2010 PDF Excerpt: The History Of The Los Angeles Crip Gang and Blood Gang

 Edited by Azizi Powell

This is Part I of a four part pancocojams series on the term "OG".

Part I is a preface to information about and examples of the term "OG". This post provides an excerpt about the history of the Crips and the Blood gangs in Los Angeles, California from https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/content/documents/history-of-street-gangs.pdf National Gang Center Bulletin, May 2010 (no. 4) by James C. Howell and John P. Moore.

Part I also includes an excerpt of an insert in that article that is entitled "Gang Names and Alliances" attributed to Miller, 2001, pp. 43–44.

The Addendum to this post presents an excerpt of  a March 2020 article about a Los Angeles gang truce after rapper Nipsey Hussle's shooting death.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2020/08/complete-reprint-of-2006-essay-making.html for Part II of this pancocojams series. Part II provides a complete reprint of  the 2006 essay entitled"The Making of an O.G.: Transcending Gang Mentality". This essay was written by San Quentin Death Row prisoners Steve Champion and Anthony Ross.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2020/08/how-meanings-of-term-og-have-changed-in.html for Part III presents some online definitions of term "OG". Those definitions along with some sentences that include that term demonstrate how the meanings of "OG"  have changed in the United States since it was first used in the early 1970s.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2020/08/kenyan-rapper-khaligraph-jones-referent_15.html for Part IV presents information about Kenyan rapper Khaligraph Jones. This post also presents examples of comments from the discussion thread of a Khaligraph Jones music video. Most of these comments show how the term "OG" is often used in Kenya as a referent for Khaligraph Jones.

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The content of this post is presented for cultural and linguistic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to James C. Howell, John P. Moore and all others who are quoted in this post.

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ARTICLE EXCERPT:  HISTORY OF STREET GANGS IN THE UNITED STATES By: James C. Howell and John P. Moore, May 2010
From https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/content/documents/history-of-street-gangs.pdf
"p. 11-13

Although Chicago had its own race riot, racial violence played a much stronger role in the formation of black street gangs in Los Angeles than was the case in Chicago (Alonso, 2004; Cureton, 2009). The first black gangs formed in Los Angeles in the late 1940s as a defensive response to white youth violence in the schools (Vigil, 2002, p. 68), from which they spread south and westward (Alonso, 2004). But the gangs that grew in the 1950s and 1960s were far more serious gangsthan the earlier ones. These grew out of black clubs and nascent gangs that played a central role in developing resistance strategies to counter white intimidation. “As white clubs began to fade from the scene, eventually the black clubs, which were first organized as protectors of the community, began to engage in conflicts with other black clubs. “Black gang activity [soon] represented a significant proportion of gang incidents” across Los Angeles (p. 665).

By the mid-1950s, South Central black gangs “served as the architects of social space in the new, usually hostile, settings” (Alonso, 2004, p. 68). Generally speaking, in the ghetto areas of the southside and the eastside of Los Angeles, “where tens of thousands of 1940s and 1950s Black immigrants were crammed into the overcrowded, absentee-landlord housing, youth gangs offered ‘cool worlds’ of street socialization for poor young newcomers from rural Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi” (p. 68). With time, blacks “were able to escape the ghetto to surrounding communities, but in doing so they merely widened the ghetto’s boundaries” (p. 69).

  

“The end of the 1960s was the last chapter of the political, social, and civil rights movement by Black groups in LA, and a turning point away from the development of positive Black identity in the city” (Alonso, 2004, p. 668). But the “deeply racialized context coincided with the resurgence of new emerging street groups” between 1970 and 1972 (p. 668). Black Los Angeles youth searching for a new identity began to mobilize as street groups. This process also widened the base of black gangs into two camps, Crips and Bloods.

[Page 12]

The Crips and Bloods began to emulate the territory marking practices that had been developed by the early Los Angeles Latino gangs (Valdez, 2007, p. 186).16 Crips wore blue clothing; the Bloods chose red. The Crips led the way in using graffiti to mark their territories.

They often listed core members of their gangs. Their claimed areas came to be known as “hoods.” They developed a mantra, “Crips don’t die, they multiply.” Indeed, the Crips grew enormously throughout Los Angeles County, particularly in the public housing projects, “insuring that available positive role models were kept to a minimum and that the role models who were around belonged to the street” (Vigil, 2002, p. 77). 

Both the Bloods and the Crips grew in these settings (Valdez, 2007, Vigil, 2002), particularly in the housing projects built in Watts in the 1950s—in Jordan Downs, William Nickerson, Jr. Gardens, and Imperial Courts—and blacks made up nearly 95 percent of these two gangs (Vigil, 2002, p. 76)

The Los Angeles gang culture soon began to draw the attention of youth in nearby cities. By the 1970s, street gangs had emerged in most populated areas across California (Miller, 1982/1992, pp. 35–36). At that time, there were 20 cities in California with populations of 100,000 or more. Of these, 19 reported gang problems, and altogether street gangs were reported in more than 100 cities and towns across the state. “The numbers of cities and towns with gang problems in the extended Los Angeles metropolitan area, along with the size of the population aggregates affected, were… without precedent in American history” (p. 37).

Modern-Day Western Gangs

The Bloods became particularly strong in the black communities in South Central Los Angeles—especially in places on its periphery such as Compton—and in outlying communities such as Pacoima, Pasadena, and Pomona (Alonso, 2004; Vigil, 2002). By 1972, there were 18 Crips and Bloods gangs in Los Angeles, and these were the largest of the more than 500 active gangs in the city in the 1970s (Vigil, 2002, p. 76). In the 1980s, the most prominent of the Los Angeles Crips and Bloods were the Hoover Crips, East Side 40th Street Gangster Crips, Hacienda Village Bloods, and 42nd Street Piru Bloods (Miller, 2001). Many of the Bloods and Crips gangs regarded one another as mortal enemies and engaged in a continuing blood feud. In succeeding years, hundreds of gangs in the Southwest—and also in other parts of the United States—adopted the Bloods and Crips names. “Today, all west coast black street gang members affiliate themselves with the Bloods or Crips” (Valdez, 2007, p. 189).”…

Note #16: "There are other competing accounts of how Bloods and Crips gangs formed. Prominent among these is Cureton’s (2009, pp. 356–357). Based on his research, former Black Panther president Bunchy Carter and Raymond Washington formed the Crips in 1969 out of disappointment with the failure of the Black Panther Party to achieve its goals. The Crips were originally organized to be a community help association; however, following Carter’s death, the Crips’ leadership shifted its focus “to drug and gun sales that involved much violence.” Street gang feuds soon erupted.

Neighborhood groups who opposed the Crips formed an umbrella organization to unify these groups. “Hence, the Bloods were born (1973 to 1975), and their philosophy was that a far more ruthless approach was needed to compensate for being outnumbered by the Crips… The Crips and Blood feuds were historic, featuring the rise and fall of peace treaties, community stress, shock, and sorrow over the unforgiving nature of fatal violence.” For yet another competing account of Bloods and Crips origins, see Valdez (2007, pp. 186–87)".

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ADDENDUM
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nipsey-hussle-s-killing-inspired-rival-gangs-march-peace-year-n1171211

March 29, 2020, 5:33 AM EDT

By Alicia Victoria Lozano and Erik Ortiz
..."Bringing together rival gangs in one room would have been unimaginable a few years ago. After the 2019 shooting death of Grammy -winning rapper Nipsey Hussle, who advocated for unity despite his own affiliation with the Rollin' 60s Crips, appetite grew for putting aside old vendettas.

Before his death, Hussle encouraged peace among gangs, according to police, and he performed with rival Bloods-affiliated rappers as a way to set an example. After his killing, gang members of different stripes — Bloods, Crips and others — marched in the hundreds to a memorial in his honor.

"That was certainly inspired by his death," Alex Alonso, a gang expert and professor of Chicano and Latino studies at  California State University, Long Beach, said.

He added that while Hussle's killing didn't necessarily spawn peace talks, many of which were already on the table, "it certainly pushed the conversation in that direction, stronger and more firmly."

'Aren't enough people dead?'

Gang intervention has a long history in Los Angeles, a city known for its notorious street crews immortalized over the decades in music and culture. The celebrity status of gangs presents both a challenge and an opportunity for interventionists like Townsend. Younger generations idolize elders who drive flashy cars and wear expensive clothing. Townsend uses their influence to inspire something else: peace.

Townsend, 56, had been working toward this moment for a long time. A former Blood-turned-community advocate, he sat back in his jeans and black T-shirt at the recent meeting, and watched as several generations of gang members hashed out their differences.

"Aren't enough people dead, enough people shot?" Townsend asked.

Gang violence that gripped some of the poorest communities in the Los Angeles area has declined since the 1980s and early '90s, when a barrage of turf wars, drive-bys and gunfights were routine occurrences.

By the end of 1992 — one of the bloodiest years on record — gang-related violence across Los Angeles County topped 800 homicides for the first time, figures show.

In the early 2000s, police again were inundated by gang-fueled homicides, with the overall murder rate rising in the Los Angeles region, while other major cities, including New York, saw crime fall.

But violent crime has been on the decline over the past decade. Last year, the city recorded 253 homicides, the second lowest since 1966, when 226 homicides were reported, police data shows.

Total gang crime dropped about 6 percent from 2018 to 2019, police said. When comparing April through December 2019, the months after Hussle's death, to the same period in 2018, gang-related crime was down 9 percent.

Recent gang-related data from other cities in the region, including Inglewood and Compton, were not immediately made available by their respective police jurisdictions."...
-snip-
I wasn't aware that today (August 15th) was Nipsey Hussle's birthday until I read this trending account https://twitter.com/search?q=%22Happy+Birthday+Nip%22. 

Here's a tweet from that account: 

Hip Hop Ties 

@HipHopTies

·

4h

Nipsey Hussle would’ve turned 35 years old today. Happy birthday Nip & RIP

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