Name all in the papers, your whole city up in an uproar, brothers waiting for me to come home, looking for my leadership. I couldn’t help em out. I ended up back in the prison 5 months later. Back in the State. And I really called going to Stateville being in segregation and going, seeing a book on a bed. And it was the autobiography of Malcolm X. I took that book and just threw it in a corner. Cause I preferred not to make life even ___ matters. And I was bored, two months later, interestingly I was bored and I picked that book up and turned to the part where it said, Malcolm X became frustrated cause he couldn’t comprehend what he was reading and that caught my attention so I went to the front of the book and I read the whole book. And when I think it might have saved me I gave it to another person. I was older, I wasn’t a young buck no more. I was 30 years old and I started realizing I hadn’t seen a year outside since 1968 and this was 1983 I’m talking about. And I thought about all those young guys in Stateville at that time that was behind me and running my __. And I brought it cause we had a board now to go to.

THE MEANING OF VICE LORD SYMBOLS

You probably’ve seen Vice Lords with the ___ ___ and the two half moons, and the 5 point star, you probably something simple. What those __ means the two half moons represented one nation of people that has been divided into two. The one on the left represent our people over in the east in Africa. The one over on the right represents us here, __ wants us go back. Cause we one nation and we broke away from our true heritage over there. This is why Vice Lord brothers ……. And that 5 point star represent the true nature of man. For every man is seeking for love, peace, freedom, justice, and equality in his life. But also man must give into his trouble, that man retrogressive knows the 5 points of the law, the <can’t understand> and this is why a lot of Vice Lords are getting killed, are in jail, are strung out on drugs, they gonna deviate from God’s laws, through the nature of man. So just being a part of that gave me my personal understanding of my culture. And as I got older it started making some sense and I was on a road, I was in a position where I could get something done with the guys. This is what I started to do and what it did is that led to breaking off from the mob.

THE 1960S AND THE ASSASSINATION OF FRED HAMPTON

... you gotta understand LSD. It was a coalition, a citywide coalition right here in Chicago called LSD. The Vice Lords, the Stones and the Disciples formed one of the first street coalition, street gang coalitions ever in this city. And Fred Hampton who was the head of the Black Panther Party, the Illinois chapter Black Panther party played a role in that. So they showed them brothers some of the power they had, how they could utilize their power, how they could push people in office, how they could get grant money... and how they became legitimate and not for profit organization.

See the Vice Lords became Conservative Vice Lord Corporation..... And Fred Hampton because he was kinda like the mastermind and intertwined with all of that there, he became a threat, this is why I believe he was assassinated. Fred Hampton wasn’t killed, he was assassinated by state’s attorney Hanrahan at that time. And the Chicago Police Department. And keep in mind if you look back in that, ...e gang violence kind of ceased. Second David Barksdale got involved with the Disciples or the Blackstone Rangers on the south side.... . On the West Side they formed what they call Operation Bootstrap. When the Vice Lords and the Gypsy Cobras and they …..wanted to get compensated. And they were clearly bringing brothers in there for purchases and they were provide job opportunities and trainers for them.

And first they had Tastee Freeze you know where …. back in 68. And the Old Man (Mayor Daley) at that time called War against street gangs. When you have 25 gangs tallying it all through Chicago... He declared war. Right. There was a senator back then…Think his name McClellan, something like that. He wanted to do an investigation on the street gangs and the programs that they had, about the efficiency of these programs and moved to discontinue any government funds that support them. So that kind of helped the brothers out there, they had became dependent on these funds from these programs and now that was taken from them. So what you saw putting together a new trend of being gang members getting locked up in a big part of the 60’s and if you’re doing the research you see Winston … went to the floor of the Cook Country Jail at that time. He inspired a new type of ambition – an African American gang was ___ and for the first time of this kind gangs ….

PRISON AND STREET GANGS

The street gangs in Chicago are controlled from the prisons, there’s no leadership out here. The leadership is in the prisons and we had this board, this committee and the committee consisted of a head from each sector, the different branches. And with us the Vice Lords one of the highest honors you can get is called the Old Man. You were like the head of this board and I became the Old Man. And I started thinking in terms of when I first came to prison there was some fear of what prison would be like and I made my mind up that I was not to get victimized so I premeditated violence constantly. Out of fear. So my position was to take all the weapons from these young guys and force them to seek council from us older guys before they act out of fear. To cut down on some of these unneccesary violence. I also felt like these young guys shouldn’t be mopping the floors and working in the kitchen that they should be in school. So we started flooding the school with these young guys trying to get enrolled but the GE class can only hold so many; it had a year long waiting list. You had to be on a year to be enrolled. We talk about the east county with this. And so the administration get wind of this and I became a threat to the administration. Cause the Vice Lords we had as part of our oath that we would serve our time constructively that for on our release we could become a productive member of our community. That was one of the oaths we took and being part of the Vice Lords it gave me a first understanding of our cause.

...In 1974 a riot broke out in the Stateville prison B House. . Lt. Burger got killed. And three brothers got indicted after that but after they came, then the brothers came together and they said hey man we need to pull it together. So they reactivated LSD behind the walls under a new name Project ABLE. Adult Basic Learning Enterprise. And this consisted of the independent white inmates, hispanic inmates, a representative of each street organization and they became like a liaison between the administation and the prison population. So gang riots ceased in prison. And out of that they formed what you called a universal law. These were laws to govern everybody. To respect each other. Cause we all have to live and occupy the same space. A code of conduct. You probably hear about different street gangs got their own limits? Well they brought, they pulling it from the universal law, the code of conduct and got your own identity, see?

Now we moving into the time of Superintendent Reed at Stateville who met with that committee and found out who they represent and discontinued. So there was no communicating between the inmate population and the administration and things got crazy again. And then started being about riots and being in prisons because there was no communication. So if they’d listened to the theme of when gangs try to come together, do some good themselves, just if someone in the field. See? ... They then would lock us up, they did it with Malcolm X, and Elijah Muhammed. They did it with Martin Luther King. They did it with Black Panther Party. They did it with the street gangs back then and they still doing it today. It’s not a coincidence if you stand on the corner, bunch of four corner hustlers stand out there, the police pull up with a load of Insane Vice Lords in the back seat and just pull over. And drop them brothers two blocks away and come right back and bust that whole block and get .. out of that corner. They did set them up. They was coming for em anyway. We talk about aggravation, we talk about people that agitate situations, keep this going, cause they need this to the work… What y’all brothers think you recognize that?

... That they bag you for it. I always say those southern Illinois farmers they got a new crop – called the inmate. They have political wars over whose little town will get a prison in it because prisons is big business now. But these young brothers need to hear this you know? A lot of guys you talk with return home and even prison life is just… it used to in time you had to read, to entertain yourself so you could develop your mind. Now they don’t mind you having a cell with a tv running and earphones on to the radio and you having a conversation with a guy down on the alley; he could use you going on. And you confide his let you come out here hey why? The kind of deal he’ll set up is just like when you look at society, overcrowded conditions. One of those tiers is no bigger than this little auditorium here. And around the cells. One tier up they have to satisfy an eight person alley. Gonna cause conflict. Four benches to satisfy 8 bodies. Conflict. 4 toilets. Conflict. 4 showers. They set up to keep conflict and tension so when it’s time to go to court, you’ve haven’t had time to prepare for his case, he spend most of his time just trying to survive.

FINAL WORDS

And what’s happening nowadays there is no more nations. Ain’t no more nations. Cause you got Gangster Disciples killing all other Gangster Disciples. There’s a thing called outlawing going on now. Some of these guys got a big old cross over their arms it’s got outlaw down the center. Maybe they outlaws for real but you make you’re a Gangster Disciple but you don’t respect certain Gangster Disciples. You may be a Vice Lord with that outlaw on but he don’t respect certain Vice Lords. That’s what this outlaw thing going on. The majority of the young guys in prison now for killing or shooting you can guarantee 90% of them is with his own. The average Vice Lord in prison for shooting and killing somebody he done killed and shot another Vice Lord. The average Gangster Disciple in prison is down there cause he shot another Gangster Disciple. Because of the conditions. Because of the conditions.

Drugs is the center of this. These drug wars going cause they give em to each other and a lot of em get strung out on it and they vow they know laws. The way this is set up now if you follow a certain mob and you selling a certain product or even a drug you can’t use that drug. And if you get caught using that drug you’re in violation. And a lot of these guys are using these drugs and it’s causing conflict within their own circle. And that keep repeating itself and it’s causing a lot of unnecessary killings see? And this is what you’re seeing. Guys like me gonna have to change. Keep from being initiated. I don’t know how to take it. On one hand it’s been over 18 years since I’ve been incarcerated it did a lot. With my mind. And I try to reach out to young guys, the police want to lock me to a deal down my past. Man I didn’t get a school, I didn’t get a degree, I can work a job, I can run program. I just walked off a job that I was the head of the program over 12 years. One of the largest drug agencies in this state.

I’m paving the way for that young guy that comes behind me. That’s in the hiding hole right now. Mobster says sure he can get high on this. So I pay you fair. So the Mobster says this is bigger than me and this is how I look at it. Mobster says this is bigger than me. What I do is not for me. It’s for those coming behind me and this is what I stand for. On the end, then I’ll take some questions now.<applause>