The Savage Skulls are a mostly
Puerto Rican and
African American
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
street gang
A gang is a social group, group or secret society, society of associates, friends, or members of a family with a defined leadership and internal organization that identifies with or claims control over Wiktionary:territory#Noun, territory in a ...
started in the
Hunts Point area of the
Bronx
The Bronx ( ) is the northernmost of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It shares a land border with Westchester County, New York, West ...
during the late 1960s, gaining popularity in the 1970s. The gang declared war on the
drug dealer
A drug is any chemical substance other than a nutrient or an essential dietary ingredient, which, when administered to a living organism, produces a biological effect. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalation, injection, smoking, ingestio ...
s operating in the Hunts Point area in the early 1970s, and was also involved in a number of running battles with rival gangs, including the Seven Immortals, Savage Nomads, and Dirty Dozen.
The gang was photographed by Jean-Pierre Laffont in 1972 and were the subject of the 1979
documentary film
A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...
''
80 Blocks From Tiffany's.''
The leader of the gang was Felipe Mercado. Like the
Savage Nomads, gang members would appropriate
Nazi symbolism
The 20th-century German Nazi Party made extensive use of graphic symbols, especially the swastika, notably in the form of the swastika flag, which became the co-national flag of Nazi Germany in 1933, and the sole national flag in 1935. A very ...
to project "how menacing and terrible they were." This included wearing ''
swastikas'', wearing
Nazi helmets and having positions called "
Gestapo
The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
" within the gang's ranks.
See also
*
Universal Zulu Nation
The Universal Zulu Nation is an international hip hop culture, hip hop awareness group formed by electro (music), electro/hip hop artist Afrika Bambaataa.
According to the website of the UZN, the Zulu Nation stands for "knowledge, wisdom, und ...
*''
80 Blocks from Tiffany's''
*
Black Spades
The Black Spades were a mostly African-American street gang which started in the Bronx in the Bronxdale houses during the late 1960s and gained popularity in the 1970s. The gang began to spread from the Bronx to Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, S ...
*
Savage Nomads
*
Julio 204
JULIO 204 was a Puerto Rican resident of Inwood who wrote graffiti in his youth. He's usually credited as being the original New York City writer and the inspiration for Taki 183. He started writing his nickname in his neighborhood as early as ...
References
{{Organized crime groups in New York City
Gangs in New York City
Street gangs
African-American gangs
Hunts Point, Bronx
1960s establishments in New York City