The Blackstone Rangers

In “The Blackstone Rangers,” Gwendolyn Brooks relies on imagery, metaphor, symbol, and allusion to represent gang life in 1960s Chicago as the skewed realization of Black Power.

In Part 1, “AS SEEN BY DISCIPLINES,” Brooks offers the perspective of the police. She relies on imagery having to do with the body—“[s]ores in the city” (Line 4)—to represent the Blackstone Rangers as part of the city, but one that is a sign of decay. That implied metaphor echoes the idea of the inner city as a diseased part of an otherwise functioning system. “[H]eal” (Line 5) recalls one of the utopian ideals of the 1960s, namely that all people and most particularly Americans, have within them the capacity to overcome differences and upheavals that marked the political movements of the period. The use of the language of disease to describe the Blackstone Rangers implies that the hope for love and peace are futile ones. The irony is that the police are primed for violence just as the Rangers are. Brooks gives this perspective short shrift by making Part 1 the briefest of the poem.

In Part 2, “THE LEADERS,” the perspective is likely that of “Jeff. Gene. Geronimo. And Bop” (Line 6), considering Jeff Fort and Eugene (Gene) Hairston were founding members of the Blackstone Rangers (Loeb, Michael. “Gang Green.” Chicago Reader. 1997). The 10-line stanza that opens this section is a series of negatives, all the things leaders of the gang are not. Brooks uses verbs—“cancel, cure, and curry” (Line 7), their sameness enhanced with those initial hard “c” sounds—to emphasize that the members in Line 8 are soldiers who unquestioningly carry out the tasks their leaders give them. That absolute command implies a certain kind of power, one Black political leaders would look at with envy.

When the speaker describes the things the Blackstone Rangers are not, it is the context of other archetypes of Black nationalist power. They aren’t part of the political machine that long dominated Chicago politics, which Brooks symbolizes using “bonbons” (Line 9)—a fancy dessert popular at catered dinners of the period—and “rhinestone” (Line 10). Both symbols imply artifice, with the bonbon taking the shape of the mold in which it cooled, and rhinestones as the flashy substitute for diamonds.

The power of the Blackstone Rangers is nothing like this kind of power—mostly because the gang has rejected all external forms of political power—which works through symbolic violence or the threat of violence to enforce law and order. The existing power structures outside of the territory of the Rangers create the conditions that make the Blackstone Rangers necessary, so to accept traditional political power as legitimate is to be one of the “dupes” (Line 8) of corrupt political structures.

The Blackstone Rangers also refuse to rely on the cultural power of influence-makers and political figures like “Belafonte, King / Black Jesus, Stokely, Malcolm X or Rap” (Lines 12-13). The list of figures, including Black Jesus (a symbol for the Black church) and H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael (leaders of the nonviolent student movement for civil rights) are historical allusions that show the Blackstone Rangers can never occupy the same cultural and political space as these figures. They are “[b]ungled trophies” (Line 14), because the kind of power they exercise is worthy of note but doesn’t align with Black power as these figures conceived of it. The Blackstone Rangers’ “country is a Nation on no map” (Line 15), both because their territory in Chicago is one that exceeds government-drawn lines and because it has more to do with affiliation than geography.

In Lines 16-29, the attitude of the speakers shift. They look on in wonder and horror at the power of the gang. The violence is all-encompassing in their territory, a point Brooks makes by identifying “passionate noon” (Line 17) and “bewitching night” (Line 18) as the hours when they are active; the poetic diction of those adjectives captures the speakers’ pride in what the Blackstone Rangers have become. Pride isn’t the only thing the speakers feel. Brooks captures the ambivalence of the speakers over what they are witnessing through a series of word plays such as “Concerts” (Line 21). To work in concert is to work together for a common purpose—fundamentally what a gang is. “Concerts” (Line 21) is also a noun that showcases the work of a particular artist.

The Blackstone Rangers are not musicians, because their power is destructive rather than “divine, vivacious” (Line 22). The sheer destructiveness of the street-fighting is a reminder that the fighting is about power, but it may also be anarchic, since “[b]ureaucracy [that] is footloose” (Line 26) and “bitter bureaus” (Line 25) are behind the fighting. If this section is from the perspective of the gang leaders, then these leaders don’t have total control over those beneath them in the hierarchy.

There is a turn in the poem in Lines 28-29, where the speakers conclude that the Blackstone Rangers are “a monstrous pearl” (Line 28), echoing the description of the Rangers as “[b]ungled trophies” (Line 14). The singleness of purpose is just what proponents of Black nationalism want for Black people, but even the leaders of the Blackstone Rangers are not confident that power can be harnessed to the benefit of Black people. If not, there is no potential for the Blackstone Rangers to fulfill Black nationalist aspirations for Black power.

Part 3, “GANG GIRLS,” is a sharp departure from the other two sections of the poem. The focus is on “Gang Girls” (Line 31) rather than “men” (Line 19), as well as on one subjective experience of gang life rather than on Blackstone Rangers’ experience in the aggregate. Finally, the central act in this part of the poem isn’t fighting or killing. It is sex. Sex has a generative potential in that it can herald “arrivals, confirmations” (Line 57) or “gleaning” (Line 58). Each of those possibilities comes in lines that end in question marks, reflecting the Rangerette Mary Ann’s hope that out of her sex with “her Ranger” (Line 49) might be born meaningful connection, love, or even a child.

That possibility seems far from likely. Even as she has sex with the Ranger, Mary Ann is aware that what she has with him is only temporary and will force her to “settle” (Line 63) for a mundane, limited life, which Brooks symbolizes with “sandwiches” and “stocking caps” (Line 63)—food and styling that is slapdash and make-do, unlike dinner set at a table or a bonnet/scarf designed to keep carefully styled hair in place. In the worst case, sex with the Ranger might create something akin to “[b]ungled trophies” (Line 14) and a “monstrous pearl” (Line 29). That creation might be “sudden blood, aborted carnival” (Line 65), descriptions that may refer to the Ranger’s sure, violent death. Brooks chooses the words “sudden blood” (Line 64) and “aborted” (Line 64), meaning that no child may come from Mary Ann’s sex with the Ranger (indicated with the “sudden blood” (Line 64) of menses), or if one does, Mary Ann may end the pregnancy.

Brooks refuses to paint Mary Ann as a passive recipient of her circumstances. That same horror and wonder at what the Rangers have created are apparent in this part of the poem as well. Mary Ann is resilient in that she “uses the nutrients of her orient” (Line 33) and still manages to be “a rose in a whiskey glass” (Line 39). “[O]rient” (Line 33) can be directional, with the implication that she lives her life realistically based on where she lives, which Brooks includes by mentioning the street name “Cottage Grove” (Line 35). She grows and survives, even if she has to do so under grave constraints because of her environment.

Her sex with the Ranger may be transactional, but Mary Ann is a “Shakedancer’s child” (Line 59)—implying that her mother performed sexually provocative dances for money. When Mary Ann “pants carefully, peers at / her laboring lover” (Lines 60-61), she is doing something her mother did not do, which is to look back at the person who commodifies her.

The carefulness of her performance of sexual pleasure for the Ranger shows a degree of self-awareness about the limits of such transactions. Sex with the Rangers ensures that Mary Ann will not be alone, lonely. In that, Mary Ann is like all the other Rangers, regardless of their sex. The ultimate message of the poem is that despite the destructiveness and violence of the Blackstone Rangers, they offer a sense of connection and identity not available elsewhere to the young people of the South Side of Chicago.