Gang Deconstruction

Race Riot of 1919, in which gangs of white youth terrorized the black community, and in
response black youth formed groups for self-protection.
However, the actual formation of Midwestern black gangs only began after World War II,
concomitantly with the Second Great Migration. It was in the late 1940s, 1950s and
1960s that black gangs such as the Devil's Disciples, the Black P-Stones and the Vice
Lords were formed. By the late 1960s, the construction of public housing Chicago
allowed gangs to consolidate their power in black neighborhoods, and the Vice Lords,
P-Stones, and Gangster Disciples controlled the drug trade of the area. These and
others emerged as "super gangs" with more than 1,000 members each by the 1970s.
During and after the 1940s, gangs in the American West expanded dramatically as a
result of three factors: expanding immigration from Mexico, the Sleepy Lagoon murder,
and the Zoot Suit Riots. The two latter events served to unify the Mexican immigrant
population and turned many youth into gang members. It was also from the 1940s to the
1960s that black gangs emerged as a criminal force in Los Angeles, largely as a result
of social exclusion and segregation. Racial anti-black violence on the part of white
youths directly contributed to black youths forming self-protection societies that
transformed into black gangs by the late 1960s.
Black gangs of Los Angeles began forming into territorial-based groups by the early
1970s, and two federations of black gangs, the Bloods and the Crips, emerged during
that period. The practice of allying local street gangs together into federated alliances
began during the 1960s and expanded rapidly across the United States during the
1970s and 1980s. Out of the prison system of Illinois came two gang alliances by the
late 1970s: the Folk Nation and the People Nation alliances. These two alliances
included a variety of white, black, and Hispanic gangs and claimed territory in and
around Chicago and other Midwestern cities. Another of these federated alliances were
the Latin Kings, originally a Chicago-based Latino gang. In the case of the West, nearly
every major city in California reported gang activity by the mid-1970s, and often it was
related to gangs affiliating themselves with the Bloods or Crips.
Contemporary Activities: 1990–Present
By the 1990s, Northeastern gangs (white, black, and Latino) had come into conflict as a
result of urban renewal and ethnic migration. The Northeast had more than 17,000 gang
members and more than 600 gangs in 2008, and Pennsylvania saw heavy growth of
gang activity. During the 2000s, the most active gangs in the region were federations of
the Crips, the Latin Kings, MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha), Neta, and the Bloods.
In the American West, as job cuts continued to rise and employers began to hire from
the cheaper labour pool of the expanding Latino immigrant community, unemployment
rates of African-American men reached as high as 50% in several areas of South
Central Los Angeles, opening up large recruitment markets for the burgeoning gangs.
The increasing social isolation felt by African-American communities across the nation
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