currently had.
One cold November night, J.T. invited me to a meeting at a small storefront Baptist church. An ex-gangster named Lenny Duster would be teaching young people about the rights, responsibilities, and power of voting. The next election, while a full year away, would place in office a great many state legislators as well as city aldermen.
Lenny ran a small organization called Pride, which helped mediate gang wars. About a hundred young Black Kings attended the meeting, held in a small room at the rear of the church. They were quiet and respectful, although they had the look of teenagers who’d been told that attendance was mandatory.
Lenny was about six foot four, built lean and muscular. He was about forty years old, with streaks of blond hair, and he walked with a limp. “You-all need to see where the power is!” Lenny shouted to the assembly, striding about like a Caesar. “J.T. went to college, I earned a degree in prison. You-all are dropping out of school, and you’re ignorant. You can’t read, you can’t think, you can’t understand where the power comes from. It don’t come from that gun you got-it comes from what’s in your head. And it comes from the vote. You can change the world if you get the niggers that are coming down on you out of power. Think about it: No more police stopping you, no more abandoned buildings. You control your destiny!”
He talked to the young men about how to “work” responsibly. It was understood among gang members that “work” meant selling drugs-a tragic irony in that they referred to working in the legitimate economy as “getting a job,” not “work.”
“You-all are outside, so you need to respect who else is around you,” he said. “If you’re in a park working, leave the ladies alone. Don’t be working around the children. That just gets the mamas mad. If you see kids playing, take a break and then get back to work. Remember, what you do says a lot about the Black Kings. You have to watch your image, take pride in yourself.
“You are not just foot soldiers in the Black Kings,” he continued. “You are foot soldiers in the community. You will register to vote today, but then you must all go out and register the people in your buildings. And when elections come around, we’ll tell you who to vote for and you’ll tell them. That’s an important duty you have when you belong to this organization.”
For my classes at the U of C, I’d been reading about the history of the Chicago political machine, whose leaders-white and black alike-were famous for practicing the dark arts of ballot stuffing, bribery, and yes, predelivered voting blocs. Like his predecessors, Lenny did give these young men a partial understanding of the right to vote, and why it was important, but it seemed that the main point of the meetings was to tell them how to be cogs in a political machine. He held up a small placard with the names of candidates whom the gang was supporting for alderman and state legislator. There was no discussion of a platform, no list of vital issues. Just an insistence that the young men round up tenants in the projects and tell them how to vote.
When Lenny finished, J.T. told his young members they could leave. I sat for a while with J.T. and Lenny. Lenny looked drained. As he drank a Coke, he said he’d been speaking to at least four or five groups every day.
Lenny was careful to explain that his fees came from personal donations from gang members or their leaders. He wanted to distinguish these monies from the profits the gang made from selling drugs. In theory, I understood that Lenny was trying to convince me that he didn’t accept drug money, but I found the distinction almost meaningless. Moreover, the gang leaders had a lot of incentive to pay Lenny to keep their gangs from fighting one another. After all, it was hard to conduct commerce in the midst of a gang war. Younger gang members, however, often wanted to stir things up, mostly to distinguish themselves as fighters. That’s why some gang leaders even paid Lenny to discipline their own members. “Disciplination is an art form,” Lenny said. “One thing I like is to hang a nigger upside down over the freeway as the cars come. Ain’t never had a nigger misbehave after I try that one.”
J.T. and Lenny talked in nostalgic terms about the gang’s recent political engagement. Lenny proudly recalled his own days as a Black King back in the 1970s, describing how he helped get out the vote for “the Eye-talians and Jews” who ran his community. He then described, with equal pride, how the gangs “kicked the Eye-talian and Jewish mafia” out of his ward. Lenny even managed to spin the black takeover of the heroin trade as a boon to the community: it gave local black men jobs, albeit illegal ones, that had previously gone to white men. Lenny also boasted that black drug dealers never sold to children, whereas the previous dealers had exercised no such moral restraint. With all his bombast, he sounded like an older version of J.T.
I asked Lenny about his talk that night, how he could simultaneously preach the virtues of voting and the most responsible way to deal drugs. He said he favored a “nonjudgmental approach” with the gang members. “I tell them, ‘Whatever you do, try to do it without pissing people off. Make everything a community thing.’ ”
About two weeks later, I got to witness this “community thing” in action. I followed four young Black Kings as they went door-to-door in J.T.’s building to register voters.
Shorty-Lee, a twenty-one-year-old gang member, was the head of the delegation. For about an hour, I trailed him on his route. Most of his knocks went unanswered. The few tenants who did sign their names looked as if they just wanted to make the gang members leave as quickly as possible.
At one apartment on the twelfth floor, a middle-aged woman answered the door. She was wearing an apron and wiping her wet hands on a dish towel; she looked surprised to see Shorty-Lee and the others. Door-to-door solicitation hadn’t been practiced in the projects for a long time. “We’re here to sign you up to vote,” Shorty-Lee said.
“Young man, I am registered,” the woman said calmly.
“No, we didn’t say register!” Shorty-Lee shouted. “We said sign up. I don’t care if you’re registered.”
“But that’s what I’m saying.” The woman eyed Shorty-Lee curiously. “I already signed up. I’m going to vote in the next primary.”
Shorty-Lee was puzzled. He looked over to the three other BKs. They were toting spiral-bound notebooks in which they “signed up” potential voters. But it seemed that neither Lenny nor J.T. had told them that there was an actual registration form and that registrars had to be licensed.
“Look, you need to sign right here,” Shorty-Lee said, grabbing one of the notebooks. He was clearly not expecting even this minor level of resistance. “And then we’ll tell you who you’re going to vote for when the time comes.”
“Who I’m going to vote for!” The woman’s voice grew sharp. She approached the screen door to take a better look. As she glanced at me, she waved-I recognized her from several parties at J.T.’s mother’s apartment. Then she turned back to Shorty-Lee. “You can’t tell me who to vote for,” she said. “And I don’t think that’s legal anyway.”
“Black Kings say who you need to vote for,” Shorty-Lee countered, but he was growing tentative. He turned to his fellow gang members. “Ain’t that right? Ain’t that what we’re supposed to do?” The others shrugged.
“Young man,” the woman continued, “have you ever voted?”
Shorty-Lee looked at the others, who seemed quite interested in his answer. Then he looked at me. He seemed embarrassed. “No,” he said. “I ain’t voted yet. But I will.”
“Did you know that you can’t take anyone in the voting booth with you?” the woman asked him.
“Naw, that’s a lie,” Shorty-Lee said, puffing out his chest. “They told me that we’ll all be voting together. Black Kings vote together. I told you that we’d be telling you who-”
“No, no, no-that’s not what I mean,” she interrupted. “I mean, first you vote. Then your friend votes, and then he votes-if he’s old enough.” She was staring now at the youngest boy in the group, a new gang member who looked about twelve years old.
“I’m old enough,” the boy said, insulted.
“You have to be eighteen,” the woman said with a gentle smile. “How old are you?”
“I’m Black Kings!” he cried out. “I can vote if I want to.”
“Well, you’ll probably have to wait,” the woman said, by now exasperated. “And, boys, I got food cooking, so I can’t talk to you right now. But if you come back, I can tell you all about voting. Okay? It’s probably the most important thing you’ll do with your life. Next to raising a family.”
“Okay.” Shorty-Lee shrugged, defeated.
The others also nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” one of them muttered, and they walked off. I waved good-bye to the
