I'm John Bachelors, this is CBSI on the world with Harry Segal, a senior editor of the

City and online journal.

Also he writes his column for the New York Daily News and the column attends to an event

in Yaki Stadium earlier this month of August, 19, 2023, celebrating commemorating an amazing

fact that 50 years ago hip-hop was born, not in the venues of bandstand or television,

but in the violence of the South Bronx, it's a fantastic story.

And I come to Harry to say, Harry, I'm old enough to remember, 1970, 71, 72, 73.

The city was overwhelmed with drug abuse, with gangs, and with a sense of lawlessness

in the street so that walking on the upper west side, where I was living at the time, I

could see people fighting on the street and just cross the street to get away from it.

There was no sense of order whatsoever.

Hip-hop, if I understand correctly, came out of a truce that happened sometime in those

months, explaining quickly, Harry, because there's a celebration here of music, of young

people who were under at great peril, finding a way forward that is joyful.

Down, there's so much unpack there, but I'm going to do the really fast version, which

is in 1971, this gang that was becoming more political called the ghetto brothers had

an older member, a drug addict, recovered, named Black Benji, who went to make peace between

warring gang members who were teens, kids.

They were beefing outside of a junior high school and he was murdered.

After his murder, the city's largest gangs each sent two representatives to meet in one

building in the South Bronx with the police, the community officers outside,

reputedly with a sniper, not from the police, outside the building, in case things went wrong,

...