Bobby Gore

The Conservative Vice Lords of the 1960s

My name is Fred Douglas Gore, but my sister, my older sister, when we were younger, in an attempt to call me" baby" ended up "Bobby," so that's how Bobby got attached to Fred. Bobby Gore instead of Fred Douglas Gore, just to kind of straighten that out.

I would like to start of by saying that in terms of some of the research I have done and living experience, gangs are nothing new. Going back all the way back to the 1700's on up to present day, there's always been gangs. Gangs became prevalent during the early 1800's or so during the time that immigrants started to come to Ellis Island and than accepted into the American Dream and trying to do better for themselves. As a result of these people coming here looking for a better life and lifestyle, because in their countries, some were derelicts, some were criminals, and then you had those that come here that were really trying to find a better way, to buckle down, get themselves settled down.

The Irish was one of the first groups... what they called so called gangs as of today. This is nothing new And A lot of this was forced because of the opportunities, the lack of being able to speak English and what not and trying to communicate and a lot of them tried to band together because they could communicate with each other and as a result of that they formed bonds, I'm Irish, you're Irish, I know you from the old country, or if I don't know you from the old country we're still Irish and we got something in common if w'’re gonna go down, we go down together.

I'd like to read something from John Haskin the second print was in 1975 and he hits it right on. It says

" It might be hard for people to accept the idea that today's urban ghetto gangs has roots that extend deep into the soil of America, much deeper than the layer of earth that is the 20th Century. It might be hard for them to accept the idea that nearly every nationality is represented in American gang history.It might be hard for them to accept the idea that basically, a gang is a group sharing common characteristics with other groups in AmericaOriginally the word gangs had no negative meanings. In Old English, gangs simply meant a going together. A gang was number of people who went around together, in other words, a group. Perhaps in our modern era the negative meaning was invented by those who did not belong to any group that went around together, although they might, they most certainly or surely or made haste to form groups of their own. Man is by nature a joiner. From early history until the present time, the group, though it has become increasingly complex, specialized and diversified, has remained a basic social unit among human beings. A group can be as simple as three inseparable friends and as important as a community and as powerful as a giant industrial conglomerate, yet all share certain basic elements, unity, identity, loyalty, reward."

So in giving that, just going back to my experiences, when my people migrated here from the south and this is during the late 30's, early 40's, I was five years old, my parents migrated to Illinois to Chicago, to try to find a better life and whatnot only to come here and find that they were met by a different set of standards that other people weren't able to overcome, given a period of time. We couldn't hide the color of our skins, we couldn't get into the melting pot we could blend and possibly do somethings for ourselves. The Irish, just to use those as an example,...

They were forced into trying to eek out an existence as best as they could. Those who had no specific skills and what not snatch apples from the merchants and wha tnot trying to feed themselves and trying to make a way, all the time not giving up the hope of trying to find a job. They were pounced upon, they were literally singled out as the rest of the nationalities go. If you read this book, over a period of time, each nationality had to overcome certain obstacles based on the way this society, which was not itself altogether at the time the ones that had the power always had their whipping boy so to speak. Now, these people that came, they were thieves, they were pick-pockets, they were murderers but they were not considered gangs, until such a time as that such is my experience.

We came here there was certain part of the city stigma you couldn't come out to this particular part of the city without being pre-identified or being stopped What are you doing out of your hood, so to speak. The Irish went through the same problem that we are facing today. They were forced to band together, to try to eke out an existence, and they ended up, not all was bad, but they ended up forming a group of those who had no particular skills in terms of trying to eke out an existence in life and all they knew how to do was to try to snatch something or to try to do this or to try to do that, but in the back of their minds, everyone wanted to get a legitimate jobs or start some kind of business to take care of themselves.

The Vice Lords were basically put together as a group. We were fragmented in the early 50's, not having a real name in terms of Vice Lords or anything like that We started out as a social-athletic club like most of the so-called gangs today started out. We didn't have malt shops. We didn't have recreational halls where we could go and socialize and learn to cook and learn to read. We had what we called bare bones gangs.

I moved into what is known as the Maxwell Street area, in 1941, I was about 5 or 6 years old at the time. We moved out to what is know is Filmore now, 1700 West, right off of Wood Street. I stayed behind what was then a predominately white school. I don't recall whether it was high school or grammar school. It was all white, right across the street from us. We used to watch the people interact with each other and the fun they were having social-athletic programs right in front of our house and whatnot. These were the kind of things we wanted for ourselves as any individual that has had nothing wants to do something for themselves. They aspire to do whatever it is to keep them from being over, there might be no food, there might be no money, I can't get the new pair of shoes or whatever it is. I grew up watching this for about four or five years. This is before any of what they called, the county hospital was up at that time, but all this other new buildings and all this kind of stuff, that wasn't there. Presbyterian was like a cracker box. It was a one building situation and no need to say what it is today.

You can just about imagine what it is in terms of the way the University of (Illinois) Chicago has grown. I came through the area whereas what they call the Maxwell Street area, and the Italian so-called ghetto had to fight to keep big business from taking over their homes, their land, wha tnot, to build in fact, were we are today. And that went on for years. As a kid, I saw the riots, the police situation they handle one group one way and another group another way. But just to get past that, that was a lot of problems. We all grew up wanting what was best, not only for ourselves, being young enough not to even think about becoming a father myself, but wanting something better for myself, wanting something better for my sisters, wanting something better for the community.

Why does my community have to look like this? And over here we got flowers and all of this kind of stuff. I'm gonna try to cut this short in terms of some the feelings and some of the things we came through. But as a group, we were no different other than the color of our skin than any other group that came here to the United States, to Ellis Island or whatever, from the south to the north, trying to find a better way of life, like anybody else would want. It didn't work too well. In some instances, it was okay, in others it was not okay.

Everybody needs somebody, this even happens in families, what they call the whipping post. Your families maybe. Maybe there's a young guy or maybe there's a female in the group. Maybe that's the one that talk too loud. Somebody don't like that, but you find these kind of little situations in terms of what we call human society. It's always somebody to put down, if I can put you down, I can feel a little better about myself. And there's always one. I've been to very few family gatherings and there's not one of those kinds of people there that everybody focuses in on.

But anyway the gang situation, as far as the Vice Lords were concerned, were born and identified as a gang back in 1958 and this came through St. Charles boys reformatory. The way they came together, a group of men from the West Side, a group of young men from the north side. It became a west side, north side, southside type situation. So the guys from the West side, they tried to come together for their survival or to get special privileges as a group. It's just like anything else, everyone tries to separate and do their own thing. The common denominator was that west side, south side. They didn't necessarily know each other. Some did, but had to band together again here. The way society is structured, to even get some positive endeavors or do some negative endeavors. At any rate, that was the common denominator in terms of putting groups together. Some guys did well. Some guys didn't

We were all called a couple names — Pueblo, we had a guy we used to call Shotgun, we had another guy we used to call Tex — nicknames and what not. When they went into St. Charles they formed a bond because there was some problems in terms of south side, west side, north side, so these guys bonded together and they found out through their endeavors that there is some power here. We could get certain perks out of the situation. Maybe four or five guys worked in the laundry. Two or three of them worked in the kitchen, this kind of thing. So, naturally the westsiders would look out for these guys. You only get one biscuit, they'd give you a biscuit and a half, these kinds of things. They had control of maybe the laundry, maybe the athletic equipment, etc., etc.

And when they were released from St. Charles they brought this thing to the street. And as a result of that, they started recruiting. People were out in the street, just like they were. No identity, they felt unloved, they were in essence, nobody. Everybody wants to be recognized as somebody, like Reverend Jesse Jackson," I am somebody". I maybe poor, I maybe whatever it is, but I am somebody. I'm a human being. I want no less nor no more than what anybody else has or what I can accomplish in terms of my own skills, in terms of trying to build what it is a business or learning how to be a plumber or whatever. I want to do the same things everybody else wants to do. And that's to earn enough money to take care of my family if in fact I have a family or when I get a family. Through the years 1958 to roughly 1961, 62, we started off like all the rest of the gangs.

Our thing was snatching hub caps off the cars, the few cars that were out there. Let me go back just a little bit. When I was born and raised we saw a car every now and then, we still had horse and wagons here, and the trolley cars, and street cars, and what not. But, given those times, they had what they called to South Water Market. We were able to make a few pennies by going over to the South Water Market and unloading trucks. This was actually when I was about 13, 14 years old. Rather than steal or snatch a pocket book and so forth and so on. And this was actually before I moved to the west side and got with the Vice Lords.

This changed, I was living at 1259 W. Throe street during this time, which was known as the Robert Brooks Projects. So I'm project raised. But once we moved to the west side, the gang situation was established there and they were beginning to do negative things. They got more rewards being negative then they did in terms of trying to be positive. No real time thinking about no community or what was actually going on. They wake up one morning and what came that day, they had to deal with it one way or another. In those days it was all basically negatives, snatching pocketbooks, like I said. I mean even going to the place and snatching grocery bags out of peoples hands. We didn't have the gold and chains and all this kind of stuff in those days. We were taking shoes off of peoples feet, taking their food from a person that came out of a restaurant, snatch their bag and run, people were trying to survive.

I had a problem with that in terms of, in my day, in my time, I couldn't understand why so much emphasis was put on those kind of activities when in fact if everybody was doing it in some parts of the city. The Germans, they faired a lot better then most. The Jewish people, they were a little bit better, and that's simply because of their financial situation. People had to respect them because they had to come to them to get a lot of things. We had nothing to offer other than labor. We hollered on this side about being free, getting up from under the slavery, and on this end over here, we couldn't get the jobs, they wouldn't give us the jobs because of the color of our skin and it was blatant.

They would say we are not hiring those kinds of people. Same thing with the Irish before we became, in terms of numbers, a recognized groups, they were doing the Irish the same way. And they had signs up, We do not hire Irish people. So this is nothing that was unique to us. This is something that has been festering in this country for a long time. We reformed that group from 1958 till about 61, we were negative. We had gotten to a place where the more negative stuff we do, the more attention people would pay to us, not in terms of saying, well hey, we got a problem and let's take these guys and straiten this out. What is their problem, schools, jobs... Whatever it is, lets try to work with this, lets strengthen it to keep this kind of crap down.

We were killing each other, we were breaking into each other's houses, we were taking parts off of cars, we were doing the whole bit. Over a period of time, doing these kinds of things a lot of the youngsters that we became familiar with, had learned to love, ended up in jail. A lot of them were killed. A lot of them were maimed, paralyzed for life and for what it was worth, it really wasn't worth the effort in terms of the way it ended up, but nobody could foresee that this would be the way it was. We got a lot of negative press to the point where some of us that were older decided, wait a minute, these are our kids, these are our grandkids, these are our grandkids that are to come, these are our grandkids kids that are to come. Can we change this? Can we make this a little bit better?

So, we decided to get together and we went to both the police commanders which was Commander Simms at the time, a big Irish guy, Commander McCann that had the reign on the street at that time. We sat down and talked to them about the kind of problems that we were having and asked, was there anything that they could do to possibly help us turn this thing around? At the time, we had access to, what, maybe about 15, 1600 young guys under our wings that would listen to us. I could give a guy a gun and tell him to go shoot this brother and without hesitation he'd just go and shoot this guy. Well, if they had that much faith in us, then we could give him a pencil and tell him to get in his book and do this and do that. And we poured our hearts out to these guys about this. They agreed to try to help us the best they could, giving us the reality that they would probably get some static from the top coming down, working with gangs.

Commander Simms was black. Commander McCann was a big Irish guy. They listened to us, they listened to us well, they helped us form a group what was known as the Operation Bootstrap. In Operation Boot Strap, we hadWwestern Electric, US Gypsum Steel, Sears Roebuck, Goldblatts, Illinois Bell Telephone... We had most of the big merchants on the West Side at that time was involved in this group. We pointed out to those people that once the density of the West Side and the ethnic situation changed, that was no help for the recreation parks, like the BBR, or the Better Boys Foundation. When it was predominately German or Jewish or whatever, the business man kicked in money to make sure they had the basketballs, the uniforms, this, that and the other. That didn't happen when we got here.

So, in dealing with that, we got we they called hand-me-downs, we got some uniforms when one of the big schools in the suburbs were gonna get new uniforms so they passed there stuff down to our group and we had a number of uniforms. But then that's another form of identity. You either wore jackets or the like or you had on a red bandanna or a blue bandanna or this that and the other, so people could try to identify with each other. With this group, we wrote a couple of proposals, with the help of a young man named David Dawley, who was a young man at the time, he was working for Transistor Corporation in Washington D.C.. He had a program that he was contracted to find out what happened to the moneys that was being allocated for community. Our definite programs, is the money being spent the way it's supposed to be. We were hired, he hired four of us, to actually go around the community having people fill out these questionnaires, talking to the directors of these programs and we found out that the money was being used basically in high powered cells. Very little of the money was being used to buy the baseball bats, and the shoes, to get the basketballs, to have a net on the basket. It opened our minds. What else is going on in this community?

So, we started doing research, we started finding a lot of negative stuff. We began to find out how politics really worked. Mayor Daley was one of the leaders. They did their thing in terms of protecting Bridgeport. We did our thing in terms of protecting our field. Don't come into our community doing this, that, and the other thing. Only difference was the color of our skin. But they not only fought the blacks coming in, they fought anybody they thought was a threat or maybe they just wanted to show off in front of the young ladies, but they wanted to people to know they had control. Years later, they had a big riot. And that was the blacks against the whites. Mayor Daily's gang lead the charge. A lot of people got killed. Right after that, they turned basically political and Mayor Daily came up through the ranks as a politician. He did a complete reverse.

And as a politician, he learned by on-the-job training. When he found out that muscle would get the votes. They formed a group and that group went political and as a result, he started rising through the ranks to the point where he was well-known. All of the past done and forgotten about created some real serious problems for Chicago. We got our first black Alderman in the 21st Ward. The 24th was one of the most tolerant Wards. These guys were delivering 99.5% of the votes, 99.0% of the votes. The political situation. The found what they thought was a scapegoat. A guy named Ben Lewis. It was time for this particular group to let the West side go. It had turned predominately black. They sat down and made a deal with this guy. You don't mess with the insurance building, you don't mess with the real estate business, and everything is cool. That went on for a number of years. This guy became pretty powerful because he had created a system where he was .

He had a system where they were giving clothes to people. And as a result, he in turn, took that and misinterpreted that power that he so powerful that they wouldn't dare do anything to harm him. When he was found in his office with handcuffs on, with a couple of bullets in the back of his head. He was assassinated. His body guard was not around at the time, who became the next alderman. But this is just to give you some idea. It is strange, it hurts, and you have to go deep inside and question yourself, how can you stand by and let this kind of thing go? How much power do we have?

We don't need another war. Based on the way the country has been growing and given the experiences that we went through. What, we got 250,000 people over there (Iraq) now? That's 250,000 jobs that are open now. Houses, programs being opened up, training to be done, in terms of local communities, and what their going through over there. We got health problems in terms of finances, we got a deficit that we can't see, that's going to be met with not in our lifetime..

When I was kid, given my retirement situation, There might have been 125 people working towards insuring that I had a **** every morning. It's down to three people now to each individual, it might be less than that, to insure a future. You hit 65 and your ready to retire, you put your life's work in. What do I need at 65? How much do I need so I can make it

Today it's not as you had 125 working for each individual. It's down to two or three. What's going to happen a few years from now? And they're saying that there's going to be a deficit that they're not going to be able to beat. And when people can't get basic needs what do they usually do? They take to the streets. They do the same thing now. We go with another gang situation here. We're not the Vice-Lords, we are not the Ambrosias, we are not this or that. We are part of this melting pot and we don't like what's going on, the majority of us, so no...

That was a gang yesterday with the high school kids and the colleges. No war. We don't need war. Politicians say, well, we need this, we need that, we got to have it, so it's going to happen. But going from that, I'm trying to wet your thinking caps in terms of some of the problems that we're facing today. As a result of this gang situation, we formed what was called the Coalition for United Community Action. And we took to the streets in terms of watching people building homes, building schools, building roads, different stuff like this in our community and there's no blacks on the job. By then, we didn't have to make seventeen dollars an hour. I would like to come out and stick my chest out and say that's my park over there, there building that school for us. I could identify with them. No jobs. We stopped most of the construction on the West Wide and then on the South Side at that time. All we were asking for was some jobs, and maybe some kind of training program whereas guys could learn to do this. Most people would want to work .

The union was more organized. And the police were on their side. We were gangs. Even though we were asking for the children, Just give us a chance to do what everybody else is having the chance to do. And we were met with resistance. We were getting threatening letters, we were being threatened with our places being blown up,

[Question: jmh]: Excuse me, Bobby, where you involved with the stuff at UIC, when they were building UIC? Could you talk a little about that, because there's very few records about what happened here.

GORE: What it was, we put roughly 2-5 thousand people around here. We had Reverend Jesse Jackson, Reverend, C.T, Vivian.. Most of them were workers. We had a legitimate right.. We're not trying to take anything. We're seeing people that we can identify with. You got a 50 Million dollar project going here and we can't get a quarter out of you. There was no recognition in terms of my kid coming out of the house and there's not a black worker no where in sight. I couldn't say, Oh, that's my uncle over there or I can't identify with any of this.

So, we were asking. We don't want to do anything. Now, we're saying we do. And they turn the on us. No violence. Violence was out. Anything happens like that we go back the other way. We sat down with a committee and they decided that things were beginning to get a little rough and out of hand out there and that didn't come from the gangs, that came from the unions. We saw the need to go back and regroup, we were still on the street. The guys got into a couple cars and if they don't want to talk with us, we'll get arrested, civil disobedience, and we'll tell our situation from the county jail, or where ever they take us.

They decided that they wanted to negotiate a little bit, 7 to 9 people went inside the trailer to do the negotiating . That went on for quite some time. Each day, there was some kind of confrontation. Eventually, we wore them out. Let's start a training program. You just don't give a guy a job, but even back in those days, you could get a job picking up 100 lb. bags or something like that, we couldn't even get those kinds of jobs. Now, in those days, we were saying to them, we will get the guy in the high school diploma and we will send you some guys you can train, but in the mean time, let's sit back here and devise a training strategy. We came up with the name Coalition for the United Community Actions. The main base was on 35th and Michigan. But this was to test the neighborhood in terms of finding people who wanted to work. Take out the most able-bodied person and was going to be

It wasn't just gang members. Anybody in the community who wanted to try to take care of their kids, this was open to them and that's the way we worked. It wasn't that we was trying to do everything for the gang. Now business that we opened up, in terms of some of the proposals that we wrote and were funded on, we got something like about $12,000, $ 15,000 seed money from the Rockefeller Foundation. We went to New York and talked with those people. And this was just basically feasibility. We wrote the programs, we gave them our mission statements, and what we were to do over a period of time. We legitimized forfirst time in the history of Chicago gangs, we chartered through the state of Illinois. And we had certain guide lines. We put ourselves under the same restrictions of law that anybody else would have once you charter non-for-profit or for-profit. There are certain rules and guidelines you have to follow in terms of your statement.

We got $25,000 from the Field Foundation for a summer beautification project. And what we said we were going to do. We said we were going to take most of these young guys, 14 upward, and take some of the moneys that was given through some of the programs like, we had a number of programs going that were hiring young kids for a quarter an hour or something like that. Our thing was, Let's put this kid a position were he can earn some money, he can go home and give mom $15-20 , he ain't got to snatch a pocket book. So we got 125 slots from the programs, I forget the name of the program right now, but anyway, what our thing was, was to dig up all of those what we call parkways out there, were there was nothing but glass, tin cans, beer bottles, wine bottles... We were going to take all of that, dig out the big boulders and all, and put grass and flowers out there, and we did that. We went (to) kids mainly from the west side, from Pulaski all the way over to Ogden Avenue. And some parts of Cermack Street.

Over time, this became a little bit too sophisticated for us given, I was a highschool dropout. It became to sophisticated, we didn't understand a lot of the ramifications in terms of business how and when. So we asked for some money to do a partnership situation whereas we would bring in expertise in terms of being running business. They were to advise and counsel, but not make decisions and this was one of the things... Each one of the guys that were involved, we had about 15 programs, we had a professional person working with that individual, teaching him the ropes. This particular individual had another man under him learning as he learned. So, our situation was for the older guys to work themselves out of those jobs that the young men had the job and in return, he teaches the guy on the end. This is the way we were trying to structure it. We got the money. And we hired some guys from New York, California, Georgia. We had some people come in that were pretty good people, they understood what we were going through. And they really tried to help. A lot of them really put their hearts into us. We learned pretty fast it was still very complicated. A lot of this right now, today, I don't understand, in terms of what we were trying to do.

But we started showing a measure of success. And that was something that the city couldn't stand, given blacks don't , the Disciples, the Cobras, this, that, and the other. If one group can do it, then here comes the rest. So, what are we doing? We're training gang members. (City leaders said) "What the gang members are doing, the''re buying guns and so forth and so on" . What they didn't know is that through the police commanders, the YMCA acted as our fiscal agent. We never touched any money. Anything that we wanted to do in terms of having something built or renovated. We get a requisition for what we needed, the requisition went through their approval and went right to the builder or the contractor. They bought the material, they did this, they did that. We were able to do that with our annual reports and our quarterly reports. (City leaders) were afraid we were buying guns. They were trying to discredit us.

In 1968 we went to Washington D.C... Just started a new program through the labor department. At the time, they had young people, like yourselves, that could identify with other young people that were able to sit down at the table and talk about some of the problems and try to get them to understand what they were going through and in fact, these people had access to either fund or reject a program. We were fortunate enough to receive money out of them. From that, we decided that we should travel to New York. We had one young man over in Central Park. His name was Chino Garcia, a Hispanic brother. In reading about some of the problems that were happening in Central Park back in those days, Chino had a positive attitude. He, in terms, was tired of seeing these people killed and knocked off and there was no rewards, no progress whatsoever, behind that. We decided we sit and we talk, that we would have a couple of meetings. We went to New York and one of our things was to have an exchange program.

During that time, we were making what they called the..... African garb and wha tnot. They were into leatherwork. So we said, okay, give us five of your guys and you take five of our guys. Our guys will show you how to make the Dashikis and you guys show us how to make the wallets and wha tnot. That worked out pretty good. Chino came up with the idea of doing a national. In other words, lets dice the United States up into four parts, with a regional director in each of the four districts and we'll house this thing in Washington D.C.. Hubert Humphrey at the time, thought it was a grand idea. He backed us all the way. And our thing was just like exchange students you have now, you have a girl from Germany, coming from where ever, and we exchange the ideas with you and different things like this and we thought that this would work pretty good.

We had a meeting in East St. Louis. It was ratified and everything was okay. We housed the place in D.C. My brother-in-law ran, he was the first president of it. And the thing was to open up lines of communication. You need some help over here in this region, Georgia, New York, whatever it is. Don't go out to the authorities. We opened up a lot of communications. We hit the other three regions and we'll come in and we'll talk. We'll sit down, w'’ll negotiate whatever your problem is. We don't know your problems, we don't live here. We come here, you don't know our problems, but we're with you. They were't asking for anything other than a chance to show that we had a whole lot of intelligence and skills going to waste simply because a person didn't get a chance. Didn't get a break.

Sears and Roebuck were pretty much in our favor. We opened up a place called Teen Town, which was a teen hang-in for young guys. The police at the time were coming around and two or three youngsters on the corner were being arrested simply for standing on the corner. I was arrested; I was a working man. I had kids at the time. I would get off of work... There's a friend of mine standing on the corner, Hey, How you doing?, shake hands and what not. Just when the police roll up at that particular time and I got to go home. I'm thirty-four years old and they're telling me to go home. Get off of the corner. I just got home from work. That's insulting. Okay? But this was the way things went. I could talk about this for a hundred years.

We had what was called the African Line. And that was given basically with our culture. We had what they called the khufees, the dashikis, the little fans and stuff, the bull tails to swat the flies out of your face, and this was some of the things we exchanged with some of the other groups in terms of whatever they were doing in the garment business and we learned from each other. We had two Tastee Freeze Parlors. We had what was known as Simone Cosmetic which was a cosmetic endeavor for blacks. Sammy Davis Jr. funded the seed money to get that up off the ground. We had what was called the West Side paper stock company. We were the first, well, I won't say people that thought, but in terms of the gang situation, we were the first ones that came up with a real proposal in terms of recycling paper. And our thing was to work through the schools, have the school kids bring papers in whichever classroom came up with the most papers, they would get free lunches for a week or something of that nature. Or the if the school produced such and such we had X amount of money set aside for them to get books or whatever the school wanted to use it for.

The money came through the National Bank of Chicago and some of the expertise in terms of running some of the businesses came through the Britannia Corporation, based on the recycling and whatnot. There were what was known as the Tenant Rights Action Group. Most of you have probably heard of slum landlords. You here of people making you pay 4 or 5 hundred dollars for something that you wouldn't put your dog in. And they had nerve enough to come and put you out of there. They set your furniture on the street and then people would come by and help themselves to everybody's stuff.

We had what was called the House of Lords. We had two of those. These were teen hang-ins to keep the police from arresting these guys on the corner. During school hours, the place was closed. Two hours after school is out, that was all dedicated to homework and tutoring inside the place, for reading, writing, so forth and so on. After 7 o'clock, then the gangs, the little white folks that they could shoot pool, play the ping pong, cards, checkers, and chess, that kind of thing. Then we had the management training program. We got a group of young men together to learn management training in terms of the businesses that we had. And that money came through the Youth Action, which was a department of the Labor Department, so they did train 20 of our teams in youth management, in business management. Then we had Malcome X GED program. This is during the time when Malcome X. Anybody that wanted to go and try to get their GED and then decide back in the mid-50's, the mid 60's ask why the schools couldn't be opened at night and be unitized in terms of parenting skills and home economics or whatever it is in terms of the older people that had kids could utilize the building. It's just opened 5 hours a day and it's closed the rest of the time and we're saying, Let's put this to some kind of use. And we asked the board of Education to help us develop some programs for these hours. It was a no good idea at the time, but now they're trying to do it.

And during this time we had the Willis Wagons. I don't know if you're familiar with the Willis Wagons. When the school became overpopulated, they brought in some trailers with desks in them. A successful amount of the kids learned from the Willis Wagons. Not enough room in the schools. So, that went on for years and years and years. We had what was called and Art and Soul. Over time we recognized there was a lot of talent in the community that was untapped. So we went to the Art Institute and we were funded by Cecil...... They dispatched two of their professional people to come out and work with the kids to show them that they have particular skills. And what they were going to do is help them with these other skills, whether it be music, art, literary, whatever. That was for quite a few months. It became too successful.

As a result of doing these kind of things, the police start coming around again and instead of coming in like regular people, at the Teen Town Restaurant, at the Art and Soul, the African Line, they came like gang busters and they're scaring everybody the way the came in. Just like parole officers do today. If you're on parole and you're fortunate enough to get a job, when they come to the job, they come to the job like gang busters and scare everybody. The employer may have taken a chance with you. Okay, Long as you don't make it known, just do your work and so on and so forth, nobody's going to know. But here they come with the big guns and the way the talk to people.

[Question: jmh] What is your analysis of why they came after these programs?

We couldn't be allowed to succeed. We were way beyond what they thought we could go before we saw a part with the little moneys that they were giving us. In the early sixties, we had a program that we worked together with Harvard University and the program was put together to go all the way back to the 1700's up until now and talk about the diversity of groups in the communities who had this behavior and how they might with the white flight. They recognized a lot of things that we were proposing to them. As a result of one of our endeavors, they built George Carlin High School. But this was another era. But inside this report I got one part, this thick, and there's four other parts. It pointed out exactly what they could've done and didn't do. Instead of taking the Willis Way, they could've built a couple more schools. What they did, they patched up a couple of schools and painted the Willis Wagons and so forth and so on and made a promise to do George Carlin's High School. This was a partnership with Harvard. There were a lot of things that were pointed out in the results of this situation where they could stop a lot of problems on the West Side, had they just spent a little money, but they didn't.

I had a particular film that I wanted to bring, but unfortunately the lady thought she had the film. I's called Lord Gang. And what we did, we made this film based on how we got started. All up until 1968, when I was arrested for murder. And I got a sentence for 25-40 years, and I served 11 years and 3 months at Stateville Penitentiary. I went in with two years of highschool. I came out with a BA degree, BS degree, associated arts. I was an instructor in terms of preparing young men for Illinois Bar exams and whatnot. And I also taught theory in terms of

I'm on a number of boards in the communities and wha tnot, even though I'm not that active now because of my health. I'm 67 years old now and my health is not as good as it used to be. It took me a half an hour to go across the street to get over here. And I'm hoping that I'm not creating a situation whereas I'm confusing, whereas you don't know which way to go. I got a couple of visual aids and maybe next time I come back through here, I can have this thing better organized. I was drawn completely out of pocket in terms of a young lady. She knew that she had that movie. And at the last minute she couldn't find it. She found two others. We've got one where I did an interview with one of the newspaper reporters and I got another one where I did a class up in Michigan, the University of Michigan. I've been trying to just do my little bit. It's in you guys' hands now. The ball is in you guys’ hands. And you can't afford to just let people make decisions for you, and just run all over you. You know what's wrong. You know what's right. You don't like a person, you got that right to go on and be by yourself, but in that same frame of mind, you don't want to go and create a problem that's not there, simply because you don't like that person over here. Some of them turn out to be best friends. Saving each other's lives in some instances. But the thing is, you can tell mom and dad gave you enough to know right from wrong. And then you're intelligent enough to know how far to go in terms of messing up your life. Two seconds to get into some trouble and a lifetime to get out of it. And you might never come out from under it, depending on the way people want to operate it.

[Question] What kind of political ties did the Vice-Lords have to West Side politicians at that time? Were they hostile, were they neutral, what were the political ties that you had to the democratic machine?

GORE ...When George Collins became the alderman over there, we took a political stance, not in terms of the whole organization, but some of the older guys understood politics and our thing was that we would work for you in terms of we'll pass out the bills, we'll do the talking on the megaphone and all of this, and in return what we were asking for was when we need grass seeds or we need some rakes, different things like this here, and some of the guys wanted to get paid. Back in the days when I was a shorty, I think we were getting a chicken and maybe a half a pint of whiskey. But then they started giving out five dollar bills. But once we get in, those guys were able to make 35-40 bucks, passing out the handbills, and so forth and so on. Still not knowing the impact that we had in terms of overall politics. It was another way for guys to make some money.

Then we got to know George personally and he seemed to be a pretty nice guy and then there were some things that we could kind of do and he was a part of Operation Bootstrap. And he was able to sit down with Mr. Wilkenson and some of the other guys. And ask them what we were talking about and go through and help make some decisions in terms of where they could help and where they couldn't. The political situation developed as the years went on. Unfortunately, George Collins was killed in an airplane crash. I think it was Midway, but I was locked up at the time. That's another whole ball game, there, in terms of the way the gang went.

How many people can you imagine are in prisons and what not and are actually innocent? But be satisfied by the noise that's being made by society. And these are the people that set examples, don't lie, tell the truth, see what I'm saying? But then you tell one and they will never let you live it down. And the common are costing people their lives. I mean, literally. Who's to say the assassination of Malcom X situation, the Kennedy brothers, you see? You can't satisfy everybody. But then, how can one end be so hostile that they could kill somebody and then next one is supposed to go and talk it out. That's just something that's kind of hard for me to understand...

But I really appreciate you guys listening to me, and hopefully you had grasping ears and maybe there's somebody sitting here, twenty years from now when I'm dead and gone can say the kind of things and do the kind of things that will help make things better for everybody. And le's stop this stuff about, you know, always question what would the United States be given the technology that they got right now, what would they be today if everybody had some input? Do you want all of the glory? That one little iota of whatever it is that I can put in might be the situation that will save society and make it last another hundred years or so. But as long as you're cutting people out and you're not giving people the chance, you're going to always have these kinds of problems. There's always somebody that's going to be put down, somebody's going to be treated wrong, I/ve heard guys crying, there's all these black students crying and crying and crying and we got a reason to cry. And our reason to cry is no different then when Marlon Dead got on the case at home and if you let me replace you, you cry. And all we're asking for the opportunity for me to show that I can contribute. And, I mean, for 3-4 hundred years we never got that opportunity. But I'm saying God only knows what we could be today had everybody had a chance to actually put some real input into the building of this country.

[Question] Can you talk about your situation?

[GORE] What I went through? Cess pool. When I went into jail, they still had what they called the batons. I do'n't know if you're familiar with the Marx Bill. They stopped that years ago, in the 70's. There was no talking, you don't care how hot or cold it is, you always had to have your clothes on. You couldn't look behind you, you could look on either side of you, but you couldn't look behind you. You could speak to the person in front of you, but you couldn't speak to the person on either side, and you walk a lot. Every morning, at a certain time, you get up for breakfast. Lunch at a certain time. They tell you when to get up, when to lay down, when to wash, take care of your personal situations and what not, they take away all of your freedoms, basically.

It is a punishment situation, but some people, as with everything, you're always going to have somebody who's going to always do well. And as a result of that, they caused a lot of problems down there. They're to the place now, where they're taking the books away from the guys, they disbanded most of the educational programs that they had there. I was fortunate enough to graduate from Lewis University and Northern Illinois University. My first couple of years, in terms of the college situation, I did my best to graduate with honors and that was hard. And the more I found out, learned what actually makes this society tick, and what makes people tick, the more I wanted to learn. And I tried to put myself in a position where if whatever it was that I tried to do, it would be useful and helpful to people. But I can also say, even though the rape situation is what a lot of people like to hear about, it wasn't that prevalent in the institution, in terms of raping and all that stuff, it wasn't that prevalent. And then again, too, at the time I was incarcerated, I would feel safe to say maybe a good 50-60% of the institution was black and gang members and Hispanic.

[Question] What was the relationship of the gangs because that was a really volatile time that you were there?

[GORE] Here again, too, they took that banding together. It was the inmates against the guards. And we could sit and we could talk with each other, whereas if we were on the street, we'd probably be trying to blow each others brains out. Under those circumstances, we were able to sit down and talk and we came through the differences. Anything happens in here, they're not going to say, well, okay, the Vice Lords didn't have nothing to do with this here, so you guys get over there, and we'll deal with the rest of the institution. Whatever happened, they came after everybody, so, in terms of recognizing how honorable that we were. No one group could ever put us in a position where they would try to start this riot situation without coming over with the rest of the guys, and that worked pretty good.

As a matter of fact, my name was, I saw an article in the paper where I was considered the " Kissinger of Statesville". It was just common sense. They shoot those guns in there and what not. The wall served two purposes. To keep what's in there in there and to keep it from getting out. As a result of some of the things that were able to get out there, some guards that were there that were kind of sensitive to what was going on, didn't particularly like being a part of what they getting paid for, they kind of helped by dealing with the certain legislators and exposing a lot of things that were going on inside the institution. Like one of the things was taking our money. The common serious situation, we were supposed to be paying less with no taxes and we're paying more. The money that we had on the books seemed like there's two-thousand people living in Statesville, and everybody maybe got 100 dollars a piece. That's putting some interest on it. Where's the interest on the money going? We were saying we should get that interest or if not, then let's take that interest money and let's better the visitor's room that our people have to come through to sit and visit with. Let’s put some drapes up in here.

So, if there's any questions you specifically want to know about, I can say this here -- the rape situation, it was'’t that wide-spread, at least not while I was at Statesville. And while I was there, yes, it was going on, but it basically happened when guys where sent to isolation. And these guys, the guards, they get to know you, they know you in the cycle, they know who doesn't like each other, and what not, and go to the hole, they'll put a Stone and four Disciple in one segment. That kind of stuff. Or a Vice Lord and whoever the opposition was, they were doing that kind of stuff.

[Question] A lot of people say, well gangs are all alike, but they’re really quite different as well as a lot of similarities. Can you talk about how the Rangers and the Vice Lords were the same and how they were different?

[GORE] Well, the Rangers were basically young guys caught into the same trap we were caught in. Vice Lords were the oldest gangs in Chicago and we, in terms of the older guys, tried to direct our leadership mostly towards positive. Like I said, the first four or five years we were just as notorious and crazy as everybody else. So it wasn't all good. We weren't goody-two-shoes, though. There's a lot of things that happened, people getting killed and maimed and that kind of thing, but under Reverend Fry, I do'’t know if he was with the Episcopal or Presbyterian, yeah, Presbyterian. They tried to do some good things in terms of the programs. Looked selfish to the group by just Blackstone. I couldn't go up in there cause I'm not Blackstone, so I can't go up there and utilize the place, but over time, Reverend Fry did some things with them where they had some real nice programs going on.

I don't know if you're familiar with the opportunity Please Knock. Oscar Brown Jr. put on things all the way in Hollywood. They made movies. This is a gang that had acting talent, musical talents, and they put on one hell-fired show. And it was quality stuff. You're always inside the gangs. You always got some guys don't care if you're all supposed to be true, you always got guys that are going to do something wrong. I joined the Vice Lords for instance, I liked breaking into people's houses. I broke into a couple of houses and then somebody caught me and beat the hell out of me. You see what I'm saying? Okay, now if I become a Vice Lord, and I break into your house and you know I'm a Vice Lord, you're going to think twice before that. And then there's so many guys by then, that it was impossible to monitor all the time. But whenever they were caught, we didn't defend them. As a matter of fact, we turned in quite a few that were wrong and they were bringing bad names, making it bad for the overall. We had those kinds of guys. They joined for their own ulterior motives.

And then you had the cowards, the dog wouldn't even mind him, but once he became a Vice Lord, put a little bass in his voice and scared the hell out of people. And he was the kind of guy, walking down the street, 28 years old, hollering, "Vice Lords!", just to scare everybody, to let someone know who he was. And then he'd stick his chest out and before then you could put a mini-skirt on him. That's just the way it was. It's almost impossible, it's just like you can't monitor the congress, you can't monitor the police, you can't monitor the fire department, you can't monitor any group and say that it's all kosher. It's almost impossible. You got guys that do things and try to hide it, and when it comes to pass, it hurts the whole organization. Like what's going on with the governor, how they're handling that with kid gloves in some areas. But be it some other organization that wasn't as powerful as the governor and Hollywood come at them people.

[Question] Were there some ways that the Rangers were a different kind of group than the Vice Lords?

[GORE] The Rangers were a little bit more wilder than the Lords. The Lords were mostly guys in their mid-teens and a little older. Well, these guys were 11, 12, and 13 years old. They were intimidating the schools and the playgrounds. 24-7, these guys were basically just intimidation until such time that some of the things we were doing began to surface. And, ironically, the hierarchy of the Blackstones were cousins to some of the Vice Lords and we used to exchange information about certain things. That's how the Coalition for United Community Action came about.

There's never been a real problem in terms of gangs with leaders who couldn't sit down and talk. It's always the younger street guy that's out there trying to make a reputation or a name for himself that caused the kind of problems, God forbid they went out and killed somebody. They don't know how to shoot pistols, I mean the police, they practice, practice, practice and very few of them could hit a running target. And these guys, I've seen them shoot pistols standing right as far as you are from me. And they don't hit nothing. It gives you something to think about. It's more than just pulling the trigger. And then you got some guy that do like this and hit someone right behind the eye in the first shot. But it's not that he's a marksman or anything like that, but then here we come with all these prejudices, he's black, he's in a gang, he's still on this side of town, he's an Italian, or he's hispanic and it depends on who and where, how the media sensationalizes all of this. They want to sell papers, do the t.v. skits, and whatever.

[Question] Did you have much to do with the Gangster Disciples, or was it predominantly more, did you have much dealings with them at all?

[GORE] No, not ... They were drawn together basically around the same time as the Stones. And they were actually fighting each other. On certain occasions, we had taken a caravan of cars out there and stopped them guys from killing one another. Meeting in the park, I got some pictures I could show you where as far as you could see, you got these guys lined up as far as you could see, but we were able to talk. And as a result of it, some of the positive situations came out. And our thing was, if you got a group of guys I'd come out and there's fifteen guys around me and every time you see me there's fifteen, twenty guys around me and just about everything I say, they're listening and whatnot. But I'm not a leader, but I've got leadership qualities that's projecting that. So recognizing that, you take that and you go with that. You prove this guy, try to find out where his mind is and try to work with that guy. Now if h''s negative, then he's nagative, ther'e's nothing you can do about that, but if he's willing to listen to you, and a lot of them respected this, and this is when you put the gun in his hand. And as a result of that we came together. We all got common denomenators. I don't care where we find us, we're still the same, we all want to be treated the same. There's not going to be any seperation, so what is the biggest problem? And the common denominator that came up was jobs, education, training, these kinds of things. All of us had the same types of problems. Same things back in the 1700's when it was the Irish, the Bohemians, the Germans, or whoever it was. But then these guys got the... They dice up the Polish to the Fire Department and they dice up the Irish to the Police Department and this is in history. This is not something that I'm just making up. And the power is being put in like that. But as a result, thats

[Question jmh] So, what happened, how come you weren't mayor and your kid isn't mayor today? That the Vice Lords aren't part of the Lawndale Democratic Party... All the things that happened to Richard Daley and all of his people, what happened to all the things that you started to build, what happened?

[GORE] We had a lot of the people that looked at things that they were designed to fail from the beginning; they could only go so far. But we did not have the clout in terms of becoming political to do the kind of things that Mayor Daley did. He's Irish, and there's the polish guys, the German guys, and we're over here together... We're like the Russians with the United States when they're in the wars and what not. You get so much of this and you get so much of that and this guy gets the oil and you had so much going in and this kind of thing. We could never muster that kind of power. Usually, what happens is that there's a certain amount of negativeness that comes into play when just the color of your skin is so recognizable. Why all of a sudden we've got a black caucus in terms of the government, why is just not congress like it used to be? Why has everything have to be divied up and it's so recognizable.

I know I'm black. It's obvious. So, why does it have to be thrown at me? You got people just sitting there like this thing with (Sen.) Lott. Make a statement a long time ago and they just crucified this guy. Who'e to say that his thinking changed? Nobody knows, but the guy ended up ruining his own career, as a result of some things that he said when the good old boys were in power. And he was part of the good old boys, so it was alright for me to say whatever it was, not knowing that I was going to become the speaker of the house, they had no ideas of that. And a lot these guys probably changed their minds as their careers developed, they said, yeah, we did do some wrong. And there are changes of mind. Put a kid in the penitentary at 17 now, let him out when he's 35, you don't think that kid's made any kind of change? That's basically in terms of what you expose that kid to during that time that he's in there. If you don't have anything quality in there, he's going to come out of there full of hate. He's against the whole world. How many people hate the United States right now? Now, in terms of what I've seen, and this is just beginning to become prevelant now, and how do you think those people hated us like this? We're calling these guys terrorists and they're calling us terrorists over in Isreal, but not in ...., these guys are going back in time. They were doing things for their country. And if they blowed up the bank, they blowed up the bank, but that was for the benifit of all. But now you bring that out today and people got real hate, real hate for the United States and it's frightening to me. You got Africans that don't want to deal with United States Blacks and for what reason, I don't know, I wish I knew the answer to that, but it''s just something to think about.

[Question: jmh] It does seem to be that you didn't have the clout like Mayor Daley did, but the Polish didn't have the clout either. They became intergrated into the machine, by all these people and it was a different trajectory.

[GORE] Well, number one, we came over here with nothing, not knowing nothing, and don't even know or selves, as far as their concerned. We knew one thing, and tha't's toss that bale, fill up that carpet bag and what not. Other people had opportunities of pooling their resources, maybe coming together and doing a farm situation that's successful and whatnot and they really cared about their own. They had something. We had nothing. Not even our own identities, if you want to get down to the nitty-gritty. And we were diversified in terms of different parts of Africa being brought here. And that indoctrination, in Russia they call it brain washing, of youth from Africa, from South Africa, your better than this and that, you know, the house guy and the plantation guy.

It's so many intricate parts that can be taken and built upon, maybe half or not even half. But to answer the question, we didn't have the resources, we couldn't hide the color. Certain nationalities of people that cut their hair and wear different things, but they were all white people. Asians and all those people, there's no hiding. And given this melting pot and the way the situation is , they're always against somebody, like I said, all the way down to the family, relatives or something, someone that everyone focuses in on to keep people off of their backs. I could streak through the house, but I didn't drink up all of the whiskey. Nobody talked about the drinking of the whiskey, they talked about that streaking through the house. It all depends on the way they want to put their ....and what not. Any progress that we tried to make was cut down and I say that openly. Any progress, as a matter of fact, there were times when we couldn't be caught talking with the guy in the field, cause you were trying to create a rebellion and what not. They just took everything from you. I heard a couple of months ago on a talkshow where the guy was talking to young skinheads. It’s time for them to grow their hair back, put the tie on, get the briefcase, put the suit on, and we could do more damage like that without the identifying things. Look what their doing to the Muslims, the Palestinians, look what they did to the Jews, where does that kind of hate come from? And then these same groups like the Irish, and the Poles, and the Jews that had so many......towards them. As a people, how do you forget that and turn around and treat somebody the same way? How can you do that? Where's the heart? You would think they would be more compassionate, and be it God, Alah, Buddah, be whoever. Give me strength to help me understand. I don't like the way my parents did it, but it got me up to this point and maybe there's something that I can do to insure that this kind of stuff doesn't keep going on.

[Question] Do think that there's chances today that the gangs -- the gangs are much different today then they were back then -- could they become, could the Vice Lords become a model for gangs today? Is that a possible thing to happen. How you guys transformed the group, could that happen today?

[GORE] I don't think so. I'm looking at the reality of the way these guys have been fragmented, now given today for the dollar. They used to be for survival. Now it's about the dollar. Here's a guy got a chance to make 2-3 hundred thousand dollars poisoning his own people with the drugs and this and that and killing each other because one is ten dollars short. They're so fragmented now, it's not such a thing where you could call a meeting for the Vice Lords and all of them would show up. You would probably have total chaos there because everybody's got their own mind in terms thinking and a lot of the guys that have gang power simply because of the money that they got, but not given status through the ranks like we had to earn. He bought his. We had certain stars: one star elite, two star elite, three star, five stars is universal elite. He could go anywhere that Vice Lords are and be recognized as universal elite, and what he's says, that basically counts as long as he’s not doing anything wrong. He cannot make that final decision. He has to go into that group and talk with whoever leading this gang here. He's bringing a message from the main guys, but if they don't want no part, they got the option to do that, to say that, we don't want no part in that. Maybe the next endeavor we get into, maybe we'll want a part. But the way things are going now, these guys would be challanged because they're not thinking of the next guy. Some of them have relatives that don't have shoes, don't have food. And these guys are out there spending 2-3 thousand on a weekend buying drinks for everyone in the place. And $5 thousand of gold on his neck, so heavy he can't hold his head up, he's got so much gold on him, could feed the whole neighborhood. What about Ms. Mable, that's eighty something years old now and changed your diapers and babysitted for you