The history of gangs in Chicago is more than a story of crime, drugs, and violence. It is a story of immigrants and migrants, neighborhoods and nations, industry and deindustrialization, workers and entrepreneurs, masculinity and femininity, rebellion and resignation, nihilism and politics. In short, it is the story of Chicago, as told from its margins.

It also is an untold story. This proposal asks UIC's Institute for the Humanities to fund the preliminary stages of a research study to write The History of Gangs in Chicago. Efforts are now underway to secure long term funding for this study.

There are three reasons why a history of Chicago's gangs is important.

First understanding Chicago means understanding all of Chicago. We see the imposing skyline of our city, hear the buzz in the loop, even feel the new economy take hold. The history of Chicago, though, is more than a history of its politicians and its successes, or of the smiley face it shows to the outside world. Chicago is a city of neighborhoods and the neighborhoods in Chicago have also been the spaces of gangs. Gangs have played political roles in communities see Royko 1971), defended neighborhoods against attack (Suttles 1962), as well as committing crimes and waging violent battle with rivals and police. They are an ever-present influence on children in poor neighborhoods. Yet traditional histories ignore or downplay them.

Second, gangs have been a prime example of media distortion and demonization. Conquergood (1994) and (Venkatesh 1996), among others, have questioned the dominant media characterization of gangs as violent "animals," career criminals who need to be locked up so the public can be safe. Voices other than those of law enforcement are seldom heard when it comes to gangs, and the rhetoric towards African-American and Hispanic gangs often takes a racist turn. Since 1969, Chicago has waged an official "war on gangs" (Fry 1973). Like any war, the "enemy" becomes dehumanized in order to justify extreme measures. A history, particularly one which pays attention to the voices of those "demonized," can retell this story, "humanize" the enemy, and question "official definitions of reality."

Most studies of gangs are funded by the Justice Department and have often resulted in research which justifies, supports, or rationalizes current law enforcement policies. One major reason the PI has chosen to apply to the Institute for the Humanities is to relocate his research among those who are interested in voices other than official ones, and in perspectives of gangs other than as criminal deviants.

Third, gangs are examples of the unfulfilled promise of modernity. Gangs are a symbol that all is not right with the present order, that something's been missing, that some voices have been suppressed. Our proposed history, relying on official and subterranean documents, and interviews with gang members, former gang members, and knowledgeable observers, will describe gangs in three distinct eras:

I. In the industrial era, when the Chicago School originated the study of gangs, Thrasher (1927) and his colleagues defined gangs as immigrant youth who fought over "interstitial" spaces. The children's court and the rising fortunes of European immigrant groups were among the factors which led most adolescent gang members "mature out" into conventionality.

II. By the 1960s, the ethnicity of most gangs had changed, but the spaces where they fought one another had not. Segregation had kept black and Hispanic gangs from moving toward the suburbs like prior ethnic groups, exploding Park's ethnic succession model (Bernard 1970). Instead of fighting rival ethnic groups over changing turf, impoverished black and Hispanic youth fought other gangs of their own ethnicity over near-by spaces. But the 1960s was also an era of political upsurge, and the civil rights movement influenced the gangs and their activities.

The late industrial-era gang "explosion" (Perkins 1987) came to an end with 1/ the war on gangs which moved the gang problem from the spaces of the neighborhood to the spaces of the prison; and 2/ the crashing of the hopes of African Americans and other minorities as the industrial economy faltered at the end of the Vietnam War, and the civil rights movement faded (Abu-Lughod 1999). This desperation saw its angry manifestation in the riots after Dr. King's death which devastated the West Side (but remarkably was kept peaceful in Englewood, due to the organizing of the Disciples and Rangers. See Fry 1973).

III. In the recent period, the gangs of the 1960s have not gone away, like they had in the past. Surprisingly, there have not been any studies which have tried to explain this immensely significant fact. Only Perkins (1987) has attempted any kind of a history of Chicago gangs, and his was confined to a thirty year period for black gangs. Additionally, many Chicago gangs now insist they are politicized "street organizations," not gangs, with formal structures and nation-wide connections (Conquergood 1994).

This period has also witnessed the visibility of female gangs. While impressionistic accounts suggest greater female gang involvement today, few studies have carefully looked at changes in the prevalence or roles of female gangs (see Chesney-Lind and Hagedorn 1999).

Gangs in the post-industrial era have become major players in the underground economy (Fagan 1996; Hagedorn 1998b). The "informal economy," a concept which is well studied in Latin America but seldom applied to the United States, includes drug dealing, curb-side car repair, off-the-books construction and hair-styling, and a wide variety of hustles and irregular work (Sassen 1991; Mollenkopf and Castells 1991). Informal economies have been conceptualized as a structural feature of late capitalist societies (see e.g. Portes and Sassen-Koob 1987; Castells 1989) with major significance for poor US communities.

The spaces where drugs and illegal markets provide gangs with income have undergone major changes, due to gentrification. Drug markets nearer the Loop have "dried up," according to participants, as the poor are removed and the middle class seldom buys their drugs on the street. The movement of gangs from their historical spaces to the far south side is an unexplained and undocumented development. The war on drugs has continued to feed prisons an ample supply of gang members, making the spaces of the prisons contiguous with the spaces of the neighborhood.

The uniqueness of this study lies in its attention to original sources, its exploration of the changing spaces of gangs, and its investigation of how economic and social change influences the development of gangs.

In this preliminary study, twenty knowledgeable community leaders and ten current older gang members will be interviewed about the history of major Chicago gangs. The PI has already secured access to founding members of most of Chicago's major gangs. Interviews will be confidential and audiotaped. No respondents will be incarcerated. Most respondents will be paid $25 an hour for an interview, to a maximum of $100. Some of the respondents may want to conduct a "for the record" interview, which can be audio or videotaped and portions placed on the web. As long term funding is secured, larger numbers of gang members and others can be interviewed.

The PI has nearly two decades of experience with interviews of gang members of public officials in Milwaukee and is able to develop instruments and organize the project efficiently. His "Gangs and the Media" course has attracted the attention of UIC students with relatives and contacts within various gang hierarchies, and many have indicated they would help in a Chicago study. With funding from Associate LAS Dean Gerry Graff, an undergraduate research conference is set for November 9^th, which will feature Timuel Black, a noted African American historian, and Jim Short, former President of the American Sociological Association, who has done seminal studies on Chicago gangs. A new grad/undergrad course, "The History of Gangs in Chicago" (CrJ 440) is planned for the spring of 2001 as one way to help carry out this study.