Gang Leader for a Day: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Sudhir begins the narrative by describing his student days in the PhD program in sociology at the University of Chicago. He lives alone between Hyde Park, where the university is, and Woodlawn, a neighborhood of lower-income families, predominately African-American. Sudhir notes that in the first few weeks, although he enjoyed walking around both Hyde Park and Woodlawn, he realized there was a large gulf between life in the two areas. Sudhir wonders how to bridge this gulf, and, in the meantime, observes what he can about Woodlawn and the people living there.

Sudhir writes that, as professionals, sociologists are divided between those who conduct quantitative, mostly statistical, research, and those who describe societies as they observe and experience them. Sudhir wonders whether he wants to engage in one or another of these subdivisions of his field, or if he has to choose between them at all. Meanwhile, he meets Professor William Julius Wilson, a member of the UChicago sociology faculty, and agrees to ask survey questions of African Americans living in the neighborhoods surrounding the university.

Sudhir meets a group of older men, including two named Charlie and Old Time, in Washington Park, where he often jogs to clear his mind after classes. Sudhir talks to them about the South Side of Chicago, where many Irish immigrants used to live before they left for the Chicagoland suburbs, and before African American families began moving into the neighborhood. Charlie and Old Time say that they have little hope relations between white and black populations in Chicago can improve. They also say that they wonder whether black poverty as a social issue can be solved or even lessened, either by people suffering from it or by the local and state government charged with helping them.

Sudhir appreciates speaking with Charlie and Old Time, but they recommend that he talk to younger men in the neighborhood to get a sense of the way things are now, rather than how they were in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Taking this advice, Sudhir visits a housing project in the Oakland neighborhood, in November of 1989. He still has his clipboard with a questionnaire, created by Bill Wilson. In the lobby of one building, Sudhir asks around to see if the young men congregating there know of anyone living in a couple particular apartments listed on his question form. The young men are confused as to why he’s in the project in the first place, and wonder aloud if he’s Mexican and a member of a rival gang, the Latin Kings.

Sudhir is confused, and though he tells the young men he is a researcher from the university, there to ask questions of people living in certain apartments, the men reply that he must stay with them, and that no one lives in the apartments he’s charged with visiting. Finally, Sudhir convinces one of the young men to let him ask something. Sudhir does, reading off the sheet: “How does it feel to be black and poor?” The young men in the lobby laugh openly at what is, to them, an absurd question.

The young men do not threaten Sudhir, but they surround him until a man named JT arrives, and asks what Sudhir is doing in the Oakland projects. Sudhir repeats that he is asking questions for a UChicago survey of the neighborhood. JT, who Sudhir realizes is the leader of a unit of the gang of which the young men are members, tells Sudhir that he is not African American, as the survey indicates. Instead, JT identifies himself using a racial epithet, saying that African Americans live in suburbs and “have jobs,” whereas people like JT reside in the projects and are in gangs. JT leaves, still somewhat confused at Sudhir but not openly hostile, and the young men huddle around Sudhir in the stairwell of the project, treating him mostly with bemused indifference.

Sudhir stays up much of the night, as the young men around him – “foot soldiers” in JT’s gang, known as the Black Kings – tell stories, smoke, and drink beer. JT comes back, after having conferred with his superiors, and talks to Sudhir again. He tells Sudhir that if he’s interested in learning about life in Chicago, he shouldn’t ask questions from surveys, nor should he be formal and “play by the rules” of academia. Sudhir listens eagerly to JT, and is surprised to hear that JT himself graduated from college and took some sociology courses there. JT lets Sudhir go in the early morning, and Sudhir is invigorated by his new firsthand experience with the members of the Black Kings (BK) gang, and especially with JT.

Sudhir goes back to his studio apartment, wondering whether he should continue with his normal graduate routine that day, of classes and department business. But after showering, he buys beer and goes back to the same project. He finds JT and says that, if JT says Sudhir should observe people and their daily lives, then he, Sudhir, is happy to do it. JT says that Sudhir is courageous for returning, even if JT is still slightly confused by his persistent desire to research the community. They talk for a time, and when JT is called away on gang business, he tells Sudhir to return the following week, to continue observing life in the Oakland projects.