Tracing the Roots of Gang Activity

Everyone in the New York neighborhood knew that once night fell, it was best to get to your home and stay there, behind locked doors. The darkened streets belonged to “them,” the wild, ragtag kids from broken homes whose nightly mission was to wreak havoc and enjoy themselves while doing it.

But after a local building was destroyed by fire following one of the group’s late-night forays, the community finally had had enough. They arranged a meeting to seek a solution to the youths’ reign of terror, once and for all.

But within a few days the youths were back roaming the streets, and doing as they pleased.

Just another story ripped from yesterday’s news? No, the year was 1791, and as tonight’s History Channel special “Street Gangs: A Secret History” aptly illustrates, life in urban America hasn’t changed quite as much as you might have thought over the past 200 years.

The two-hour documentary (at 9 p.m.) offers a sprawling overview of the forces that traditionally have shaped gang development in this country, a phenomenon that has repeated itself countless times across ethnic and racial lines.

The common denominators are poverty and a sense of disenfranchisement from the prevailing power structure, two factors that never seem to be in short supply.

The proliferation of guns and the introduction of crack cocaine in the 1980s helped usher in a new era when turf wars evolved into battles over market share. The program loses some steam as it moves beyond the 1980s, however, largely because modern gangs already have been so scrutinized by the media and even glamorized by pop culture. But by these closing minutes, viewers have already gained a sobering understanding of a way of life that’s part of living in America.