Inside The Deadly War That Divided Chicago Into Two Nations: Larry Hoover vs Jeff Fort – ht
Two boys, both born in Mississippi, both black, both poor, both headed to the same city, the same Southside, the same streets on a collision course that would divide Chicago for the next half century. Jeff Fort, born February 20th, 1947 in Aberdine, Mississippi. Larry Hoover, born November 30th, 1950 in Jackson, Mississippi.
Fort’s family lands in the Woodlon neighborhood in 1955. Hoover’s family rolls into Englewood when the boy is barely four years old. Neither family had much. Neither neighborhood had much either. What those streets did have was war. All right, y’all. Now, let me keep it real with you for a second. I spent like three straight hours digging into Jeff Fort’s early years and what I found, man, it honestly surprised me.
Cuz the story everybody thinks they know, the gangster, the terrorist dude locked up in Supermax for life. That story don’t start where you’d expect. It starts with a kid. A kid who was so good at calming people down, settling arguments, bringing folks together that people around him had a nickname for him. They called him Angel.
Angel. Jeff Fort. The same man who would later negotiate a terrorism deal with Muama Gaddafi. They called him Angel. By the time he’s 18 years old, Ford has done something almost nobody in Chicago gang history had ever managed. He took 21 separate street gangs, 21 crews who hated each other, and folded them into a single federation.
He called the governing body the main 21. 5,000 members answering to one structure on the south side of Chicago in the 1960s. That is not a street gang. That is an organization. Meanwhile, in Englewood, Larry Hoover is 13 years old when his gang’s leader gets murdered. He doesn’t run. He steps up. By age 15, he has grown the Supreme Gangsters to over a thousand members. 15 years old.
Then came the money. And this personally, I think this is the most underrated part of the entire story. This is where the government handed the keys to the kingdom to a gang, smiled, and called it a poverty program. 1967, Fort creates a nonprofit called the Grassroots Independent Voters of Illinois.
He applies for a federal anti-poverty grant through the Office of Economic Opportunity. $927,000 approved. Gang members are put on the payroll as job training instructors. President Richard Nixon publicly praises the program. Ford is invited to Nixon’s inauguration ball in January 1969. He doesn’t go. Jeff Fort gets invited to the White House and says, “No, let that land for a second.
” But behind the scenes, the program is hemorrhaging money. Eugene Haristen, Fort’s co-leader and assistant project director of the program, gets convicted of paying teenage gang members $1 each and some cold cuts to commit murder while running a federally funded jobs program. Senator John Mlelen hauls fort before his subcommittee.
The very first question prepared for him after all the congressional resources, all the investigators, all the federal scrutiny, the first question is, “Where do you live?” Jeff Fort refuses to answer. He refuses to answer every single question. Convicted of contempt of Congress, Mlelen stands up and declares, “It doesn’t make sense, this squandering of taxpayers money.
” and the White House, the same White House that praised the program, says nothing. Then comes January 1969. Fort and Hoover sit down to talk Alliance. And for one brief moment, it looks like the two most powerful young gang leaders in Chicago history might unite. They don’t. Fort Refuses equal partnership.
He wants the throne, not a table. A shooting breaks out near Hoover’s home. By June 1969, it’s over. Two kings, same city, same streets, irreconcilable. The war begins. When the alliance with Fort collapsed in June 1969, Hoover didn’t grieve it. He pivoted. That same month, he sits down with David Barksdale, King David, leader of the Black Disciples.
They meet at St. Stevens Parish House, 6455 South Peoria, Englewood, a church. And out of that church meeting comes the largest gang merger in Chicago history. Barksdale’s 10,000 Black Disciples. Hoover’s 5,000 Supreme Gangsters. Together, the Black Gangster Disciple Nation. Barksdale takes the title King. Hoover takes chairman.
Then comes June 7th, 1970. Barksdale and Hoover are at a bar on West 69th Street in Englewood. A fragile truce is technically in effect between the Disciples and Forts Black Pea Stones. Technically, a PE stone known on the street as Suitcase Charlie is also there that night. According to some accounts, he drops an M14 rifle and it fires on impact.
Other sources call it a deliberate hit. Either way, the bullet tears into Barksdale’s side and lodges near his kidneys. Hoover gets him into the car, drives hard to St. Bernard’s hospital, and stays with him. Doctors say Hoover saved his life, but the kidney damage is permanent, and a clock starts ticking on King David that nobody can stop.
1973, Hoover is 22 years old and a drug dealer named William Young goes missing. Young, 19 years old, known on the street as Pooky, is accused of stealing from the gangster Disciples. On February 26th, Hoover orders Young’s killing. Pooky Young is murdered. He was 19, a teenager. That detail tends to get buried under the scale of everything that follows.
But William Young had a name, and he was somebody’s son. September 21st, 1973. Hoover is arrested, convicted, sentenced to 150 to 200 years. Stateville Correctional Center. Prison doesn’t stop Larry Hoover. It elevates him. By 1978, he effectively runs Stateville. Not metaphorically, literally. He later tells people he found his blueprint reading a biography of Mayor Richard J.
Daly. It showed you can make a transition from a street gang to a socially acceptable gang. The man is serving 150 years and taking notes on municipal governance. September 2nd, 1974. David Barksdale dies. Kidney failure. 4 years after that night on West 69th Street. He is 27 years old. Hoover, already locked in Stateville, inherits the throne of the entire Black Gangster Disciple Nation, King from a prison cell.
April 1978, Hoover organizes a work stoppage at Stateville over rotten food and brutal conditions. He gets rival gang leaders inside the prison to stand with him, then pitches something nobody had ever attempted, a formal two coalition system. Every gang in Chicago aligned under one of two flags. November 11th, 1978. Folk Nation is born inside Stateville.
Gangster Disciples, Black Disciples, Simon City Royals, 26 Spanish Cobras, Maniac Latin Disciples, Imperial Gangsters. The name folks comes from the Simon City Royals, a white gang which tells you everything about how wide Hoover was cast in his net. Six-pointed star of David, the pitchfork, the number six. Fort watches from the outside.
And in 1981 he answers People Nation, El Rukans, Vice Lords, Latin Kings, Mickey Cobras, Four Corner Hustlers, Five Point Star, Crescent Moon, The Number Five, Mirror Opposites, Surgically Designed to Counter Everything Hoover built. By the late 1980s, the two coalitions claim over 100,000 active members. Chicago doesn’t have a gang problem anymore. It has two nations.
The FBI recordings would come later, but when they did, they caught Hoover talking about the first time he ever saw Jeff Fort walk into a room. His exact words. You could hear a pin drop when he was walking in. I told myself I could have a mob like that. Rivals, architects, both of them building toward the same cliff.
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That would honestly mean a lot. All right, now let’s get back to the story. By the mid 1980s, the map of Chicago’s Southside has been redrawn. Not by city planners, not by politicians, by two men. One in a converted theater fortress. One in a minimum security prison that looks like a community college.
Every corner, every alley, every floor of every public housing tower, five or six people or folks. There is no neutral ground. 100,000 people at minimum living under flags drawn by Fort and Hoover. And neither king is free. That detail is worth sitting with. The two most powerful men on Chicago Southside are both behind bars. And it doesn’t matter. Let’s start with Hoover.
Because when the FBI finally got eyes inside Vienna Correctional Center, what they found was wild. Now, I’ve been inside a prison once doing a journalism piece. And even a regular medium security spy hits you the second you walk in. Heavy doors, concrete. that feeling in your chest like the place is pressing down on you.
But Vienna, according to the investigators who saw it, the place didn’t even feel like a prison. It felt like a campus. And Hoover, he wasn’t just another inmate there. He was the landlord. FBI recordings document what daily life looked like for the chairman. $400 alligator boots. specially prepared food, not cafeteria trays, actual meals, bodyguards who held keys to every internal door in the facility except the one leading outside.
The man is serving 150 years, and he is eating better than most of the correctional staff. His drug operation is generating $100 million a year in Illinois alone. 100 million from a prison cell while Hoover is running a corporation for is building towards something that has no precedent in American gang history.
Something that will permanently change how law enforcement categorizes street gangs. Something that even now most people don’t fully understand. Fort hears that Louisie Farrakhan received $5 million from Libyan leader Muhammad Gaddafi. The money had been alone, a political gesture from one ideological ally to another.
And Jeff Fort was sitting on his throne at 3947 South Drexel Boulevard. A converted theater his people called the Fort decides he wants in. He doesn’t ask for a loan. He offers services. March 11th, 1986. Eluka and members board a flight to Libya. They sit down with Libyan intelligence. The offer on the table. Elukin will carry out terrorist attacks inside the United States in exchange for $2.5 million per year.
Bombings, assassinations, domestic terror for hire from a Chicago street gang on behalf of a foreign government. The FBI is already watching. July 31st, 1986. Undercover agents run a sting operation. El Rukhan members purchase a militaryra rocket launcher for $1,800. Proof of capability. Proof of intent. The FBI moves.
Raids hit 3947 South Drexel. inside the fort. 33 firearms, three hand grenades, and enough evidence to end Jeff Fort’s life as a free man permanently. 1987, Ford is convicted of terrorism conspiracy. 80 years, he becomes the first American ever convicted of plotting terrorism for a foreign government. Added to his existing 13-year drug trafficking sentence and a 1988 murder conviction carrying 75 years, Jeff Fort now faces 168 years in federal prison.
168 years for a man who was once invited to the presidential inauguration. There is something almost Shakespearean about it. the fall so steep, so total, so specific. He didn’t get brought down by a rival. He got brought down by envy by hearing that Farrakhan got $5 million from Gaddafi and deciding he deserved the same.
That particular detail, I personally think it’s one of the most psychologically revealing moments in this entire story. the most dangerous man on the south side of Chicago. Taken out not by bullets but by jealousy. Fort disappears into federal maximum security custody. 8 years later when ADX Florence opens in 1995, the Alcatraz of the Rockies, he is among its first transfers and Hoover, still at Vienna, still in his alligator boots, still running everything, watches it happen.
The tapes would later catch him talking about Fort with something that sounds almost like reverence, about seeing him walk into a room in the 60s, about the silence that followed him everywhere. Two kings, one just fell, the other one moves like nobody can touch him. Ford is gone, buried in federal concrete.
And Hoover, watching from Vienna, decides to try something nobody has ever attempted. He is going to rebrand a hund00 million drug empire as a civil rights movement. And for a moment, it almost works. But first, the empire fractures from within. 1989. Hoover starts pulling the gangster disciples away from the broader folk nation, consolidating power, cutting off the branch to feed the trunk.
The black disciples feel it immediately. Two decades of shared identity, shared symbols, shared blood. and Hoover is done sharing. By 1991, black disciple leader Mickey Bull Johnson is dead, killed in a GDL linked shooting. By 1993, the black gangster disciple nation, the alliance born in that Englewood church cemented the night Hoover carried Barksdale bleeding to St.
Bernard’s hospital is finished. Gangster disciples and black disciples are now enemies. Hoover dismantled his own coalition, chasing soul control. The king ate his own kingdom, but the public never sees any of that. What the public sees is the rebranding. Hoover renames the gangster Disciples. They are now Growth and Development.
He builds businesses Ghetto Prisoner Clothing Incorporated, a music promotion company. Then he creates 21st century votes of total empowerment, a political action committee. On paper, on the street, the internal code is still the duck. Nothing will hurt the duck but his bill. You do not discuss gang business ever. Anyone who talks risk death.
The politics are window dressing. The operation underneath never stops. May 1993, 5,000 people march on Chicago City Hall over healthc care cuts organized by 21st century vote. It looks like a community movement. It is a community movement funded entirely by cocaine. August 1993, Hoover applies for parole. And here is where Chicago’s political class loses its mind completely.
Former mayor Eugene Sawyer endorses him publicly, calls him a peacemaker. Chicago alderman, make the trip to Joliet Prison to personally vouch for the man. Illinois Attorney General Roland Burus, the state’s top law enforcement officer, claims neutrality. The Chicago Tribune editorial board erupts, “How can political leaders take up his cause?” The answer is not admiration.
It is fear. When a gang runs 30,000 members across 35 states, aldermen don’t show up because they believe in rehabilitation. They show up because they understand power. What none of them mention, the Chicago Tribune is already pulling the thread. What they find is this. 21st Century Votes founding directives include a convicted murderer, a felon convicted of attempted murder, and an ex-convict who police say personally smuggled drugs into prison for Hoover.
One founding director is awaiting trial for murder. That is the board of the political action committee that just put 5,000 people in the street September 1993. 10,000 gangster disciples gather at a picnic in Cana. Hoover’s pre-recorded voice plays over speakers. The grounds are decorated with murals listing active gang leaders, Hoover’s name among them, while somewhere across the city, a school principal is writing the parole board, calling him a visionary.
The FBI has been in the room the whole time. October through December 1993, federal agents plant transmitters inside visitor badges. Every in-person meeting captured the tapes document a man ordering violence against rivals, micromanaging distribution routes, and moving drug money through nonprofit accounts.
Not one dollar of growth and development funding ever reached the community program. Not one. August 31st, 1995. 40 counts conspiracy, extortion, money laundering, continuing criminal enterprise. 1997, convicted on all 40 six additional life terms. At sentencing, Hoover stands and calls it a politically motivated farce. Says the US attorney prosecuted him to launch a political career.
The judge sentences him anyway. Prosecutor Ron Safer delivers the number that ends every debate. In the final year before the federal case, there were 930 murders in Chicago. The gangster disciples were responsible for more than half. More than half. Hoover is transferred to ADX Florence, Colorado, the Alcatraz of the Rockies. Soundproof concrete sales 23 hours a day alone.
And when he arrives at ADX Florence, Jeff Fort has already been there for years. ADX Florence. 49 acres of poured concrete and razor wire in Fremont County, Colorado. El Chapo, the unabomber, the 911 conspirators. And somewhere inside that fortress, locked in separate cells, the two men who divided Chicago. For years, the streets whispered a rumor.
People said that around 2015, the government pulled Fort and Hoover off lockdown. Said they sat together in a cafeteria holding symposiums talking about community reform. Two old rivals finally making peace. Man, I wanted that to be true. But let me keep it real with you. For men like Fort and Hoover, ADX Florence doesn’t have a cafeteria.
It doesn’t do symposiums. It is designed for absolute crushing isolation. Soundproof 7 by12 concrete boxes. Meals pushed through a steel slot 23 hours a day alone. The two most powerful men to ever run the southside live in the same facility, but they will never see each other’s faces again.
Meanwhile, outside those walls, the Gangster Disciples now operate in over 100 cities across all 50 states. The lines these two men drew never disappeared. They just spread. October 11th, 2018, Kanye West sits across from Donald Trump in the Oval Office and makes his case. He calls Hoover a beacon, a living statue, then delivers the line, “Nobody forgets.
” In an alternate universe, I am him and I have to go and get him free. December 2021, Kanye and Drake end their yearslong feud for one night. 70,000 people at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. 240 nations streaming. All of it for a man in a concrete box in Colorado. May 28th, 2025. Trump commutes Hoover’s six federal life sentences. The headline screams freedom.
The fine print says otherwise. Presidential clemency does not touch state crimes. The chairman’s 200-year Illinois murder sentence for 19-year-old William Pooky Young killed in 1973 remains. His state parole date October 2062. He would be 111 years old. Jeff Fort still at ADX Florence 168 years. Compassionate release denied.
He will likely die there. Larry Hoover Jr. said it plainly. They want to give him a legacy of Al Capone when I think his legacy was going to be like a Malcolm X. Two boys from Mississippi, both still inside. The city they divided, still divided. The war never ended. It just ran out of kings.