Almighty Black P. Stone Nation
The Almighty Black Peace Stone Nation (BPSN) is a gang that was originally formed in Chicago in the early 1960's as the Black Stone Rangers. In the more recent past they have called themselves the El Rukn tribe of the Moorish Science Temple in America and finally El Rukn, Sunni Muslims under their religious leader and founder Abdul-Malik (Jeff Fort). Throughout their history, the BPSN has been crucial players in both domestic and international political events. The BPSN has managed to finance itself through a wide array of crimnial activities and are also part of a large gang alliance known as the People Nation.[1]
The Black P Stones are also gangs based in the Los Angeles Area. One in the city's midtown neighborhood and another in Baldwin Hills.
History
Founded at the St. Charles correctional facility in 1961 by Jeff Fort and Eugene Hairston, the Almighty Black Peace Stone Nation was originally known as the Black Stone Rangers because their main turf was Black Stone Avenue in Chicago. The gangs formative years coincided with the rise of the Black Power movement and severe repression from US domestic security agencies. The Chicago field office of the FBI became extremely concerned about a proposed alliance between the Black Panther Party under the leadership of Fred Hampton and the Black Stone Rangers. The Panthers had hoped to politicize the Rangers away from street crime and towards constructive community action. It appears that tension was later induced between the Rangers and the Black Panthers, with evidence suggesting that Jeff Fort's gang were in fact paid by someone to engage in conflict with the Panthers, thus preventing the Panthers from effectively operating. No evidence has yet been reported on who exactly provided such funding to the BPSN to covertly suppress the Black Panther operations in Chicago[2] It wasn't until the Church Committee report on the abuses of the FBI's Counterintelligence Program, or COINTELPRO, was released nearly a decade later that the evidence came out that the FBI's Chicago field office - and J. Edgar Hoover personally - had stoked the tension between the two groups, hoping that the hair-trigger Fort would embroil the Panthers in an endless blood feud of retaliatory killings.
BPSN founding member Eugene Hairston was incarcerated on drug charges on June 6, 1966,[3] and Fort was arrested for mismangement of government grants which totaled $927,000 from the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity in March 1972. Fort was released in the early 1980's, but was later reincarcerted on drug charges. Following meetings during 1986 with Libyan operatives from Colonel Moammar Qadhafi, Fort was charged with buying weapons to commit terrorist acts on behalf of the Libyan government after he converted to Islam and gave the gang an Islamic doctrine.[4] Today, although Fort (referred to as Caliph Abdul-Malik) continues to have considerable influence over the BPSN from prison, the various Black Stones splinter groups suffer from rampant infighting since there is no clear cut leader anymore and everybody is doing their own thing.
Colors and symbols
They generally wear red, black and green to identify themselves, although in places on the East Coast they additionally wear maroon and brown. The crescent moon and the five pointed star are today important symbols used by the BPSN because of the strong Islamic influence in this gang. The pyramid with one side showing twenty-one small rectangles that could be "bricks" is another important symbol that also refers to the "Main 21" - the 21 leaders of gangs who had agreed to merge, to a greater or lesser extent, with the Blackstone Rangers. Most of the other original "main 21" are dead. The "main 21" was like a quasi commission for organized crime and still functions today.
Other symbols associated with the BPSN include their code words, such as "C.S.A." which stands for "Cold Soldier Army". The name of their "set" is also commonly used in their graffiti: an example would be "Terror Town", which refers to Chicago's southeast side. In this area of southeast Chicago, you cannot miss the clear language when you enter the neighborhood, and this gang graffiti has existed in this fashion for many years. An expression of solidarity for this gang is also commonly used: "Stones Run It", meaning the BPSN are "in control" or are "very powerful".[5]
Islamic identification
The practice of incorporating Islamic religious symbols and concepts has been a common phenomena among several African-American street gangs since the 1970s. The majority of the original BPSN leadership from Chicago have assumed Muslim names, briefly renamed the organization El-Rukn, and use Islamic rhetoric in their correspondences, despite engaging in criminal activity which contradicts orthodox Islamic theology. The sincerity of an individuals religious convictions are impossible to gauge without bias, but it has been suggested that Fort's (Caliph Abdul-Malik) motivations were at least partially an attempt to legitimize the BPSN's public image or confuse prison authorities. Classification has also proven difficult, with the group not claiming affiliation to either the Nation of Islam or the Five Percenters, two well known offshoots.
Notes
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- ^ Kenneth O'Reilly, Racial Matters: The FBIs File on Black America 1960 - 1972 p. 409, New York 1991
- ^ Sale, R.T., The Blackstone Rangers: A Reporter's Account of Time Spent with the Street Gang on Chicago's South Side, New York, Random House 1971
- ^ Hairston was eventually murdered in the Ida B. Wells housing project in the early 1980s
- ^ Robert W. Dart, The Future is Here Today: Street Gang Trends, 1992
- ^ George W. Knox, Gang Profile Update: The Black P Stone Nation