The Blackstone Rangers

In “The Blackstone Rangers,” Gwendolyn Brooks relies on imagery, metaphor, symbol, and allusion to represent gang life in 1960s Chicago as the skewed realization of Black Power.

In Part 1, “AS SEEN BY DISCIPLINES,” Brooks offers the perspective of the police. She relies on imagery having to do with the body—“[s]ores in the city” (Line 4)—to represent the Blackstone Rangers as part of the city, but one that is a sign of decay. That implied metaphor echoes the idea of the inner city as a diseased part of an otherwise functioning system. “[H]eal” (Line 5) recalls one of the utopian ideals of the 1960s, namely that all people and most particularly Americans, have within them the capacity to overcome differences and upheavals that marked the political movements of the period. The use of the language of disease to describe the Blackstone Rangers implies that the hope for love and peace are futile ones. The irony is that the police are primed for violence just as the Rangers are. Brooks gives this perspective short shrift by making Part 1 the briefest of the poem.