They called themselves "Vampires, " "Dragons, " and "Egyptian Kings."
They were divided by race, ethnicity, and neighborhood boundaries, but
united by common styles, slang, and codes of honor. They fought--and
sometimes killed--to protect and expand their territories. In postwar
New York, youth gangs were a colorful and controversial part of the
urban landscape, made famous by "West Side Story" and infamous by the
media. This is the first historical study to explore fully the culture
of these gangs. Eric Schneider takes us into a world of switchblades and
slums, zoot suits and bebop music to explain why youth gangs emerged,
how they evolved, and why young men found membership and the violence it
involved so attractive.
Schneider begins by describing how postwar urban renewal, slum
clearances, and ethnic migration pitted African-American, Puerto Rican,
and Euro-American youths against each other in battles to dominate
changing neighborhoods. But he argues that young men ultimately joined
gangs less because of ethnicity than because membership and gang
violence offered rare opportunities for adolescents alienated from
school, work, or the family to win prestige, power, adulation from
girls, and a masculine identity. In the course of the book, Schneider
paints a rich and detailed portrait of everyday life in gangs, drawing
on personal interviews with former members to re-create for us their
language, music, clothing, and social mores. We learn what it meant to
be a "down bopper" or a "jive stud, " to "fish" with a beautiful "deb"
to the sounds of the Jesters, and to wear gang sweaters, wildly colored
zoot suits, or the "Ivy League look." He outlines the unwritten rules of
gang behavior,the paths members followed to adulthood, and the effects
of gang intervention programs, while also providing detailed analyses of
such notorious gang-related crimes as the murders committed by the
"Capeman, " Salvador Agron.
Schneider focuses on the years from 1940 to 1975, but takes us up to the
present in his conclusion, showing how youth gangs are no longer social
organizations but economic units tied to the underground economy.
Written with a profound understanding of adolescent culture and the
street life of New York, this is a powerful work of history and a
compelling story for a general audience.
