page_title: Gangs in the United States
section_title: Reemergence and growth: 1870–1940
hierarchical_section_title: Gangs in the United States / History / Reemergence and growth: 1870–1940
caption_attribution_description: English: The Buck Gang. Rufus Buck, Ute Indian &amp; others. Captured, probably Aug. 1895
context_page_description: Gangs in the United States include several types of groups, including national street gangs, local street gangs, prison gangs, motorcycle clubs, and ethnic and organized crime gangs. Approximately 1.4 million people were part of gangs as of 2011, and more than 33,000 gangs were active in the United States.
  Many American gangs began, and still exist, in urban areas. In many cases, national street gangs originated in major cities such as New York City, Detroit and Chicago but they later grew in other American cities like Albuquerque and Washington, D.C.
context_section_description: During the late 1800s, gangs reemerged as a criminal force in the Northeast, and they emerged as new criminal enterprises in the American West and the Midwest. In New York after the Civil War, the most powerful gang to emerge was the Whyos, which included reconstituted members of previous Five Points area gangs. Another late 19th century New York gang was the Jewish Eastman Gang. Meanwhile, Chinese immigrants formed tongs, which were highly structured gangs involved in gambling and drug trafficking. These tongs were matched in strength by an emerging Italian organized crime network that became the American Mafia.
  Gangs emerged in the Midwest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Chicago. European immigrant groups such as Poles and Italians formed the core membership of Chicago gangs, while only 1% of gangs were black. However, gangs in the 19th century were often multiethnic, as neighborhoods did not display the social polarization that has segregated different ethnic groups in the postmodern city (see Edward Soja). The gangs of Chicago in the late 19th century were particularly powerful in the areas around the Chicago Stockyards, and engaged in robbery and violent crime.
  As in New York and northeastern gangs, it was during the early period of Chicago gang growth that gangs connected themselves politically to local leaders. Such gangs as Ragen's Colts became influential in Chicago politics. By the 1920s, several gangs had grown to the point of becoming organized crime groups in Chicago (e.g. the Chicago Outfit under Al Capone), and gang warfare was common among them. Street gang activity continued alongside these larger criminal organizations; contemporary estimates suggested some 25,000 gang members and 1,300 gangs in Chicago during the late 1920s. By the early 1930s, however, these immigrant-dominated gangs largely died out.
  Just as with the Midwest, the American West experienced gang growth during the late 19th century and early 20th century. The earliest Los Angeles gangs were formed in the 1920s, and they were known as "boy gangs"; they were modelled on earlier social groups of Latino and Chicano men known as palomilla. Frequently these groups were composed of Mexican immigrants upon coming to the United States. The youth of this culture became known as the cholo subculture, and several gangs formed from among them.
  By the 1920s, cholo subculture and palomilla had merged to form the basis of the Los Angeles gangs. The gangs proliferated in the 1930s and 1940s as adolescents came together in conflict against the police and other authorities. Territoriality was essential to the Los Angeles gangs, and graffiti became an important part of marking territory controlled by gangs. Neighborhood identity and gang identity merged in ways unlike other parts of the United States; in addition, the gangs of the West were different in their ethnic makeup. Finally, they were unique in that, unlike gangs in the Midwest and the Northeast, they did not grow out of social problems such as poverty, but out of ethnic segregation and alienation.
caption: The historical Rufus Buck Gang (1895)
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