Part V

Written Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 3:31pm

Citysitting part V

There has been another shooting..

The Black P Stones started up around the same time as the Vice Lords back in the early 60s headed by Jeff Fort (Chief Malik) and Eugene Hairston (King Bull.) While the Vice Lords were getting their start running around the city’s west side Lawndale neighborhood, the Black P Stones kids (also occasional guests of the St Charles Reformatory for Boys and the Cook County Temporary Juvenile Detention center) spent their days and nights terrorizing the city’s south side neighborhood of Woodlawn. Up until the early 50s, Woodlawn had been a predominantly middle class white neighborhood (many of whom were employed by the University of Chicago,) but with a Supreme court ruling which outlawed racially restrictive covenants, absentee landlords divided large apartments into multiple smaller units, and poorly maintained buildings became overfilled with african american families. (Such events were the inspiration for the play Raisin in the Sun) 

By the mid 60s, Woodlawn had become predominantly african american as ‘white flight’ made way. The P stones had begun working with Reverend John Fry who was instrumental in helping the group receive government funding towards job training programs.  In 1966 they provided security for Dr Martin Luther King and the Congress on Racial Equality as they marched through hostile white Chicago neighborhoods. In that same year, Fort and Hairston met with a group of rival gang leaders, to offer them a truce, thus officially forming the Black P Stone Nation.  However, by 1972 Jeff Fort and a few others were brought up on charges of mismanaging government money (approx a million dollars in grants) and sent to jail. Upon his release in 1976 Fort attempted to convert to Islam and due to not being accepted into the Moorish Science Temple, he promptly formed his own temple. He then led a section Black P Stones still loyal to him into adopting his islamic beliefs and taking on the name EL RUKN. In 1983 Fort was sentenced to 13 years in jail for his connection to a massive drug shipment in Mississippi. However, he continued to run El Rukn, whose top members had gone so far as to make contact in Libya with Col. Moammar Kaddafi. In 1986 El Rukn travelled to Panama City to meet with Libyan delegates, arranging a deal to trade 2.5 million dollars and asylum in Tripoli for weapons to use in an assault against city police and governmental institutions. However, Fort and 50 other high ranking El Rukns were tried on terrorist charges and Fort was sentenced to 80 years in jail (in addition to the time he was already serving..) The name El Rukn died out and Black P Stones remained.  There are pockets of Black P Stones on the north side of the city left from Fort’s “friend,” Hairston, who surviving three bullets in 1975, fled to the relative safety of the north side.   

While my corner of Hazel and Windsor is listed as Vice Lord territory, Wilson and Magnolia (near Truman college where I took French from the best language teacher ever!!) fall under Black P Stone territory.  It is strongly suspected that the shootings plaguing the Uptown neighborhood are a result of a drug and turf war between these two gangs. It is also rumored that a certain higher ranking Vice Lord had recently been released from prison and has been busy organizing and coercing the local younger Vice Lords into following his orders thus exacerbating the tensions. One only has to watch the street for a few days to see him at work. However, in his particular case, the police are closely watching and it is suspected that he will slip up and be off the streets shortly.   The most recent shooting occurred yesterday afternoon around 4:30 pm on the incredibly busy corner of Wilson and Broadway. (4 blocks from my home..the corner I cross to get to Truman) A 20 year old man was shot in the ankle, and police were said to be chasing a black man with dreadlocks running westbound on Wilson. While one bullet found it’s mark, seven or eight additional bullets fired off into the Chicago air. One bullet went cleanly through the window of parked car where a little girl had been sitting. Her horrified father pulled her out of the car only to discover glass from the broken window tangled in her hair. 

As these events occurred, I was safely seated at a piano in Downers Grove.  I had done my day’s round of Hi’s earlier before leaving to teach. My husband and I had just commented the night before on how wonderfully quiet the neighborhood had been this past week. However, in the aftermath of yet another shooting, the neighborhood is on watch again, everyone looking for a way to be safer.  The website “Uptownupdate.com” has been a constant online venue for news and comments and many people are waiting to see what the newly kinged alderman will do. There has been a lot of advice flying around to call 911 when ever anything suspicious is seen and there have been just as many frustrated comments on the sheer audacity of the 911 operators to react with disrespect and lack of will to send responders. (I concur..) Unfortunately, all of our reactions are merely that...reactions to events which have already been allowed occur. No one seems to know how to combat Uptown’s issues from the other side of things. No one knows how to be proactive, how to prevent..myself included. 

In my daily sitting (and nightly observing,) I am becoming familiar with my neighborhood.  People who at first grudgingly said hi, are now stopping for a short chat or to let me pet their dogs. Though I have kept an eye out, I have yet to see the north african auntie again. I have noticed the shirtless man in the apartment across the way who spends an unusual amount of time in his bathroom..with his window unfortunately open, and I have felt each time a large rusty white van drives by with it’s stereo bass set loud enough to be heard and felt on the moon. Today, I quietly observed as my neighbor father of four pulled his youngest, a lovely sleeping little girl, out of his car and held her close as he carried her into his home.