Murder Town, USA

YASSER ARAFAT PAYNE is a professor of sociology in the department of sociology and criminal justice; and the department of Africana studies at the University of Delaware. Dr. Payne completed his Ph.D. in social-personality psychology and postdoctoral fellowship (National Institute of Drug Abuse) in New York City’s largest jail, Rikers Island. Dr. Payne’s street ethnographic research program draws on a methodological framework entitled: StreetParticipatory Action Research— the process of involving members of street identified populations in research and local activism. Also, Dr. Payne’s research program focuses on street culture; gun violence; policing and reentry; experiences with work and school; and Gangster Rap music and culture.   BROOKLYNN KRISTINA HITCHENS is an assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland. She recently completed a Postdoc in the Department (2020-2021). She is a sociologist and critical criminologist who studies race, class and gender inequities in crime, urban violence and trauma, along with urban policing. Using participatory action research (PAR) methods, she partners with low-income Black communities to reduce racial disparities in gun violence. Her work is primarily qualitative, through the use of ethnography, interviews, and focus groups – and she also utilizes mixed methods. DARRYL L. CHAMBERS is the executive director of the Center of Structural Equity in Wilmington, DE; and this center houses four Street PAR projects, a gun violence prevention and outreach program and other various youth programs. Mr. Chambers is also a Research Associate at the Center for Drug and Health Studies (CDHS) at the University of Delaware. His responsibilities at CDHS include the SPF-SIG project, the Safe Haven Program, the Suicide Prevention Grant, and Crime Mapping in Wilmington, DE.  

Introduction: Street Identity, Structural Violence, and Street PAR 1

Part I: Context of Opportunity and Violence
1 A City of Banks: A Long Legacy of Economic Violence and Crime 27
2 “Welcome to Wilmington—A Place to Be Somebody”: Negotiating City Culture and Building Rapport 41
3 “Murder Town, USA”: Reframing Gun Violence and Resilience in a Small City 57

Part II: Management, Containment, and the Social Control of Black Wilmington
4 "I'm Still Waiting Man . . . on That Golden Ticket!" Education and Economic Justice, a Dream Deferred––in Perpetuity 87
5 “F-ck the Police!” Standing Up to the Policing Machine 113
6 “I Don’t Let These Felonies Hold Me Back!” HowThe Streets Radically Reframed Re-entry 135

Part III: Street Agency: Coping with and Ending the Structural Violence Complex
7 “Brenda’s Got a Baby”: Competing Roles of Black Women as Matriarchs and Hustlers 157
8 “Street Love”: How Psychological and Social Well-Being Interrupts Gun Violence 181
9 “Winter is Coming!” White Walkers, Revolutionary Change, and the Streets Call for Structural Transformation 196

Conclusion: Calling for a Radical Street Ethnography: Street PAR, SOR Theory, and the Bottom Caste 217

Notes 233
Bibliography 263
Index 000