YOUTH: The Return of the Gang

Among the phenomena of the 1950s was the rise of the violent urban gangs with their freewheeling, sometimes lethal "rumbles" in protection of their "turf." By the mid-'60s, gangs seemed to be on the wane, their vital energies either drawn into the protest movements of that era or sapped by the burgeoning drug culture.

Now in several of America's largest cities, the gangs are back—and with some ominous differences. Older, better armed, more sophisticated, the gangs today operate in all too deadly earnest. New York City has had 27 gang-related murders reported this year—ten of them in the seething South Bronx, where 877 gang arrests have taken place in 1973. In Chicago the gangs have largely graduated to big-time crime as profiteers in guns, extortion and gambling. Los Angeles has nearly 200 gangs, more than 40 of which are black or Chicano. Their clashes have caused 16 deaths this year.

Nowhere are the new gangs more virulently active than in Philadelphia, where over half of all violent crime in the city is committed by juveniles; in the past five years 191 youngsters have died in gang wars and gang-related assassinations. TIME Correspondent Barrett Seaman spent some time on the streets of the City of Brotherly Love and sent this report:

In Philadelphia, a gang is called a "corner," and a gang leader is a "runner" or a "checkholder." Smokey, aged 19, dressed in a flaming red shirt and matching narrow-brimmed hat, is the runner of the Montgomery corner, and he is expecting trouble from the Norris Avenue corner, whose turf is just across Berks Street. "I keep everybody together, plan any action we might take," he explains coolly. Just then a corner member, who looks to be no more than nine or ten, points a finger and yells: "Three dudes coming up. Looks like warrin' time." As the three enemy youngsters cross into no man's land, twelve of Smokey's gang set off at a run to intercept them. No weapons are visible yet, but the mood is ugly. Fortunately, a cruising police car happens by before the two groups collide, and the antagonists melt into studied casual poses. "They know there's gonna be trouble," observes a Montgomery. "Norris is gonna move on us tonight, and the Man's got the word."

The Montgomerys and the Norrises are among the estimated 100 to 200 gangs that roam the black neighborhoods of West and North Philadelphia. Most of the gangs have memberships of no more than 30 or 40 teenagers, and in some cases their territory is quite literally no more than a corner or a block at best. The rules of sovereignty—and survival—are strict. The difference between life and death can often depend on whether a boy walks on one side of a street or the other. Forays by an individual or a group into the territory of another gang are a justifiable cause for all out combat. The slightest provocation—a little back talk in a school corridor, a random surreptitious glance at the "sister" of another corner, a taunting gesture from a block's distance—can plunge corners into a war that may last for two or three years.