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Officials try to minimize the situation, but there is a wave of terror in every public elementary and high school. Young Negro gangsters lurk about the schools, sell reefers, molest girls, and commit mayhem on children who won’t pony up. Boys and girls thus forced to pay tribute are told to steal from their parents or do a little shoplifting if they have no other means of procuring the extortion money. Youngsters are put on heroin and morphine by the youthful gangsters, and soon enter a life of serious crime.

Other yokers use a tactic borrowed from the dacoits, a murderous religious gang of India, throwing a cord over the victim’s head from behind and garroting him.

Some of these colored juvenile mobs have been in existence for 15 or 20 years. When boys and girls outgrow them and become adult criminals on their own, they are replaced by new children on the way up. Among the older and better-organized kid mobs are the Fastest Runners, the Forty Thieves, the Purple Cross Gang and the Protective Association.