Gangs jumping into politics seldom go legit
At the turn of the 20th century, neighborhood social and athletic associations were used by aldermen for political muscle. Derided in their day as "youth gangs," they received cash, jobs and even roller skates to get voters to the polls and harass opponents.
"The ward 'heeler' often corrals a gang like a bee man does his swarm in the hive he has prepared for it. ... In return his proteges work for him in innumerable ways and every gang boy in the hive is expected to gather honey on Election Day,'' University of Chicago professor Frederic M. Thrasher wrote in his 1927 book, The Gang.
One of those clubs, the Hamburg Athletic Association, helped spawn the Daley dynasty and still contributes to Democratic coffers. While not the most notorious, it reportedly played a large role in a four-day race riot in 1919.
Richard J. Daley, who ran the city and the Democratic machine from 1955 until his death in 1976, served as the club's president for 15 years beginning in 1924.
But the Hamburg and other social clubs weren't gangs in the current sense of the word, stressed George Knox, director of the Gang Crime Research Center. They did not engage in criminal enterprises like running bootleg liquor, selling drugs or murder.
"These guys smoked cigarettes and played cards,'' Knox said.
King exacted promises from more than 200 gang members not to be involved with violence in exchange for work as marshals in upcoming marches by King and his group. "Power in Chicago means getting the largest political machine in the nation to say yes when it wants to say no," King said, according to the 1990 book Freedom Bound.
Former Vice Lords leader Willie Lloyd, who met King during his stops in Chicago, said he took King's message to heart. When he was in his late teens he worked with other gangs to support the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, who had worked closely with King, in shutting down construction sites that weren't hiring black workers, Lloyd told the Chicago Sun-Times.
"We thought we were serving the interest of our community,'' Lloyd said. "They used the black street organizations to get ahead, so to speak, at the time. We were pretty naive and went along with them.''
During the 1960s, groups became increasingly militant and looked at politics as a natural hurdle to cross in their quest for power. The Black Panthers, the militant black nationalist group, looked at itself as a political power to be reckoned with across the country, including Chicago.
Supporters insisted the Panthers' work was an effort to foster black empowerment through medical clinics for the poor and free breakfast programs for children. Detractors like former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called the Panthers "the most dangerous and violence-prone of all extremist groups."
Federal War on Poverty programs of the late 1960s naively earmarked thousands of dollars in grant money to be dispersed through the leadership of Fort's gang and another rising group, the Gangster Disciples.
In the early 1970s, Fort and several other gang members were convicted of misspending nearly $1 million of that money.
Nonetheless, some government agencies and political leaders continued to view gangs as, at least in part, quasi-political organizations that could quell neighborhood violence, distribute money and run job-training programs.
In 1992 the Gangster Disciples took a direct role in the political process when Gangster Disciples leader Larry Hoover helped create 21st Century V.O.T.E., a local political action organization that unsuccessfully worked to have Hoover paroled from prison.
The group won the support of many local politicians, including former Mayor Eugene Sawyer and former state Rep. Coy Pugh. In 1995, the group nearly scored a $45,000 deal to recruit minority workers for a CTA project, but it was scuttled by an opposing alderman.
The group ran its own candidates--former Disciples enforcer Wallace "Gator'' Bradley and former gang leader Hal Baskin--against machine-backed aldermanic candidates. When they went to Washington to discuss a crime bill, Bradley was photographed in the White House with President Clinton and Jackson.
In a survey of Gangster Disciples members in 1996, 15 percent said they had worked for a politician, according to Andrew V. Papachristos of the National Gang Crime Research Center.
More than half said they had received compensation for their work. And more than 80 percent said a gang leader asked them to participate in political activity, with only 18 percent saying a politician sought their help.
"While not an overwhelming amount, 15 percent of the supposed 30,000 members of the Gangster Disciples would yield approximately 4,500 gang members who would have reported as having worked for a politician," Papachristos wrote in a May 2002 paper, ''The Politics of Street Gangs.''