Hoe Avenue peace meeting

In the early 1970s, the New York City police recognized that there were as many as 10,000 gang members in the Bronx alone. On December 2, 1971, Cornell Benjamin, known as "Black Benjie", a former heroin addict turned community activist who had joined the Bronx gang the Ghetto Brothers and become their minister of peace, led a delegation to meet with members of rival gangs the Mongols, the Savage Skulls, and the Seven Immortals in order to negotiate a truce. He was beaten to death. ==Peace meeting==

Instead of avenging the death, the leader of the Ghetto Brothers, Benjamin Melendez, known as "Yellow Benjie", called a peace meeting at the Boys Club on Hoe Avenue. including the Black Pearls, Black Spades, Dirty Dozens, Dutchmen, Latin Spades, Liberated Panthers, Magnificent Seven, Peacemakers, Royal Javelins, Savage Skulls, Seven Immortals, Turbans, and Young Sinners, together with police and city officials. Presidents, vice-presidents, and warlords sat on folding chairs in a circle in the middle of the club's gymnasium. Gang members took seats in the bleachers, while wives were made to wait outside the building. Only two women were permitted inside—the presidents of the all-girl gangs, the Alley Cats and the Savage Sisters—and they were seated in the last row, behind the warlords. To guard against violence, a member of the Turbans gang was stationed with a rifle on a rooftop across the street. The gang representatives agreed that the media would be glad for them to kill each other in a gang war. They voted for peace. ==Aftermath==

The truce lasted until the outbreak of the crack cocaine turf wars in the early 1980s. A member of the Bronx gang crisis squad of the New York City Youth Services Agency, Eduardo Vincenti, known as "Spanish Eddie", worked to have every major gang in the Bronx sign a formal treaty and form a grand alliance to be called "The Family", which he hoped could be guided to become a force for good. Sixty-eight gangs had signed on when Vincenti and 10 other crisis squad members were suddenly reassigned to Brooklyn. He continued his efforts in the Bronx in his spare time, surviving being shot in the face trying to prevent a gun battle in the West Farms neighborhood. == Commemorations==

In 2011, a 40th anniversary commemoration was held at the Bronx River Art Center. Former members of the Ghetto Brothers and Black Panthers spoke to the New York Daily News in advance; Joseph Mpa of the Black Panthers noted the role of the truce in the rise of hip-hop. In June 2023, the intersection where "Black Benjie" was killed was renamed to Cornell "Black Benjie" Benjamin Way. == In media ==

The peace meeting inspired the gang summit in the 1979 film The Warriors, and is the focus of Shan Nicholson's 2015 documentary Rubble Kings. ==See also==