The Unfinished Story of Kingfish Cohen

Kingfish Ben Cohen lives in the midst of the dilapidated North Philadelphia ghetto, the city’s worst. It houses the new immigrants from the South and the successive waves of human driftwood cast up by “renewal” elsewhere in the city; it houses the poorest of the poor. Kingfish Cohen is black, and he is the kind of leader every city needs if that city is to avoid riot-torn summers: a young man who has learned how to channel constructively the explosive energies of the city’s powerful youth gangs.

Kingfish has an eighth-grade education. He’s 32, married, with four kids. He owns and runs a small junk business. And he’s nobody’s man: not the mayor’s, the police commissioner’s, the district attorney’s, the NAACP’s, the Black Guard’s, or some social agency’s. No one bought his actions to keep the peace last summer, although offers were made. In fact, Kingfish and his troops scoff at the “white hats” approach made famous through Tampa’s hiring of gang leaders as police aides: this works only once, if then. It’s a matter of pride. I mean, next time those pretty hats’ll be the target. Dig?

MD

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Morgan J. Doughton

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Kingfish Ben Cohen lives in the midst of the dilapidated North Philadelphia ghetto, the city’s worst. It houses the new immigrants from the South and the successive waves of human driftwood cast up by “renewal” elsewhere in the city; it houses the poorest of the poor. Kingfish Cohen is black, and he is the kind of leader every city needs if that city is to avoid riot-torn summers: a young man who has learned how to channel constructively the explosive energies of the city’s powerful youth gangs.

Kingfish has an eighth-grade education. He’s 32, married, with four kids. He owns and runs a small junk business. And he’s nobody’s man: not the mayor’s, the police commissioner’s, the district attorney’s, the NAACP’s, the Black Guard’s, or some social agency’s. No one bought his actions to keep the peace last summer, although offers were made. In fact, Kingfish and his troops scoff at the “white hats” approach made famous through Tampa’s hiring of gang leaders as police aides: this works only once, if then. It’s a matter of pride. I mean, next time those pretty hats’ll be the target. Dig?