Bastards of the Party (2005)

Bastards of the Party

Bastards of the Party, is a documentary tracing the history of Los Angeles' Blood and Crip gangs that emerged in the early 1970s, but this story actually starts in the late 1940s as director Cle Bone Sloan interviews members of the Businessmen, Slausons, and Gladiators which were among the gangs that formed in the late 1940s and 1950s.

This early gang history leads up to the Watts Riots of 1965 when the traffic stop of Marquette Fry caused one of the biggest urban uprisings of the time. LAPD Chief William Parker's (1950-1966) racist views towards the black community and his aggressive police tactics played a significant role to the building tensions between frustrated black residents of LA and an insensitive police force. One of the positive results from the 1965 uprising was that it brought calm to the black gangs in Los Angeles and violence in the black community was on the decline.

Members of the Slausons, Gladiators and many of the other various black gangs were motivated to become politically conscious during the latter part of the 1960s. Many political organizations were born out of the Watts Riots, but Ron Karenga's US Organization and the LA Chapter of the Black Panther Party were among the most active and popular groups. Through COINTELPRO though, the FBI put fuel on the fire that existed between the two organizations and that instigation led to the assassination of both Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter and John Huggins of the Black Panther Party at a UCLA hall in January of 1969.

Bastards of the Party links this unfortunate event plus others with the formation of the Bloods and Crips in the early 1970s and its continued growth throughout the 1980s and 90s. Bastards of the Party reveals that the contemporary gang situation has historical roots that go back several decades and to address this culture is to address other social problems that exist within our communities.

Director: Cle Bone Sloan
Producer: Cle Bone Sloan & Antoine Fuqua
Executive Producer: Jack Gulick
Co-Producer: Alex Demyanenko, Keith Salmon, Alex Alonso
Editor: Keith Salmon
Cinematography: Haskell Wexler
Appearances: Jack Blum, Danifu, Chinaman, Mike Davis, Joe Hicks, Ericka Huggins, Khalifani aka Bird, Geronimo Pratt, Wes Swearingen, Raymond "Suge" Wright and many more

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