The Quad

Issue date: 3/31/08 Section: News

Speaking to a small but very enthusiastic turnout at West Chester University, John King spoke on the history of the Black Mafia in Philadelphia, specifically his family's history.

This past Wednesday night, King, a professor at Temple University, visited WCU at the behest of The Contemporary Issues division of Student Services Inc.

He began his discussion by reading two passages depicting crimes, the first set in North Philadelphia and the second revolving around heroin trafficking. These, he later revealed, were case summaries of criminal activity involving Jesse James and Al Capone, respectively.

"Organized crime is indifferent to every community," King said. "No community is immune…Crime is not something invented by criminals. Criminals are born out of a society that raises them."

He related to the crowd that the Black Mafia never referred to themselves as a "Mafia," but rather saw themselves as necessary organizations formed to protect the struggling communities of first-generation North Philadelphia residents.

"These organizations were created to keep outsiders from eating them alive," said King.

In 1970's, a group calling themselves The Brotherhood, all members of the Nation of Islam and mostly first-generation Northerners, came to power in Philadelphia.

"They came from the neighborhoods of Philly, came of age in a world of doo-wop, street gangs and protection of neighborhoods," King said. "Because of that ethos, there was a toughness among the guys. They formed gangs, alliances."

The Brotherhood engaged in illegal activities with the idea that if they could control the vices, then they could get rid of them. They used a street tax or extortion to muscle-out the non-black businesses in their mainly black neighborhoods, as well as to tax all "after-hours" houses, white and black.

Heroin distribution was present but, as King pointed out, was supplied mainly by the other crime groups in the area. The Brotherhood refused, however, to expand into vices outside the area of drugs and extortion; prostitution was never their method of choice.

King's father was a high ranking soldier in The Brotherhood, which is how King came to be so familiar with the entire history.

A rival group's leader, Abdul Khaalis, came back from a shopping trip with his first wife to his Washington DC home one day to find much of his family slaughtered. His second wife and five of his children, along with several other associates, had been brutally murdered in his house. This would become the largest mass-murder in the capitol's history.

Continued...

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