[Black Spades, South Bronx, Gangs] Projects Heads 1974

[Bronx]: np, 1974. Mimeograph. 8 1/2 x 11 in. Very good. Item #5611

A mimeographed sheet outlining the members and hierarchies of the Black Spades, the year after the Zulu Nation split from the group. The Black Spades, intitally founded by a member of the Nation of Islam, were one of the largest youth gangs in the South Bronx in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though originally influenced by Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, and the Weather Underground, by the mid 1970s the Black Spades had apparently become increasingly violent, bowing to the pressure exerted by enormous growth of the organization and the aging out of original members.
Founded in late 1973 by DJ Afrika Bambaataa as a departure from the Black Spades, the Zulu Nation would become an internationally recognized hip-hop group. The gang culture of the South Bronx in the early 1970s is credited by many as the origin point for hip-hop.

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