Three
years ago a seventy-six year old man sat a young man down by the
name of Troy Reed and began to document the history of the Black
Gangster and how Black Organized Crime began in Harlem. The first
words out of this elderly man`s mouth was "when people are
poor they have to do something for money", then he explains
how numbers were one of the biggest ways for black people to earn
money the fast way. This was introduced to Harlem by a lady named
Madam Queen who brought the number game here from Cuba. Sometime
later a well respected gentleman called Bumpy Johnson began to
change the number's and emerged in Harlem in the 1930s up until
the early 1960s he would control Harlem. Bumpy Johnson would eventually
die from a heart attack.
After Bumpy's death a new era began and a drug dealer by the name
of Leroy Nicky Barnes emerged taking over Harlem. Nicky Barnes
took over Harlem in the mid 1960s until the mid 1970s when he
was eventually convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. (Click
here to view newspaper article.)
Following the rise and fall of Leroy Nicky Barnes, a man fifteen year's
younger became one of the head men of Barnes organization. That man was
Guy Fisher, a friend and business associate of Leroy Barnes. By 1977 Guy
Fisher notability on the streets of New York was enhanced when he purchased
the world famous Apollo Theater, for the first time in history the Apollo
became a black owned theater. Shortly after the arrest and conviction
of Leroy Nicky Barnes, he would become a government informant and
testify in a federal court against Guy Fisher and a number of other organization
members who are now presently serving a life plus sentence!.
Shortly after the Nicky Barnes & Guy Fisher era a new breed of young
aspiring hustlers began to emerge on the scene through out New York City.
By the 1980s black organized crime would be know longer in place but a
new form of hustlers would take Harlem by storm and they would be known
as crews. Every decade it seemed a new form of hustling would comes on
the scene from the Bumpy Johnson era of numbers to Nicky Barnes era of
heroin to now the explosive era of cocaine & crack which three young
men took NYC by storm at the ages of sixteen and seventeen their names
were Richard Porter, AZ and Alpo. These three young men would go on to
be major players in the drug game but ultimately their greed and treachery
would lead to kidnapping, betrayal and death. Black Organized Crime would
never again have a place in the history of the urban under world from
the 1930s up until the 1980s I would now say the GAME IS OVER! Street
Stars would characterize these stories as the closes thing to reality
to any man or woman who interested in pursuing life in the street.
Street
Stars' purpose in producing these real-life accounts of life on the streets
is to present facts to the youth of the United States broken society.
Crime has no color and a bullet has no name on it. A child is not born
with dreams of selling or using a half of key of cocaine. Society's teens
are producing nothing but babies, AIDS, and nightmares for parents. Statistics
show how out of every 15 teenagers, only three will be successful, the
other twelve will fall short to the street, which reflect sex, drugs,
jail, gangs, and death. The n umber
one though of teenagers in the inner city districts through out the U.S.
is "How can I become somebody -- right now!" This is very vital
because the streets don't respect patience, because there is nothing slow
about the streets. If you don't have the necessities that most teenagers
have then you are considered a nobody. Education is not respected because
it is not in a physical form, until it is accomplished. So now the question
is what price will I pay to accomplish the American Dream?
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