ABSTRACT
Gangs may be larger or smaller, named or nameless, modestly or extensively differentiated, more or less active in gang fighting, stronger or weaker in leadership, black, white, yellow or brown, without affecting their identity as gangs. Simultaneous field observation in several white lower-class neighborhoods turned up evidence that gangs were congregating at numerous street corners throughout the area. The fact is that the urban adolescent street gang is as old as the American city. Henry Adams, in his Education, describes in vivid detail the gang fights between the North-siders and Southsiders on Boston Common in the 1840s. The main reason that people have consistently mistaken the prevalence of gangs is the widespread tendency to define them as gangs on the basis of the presence or absence of one or two characteristics that are thought to be essential to the "true" gang.
