Before you get to the article\u2026<\/p>\n
On February 23, 2018, my book on the Mau Maus and Sand Street Angels, who were two Brooklyn youth gangs from the 1950s, has been completed.\u00a0 It took 15 years of research and writing to complete Brooklyn Rumble: Mau Maus, Sand Street Angels, and the End of an Era.\u00a0 <\/em>This book is roughly 6\u2033x9\u2033 and has 370 pages and includes a look at the characters in the Mau Maus and the details of a gang killing that happened in February 1959 in front of the iconic Brooklyn Paramount Theater (now Long Island University).\u00a0 If you want to buy a copy, click here and this link will take you to an online ordering page<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n Scotchmen.\u00a0 Scottsmen.\u00a0 Both those names came up in my research of a gang in Harlem.\u00a0 Two of the three times they were called Scotchmen, so that is probably their true name.\u00a0 I assumed they were a white gang based on the name, but this wasn’t true; they were a black gang.\u00a0 Controlling a turf on East 129th Street between Park and Madison and the nearby Lincoln Houses which butted up against Harlem River, a detective from the 25th Squad described them as an aggressive and war-like group of boys.\u00a0 Although technically in East Harlem, they were at the north end of East Harlem, and closer to Central Harlem which was predominantly black.\u00a0 Further south in East Harlem were mostly Puerto Rican gangs and some Italian gangs as well.<\/p>\n A fairly large gang, the Scotchmen loitered on the streets until all hours of the night, drinking alcohol, and battling enemy gangs.\u00a0 Like many gangs of the day, the Scotchmen had a President, Prime Minister and War Counselor (black gangs were especially highly stratified).\u00a0 Many Scotchmen lived in the 15-story high Lincoln Houses which were built in 1948, replacing the tenements in the area.\u00a0 Over 3,000 people lived in the Lincoln Houses.\u00a0 For the Scotchmen that lived around the Lincoln Houses, the buildings were dilapidated and run-down, (by 1960 half of the buildings were considered deteriorated) and most of the residents were very poor, living on social assistance.<\/p>\n One of the gangs that the Scotchmen fought were the Assassins.\u00a0 There were two branches of Assassins gangs in Harlem, one near the Scotchmen and another in West Harlem.\u00a0 The gang in West Harlem was involved in a gang murder in the summer of 1959, but they were too far from the Scotchmen up by East 129th Street.\u00a0 But their Assassin counter-parts from close to East 129th Street were close enough and thus found themselves getting in rumbles with the Scotchmen.\u00a0 One former Assassin I talked to remembered the Scotchmen having a tight grip on their turf and to venture into the Lincoln Houses was madness because they had to contend with the “the project folks.”\u00a0 If the Assassins had the guts to go into the Lincoln Houses, they had to be in full force.\u00a0 The best way was to pick them off outside of the Lincoln Houses.\u00a0 He explained to me what happened when the Assassins did go into the Lincoln Houses to fight the Scotchmen:<\/p>\n It was in the projects uptown on 134th street and Madison avenue, The Lincoln houses, an area that was filled with Scotchmen Lords, they ruled that turf along with the Assassins.\u00a0 We were tots on Halloween looking for a rumble with any body.\u00a0 A group of us went into the projects to pull a knock on a guy named Cherry,he had stomped lil Dutch the week before. O.k. here it is, we enter his building, 10 or maybe more of us to catch this punk.\u00a0 To our surprise there was Scotchmen all inside of the place; shit hit the fan and some one pulled a real 22 pistol and started shooting at us. Lil Freddie got hit in the shoulder and some other guy in the leg.\u00a0 We fought our asses off, I was wounded in the head by a bottle, and Ace my right hand man was stabbed in the back.\u00a0 He was placed in Harlem hospital for a month, he was f__ed up. That was one fight that took away my love for bopping.<\/p>\n The Assassins didn’t have any brother clubs to rely on and had to contend with many other Harlem gangs from the area such as the Desolation Lords, Enchanters, Cobras and Imperial Knights.\u00a0 I was able to uncover some information on some gang fights\u00a0 in 1958 and 1959 (besides the one recounted above) between the Assassins and Scotchmen that resulted in serious injury.\u00a0 More on that soon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before you get to the article\u2026 On February 23, 2018, my book on the Mau Maus and Sand Street Angels, who were two Brooklyn youth gangs from the 1950s, has been completed.\u00a0 It took 15 years of research and writing … Continue reading