History of Youth Gangs
Youth gangs may have first appeared in Europe (Klein, 1996) or Mexico (Redfield, 1941; Rubel, 1965). No one is sure when or why they emerged in the United States. The earliest record of their appearance in the United States may have been as early as 1783, as the American Revolution ended (Sante, 1991; Sheldon, 1898). They may have emerged spontaneously from adolescent play groups or as a collective response to urban conditions in this country (Thrasher, 1927). Some suggest they first emerged following the Mexican migration to the Southwest after the Mexican Revolution in 1813 (Redfield, 1941; Rubel, 1965). They may have grown out of difficulties Mexican youth encountered with social and cultural adjustment to the American way of life under extremely poor conditions in the Southwest (Moore, 1978; Vigil, 1988). Gangs appear to have spread in New England in the early 1800's as the Industrial Revolution gained momentum in the first large cities in the United States: New York, Boston, and Philadelphia (Finestone, 1976; Sante, 1991; Spergel, 1995).
Gangs began to flourish in Chicago and other large cities during the industrial era, when immigration and population shifts reached peak levels (Finestone, 1976). Early in American history, gangs seem to have been most visible and most violent during periods of rapid population shifts. Their evolution has been characterized by an ebb and flow pattern that "at any given time more closely resembles that of, say, influenza rather than blindness," as Miller (1992:51) has observed. The United States has seen four distinct periods of gang growth and peak activity: the late 1800's, the 1920's, the 1960's, and the 1990's (Curry and Decker, 1998). Gang proliferation, in other words, is not a constant.
In the modern era, youth gangs have been influenced by several trends. In the 1970's and 1980's, because of increased mobility and access to more lethal weapons, many gangs became more dangerous (Klein, 1995; Klein and Maxson, 1989; Miller, 1974, 1992; Spergel, 1995). Gang fights previously involving fists or brass knuckles increasingly involved guns. The growing availability of automobiles, coupled with the use of more lethal weapons, fueled the growth of drive-by shootings, a tactic that previously took the form of on-foot hit-and-run forays (Miller, 1966). Gangs of the 1980's and 1990's seem to have both more younger and more older members than before (Miller, 1992; Spergel, 1995), more members with prison records or ties to prison inmates (Hagedorn, 1988; Miller, 1992; Moore, 1990; Vigil, 1988), and more weapons of greater lethality (Block and Block, 1993; Miller, 1992; National Drug Intelligence Center, 1995). They are less concerned with territorial affiliations (Fagan, 1990; Klein, 1995), use alcohol and drugs more extensively (Decker and Van Winkle, 1996; Fagan, 1990; Thornberry, 1998), and are more involved in drug trafficking (Battin et al., 1998; Fagan, 1990; Miller, 1992; Taylor, 1989; Thornberry, 1998).
Some youth gangs appear to have been transformed into entrepreneurial organizations by the crack cocaine epidemic that began in the mid-1980's (Sanchez-Jankowski, 1991; Skolnick et al., 1988; Taylor, 1989). However, the extent to which they have become drug-trafficking organizations is unclear (Howell and Decker, in press). Some youth groups, many of which are not considered bona fide gangs, are not seriously involved in illegal activities and provide mainly social opportunities for their membership (Fagan, 1989; Vigil, 1988). Some gangs seldom use drugs and alcohol, and some have close community ties (Fagan, 1989; Sanchez-Jankowski, 1991; Vigil, 1988).
Source: http://www.ojjdp.gov/jjbulletin/9808/history.html
HISTORY OF STREET GANGS IN THE UNITED STATES
The first active gangs in Western civilization were reported
by Pike (1873, pp. 276–277), a widely respected chronicler
of British crime. He documented the existence of gangs of
highway robbers in England during the 17th century, and
he speculates that similar gangs might well have existed
in our mother country much earlier, perhaps as early as
the 14th or even the 12th century. But it does not appear
that these gangs had the features of modern-day, serious
street gangs.
1
More structured gangs did not appear
until the early 1600s, when London was “terrorized by a
series of organized gangs calling themselves the Mims,
Hectors, Bugles, Dead Boys … who found amusement in
breaking windows, [and] demolishing taverns, [and they]
also fought pitched battles among themselves dressed
with colored ribbons to distinguish the different factions”
(Pearson, 1983, p. 188).
The history of street gangs in the United States begins
with their emergence on the East Coast around 1783,
as the American Revolution ended (Sante, 1991). But
there is considerable justification for questioning the
seriousness of these early gangs. The best available
evidence suggests that the more serious street
gangs likely did not emerge until the early part of the
nineteenth century (Sante, 1991).
Street Gang Emergence in the
Northeast
Street gangs on the East Coast developed in three
phases (Adamson, 1998; Sante, 1991). The first ganglike groups began to emerge immediately after the
American Revolution ended in 1783, but they were
not seasoned criminals; only youth fighting over local
turf. The beginning of serious ganging in New York
City would commence a few years later, around 1820,
in the wake of far more large-scale immigration. The
gangs that emerged from this melting pot were far
more structured and dangerous. A third wave of gang
activity developed in the 1950s and 1960s when Latino
and black populations arrived en masse.
New York City’s Ellis Island was the major port of entry
to the United States. It “has throughout the country’s
history been the cauldron into which highly diverse
immigrant groups have been poured” (Geis, 1965,
p. 42). The three predominant early immigrant groups
that arrived in New York City and settled in the Lower
East Side in large numbers after the War of 1812 were
English, Irish, and German (Sante, 1991). Their collective
arrival spurred gang development in the squalor and
overcrowding of the Lower East Side. That area of the
city—particularly around the Five Points—fell victim to
3 The term “Hispanic” is used particularly by federal and state
bureaucracies to refer to persons who reside in the United States
who were born in, or trace their ancestry back to, one of 23
Spanish-speaking nations (Moore and Pinderhughes, 1993, p. xi).
Many of these individuals prefer to use the term “Latino,” and
that term is used in this report. “Chicano” is also used to refer to
Mexican descendants.
rapid immigration and ensuing political, economic, and
social disorganization.
First Period of Gang Emergence
in New York City
The members of the gangs that first drove social stakes
in the streets of New York in the late 18th century were
the same age as most members of current street gangs,
from the early teens to about the mid-twenties (Sante,
1991). They consisted of five main groups: “The Smiths’s
Vly gang, the Bowery Boys, and the Broadway Boys
were white, mainly Irish groups; the Fly Boys and the
Long Bridge Boys were black” (p. 198). There already
was a substantial black population in the area (Sante,
1991, p. 199).
It is important to examine more closely the racial/ethnic
character of the early New York gangs described here.
Overall, the earliest gangs were largely Irish, followed
after the Civil War by Italian and then Jewish gangs
with a mixture of Italian, Irish, and Scandavian members
(Riis, 1902/1969; Sante, 1991). Dutch, Welsh, Scots-Irish,
Irish Catholic, and German youth, as well as persons
of mixed ethnicity, soon would expand the melting pot.
Indeed, early gangs were often multi-ethnic, drawn
from neighborhoods that were not rigidly segregated
by ethnicity (Adamson, 2000).
The earliest gangs of New York were not criminal
groups. Many street gang members were employed,
mostly as common laborers (Adamson, 1998; Sante,
1991). Some were bouncers in saloons and dance
halls, as well as longshoremen. A few were apprentice
butchers, carpenters, sailmakers, and shipbuilders.
“They engaged in violence, but violence was a normal
part of their always-contested environment; turf warfare
was a condition of the neighborhood” (Sante, 1991,
p. 198). Gangs formed the “basic unit of social life among
the young males in New York in the nineteenth century”
(Sante, 1991, p. 198).
More dangerous street gangs than previously seen
emerged around 1820 from the persistent disorder that
gripped the city slums, tenements, saloons, and dance
halls (Riis, 1902/1969; Sante, 1991). The Forty Thieves gang
was characterized as “the first important and decisively
dangerous gang of the quarter [century]” (Sante, 1991,
p. 199). It and other new groups of gangs that emerged in
this period were centered in criminal enterprises as much
as in territorial disputes (Sante, 1991). “It is axiomatic
that the more sophisticated the gangs became, the more
violent they grew as well” (p. 198).
“Prior to 1840, territorial alliances took precedence over
ethnic solidarity. Thereafter, in the climate of economic
restructuring and intense competition for jobs, gang
warfare replicated ethnic conflict” (Adamson, 1998,
p. 64). From its early history, ethnic succession and
invasion has been a regular process in the city. “From its
earliest days when the Dutch and English struggled for
political and economic control, through the nineteenth
Irish settled in great numbers, and up through the century when new groups such as Germans and the early twentieth century with the arrival of southern
and eastern Europeans, the city has always been an
ever-evolving mix of ethnic groups” (Lobo, Flores, and
Salvo, 2002, p. 703).
The Five Points gangs, such as the Dead Rabbits,
typically formed in the corner groggeries (selling a
combination of groceries and cheap liquor) that had
bars in the rear of the buildings (“speak-easies,” Asbury,
1927), which became social centers. “As a social unit,
the gang closely resembled such organizations as the
fire company, the fraternal order, and the political club,
all of these formations variously overlapped” (Sante,
1991, pp. 197–198). Bar room brawling was a common
denominator. “The majority of dives featured one or
another of a variation of the basic setup: bar, dance floor,
private boxes, prostitution, robbery” (p. 112).
The Five Points Gang was particularly influential, such
that it is said to be “the most significant street gang
to form in the United States, ever!” (Savelli, 2001, p. 1).
Its coleader, Johnny Torrio, became a significant member
of the Sicilian Mafia (La Cosa Nostra). He recruited street
hoodlums from across New York City to the Five Points
Gang, including a teenaged Brooklyn boy of Italian
descent named Alphonse Capone, better known as
Al Capone or “Scarface.” Capone became a member
of the James Street Gang, which the Five Pointers
considered a minor-league outfit. The Five Points Gang
became the major league to many young street gangsters
and a farm club for the Mafia (Savelli, 2001, p. 1).
The gang also specialized in supplying bodies to
political entities, in keeping unsympathetic voters away
from the election center. It was a symbiotic relationship;
each group benefitted from the influence of the other.
The apex of its 25-year history was approximately 1857
(Sante, 1991). “By the 1870s, few gangs remained in Five
Points” (Gilfoyle, 2003, p. 622). A 2002 movie, Gangs
of New York, vividly depicted their reign, with some
exaggerations and distorted history in “a blood-soaked
vision of American history” (p. 621).
Years later, in 1919, being sought by authorities in
connection with a gangland murder in New York,
Al “Scarface” Capone moved to Chicago when Torrio
needed his assistance in maintaining control of Chicago
mob territories. “Al Capone eventually became the
most violent and prolific gangster in Chicago, if not…
the United States, that law enforcement has ever
experienced” (Savelli, 2001, p. 1).
Second Period of Gang Growth
in New York City
The arrival of the Poles, Italians, and Jews in
New York City in the period 1880–1920 ushered in a
second distinct period of gang activity in the city’s
slums. Jacob Riis, a journalist, photographer, and social
reformer, shocked the conscience of many Americans
with his factual descriptions of slum conditions in his
book, The Battle with the Slum (1902/1969). Inundated
with immigrants, New York City could not provide
enough homes for the influx that occurred over the next
30 years. Tenement houses were created as a temporary
solution that became permanent. Members of a select
committee (cited in Riis, 1902/1969, p. 12) of the state
legislature came to the city and saw how crime came
to be the natural crop of people housed in crowded,
filthy tenements with “dark, damp basements, leaking
garrets, shops, outhouses, and stables converted into
dwellings.” These conditions predated the formation
of the city Health Department, viable social services,
and the Children’s Aid Society. Moreover, the New York
City Police Department was not effective in maintaining
order. Gangs and other criminal groups were virtually
unfettered from forging their own wedges in the social
and physical disorder.
The Whyos (named for a bird-like call the members used
to alert one another) is said to have been “the most
powerful downtown gang between the Civil War and
the 1890s” (Sante, 1991, p. 214). It appeared to have
emerged from an earlier gang, the Chichesters. This
transformed and far more criminal gang actually had a
take-out menu of its services, including punching ($2),
nose and jaw bone broken ($10), leg or arm broken ($19),
shot in the leg ($25), and “doing the big job” ($100 and
up) (Sante, 1991, p. 215).
The histories of the city ’s gangs can be
seen as running a close parallel to the
progress of commerce. From small, specialized
establishments narrowly identified with
particular neighborhoods, gangs branched out,
diversified, and merged, absorbing smaller and
less well-organized units and encompassing
ever-larger swaths of territory. After the Whyos,
their numbers decimated by jailings and deaths,
dissolved in the early 1890s, a small number
of very large gangs, organized as umbrella
formations made up of smaller entities, came to
dominate the scene (Sante, 1991, p. 217).
Four gang alliances were longest-lived gangs on the
Lower East Side of Manhattan—for nearly two decades
on either side of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries:
the Five Pointers, the Monk Eastman, the Gophers, and
the Hudson Dusters (Sante, 1991, p. 217). Territorial
disputes and reorganizations were commonplace,
but the Jewish Monk Eastman Gang was particularly
notable for having “terrorized New York City streets”
(Savelli, 2001, p. 1).
In the meantime, the Chinese set up their own highly
structured tongs around 1860, and put the street
gangs to shame in running a criminal operation that
controlled opium distribution, gambling, and political
p a t ro n a g e ( C h i n , 1 9 9 5 ) . “ T h e t o n g s me rg e d t h e
functions, resources, and techniques of politicians,
police, financiers, and gangsters, and enforced their
levy with no opposition” (Sante, 1991, p. 226). Even so,
the tongs soon were matched in strength by the Mafia,
which had moved from New Orleans into New York. The
last major downtown gang fight occurred in 1914; soon
thereafter, “the gang situation downtown had entered
its decadent phase. Gangs were splintering into tiny
groups, while bands of juveniles and amateurs were
coming up everywhere” (Sante, 1991, p. 231).
Third Period of Gang Growth in
New York City
Youth gangs are presumed to have virtually disappeared
from New York City by the 1950s, following the West Side
Story era (Sullivan, 1993). But field observations in the
city by an anthropologist and adroit gang researcher
(Miller, 1974) refuted the popular media story that
the gangs had dissolved. In New York City and other
places, “mass migration of Southern Blacks (seeking
better employment opportunities and social conditions)
landed many of them in urban locales near all White
neighborhoods, which sparked interracial conflict . . .
White male youth groups formed and violently resisted
racial integration of neighborhoods, which led to Black
brotherhoods evolving into social protection groups”
(Cureton, 2009, p. 351). Under these conditions, “street
gangs became entrenched in the social fabric of the
underclass” (p. 351).
New York City ’s gangs also were strengthened
during this period by Latino immigrant groups (from
Latin America, the Caribbean, Puerto Rico) that
moved into areas of the city populated by European
Americans—particularly in the South Bronx (Curtis,
2003) and Brooklyn (Sullivan, 1993).
U r b a n p l a n n e r s b u i l t h i g h - r i s e p u b l i c h o u s i n g
developments across the country (from the mid-1940s
to the mid-1960s). Black gangs were very prevalent in
these and in segregated communities in New York City
by the 1960s (Gannon, 1967; Miller, 1982/1992). On the
one hand, high-rise public housing settings provided
gangs with cohesion because it was an identifiable and
secure home base (Monti, 1993). On the other hand, the
creation of low-income, high-rise public housing shifted
previous inner-city slums and ghettos to outer-city,
ring-city, or suburban areas (Miller, 1982/1992). The
scattering of these low-income public housing projects
around the city served to diffuse to some extent the
between-gang violence that developed in Chicago.
By the 1960s, more than two-thirds of the New York
gangs were Puerto Rican or black (Gannon, 1967,
p. 122). However, the highly organized Chinatown
gangs reigned for nearly 20 years—from the mid-
1970s to the mid-1990s—during which they were
“responsible for systematic extortion and violence”
(M. L. Sullivan, 2006, p. 22). In this same period, a
surging Hispanic/Latino population succeeded whites
across New York City, creating a preponderance of
both all-minority and multiethnic neighborhoods (Lobo
et al., 2002). In the post-1990 period, newer Hispanic
groups began to succeed Puerto Ricans. “In fact, by the
late 1990s, Hispanics had replaced blacks as the largest
minority group in the city” (p. 704). “Social observers of
New York City in the 1880s, when the city was swarming
with Irish gangs, would have been incredulous had they
been told that within the century the police would be
hard put to locate a single Irish gang in the five boroughs
of the city” (Miller, 1982/1992, p. 79).
Modern-Day Eastern Gangs
In the 1990s, post-World War II urban renewal, slum
clearances, and ethnic migration pitted gangs of AfricanAmerican, Puerto Rican, and Euro-American youth
against each other in battles to dominate changing
neighborhoods, and to establish and maintain their turf
and honor (Schneider, 1999). By 2008, “approximately
640 gangs with more than 17,250 members [were]
criminally active in the New England region
4
” (Federal
Bureau of Investigation, 2008, p. 17). Most of the gang
growth in this region has been in the 222 Corridor—so
named because Pennsylvania Route 222 bisects five
cities
5
in the state. In the decade following the late
1990s, “each of these cities experienced a dramatic
increase in gangs and their associated criminal
activities” (Easton Gang Prevention Task Force, 2007).
“Violent gang members from major metropolitan areas
such as New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, and
Baltimore travel to and through the 222 Corridor using
the smaller urban communities as part of their drug
distribution networks” (p. 1).
Another important trend in the broader Northeast
region is increasing gang-related violence as a result of
competition among gangs for control of territories (FBI,
2008). According to the FBI’s intelligence reports, “the
most significant gangs operating in the East Region
are Crips, Latin Kings, MS-13, Ñeta, and United Blood
Nation” (p. 16).
A relatively new street gang in the Northeast region,
the Trinitarios, meaning the Trinity or Special One,
was formed during the late 1990s for protection from
Dominican inmates in New York prisons (FBI, 2008).
Upon leaving prison, members banded together as a
street gang, calling themselves Trinitarios to separate
themselves from other Dominican street gangs in
New York. “Trinitarios members are establishing a
reputation for extreme violence throughout the area”
and this gang appears to be increasing its presence
in the region (p. 16). Its members are particularly
involved in drug trafficking, robberies, auto theft, and
murder. Trinitarios also maintains strong, hierarchical
organizations in correctional facilities.
In addition to the Trinitarios, local law enforcement
agencies currently identify the East Coast Bloods and
Dead Man Inc. as presenting enormous threats to
public safety in the Northeast region. The East Coast
Bloods were formed in New York City’s Rikers Island
Jail in 1993 to fight off Ñetas and Latin Kings within
the facilities.
6
Members of this gang are predominantly
African-American males aged 16–35 years. Some gang
4 This region extends northward from the New York border.
5 Easton, Bethlehem, Allentown, Reading, and Lancaster.
6 Capital Region Gang Prevention Center: http://www.
nysgangprevention.com/).5
sets
7
on Rikers require an individual to “put in work”
or “eat food” (cut or slash someone) before they are
considered Blood members. In the estimation of some
authorities, the East Coast Bloods is reputed to be the
largest street gang in New York City, and it operates in
other East Coast cities as well.
Dead Man Inc. is a white prison gang that reportedly
was formed in the Maryland Correctional Adjustment
Center, known as Supermax. It was founded in the late
1990s by white inmates who desired affiliation with
the established Black Guerrilla Family, but the group’s
request was denied because its white race, which
conflicted with the BGFs Black membership.
8
Hence,
Dead Man Inc. was formed.
Street Gang Emergence in
Chicago
Chicago emerged as an industrial hub between the Civil
War and the end of the 19th century. The city’s capacity
to produce gangs was enhanced when it recruited a
massive labor force from the peasantry of Southern and
Eastern Europe, becoming “a latter-day tower of Babel”
(Finestone, 1976, p. 6). Gangs that flourished in Chicago
in the early part of the 1900s grew mainly from the same
immigrant groups that populated the early serious street
gangs of New York City (Thrasher, 1927/2000). By the
early 20th century, Polish and Italian gangs were the
most numerous in Chicago. Only 7 percent were black.
Much like the early New York scene, gangs of mixed
nationalities were common; in fact, ethnically mixed
gangs represented almost 40 percent of all gangs in
Chicago by 1925 (p. 68). Another parallel is that the social
dynamics associated with gang formation were similar
in the two cities. Thrasher (1927/2000) stated the case
for Chicago. The gang, he said, “is one manifestation
of the disorganization incident to the cultural conflict
among diverse nations and races gathered in one place
and themselves in contact with a civilization foreign and
largely inimical to them” (p. 76).
Thrasher (1927/1963) dubbed this “economic, moral,
and cultural frontier” the “zone in transition.” This
“gangland” between the thriving downtown business
district and neighborhoods filled with stable, workingclass families was “unattractive, dirty, and filled with
industry, railroad yards, ghettos, and the city’s recent
immigrants” (Monti, 1993, p. 4). Thrasher’s study was
a very broad one. In addition to gangs, he discusses
other criminal groups: adult hoodlum bands, rings,
syndicates, political machines, bootleggers, robbers,
gambling houses, vice resorts, and other crime fixtures
in the urban landscape of rapidly developing Chicago. Of
the more than 1,300 gangs that he catalogued, he was
able to classify 90 percent: 530 were clearly delinquent
or criminal; 609 were dubious in character; and only 52
were clearly not delinquent. But this characterization
7 Gang subgroups or sections.
8 According to intelligence information compiled by the Gang
Identification Task Force: http://whiteprisongangs.blogspot.
com/2009/05/dead-man-inc.html.
masked the truly dangerous gangs that already existed
in the city of Chicago at that time.
First Period of Chicago Gang
Growth
Chicago’s first street gangs developed among white
immigrants along ethnic lines before the American Civil
War.
9
Perkins (1987) found evidence of white gangs
“roving the streets” in the city as far back as the 1860s,
but it would be 20 years before street gangs had a
notable presence. Many of the early white gangs may
have emerged from fire departments. Carrying names
such as “Fire Kings,” these companies of young workingclass men brawled in the streets and sponsored social
events. After the official creation of fire departments
forced volunteer operations to disband, gang activities
shifted into saloons.
Predominant large Irish gangs included the Dukies and
the Shielders, which exerted a powerful influence on the
streets around the stockyards—robbing men leaving
work, fighting among themselves, and terrorizing the
German, Jewish, and Polish immigrants who settled
there from the 1870s to the 1890s. These gangs fought
constantly among themselves, but they occasionally
united to battle nearby black gangs.
10
Black gangs did
not appear until the 1920s, although “the impact of Black
street gangs on the Black community was minimal, at
best, prior to the 1940s” (Perkins, 1987, pp. 19, 25).
During this period, gangs became entrenched in the
patronage networks operated by ward politicians
(Adamson, 2000), and the city’s gangs “thrived on
political corruption” (Moore, 1998, p. 76). Cook County
Commissioner Frank Ragen established the Ragen
Athletic Club—home of the Ragen’s Colts gang—on
Chicago’s Halsted Street. This gang’s mantra was “Hit me
and you hit a thousand” (p. 278). “The gang masqueraded
as an athletic club but in fact controlled and protected
[its] turf, particularly from Blacks who either worked in
the area or traveled through the area on their way to and
from work” (Arrendondo, 2004, p. 406). With members
ranging in age from 17 to 30, it also “provided a de facto
policing service for the community” (Adamson, 2000, p.
278). Several other athletic clubs hosted gangs, and gangs
also assisted union leaders and factory workers in the
protection of their interests (Spergel, 1995).
During the “Roaring Twenties,” violence among warring
gangs was a frequent occurrence in Chicago (Block,
1977). Organized crime mobs were also prevalent,
the most notable of which was the Al Capone gang
(Peterson, 1963). Street gangs were said to “prosper in
the very shadow of these institutions” (McKay, 1949,
p. 36). Thrasher described the key characteristics of most
9 The author’s main source for this early history of Chicago gangs
is the Encyclopedia of Chicago History: http://www.encyclopedia.
chicagohistory.org/pages/27.html. Accessed December 28, 2009.
10 The author’s main source for this early history of Chicago
gangs is the Encyclopedia of Chicago History: http://www.
encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/27.html. Accessed
December 28, 2009.6
of the 1,313 gangs (with some 25,000 members)
11
that he found
in Chicago and plotted their location on a map of the city. This
exercise revealed Chicago’s “gangland” (see Sidebar: Chicago’s
Gangland) within what Thrasher called the “interstitial” or rapidly
deteriorating transitional areas (ghettos and slums) between the
central city and the better residential areas.
The heyday of Chicago’s white ethnic gangs soon came to an
end, however. As Moore (1998, p. 68) explains it, “the gangs
of the 1920s were largely “a one-generation immigrant ghetto
phenomenon.” Perhaps the most important reason for the gangs’
dissolution is that their immigrant families were able to move out
of Chicago’s downtown ghettos and into better areas, into a social
and economic mainstream. But “they did not take their gangs
with them.” These remained and more gangs soon would emerge
because the whites moved to the suburbs, making room for the
incipient influx of African Americans in the more impoverished
central city
http://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Content/Documents/History-of-Street-Gangs.pdf
