Gang of writers: How a teen paper documented life in the 'hood

A WEEK after I began organizing Dig This, a teenage newspaper in Francisville, a social worker tipped me off: "Oh, you're working with the Morroccos gang."

I blanched. By May 1968, the Morroccos had killed three people. They were one of the most violent of 106 street gangs then terrorizing the city, with dozens of kids killed in the mid-1960s.

I was a work-study student from Temple. The late George Robinson, head of Can-Do, a community organization sponsoring the newspaper, told me that I'd be working with the North Central Athletic League, on 17th Street near Fairmount Avenue.

The next day I asked the kids, "Hey, you guys, why didn't you tell me you were a gang?"

Their response: peals of laughter.

Not one to miss a beat, I said, "We'll start a gang newspaper."

Gang life was a microcosm of world politics, with a pecking order, turf boundaries, internal politics, hostile actions and "peaceful" ways to settle disputes.

Ranked by age, size and ability to fight, members were called old heads, runners, juniors, midgets and peewees. Many boys sought refuge in gangs for protection, such as walking to school through rivals' neighborhoods.

Each of the 106 gang "turfs" had specific borders. The Morroccos congregated at the Francisville Playground, but their boundaries were Broad Street to 19th, and from Fairmount Avenue to Girard.

If a gang member wandered onto rival turf, he'd get beaten or possibly killed. But rivals could resolve disputes with "a fair fight" - a fistfight between two members of opposing gangs on neutral ground.

Rarely did gang members have real guns. They made "zip" guns from a piece of wood, a rubber band, a nail and a bullet, and fired them like a slingshot. They could - and did - kill their enemies and sometimes schoolchildren caught in the crossfire.

At Benjamin Franklin High School, on Broad Street near Brandywine, four gangs - the Morroccos, 12th and Poplars, 16th and Wallaces and 20th and Greens - fought to control the halls and stairs, which often determined who could go to school.

With a hot summer ahead, there was a fear that riots could explode along Columbia Avenue, now Cecil B. Moore Avenue, as they had four years earlier. Civic leaders pledged to provide 12,300 summer jobs and 7,000 full-time jobs for the unemployed by June.

Keeping gang members busy - with jobs or social activities - became critical after riots erupted around the country in the wake of the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.