The D.C. Blacks is an African-American

prison gang A prison gang is an inmate organization that operates within a prison system. It has a corporate entity and exists into perpetuity. Its membership is restrictive, mutually exclusive, and often requires a lifetime commitment. Prison officials and ot ...

in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

whose members are from

Washington D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

They are allied with the

Black Guerrilla Family The Black Guerrilla Family (BGF, also known as the Black Gorilla Family, the Black Family, the Black Vanguard, and Jamaa) is an African American black power prison gang, street gang, and political organization founded in 1966 by George Jackson, ...

and some other black prison gangs. The

Aryan Brotherhood The Aryan Brotherhood (AB or The Brand) is a neo-Nazi prison gang and an organized crime syndicate that is based in the United States and has an estimated 15,000–20,000 members both inside and outside prisons. The Southern Poverty Law Center ...

is one of their main rivals. Although the D.C. Blacks are one of the largest prison gangs within penitentiaries, they are small compared to the gangs outside of the prison system, such as the

Bloods The Bloods are a primarily African Americans, African American street gang which was founded in Los Angeles, California. The gang is widely known for Crips–Bloods gang war, its rivalry with the Crips. It is identified by the red color worn ...

and the

Crips The Crips are a primarily African-American alliance of street gangs that are based in the coastal regions of Southern California. Founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1969, mainly by Raymond Washington and Stanley Williams, the Crips ...

History

The

District of Columbia Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...

is a federal district and not a state. As a result of this, there is no statewide prison system or even a facility within D.C to place felons after sentencing as is the case in the 50 states. Since D.C is a federal district, violators serving more than one year for offenses must be transferred from the D.C custody into Federal BOP custody to serve out the sentence in one of the federal corrections facilities. The number and concentration of these inmates into various systems, as well as the relative concentration of high crime areas in DC and the resulting familiarity of those inmates to one another has, over the years, created a de facto prison gang. Though referred to as DC Blacks for purposes of identifying the demographic, the actual inmates from D.C that band together, in many cases do not identify themselves as that. In most cases it is simply association through residency and mutual defense and resource sharing between these inmates in the course of their prison experience.

Origins

The D.C. Blacks prison gang is said to have originated in the late 1960s or the early 1970s. From being in prison, the D.C. Blacks became enemies with another prison gang called the Aryan Brotherhood, which is a group consisting of only convicted white men. The race wars against the D.C. Blacks raged across the federal prison system in the early 1980s and again in the 1990s when two of the high-ranking officers within the D.C. Blacks were stabbed and killed at the United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania by Aryan Brotherhood members. The race war in the federal system between the Aryan Brotherhood and the D.C. Blacks started on November 22, 1981, when a member of the Aryan Brotherhood,

Thomas Silverstein Thomas Edward Silverstein (born Thomas Edward Conway; February 4, 1952 – May 11, 2019) was an American criminal who spent the last 42 years of his life in prison after being convicted of four separate murders while imprisoned for armed robbery, ...

, murdered a member of the D.C. Blacks, Robert M. Chappelle. An FBI investigation was sparked when Chappelle's body was found dead in his cell at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. The race war continued when Silverstein killed the national leader of the D.C. Blacks, Raymond "Cadillac" Smith, on September 27, 1982. The violent campaign against the D.C. Blacks was at the center of the government's 2002 indictment against the Aryan Brotherhood when one of the leaders from the Aryan Brotherhood allegedly ordered the 1997 killing of two D.C. Blacks at Lewisburg with an invisible ink message written in urine. This message was sent to Lewisburg to warn their other members that the D.C. Blacks called hits on two of their members. Messages began to be going back and forth between the two penitentiaries calling hits on both gangs. Individuals from both the D.C. Blacks and the Aryan Brotherhood have testified in court, giving the public a general idea of what life at USP Marion looked like.

References

{{Organized crime groups in the United States Prison gangs in the United States African-American gangs Gangs in Washington, D.C. African-American history of Washington, D.C.