Hip Hop
by Steven Hager
copyright 2012 by Steven Hager
Published by Steven Hager at Smashwords
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4659-9392-2
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Chapter 1: The Bronx on Fire
In 1955, it seemed like everyone wanted to live in the Bronx. Second-generation immigrants from Manhattan's impoverished Lower East Side, blacks leaving the South, Puerto Ricans fresh from La Guardia airport, servicemen returning from overseas duty—they poured across the Harlem River in search of the American Dream, which would be lived out in an art deco apartment building overlooking the Grand Concourse, New York's finest boulevard and the Bronx equivalent of the Champs Elysees.
"The Bronx at that time was a paradise compared to [Harlem]," recalled Victor George Mair, who soon joined the migration northward. "Everything was so neat, so clean, so tidy, so orderly. I mean they were living in luxury."
Queens was dubbed "the borough of private houses," the the Bronx was known as "the borough of apartment buildings." Despite all the buildings, it wasn't easy to find a place to live. Rent controls enacted during World War II had kept the housing market tight and leases were usually kept in the family, handed down like priceless heirlooms. Most buildings, especially those on the Concourse, had long waiting lists.
It seemed impossible that within a few years this distinguished, orderly neighborhood could begin to suffer a precipitous decline that would not be slowed until more than 1,500 buildings were left abandoned. Life-long Bronxites moved out in droves, entire neighborhoods were decimated by arson, and the once beautiful landscape of the South Bronx became so dominated by rubble-strewn lots that some visitors said it reminded them of Dresden after the war.
"It happened so slowly and to such an extent that I wasn't even aware of change until one day I decided to take a walk around the block and discovered we had no block," Mair told a historian from the Bronx Museum of the Arts. "Then I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood and found that we had no neighborhood."
The beginning of the end came in 1959, when Parks Commissioner Robert Moses began building an expressway through the heart of the Bronx. It was apparent that Moses cared little for the small, tight-knit communities that stood in his way. "When you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way through with a meat ax," said Moses.
Marshall Berman vividly recalled the effects of Moses' ax in his book All That I Solid Melts Into Air. "My friends and I would stand on the parapet of the Grand Concourse, where 174th Street had been, and survey the work's progress—the immense steam shovels and bulldozers and timber and steel beams, the hundreds of workers in the variously colored hard hats, the giant cranes reaching far above the Bronx's tallest roofs, the dynamite blasts and tremors, the wild, jagged crags of rock newly torn, the vistas of devastation stretching for miles to the east and west as far as the eye could see—and marvel to see our ordinary nice neighborhood transformed into sublime, spectacular ruins."
The middle-class Italian, German, Irish, and Jewish neighborhoods disappeared overnight. Impoverished black and Hispanic families, who dominated the southern end of the borough, drifted north. Businesses and factories relocated. The open-air market on Bathgate Avenue was destroyed.
Along with the poor came their perenial problems: crime, drug addiction, unemployment. They also brought a smoldering sense of injustice, which exploded in nearby Harlem with a wave of "race riots" in 1965. Athough there were no riots in the Bronx, it wasn't long before a Black Panther Information Center opened on Boston Road.
In 1968, Robert Moses completed his second grand project for the Bronx, a 15,382-unit co-op apartment complex, located on the northern edge of the borough and conveniently serviced by one of his expressways. Vacating their comfortable apartments, the Bronx middle class poured into Co-op City so fast one might have thought the hounds of hell were chasing them. With vacancy rates skyrocketing, reputable landlords panicked and quickly sold out to professional slumlords, who began buying, selling and trading buildings at a furious rate.
Coincidentally, 1968 marked another important development in the Bronx's history. During that summer a group of seven teenage boys began terrorizing the vicinity around the Bronxdale Project on Bruckner Boulevard in the Southeast Bronx. In itself, this might not seem significant, but it was the presence of this group that laid the groundwork for a surge of streetgang activity that overwelmed the Bronx for the next six years.
At first, the group called itself the Savage Seven and they were known primarily for beating up bus drivers and generally wreaking havoc around the Bronxdale Community Center. However, it wasn't long before other boys wanted to hang out with the Seven. The ranks swelled to several dozen and the name had to be changed. They chose "The Black Spades," which worked out nicely because they could take the spade emblem from a deck of cards, sew it on the back of a jean jacket, and wear colors, just like the Hell's Angles. It wasn't long before a spray-painted Black Spade emblem began to appear in every hallway in the Bronxdale Project.
The Black Spades may have started out as kids aged twelve to fifteen, but collectively they assumed a power far beyond their age, a power that struck instand fear in the hearts of their elders. You couldn't pick a fight with one Spade without picking a fight with all of them. Together, they were invincible. They could swagger into any project in the Bronx and bully anybody.
The boys who lived in the Castle Hill Project in the North Bronx always hated the boys in the Bronxdale Project. It was one of those feuds that started shortly after the projects were built and never went away. Realizing it was time to get organized, the Castle Hill Project created a group called "Power," whose primary activity was to get into fights with member of the Black Spades. Wanted to do the Spades one better, they began creating divisions of Power in other projects.
Almost overnight, streetgangs appeared on every corner of the Bronx. Realizing they had a significant problem on their hands, the New York Police Department created the Bronx Youth Gang Task Force, a 92-member squad commanded by Deputy Inspector William Lakeman, who spent his first year on the job compiling dossiers on suspected gang leaders. By 1970, estimates of gang membership ran as high as 11,000. Reported assaults in the Bronx had risen from 998 in 1960 to 4,256 in 1969. Burglaries during the same period had increased from 1,765 to 29,276.
It wasn't long before the media became interested in the streetgangs, and, strangely enough, most of the early articles were somewhat positive, focusing on the gangs' attempts to wipe out heroin addiction in their neighborhoods. Howard Blum wrote in the Amsterdam News:
There are no junkies on Hoe Avenue in the South Bronx. The Royal Charmers ordered all junkies and dealers to leave their turf. Most left quickly. Those who stayed were beaten or killed. The Royal Charmers were brutal, but effective: there are no junkies on their turf.
On an August afternoon last summer a bedsheet was tied to two corner lampposts and stretched high across 173rd Street and Hoe Avenue in the Bronx like a campaign banner. The message on the sheet, written in large, childlike black letters, was direct: 'No junkies allowed after 10 o'clock. The message was signed 'R.C.'
This message began a two-month period of vigilantism by the Royal Charmers. It was a campaign in which one dealer was pushed off a roof, his dead body found weeks later in an alley garbage can, two others were murdered, junkies were whipped through South Bronx streets, and one Royal Charmer was blinded, the victim of a shotgun blast in the face from a vengeful drug dealer.
Contrary to the myth created by this and other articles, streetgangs did not appear in the Bronx solely to rid the streets of junkies. Junkies just happened to be the first convienient target of newly formed gangs that wanted to flex a little muscle: They were easy to identify, they had no potential as gang members, and they could be beaten up without arousing a cry of anguish from the community. Gang leaders were also smart enough to realize that heroin was one of the major reasons why the Bronx remainded pacified throughout the sixties.
As the gang culture spread through the city, several hundred new gangs were formed. Most were dominated by four members: the president, the vice-president, the warlord (who attended pow-wows with rival gangs and declared war if necessary), and the masher, the best street fighter. The gangs had clubhouses where weekly meetings were held, and ritualistic initiation rites, the most common of which was called "Running the Mill," a rite of passage that required new members to run between two rows of members wielding chains, pipes, and studded belts. Every gang had the same uniform: Levi jackets with insignias on the back, Lee jeans, Garrison belts, and engineer boots. Lists of rules and regulations were drawn up and severely adhered to. It was easy to join and hard to quit.
The number of gangs in the Bronx kept growing through the summer of 1971, but this development went largely unnoticed until Adlai E. Stevenson High School re-opened its doors in September. Located in the North Bronx, Stevenson was a new school located in a predominately white neighborhood. During its second year the school started receiving busloads of blacks and Hispanics from the South Bronx, as well as a sizeable contingent of whites from middle-class neighborhoods in Throgs Neck and Pelham Bay.
Afrika Bambaataa, who would later become a leader in the largest gang in the city, was in the eighth grade when he was bused to Stevenson. He recalled the first two weeks of school in a theme he wrote for English class titled "Street Gangs Beware":
For the first week things seemed to go okay. There were no sign of a gang or gang activities in the school, not until a couple of Black Spades and Savage Nomads started flying colors in the second week. Then other gang members from a variety of streetgangs started wearing their colors. Suddenly, Stevenson officials found out that at least a member from every streetgang in the Bronx and parts of Manhattan went to Stevenson High School. Tension arose between the black and Hispanic against the whites. There was all kinds of trouble happening. A couple of white teenagers had a fight with a black who happened to be in the Black Spades. After school was over, the Black Spades led an army of students to the Korvettes Shopping Center where the white teenagers catch the #5 bus to Throgs Neck/Pelham Bay area. A rumble broke out...A white got thrown through a window and other whites and blacks and Hispanics got stabbed and stomped. After that day Stevenson was never the same peaceful high school again.
Several predominantly white gangs had been formed in the North Bronx, including the Aliens, the Golden Guineas, and the War Pigs, but after the fight at Stevenson they merged into a single gang called Ministers Bronx. Violence in the school became an everyday occurrence. Many students refused to eat lunch in the cafeteria, where fights were likely to break out. All the bathrooms but a few had to be locked permanently; those that remained open had guards posted at the doors.
Bambaataa joined the Black Spades in 1969, shortly after a division was founded at the Bronx River Project, where he lived with his mother. Although he became a devoted member, Bambaataa was far from a typical one. While the others were out playing basketball or hanging around street corners, Bambaataa was scouring record bins for obscure rhythm & blues recordings. Just as unusual was the name he chose for himself, which was inspired by the release of a feature film about the Zulus, a fierce, warrior tribe in Africa. The original Bambaataa was a Zulu chief at the turn of the century. Translated into English, the word means "affectionate leader."
"Bam was never interested in sports. As long as I've known him, he's always been the music man," said Jay McGluery, who grew up at Bronx River with Bambaataa. "His mother was a nurse and she was constantly on the go, so we always went to his house to party. He had every record you could want to hear, including a lot of rock albums. James Brown and Sly and the Family Stone was his favorites."
In his many snapshots from the period, Bambaataa looks young, lean, and angry, his eyebrows fused in a permanent scowl of disapproval—just the sort of look designed to intimidate whitey. Despite the angry look, he tended to be quiet and philosophical, his guarded, reserved air frequently shattered by a laugh so friendly it infected everyone around him.
He was also more attuned to politics than many of his fellow gang members, some of whom understood only three basic concepts: "crush, kill and destroy." When he was twelve, he had already begun hanging out at the Black Panther Information Center. His political leanings were encouraged by the appearance of "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud" by James Brown and "Stand" by Sly and the Family Stone.
However, like many gang members, Bambaataa had a reckless, unpredictable streak. One time he and McGluery were playing war games and McGluery took refuge in one of the project's apartment buildings. Bambaataa poured gasoline on the sidewalk in front of the building, lit it, and announced he was holding everyone hostage. That same summer, he convinced his friends to buy target bows and arrows so they could hunt rabbits on the banks of the Bronx River. "Bam was always a leader," said McGluery. "He was always full of crazy ideas."
During the early seventies, life at Bronx River changed dramatically. Since it was a stronghold for gang activity, the project was under constant police surveillance. Any teenager wearing engineer boots was likely to be stopped for a grilling, which usually started with the question "Are you a Spade or a Skull?" (the two largest gangs in the area). It was not unusual for fistfights to break out between gang members and the police. Since the police were almost entirely white at the time, charges of police racism were rampant. Considering that newspaper stories from the period indicate that white gang members were seldom arrested, the charges may have had some foundation.
Although several rumbles were arranaged between the Black Spades and the Ministers, they were usually aborted. The Spades couldn't board a bus headed uptown without it being surrounded by squad cars before it reached the Ministers' turf. Typically, the windows of the bus would fly open and a shower of chains, knives, bats, and zip guns would hit the pavement. On June 27, 1973, a brief battle was broken up by police in front of P.S. 127 on Castle Hill Avenue, resulting in the arrest of eighteen Black Spades.
Gang activity tended to quiet down during the winter only to resurface with even greater intensity each summer. Every year the gangs seemed to fall under the control of older, more demented individuals, many of whom were returning from stints in prison. By 1972, Running the Mill was being replaced by gang rape.
STREET GANG RAPES GIRL IN BRONX
(New York Post, November 9, 1973)
A 16-year-old cheerleader on her way home from practice at Evander Childs HS was abducted by members of a Bronx sreet gang and raped and beaten.
In another incident only hours earlier yesterday afternoon, a 15-year-old girl was abducted off the street, raped and beaten at gunpoint in a Brooklyn apartment, police said.
In the Bronx incident, the girl told police shw was abducted around 4:45 P.M. by four youths in a car as she was walking near 212th St. and White Plains Road, four blocks from school.
She was blindfolded and taken to an apartment building in the Hunts Point section that police suspect was a clubhouse of the Black Spades, a Bronx street gang.
According to the account given police, the girl, whose name was withheld, was raped in the apartment by three youths and hit several times with bottles and chukka sticks—lengths of wood slung from rope or cord.
The girl said she was blindfolded again and driven to a deserted area at 151st St. and River Ave., where she was forced to commit sodomy with at least seven other youths.
Violence between gangs intensified as well. One feud between the Black Spades and the Seven Crowns lasted for 92 days, during which time the Bronx River Project was constantly peppered with gunfire from passing cars. Shootouts became so common that the residents started calling it "Li'l Vietnam."
"I was into streetgang violence," admitted Bambaataa. "That was all part of growing up in the Southeast Bronx." However, that's about all he'll say on the subject. "I don't really be speaking on that stuff because it's negative," he explained. "The Black Spades was also helping out in the community, raising money for sickle cell anemia and getting people to register to vote."
"He was not what I would call gun-ho," added McGluery, who became warlord of the Bronx River division before quitting to join the Marines. "Bam was more like a supervisor. There were so many different gangs and he knew at least five members in every one. Any time there was a conflict, he would try and straighten it out. He was into communications."
Gang activity probably peaked in 1973, when there were an estimated 315 gangs in the city, claiming 19,503 members. The Black Spades were by far the largest and most feared, with a divison in almost every precinct. However, by 1974, the Black Spades began to disintegrate.
"Some gangs got into drugs," said Bambaataa. "Other gangs got wiped out by other gangs. Others got so big that members didn't want to be involved no more. Girls got tired of it first. They wanted to have children. Plus times was changin'. The seventies was coming more into music and dancing and going to clubs. The lifestyle was changing."
After many of the original Black Spades were killed, jailed or dropped out of the gang, Bambaataa took on an increasingly influential role. His affiliation continued until January 10, 1975, when his best friend, Soulski, was shot and killed by two policemen on Pelham Parkway. Bambaataa insisted that the shooting was nothing short of an assassination carried out during a police crackdown on gang activity. A Xerox of his friend's death certificate hangs in his bedroom. "He got shot in about nine different places," said Bambaataa. "The back, the stomach, the face. At first, I wanted to go to war with the police, but we couldn't really win. The Amsterdam News calmed everybody down and told us to fight through the system. It went to trial, but the cops never got convicted."
For over five years the Bronx had lived in constant terror of streetgangs. Then, in the summer of 1976, they unexpectedly failed to appear. Something better had come along to replace the gangs.
Interview with Afrika Bambaataa, February 20th, 1982
My father and mother is from America, right? From New York. But their parents, my father's side is from Jamaica and my mother's side is from Barbados.
How old are you?
I don't give my age out. I let everybody figure that out for theirselves. Cause I feel you can communicate with all people without their knowing your age. Whether you're talking to a senior citizen or young ones. A lot of people be wanting to find out my age, but I let them think what they want to think.
What kind of work does your father do?
Hmmm. I know he's working at the hospital. I don't know as what. My mother is a nurse. My father don't live with me now. I live with my mother.
You have a big family?
No, I'm the only one. But there's a lot of people that are like family. A lot of people be coming back and forth through the house. Friends, godsisters, godbrothers.
You grew up in the Bronx?
The Southeast Bronx. Bronx River Houses. On east 174th Street.
What was it like growing up there?
This is the 1960s, '70s. In the '80s I moved uptown in the North Bronx. Sixties was nice. It's a time we was going through a lot of changes. James Brown came out with "I'm Black and I'm Proud." Everybody started having self awareness of our culture. Plus we was into a lot of different things, like the Black Panther Party. Then the Five Percent Nation, then the Nation of Islaam.
You were involved in the Black Panthers?
They used to have a chapter on Boston Road. Used to go check out their meetings and things like that. Then when the street gangs came in, I was involved in one of the largest black street gangs in the city, The Black Spades. From there I went to the Five Percent.
What year were you involved in the Black Spades?
Umm, 1970 to 1975.
Who ran the Black Spades?
There was a lot of different leaders. They had one main leader, who was the president, then you had vice presidents, other chapter leaders, war lords, whole lot of different things whereever they had chapters. They had chapters in every precinct in the whole of New York City. Then they had chapters outside of New York State. There's a lot of history on the Black Spades.
Do they still exist?
They've broken up into different groups or crews. Like Zulu Nation. A lot of members of the Spades are in the Zulu Nation. Lot of members of the Spades are in the Casanova Crew. Lot of members of the Spades are in the Gestapo Crew. There's different groups that the Spades turned into.
What kind of stuff were the Spades doing in 1970?
Umm, some was into violence, some was into doing thing for the community. Some was into dealing with politicians and the youth service agency. Whatever. It depends on who was running what. Myself, after I left, I joined the Five Percent Nation. I was checking out their stuff when I got into Islaam. Then from the Five Percent I went into the Nation of Islaam under the Honorable Elijiah Mohhamed. kI got into that from about 1973 all the way into the present. After his son, Wallace D, took over, that's when I left. But when it comes to, say, like you're in church and you don't go to church, that means Christians and Catholics, but you don't go to the Catholic Church every week, by nature of your family, you're a Catholic. I feel I'm still a Muslim. If they ever call for all of us to come back, for teachers or whatever, then I will go. Under Wallace D., I wasn't satisfied with what he was doing.
I'd like to get some idea of what if was like when you were growing up.
I was always into cultural things and helping out in the community in Bronx River Center. Plus I had a big leadership with a lot of youth in the neighborhood. I wsa dealing with politicians at certain times. Say like a politician needed help with signatures. I would get out into the community and try to get people to vote. If people needed meetings with youths, to find out what were their problems, I would arrange it in the Bronx River Center, where hundreds of youths would come from different areas to meeting with police, politicians or community people. Also raise money for certain groups. In 71 or 72, we raised up some money for Sickle Cell Enemia.
Were you ever into violence?
I was into street gang violence too. That's part of the whole thing of growing up in the Southeast Bronx. If you was in a gang you was doing what the gang was doing. If it was violence, it was violence. Some was good. I don't be speaking on all the stuff we be doing like that. We had our times. Other street gangs and people you don't like. I was a person who negotiated to get the gangs to stop fighting. Same with like crews they have now. When they have trouble, we try and get it all squashed, cause we don't need none of that now. It's about survival and dealing with economics, keeping our people moving on.
Could you give an example of a fight between two gangs?
I don't really be speaking on stuff that happened back then dealing with the gangs cause that's really like negative. I try to leave the negative alone and deal with the positive.
Did any of your good friends get killed in this period?
Yeah, some people got killed, stuff like that. We had articles where some people got killed by police on Pelham Parkway and a big protest and all that stuff went down. People at the Amsterdam News was involved.
When did you first get your turntables?
I been playing, we used to have regular parties where you just put on a record, take it off, if you want to call that deejaying, back in 1970. First time I seen someone with two turntables was when this brother Kool Dee came out. That was around 1975. He had a big coffin with two turntables, amps and everything. That blew a lot of people's minds seeing him playing like that. He was playing regular disco records, whatever was on the radio. He started playing and everybody at the party was doing the Bus Stop, the Bump, all that different type of dances.
Is this when the song Apache came out?
No, Apache wasn't out. It was out in 1973, since before we started deejaying. I had Apache since it came out. I wasn't a deejay at the time. But when this brother by the name of Kool Herc came out of the West Bronx, and he had this different form of music that nobody had never heard, all it was was a bunch of percussion and breaks, he just kept running it running it. Then he started saying "rock on my mellow, rock on, to the beat and you don't stop." The records he was playing, I said, wow, I got all those types of records since 1963. I got a large collection of records.
What kind of records was he playing?
He would take the best part of records, the break, and keep that going, instead of letting the words come in. Everybody would keep dancing. Somebody might be talking over the record, or telling people what dance to do, do the Bus Stop, do the Bump. It started with Kool DJ Herc in the West Bronx. He's Jamaican. The toasting that the Jamaican's do, that's the other side of the record, dub side. They'd rap over it. He took that to American music and he started using echo and saying "rock, rock, rock." He might not mix it because he wasn't all that into mixing, but by the time the echo finished going down, you was already dancing to another record. Everybody would say, oh, wow, see how he's rockin'. You had people rapping over the record. It wasn't like rapping with rhymes, it was just like, "Rock on, to the beat y'all."
Was he saying that?
Yeah, he was. Clark Kent. That's all in 1975. There was break dancing in 1973, but that was like with the gangs, like the Good Foot. That was a form of break dancing from James Brown's "Get on the Good Foot." Guys started dancing with each other and then the girls got involved. Girls taking out other girls, girls taking out guys, all different types of break dancing.
Interview with Jay McGluery, February 26, 1982
We all grew up at that Bronx River neighborhood projects. I went to P.S. 106. During our youth, we was like any other kids. Our families wasn't well off or anything like that. Myself, I was sports inclined. I played a lot of football, a lot of basketball, but Bam wasn't the athletic type. He was more into music. Ever since I known him he was the music man. At the time he was heavily into Sly and the Family Stone. And he had every album you could name about Sly. Also, he had all kinds of rock albums. Three Dog Night, Redbone...His mother was a nurse, but she was constantly on the go. The center wasn't here, this was all grassy area. All the fellows and girls, we had no where to go. We didn't have a gym or anything for recreation, so we used to go to Bam's house. He had all the records and we used to have a clubhouse party there. Before we knew it, the Black Spades orginated at the Bronxdale Projects. We became familar with the people and joined the organization. And before I know it, I wind up as Warlord of this division right here at Bronx River. Bam at the time was more or less a spokesperson, or more supervisor. As far as any conflict with people, with each other, Bam would try to settle it. He would get the final say and try and straighten the fellows out.
How did he fall into that position?
Good question.
Was he trying to promote peace within the gang?
Right, beautiful. See Bam was more communications. He knows a lot of people. At the time there was a lot of gangs. We had Skulls, Reapers, Immortals. There were so many. And Bam knew all these people. He knew at least five people out of every gang.
How did he meet these guys?
All the schools are close. If you go to school, you meet this guy, and that guy. Once you get out of school you return to your clique and then you would hate this guy for some reason that was really crazy. But that's the way it was. And Bam just knew a lot of people. To make peace or make war. He was a funny guy. He never participated in sports. He was strictly a music man ever since childhood. Even when he was in the Muslims he was musically inclined. That's all this guy did is play music, music, music. I think deejays really started getting their share of publicity in 1973. That's when it really started coming on heavy. Also was this other young man named DJ Kool Herc. As we started getting older, around 16 or 17, we used to have war games. Bam, he was kind of nutty. He's the one who got all the fellas into getting bow and arrows. Not the real ones, they was practice bows and arrows. They was real points, but not hunting points. Hunting points is a blade, really dangerous. These, which you could buy in a store, were called "target." Still, if it goes into your body you'd probably get killed.
He wanted everybody to get those?
Yes, he did start everybody. He was a leader. He was the first. We used to go over by the train tracks, right here by Bronx River, and we used to shoot the bow and arrow. We'd go down there on the train tracks. We called it hunting, and we didn't even have a hunting license. And there's rabbits down there if you get up early in the morning. None of us never hit one cause we wasn't that good. But Bam and us would go down there and a few other guys from the Spades. We'd save our Youth Core checks cause those were the jobs we had. Every year we'd work for the Youth Core in the summer. We was working with kids, assistant counselors. Bam was pretty much of a leader and he was kind of a crazy guy in his own way. Then after that, we had war games. We used to have half the project. Bam lived on the other side of the project from me, right? I lived close to the center. Bam lived on the back side. So he used to get all his friends on that side against my side. We used to fight against each other. Not real fighting, but if you happened to come along and see us, you'd swear we was really hating each other. That's the way we played. We threw bottles at each other like we was trying to kill each other. In our hearts we was playing. Bambaataa, this guy, one time he came to #135 on my side. He got some gasoline and put the gasoline all in front of the building and strikes a match, talkin' about nobody is leaving this building. So the building is burning up. The front stoop is on fire, locking everyone in. Eventually, sopme of the guys jumped out on the sides of the fire and we started chasing him all through the project. He was running. Some times we'd catch him and we'd pound on him like we'd beat him half to death. And after that we'd run and he'd get about five guys and they'd chase one of us the same way. Like I say, we was all playing.
Were there nasty wars with other gangs?
I was involved in so many. They was all nasty to tell you the truth. You might be talking about the Savage Nomads, they was located over on Southern Boulevard. And the Spades and them just did not click. If you want to look at it nationality-wise, it was blacks against Puerto Ricans. It was two pretty tough people. They had knives. We had hand guns. We made zip guns. We had a thousand zip guns and these 22-caliber bullets. Some guys were real good. They made themselves a double shot. Most were single shot. This was was pretty outrageous. You'd think it was Al Capone and Bugs Morane. Some guys would roll up to the projects in a car and shoot up everybody. The dangerous thing about that was you'd be hurting not only the people you wanted to hurt, but you'd be hitting innocent bystanders. You couldn't tell us we was wrong. We just hit everybody. They did the same thing and we did the same to them. And that thing just lasted on and on. I got out of the Spades in '75 and then I went to the Reaper's Bronx and I did about 1 and 1/2 years with them. I got out of the Spades because they was more organized in how they do things. They had a thing, what we would call a re-con unit in the Marines, like we would send four men to do a 30-man job. I got so surprised when I went to the Reapers Bronx and I seen this. Like four men equipped with hand guns and ammunition just like in the military. You get the driver and the guy riding shotgun and two guys in the back fully armed with pump shotguns and automatic pistols and the driver would have an automatic pistol. The Spades didn't believe in this. Even though they was capable of doing anything. They just had to be seen. Then wanted to show how strong they was, with a hundred men coming down the street. Chains all over them and guns sticking out of their boots. They just had to show a real strong force. They'd mob a train or mob a city bus. In fact, there was one guy named Rudy, he even stole a city bus with six other Spades. They got caught eventually and they went to jail. They did their time. I had limitations. I could only go so far. I felt like I was pretty much of a class man. I liked to do something with a little bit of style. There guys, a lot of them, just didn't care. I wasn't like that. Even though a lot of us was raised right. Our families preached to us and we didn't have no bad background. My brother's a cop, so we wasn't really raised to be that way, yet there we was.
Were you around the day the cops tried to arrest the guy walking his dog?
Oh, yes, hahaha. How could I forget? His name was Ronald Perkins. During that time they had a lot of rookie cops and the rookie cops used to wear brown uniforms. So you'd know when you see this officer in the street, he's a rookie. He's not bonafide, a veteran. So two rookie cops had a tip inside the center that the Spades were inside with guns and everything. I'm not quite sure. There was a big fight and commotion going on. This guy Perkins had a hunting dog, brown with white spots. Perkins was a mouthy type. He was also a black belt in karate. These rookie cops approached him and they was talking about something. The next thing I know, here comes a flying side-kick at the police officer. By this time one radioed in for more patrolmen, while the guy was beating up his partner. Some Spades came and took the guy's gun. By this time a hell of a lot of cops came and we was all gone. They had Mr. Perkins and his sister Rita.
They took Perkins in and worked him over?
They certainly did. He had a busted head by the time his parents got up there at the precinct. They saw the ambulance take him to Jacoby Hospital. Bam wasn't all that gung-ho with the Spades. I was once.
He wasn't into the whole violence scene?
No, not at all. He was pretty much a supervisor. You must treat the ladies with dignity.
This is about the same time the police are hunting down the Black Liberation Army?
We used to get a hell of a lot of harrassment from the police officers in the community. First of all, it was the 41st Precinct. They moved, but they was right over here in Parkchester. Most of them were white, very rascist. Most of us would be stopped and thrown against the wall. That made us stick together into gangs and stuff. And here they had a lot of white gangs, anyway. The cops harrassed us. Sometime beat us up, kick us in the groin, nasty stuff. If they wanted any cooperation from us they would never get it.
These were white cops mostly?
Matter of fact, I had seen a few black officers but they were never patrolling our neighborhood. Some of the cops was so gung-ho there was no reasoning with them. Like if you'd get stopped for a traffic violation, the cops were so nasty they might run you in. Just praying for you to come out with your face wrong and then you got a fist or a foot. Then some other cops would join in. "Oh, you giving a fellow officer a hard time, what is this?" Then they arrest you on jive charges. It was rough with these police guys. But to get back to Black Liberation, a lot of guys was young. Those guys were a little bit older than us. They used to say: You know we're the leaders for some militant organization. I remember I was young but I understood enough what he was talking about. No way in the world is he going to mistake me for those guys. We had zip guns. Those guys had damn near military gear, machine guns, 45 automatics. We didn't graduate to that stuff yet. We might have had heart like them but we didn't have our hands on any kind of equipment. Bullet proof vests, none of that stuff. Bam and I used to get harrassed a lot, especially in Junior High School. We used to show our colors. Bam went to 125. I went to 127. That's probably about 3 1/2 miles away from each other. And these areas was predominantly white areas and they didn't want no blacks in there, especially going to school. Always, until this very day it is a controversial thing there. Now we used to catch the 42 bus and there'd be a bunch of white gangs out there. They was really gonna do some work. And the police would come and a few cops would come and tell us to keep walking. And here these guys had sticks, chains, and if that wasus, we would have been arrested on the spot. Get our face busted in. But these guys, they was standing on the street ready to take our lives. And believe they would try to take our lives. I had a few friends with busted heads and stab wounds and all that kind of crazy stuff. So the law was pretty much for those guys. So once we got away from the Junior High School was pretty much stayed away from these areas. Cause there was times when we felt threatened enough that we'd call reinforcements. Make a telephone call and we'd have about fifty guys coming up on buses. By the time they get half way, somebody had already phoned the police, who met them halfway, and they'd get arrested and we'd still be in the position where we started. So it was pretty rough. They was very racist, those guys.
What's the name of the Black Spade who got killed by the police?
Soulski. I only knew him by his nickname. By this time I was out of the Spades. He got shot in 1975. I remember when we used to go to 127 to play basketball. This must have been '74. I asked him, cause I seen him, he was 5' 7", nice build, athletic build. I saw those qualities in him, so I asked him, would you like to join the Spades? And he nodded his head, no. I saw some kind of quality in him. I liked him. He said no and I left it at that. I never thought anything of it. Before I know it, he was a Spade. Before I know it again, he was the President, Bronx River. Things were pretty good with him and Bam. He kept the same position as supervisor, but Soulski took over even more. He was kind of gung-ho. He had a lot of personality. He had feelings for people. He was attending trade school. He had some intelligence. He wasn't an A student, average student. He was a likeable guy. Everybody liked him. They knew he was in the Spades, they know the Spades are nothing but hell raisers. Most of them were like that. He was one of the good ones. He had a nice girlfriend. She was studying to be a nurse. Here was a woman who I thought would never see a man like him. Just shows you the way the world turns. He had no other girls. He was a leader. Lot of people looked up to him. You'd think he was 6'3" or something he got that respect.
He got shot when he was 17?
Yeah, exactly.
Was he Bam's best friend?
Yes, you could say that. Matter of fact, Soulski came from a nice background. His mother and father had good city jobs and they lived in a co-op on Webster Avenue. You had to pay nice rent. Also he had some sisters and one brother. He had a nice home where he could go, bathe, shower, get three meals a day. Being that Bambatta was an only child and his mother stayed away, he was kind of spoiled too. Soulski used to spend nights over there. Being that he's the president, he was always over here. Might was well say he made his home at Bambatta's. He had his clothing there, his toothpaste, everything. So in a way he lived there for a while.
If Bam had been in that car that night he probably would have been killed.
Without a doubt. They should call the man Lucky Luciano because when it came to some real high stuff where some people would get caught at the scene, or gunned down, Bam was never there. You could call him Lucky Bam. He was never there, or he just missed it. Something came up and boom, he was elsewhere.
How long after Soulski was shot that Bam left the Spades?
There was a bunch a commotion about who done it and why.
I know in '76 Bam started the Zulu Nation.
Defintely. Okay, somewhere in late '75. Soulski was really the last of the Spades. All the old timers dropped out. Some of us had different goals in life. Some of us was getting really serious about different women. Some went to service. Some died. Some went to college. Everything spread out. So we was growing up and Bam was still stuck with the Spades. Soulski was really the juice and battery of the Spades. He was the motivator. He would urge the men to fly their colors. Somewhere in late '75 there was me, Bambaataa, Goodrich, Desota, Pearson, Cross, Pearson. Eight guys. From that day on Bam had an idea in his head. He wanted to start giving parties. Now he graduated from being crazy guys to being businessmen. He wanted to make money. So at the time he formed a little organization. I'm trying to think of what he called it before the Zulu Nation. Bam, being that he was the deejay, everybody went to his mom's house and he's got any record you name, white, black...But Bam, he'd play hard rock. Here it is, this guy into some hard rock in this community who started all this. I'll never forget it. We all sat in the middle of the center on the benches. How can we make money? Let's throw some parties at the old center. At the time I broke away. We had pull. We'd get in the center free. We'd charge 50 cents and sell franks. It would be extremely crowded. It was okay. After a while, me and Pearson, Cross, Desota decided to split because Bam was starting to attract more of a younger crowd that we were.
What about Kool Herc?