"It wasn't pushed enough in this country," she said. But "Lord Thing" never received proper distribution in Chicago and the United States, Kobel said. The film, meanwhile, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1970 and won a silver medal at the Venice Film Festival in the same year. "DeWitt really saw the possibilities in the men that he met, and he was really impressed with their intellectual capabilities," said Cynthia Kobel, a friend of Beall's who worked as a production assistant on "Lord Thing" "The media and law enforcement made it seem like what the Conservative Vice Lords were doing was a front for criminal activities, and it wasn't."īeall, a Dartmouth University graduate who embedded himself with the Conservative Vice Lords during the filming of "Lord Thing", was enamored with the gang and used his influence to help enroll 15 street-smart Vice Lords into his Ivy League alma mater from 1967 to 1973. "There were still other factions of the Vice Lords that were still involved with crime, and that was putting a negative light on what the Conservative Vice Lords were trying to accomplish," Lee said. The film ends in 1969-'70 with the demise of the reformed Conservative Vice Lords, caused by a crackdown on gangs that was led by Chicago Mayor Richard J. (That cooperative effort was reflected in the film, which was narrated by then-Blackstone Rangers spokesman Leonard Sengali). "Lord Thing" shows some of the results of this transformation - the opening of Conservative Vice Lord-owned Tastee Freeze franchises in North Lawndale, the creation of a teen youth center called Teen Town on the West Side and the institution of various job-training centers in the neighborhood.īy 1969, the Conservative Vice Lords had joined forces with factions of the Blackstone Rangers and Gangster Disciples in an effort to get federal grants from organizations for business and community-based enterprises on the West Side. The group had the support of powerful backers, including the Rockefeller Foundation (which provided a $275,000 grant to create recreational areas and businesses in North Lawndale) and other major grantors the Chicago Police Department and West Side aldermen. It then uses actual color documentary footage to show how certain members of the Vice Lords - including group spokesman and co-founder Bobby Gore, acting president Kenneth "Goat" Parks and president and co-founder Edwin Perry - decided to transform a faction of the group into the Conservative Vice Lords, a not-for-profit neighborhood social organization. Charles youth reformatory.Īctual Vice Lords participate in a series of staged scenes, shot in stark black and white, which show how the gang used brute force to become a powerful criminal organization on the West Side. It tells the story of the rise of the Vice Lords, which was started in 1958 by seven teens who had been incarcerated in the St. "Lord Thing" is indeed a unique experience.
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