Durango Street by Frank Bonham

First published: 1965

Type of work: Social realism

Themes: Race and ethnicity, poverty, and crime

Time of work: The early 1960’s

Recommended Ages: 15-18

Locale: Southern California

Principal Characters:

• Rufus Henry, a streetwise black teenager on parole for gang activities
• Mrs. Henry, his hard-working mother who feels overwhelmed trying to raise three children in a fatherless household
• Janet Henry, Rufus’ cute twelve-year-old sister, who adores him
• Alex Robbins, a progressive young black social worker
• Simon Jones, the black teenage leader of a rival gang
• Ernie Brown, a black pro-football star

The Story

Rufus Henry, a cocky black teenager, is released from a juvenile detention camp on parole. He returns to Los Angeles to live with his mother and two younger siblings in a black ghetto. He has been warned by his parole officer to stay out of gang activities; however, Rufus believes that it is impossible to live with dignity in such a dangerous environment without the protection of membership in a respected fighting gang.

Almost immediately, Rufus’ pride and pugnacity get him in trouble with a tough gang called the Gassers. In self-defense, Rufus joins a rival gang, the Moors, and quickly becomes their leader because he is tougher and more resourceful than any of the others. He leads the Moors into a violent battle with the Gassers and routs them. Simon Jones, leader of the Gassers, vows revenge.

At this point, Alex Robbins, a young black social worker whose specialty is working with urban gangs, makes contact with the Moors. His job is to try to direct gang members away from antisocial and self-destructive behavior and into activities that will be beneficial to both themselves and society. At first, Robbins meets with cold rejection; however, he has an ace in the hole. He has found out that Rufus idolizes a black professional football player named Ernie Brown, whom Rufus secretly believes to be his real father. Robbins offers to introduce both the Moors and the Gassers to the champion athlete if the gangs will call a temporary truce. Under Rufus’ leadership, the two gangs are peaceably transported to the training camp, where they spend the day with Brown and his team and get a taste of what real achievement and self-realization are like. Rufus, a natural athlete, excels in playing football. Brown encourages the two gangs to start neighborhood football teams and offers to coach them.

Having gained the trust of the Moors, Robbins continues to exert his influence. He teaches Rufus that gang feuds are futile because each side feels compelled to retaliate against the other indefinitely; therefore, the violence escalates from fists to knives and eventually to guns. With Robbins’ encouragement, Rufus decides to hold a big dance and show the entire ghetto that the Moors are not dangerous criminals, but a mature and responsible organization.

Naturally, Simon Jones and the rest of the Gassers crash the dance to cause trouble. They set off a smoke bomb in the ventilation system, and Rufus takes charge of the situation and averts a potentially disastrous panic. The Gassers’ plot boomerangs against them: They are charged with arson and conspiracy. The Moors have become heroes for their enterprise and managerial expertise, while the Gassers are disgraced.

By the end of the novel, Rufus realizes that he has some potential of escaping from poverty and drudgery by developing his talents as an athlete and as a leader. He decides to finish high school and try to get a scholarship to attend college.

Context

Durango Street was published in 1965, the same year the entire nation was shocked and terrified by the riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles—an orgy of burning and looting that broke out in a black ghetto and finally had to be quelled by thousands of heavily armed troops of the California National Guard, leaving miles of burned buildings and gutted stores that resembled scenes of Berlin after World War II. Similar rioting occurred in black ghettos in other big cities that same year.

Poverty and racial discrimination have existed in America for centuries; however, the poor tended to remain ignorant of how the affluent lived, and vice versa. The catalyst that caused the violent reaction was television. For the first time in history, the underprivileged were treated to a daily spectacle of white, middle-class luxury. The same underprivileged people who lived on mush and beans in rat-infested dwellings and sometimes had to eat cat food were being solicited by television commercials to buy new Cadillacs, diamond necklaces, and vacation trips to Tahiti. Television also brought vivid pictures of the killing, burning, looting, and mass hysteria of the riots into every living room. For the first time in history, the entire American public began asking why such smoldering hatred existed in the nation’s cities and what, if anything, could be done to deal with a condition that bordered on revolution.

Frank Bonham is an exceptionally popular author of juvenile fiction because he has an instinct for identifying subjects of outstanding social significance and the integrity to treat them with authenticity. He relies heavily on research. Before writing Durango Street, he attended meetings of street-club workers with their groups, visited detention camps, and accompanied gang members on outings in Southern California. He was able to attend meetings and conferences of social workers and a psychiatrist, as well as meetings between social workers and the parents of gang members. As a result, his novel is a valuable document that illustrates in dramatic form many of the problems that exist in urban slums. In an epilogue to his novel, he states: “It would be a mistake to conclude...that the members of any one race are more gang-oriented than another.... What does seem to be true, though, is that racial discrimination is a strong factor in the formation of such groups.”