Revisiting Gangs in the Post-World War II North American City: A Forum

City gangs have long been a subject of historical debate. More than a century ago, the muckraking journalist Jacob Riis presented one of the earliest systematic examinations of gang life in American cities. "By day they load in the corner-groggeries on their beat, at night they plunder the stores along the avenues, or lie in wait at the river for unsteady feet straying their way," wrote Riis (1890) in his classic How the Other Half Lives. Riis's examination of gangs over several decades was sensational and melodramatic, a characteristic reinforced a generation later with Herbert Asbury's (1927) embellished and exaggerated Gangs of New York. The themes and images of gang life -- that such groups were little more than juvenile terrorists, that they were products of the "vice and corruption" of city life, that members embodied "the worst depravity" of the modern city -- persist in contemporary culture, as witnessed by the popularity of Martin Scorcese's (2002) Gangs of New York. For most of the twentieth century, sociologists have provided the most rigorous and serious study of gangs and inner-city youth subcultures. More recently, historians of American cities have moved beyond the sensationalized stereotypes, assumptions, and narratives of Riis, Asbury, and others. Eric Schneider's (1999) Vampires, Dragons and Egyptian Kings: Youth Gangs in Postwar New York and Andrew Diamond's (2009) Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City: 1908-1969 represent some of the most influential and sophisticated attempts to revise and reinterpret this literature. Schneider attributes the emergence of gangs after World War II as an outgrowth of changing conceptions of male identity and masculinity between 1940 and 1970. Diamond, by contrast, believes that ideological and political factors played equally important roles in gang formation during these years. In 2002, both debated these points in these pages. More recently, historian Will Cooley challenged elements of Diamond's argument. Accordingly, the Journal of Urban History presents the ongoing discussion regarding the importance of political ideology and social circumstance in gang formation in the postwar North American city. The debate continues. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]