Читать книгу Washington Confidential онлайн

105 страница из 121

Three young colored boxers, aged 14, 16, and 17, terrorized Washington a few months ago, committing at least 19 yoke robberies, netting more than $2,000. The 17-year-old was a semifinalist in the 160-pound class in last year’s Golden Gloves tournament. The youngest boxed at a boys’ club. The 16-year-old was a quarter finalist in the 135-pound class. These activities are said to breed good citizens.

The three bet among themselves which would land the first punch on the victim and whether it would be a knockout.

Police arrest hundreds of Negro yokers every year, most of them in their teens. Thousands of yokings go unsolved. The yokers are usually highly organized into juvenile gangs which fight also with home-made pistols, sawed-off shotguns and switchblade knives.

Many of these young Negro gangs terrorize students, white and black, in public schools, offering to sell them “protection” and punishing them when they don’t pay up.

Startled public officials first heard about these gangs some months ago after incidents at Banneker High. An 18-year-old colored boy was held for the grand jury on a charge of robbing a 15-year-old Banneker schoolboy of a wrist watch on the school playground. He threatened to whip the younger boy if he talked. School officials were awakened to the fact that all the schools in the city had this problem. According to the assistant superintendent of schools G.C. Wilkenson, “the gangs are made up of boys who aren’t in school and who aren’t working—mostly from 16 to 21 years old.”