Hoe Avenue Peace Meeting - History

History

The meeting was held at the Boys Club on Hoe Ave with dozens of street organizations and many city officials and police present. Present at the Hoe Avenue peace meeting included the Black Pearls, Savage Skulls, Turbans, Young Sinners, Royal Javelins, Dutchmen, Magnificent Seven, Dirty Dozens, Liberated Panthers, Black Spades, Seven Immortals, Latin Spades, Peacemakers and the Ghetto Brothers. The peace meeting was organized by the Ghetto Brothers after one of their members, 25 year-old Cornell "Black Benjie" Benjamin, was killed trying to stop a gang fight. The objective was to draw up a peace treaty in honor of "Black Benjie", who had been the designated peacemaker of the Ghetto Brothers.

To guarantee that it would be nonviolent, it was arranged to have a member of the Turbans gang to take position, with a rifle, on a rooftop across the street from the Boys' Club on the day of the meeting. Inside, the power structure was in evidence. Presidents, vice-presidents, and warlords sat on folding chairs in a circle in the middle of the club's gymnasium. Gang members took seats in the bleachers, while wives were made to wait outside the building. Only two females were permitted inside—the presidents of the all-girl gangs, the Alley Cats and the Savage Sisters—and their folding chairs were placed in the last/fourth row, behind those of the warlords. The Peace Meeting and the context both before and after 20 years appear in Flyin' Cut Sleeves; Children of the Street, a documentary film by Rita Fecher and Henry Chalfant.