![]() It took the murder of peace keeper “Black Benjie” of the Ghetto Brothers, a gang and music group in the South Bronx, for rival gangs to convene and sign a peace treaty. We felt like we were our own world where we just had to fend for ourselves. “A block crew was the protector of that block and the street gang was the security for the community, more than the police department,” Murphy said. When they left, block crews filled the void. ![]() They worked security and distributed food through programs around the neighborhood. Originally, the Fort Apache neighborhood was supported by the Black Panther Party. “The world was not flowers and butterflies and sunshine, especially if you were living in the Fort Apache section of the South Bronx,” said graffiti writer Edward Jamison, also known as “Staff 161.” In December, 1972, Jamison painted an entire subway car with an image of the Grim Reaper, “because that’s what I knew.” Life in the Bronx was bleak, and Murphy said his neighborhood of Fort Apache was infamous for its violent crime. The Bronx was on fire, and Vietnam veterans – often missing limbs, addicted to heroin and other drugs – found themselves returning home to a war zone. Privately-owned housing buildings across the borough went up in flames, often set ablaze by landlords themselves for insurance money. New York City as a whole was facing bankruptcy in the 70s, and the Bronx, which was already suffering from disinvestment, redlining, resident displacement and white and middle-class flight, descended into urban decay. He remembers multiple families crammed into public housing units, sometimes up to 15 people living in a two or three-bedroom apartment, sharing the space with rats and roaches and dealing with negligent landlords. “Poverty was the flavor of the day,” said Murphy, who also grew up in the South Bronx in the 1960s. The earliest hip-hop culture was a reflection of those difficult realities in the South Bronx. Her brother was killed in gang violence and she saw her neighborhood fall prey to drugs, prostitution and violent crime throughout her childhood. Carter, 56, grew up just blocks away from where the cafe now sits in Hunts Point and lived the realities of urban blight. ![]() “I do find it ironic that one of the richest parts of American culture comes from a place that is still one of the poorest parts of our country,” said Majora Carter, an urban revitalization strategist and founder of The Boogie Down Grind, a cafe in the South Bronx that has images of old hip-hop party flyers from the 70s and 80s lining the walls and classic hip-hop jams playing over the speakers.
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