Black Brothers, Inc. : The Violent Rise and Fall of Philadelphia's Black Mafia

A great book. Its very detailed and the author really connects the dots. Sometimes I went to sleep afraid at the memory of the horrific crimes and the terrible legacy created by the Black Mafia. May it never happen again.

I grew in the area that is addressed in the book (A block away from the Richard Allen Housing Projects) I am to young to remember the orginators of the Black Mafia but I came up during the era of the JBM and I knew,hung out and hustled with a lot of the sons and nephews of many of the founding members.This book puts everything out there and lets the reader soak in about how "Being Fly" and connected could shorten your life span. I have read it several times now I am still blown away by it. GET THIS BOOK!!!

The only thing I can say about this is: WONDERFUL! This is a great book and I highly recommend it to anyone who grew up in South Philly during the 70's. Heck, if you just grew up in Philly period, you'd be interested in reading this book.

This is certainly a must-read. Like one poster wrote, Mr. Griffin did a thorough job chronicling events that were (before this book was published) often rumored of and never elaborated on. The Black Mafia/Black Brothers/Black Muslim syndicate had long tentacles extending beyond Philadelphia, but eventually crumbled because of its own ultra-violent behavior. In so many ways, Philadelphia was the epicenter of Black America during the 1970s, and the book does a great job of exposing a number of historical events. I grew up hearing about the Hanafi massacre, the mysterious beheadings, the life and death of Major Coxson, the prison murder of Bo Price, and the rumors surrounding the Nation of Islam. If anyone is interested, this book is beyond worthy, and deserves a space in your library.

Imformative, as far as who some of the chararcters where that I only heard about as I was growing up in Philadelphia and why they where so feared. It also explained in detail some of the historic events that neighborhood rumors and newspapers only touched on.