New job for former gang members

Their name, the Businessmen, was derived from the slang term "taking care of business." They were among several dominant African American gangs -- the Slausons, the Gladiators, the Del Vikings -- in the early 1960s in the neighborhood then known as South-Central: the precursors to the Bloods and the Crips.

Now, the Businessmen of South Park have traded their fedoras for bifocals, and their whiskers are gray. But they're together again -- not to fight or drink but to try to unravel what they say is their own destructive legacy. They are tormented by the thought that their early gang activity begot increasingly violent generations of gangs. "We had a hand in making it like this," said Carter Spikes, 61. "Now we are doing what we can to make things right."

So the gang that once hung out by the gymnasium in the big green expanse of South Park on Avalon Boulevard and 51st Street now boasts an office across the street, with a brass placard on the door that reads The Businessmen, and with a computer, coffee maker and extra large canister of Coffee-mate inside.

Former gangsters turned anti-gang activists are nothing new in South Los Angeles. So far, the Businessmen acknowledge, their nascent organization has produced mostly ideas for future projects.

What sets the Businessmen apart are their age -- most are in their 60s -- their memories and a certain mellowness that comes with their status as grizzled survivors.

The Businessmen comprised four generations -- age groups -- of young men growing up around South Park in the 1950s and 1960s, many of whom attended Jefferson High School. Successive generations were dubbed the Seniors, the Juniors, the Babies, and the Unborns. Most of the current group belonged to the third installment of the gang, the Baby Businessmen, active in the period right before the 1965 Watts riots.

Their families were recent migrants from Jim Crow-era Louisiana and East Texas, seeking a better life in a Los Angeles then divvied up by racially restrictive housing covenants. Their parents worked as domestics and garment workers or seized what manufacturing jobs were to be had at a time when blacks still faced considerable discrimination on the factory line.

The Businessmen were poor and mostly jobless. They played sports at South Park and hung out there, as younger gang members still do. "We drank wine and smoked cigarettes and every now and then a little weed," said Shane Stringer, 64.

Despite their empty pockets, they aimed to dress well, favoring leather jackets, alpaca sweaters, alligator shoes and hats -- homburgs and Borsalinos. Those who could afford it got silk-blend slack suits tailored at Arthur Williams on Broadway. They danced the cha-cha, listened to the Isley Brothers and the Dells.

At night there were house parties and fights -- fighting being a central activity of the gang. "The value of a man was how many guys could whip you," Stringer said. The Businessmen's era marked a time when all-white neighborhoods south of Slauson Avenue had recently given way to blacks, said Josh Sides, director of the Center for Southern California Studies at Cal State Northridge. The Businessmen mostly fought other black gangs from these neighborhoods, chiefly the Slausons.

Today's Businessmen describe the gang's old criminal activities as highly disorganized: occasional fights with knives and bumper jacks resulting in serious injuries, a couple of "in-house" killings. Some members dealt marijuana and barbiturates called Red Devils, and some were arrested for robbery, burglary and drug possession. Spikes served time for bank robbery.