[Chicago Crossings: Bridges and Boundaries, reel 36; Kerry Marshall]

Artist Kerry James Marshall talks with a Kartemquin Films crew about Baruch Goldstein and growing up in South Central Los Angeles during the emergence of the Crips and other violent gangs.

0:34Copy video clip URL Kerry James Marshall talks about the aftermath of the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre and the iconification of Baruch Goldstein, and how it inspired one of his most recent pieces.

3:15Copy video clip URL Marshall talks about his childhood and his family’s multiple moves, eventually settling in South Central Los Angeles. “I remember when gangs were a different kind of gang, back then, when they were more like a club,” he says. Marshall goes on to tell his first-person account of the evolution of gangs, sparked by the inception of the Crips.

5:23Copy video clip URL Marshall posits his hypothesis for the emergence of violent gangs: “When the Crips came into existence it was a generation of kids who were all really short; they were all little-bitty guys, so they couldn’t beat anybody up, so they had to shoot people. I saw that as the turning point in gang warfare,” says Marshall.

6:13Copy video clip URL Marshall continues to talk with the Kartemquin crew about growing up in the birthplace of violent gang warfare at its inception while B-roll footage of his studio is taken.