So.. I was on a bit of a documentary binge about gangs in the US - and I ended up looking through Wikipedia articles on some of the most notorious. Bloods, Crips, La Raza, Aryan Brotherhood, etc...
And on the Crips page it makes the claim -
"Crips in prison modules during the 1970s and 80s would sometimes speak in Swahili to maintain privacy from guards and rival gangs"
The source for this is a book called "Inside the Crips: Life Inside L.A.'s Most Notorious Gang" by a guy called Colton Simpson.
Now I have never heard about this anywhere else, it's the only reference and there is no similar claim on the Bloods page (or any other major African-American gang for that matter)
My question is, was this a real thing?
Did some members of the Crips in the 70's and 80's in LA speak Swahili?
Where would they have even learnt it? I can't imagine many East African language teachers in inner-city LA in the 70's?
And if it was used - how wide spread was the practise? Did it continue? Are there current Crips members who speak Swahilli? (this may be breaking the 20 year rule though!)
Thanks.
EDIT: Just noticed this may actually fit this weeks theme!? That's a funny coincidence!
In prison they did, before there were sizable Crip gangs in the jails/prisons there was only the Black Guerrilla Family, and a lot of members were part of earlier countercultural and Black liberation movements (e.g. Black Panthers) before ending up in the correctional system.
There was (and still is) a trend among black revolutionaries to change their names to an African name, which is what another Crip gang member did in the eighties before writing the book "Monster: Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member"; Kody Scott became Sanyika Shakur.
In that book he touches on learning Swahili while imprisoned at (I think) Pelican Bay. I'll use a quote about him and the book (Monster) because I can't find the book itself right now:
He informally adopted the name Sanyika Shakur, learned to speak Swahili, became involved with the New African Independence movement. Paroled again in November '88, he legally changed his name to Shakur.
Crimes of the Centuries - Steven Chermak, 2016
So I would say a sizable amount of Crips would know some amount of Swahili, increasing with the age and rank of the Crip in question because they were primarily exposed to it in the penitentiary. I highly recommend Monster: the Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member to learn about what you're asking from an actual former Crip who was active from the late 70s to the early 90s.