If you ask ten different people in South Central Los Angeles who founded the Bloods, you’re likely to get five different answers and a long story about the 1970s. It wasn't one guy in a basement with a master plan. It wasn't a corporate rollout. Honestly, it was a desperate, violent reaction to the massive expansion of the Crips. To understand who was the founder of the bloods, you have to stop looking for a single "CEO" and start looking at a collection of neighborhood leaders who were basically forced into a corner.
The history is jagged.
In the early 1970s, the Crips, led by Raymond Washington and Stanley "Tookie" Williams, were taking over everything. They were the big kids on the block, and they weren't being nice about it. Smaller independent gangs were getting absorbed or crushed. This atmosphere of "join or die" created a power vacuum where several different groups decided they’d rather fight than flip.
The West Piru Street Beginnings
The story usually starts on Piru Street in Compton. This is where the nuance comes in. While the Bloods are a massive national brand now, they started as the Piru Street Boys.
Sylvester Scott and Vincent Owens are the names that historians like Alix Sharkey and former gang members frequently cite as the catalysts. They didn't set out to start a global organization. They just wanted to protect their turf from the Crips. In 1972, a massive conflict broke out between the Crips and the Pirus. The Pirus were outnumbered. They were losing.
So, they did the only thing they could: they called a meeting.
This meeting took place on Piru Street. It included other marginalized groups like the Lueders Park Hustlers, the LA Brims, and the Denver Lanes. They needed a unified front. They chose the color red to contrast with the Crip blue. This alliance is technically what we call the Bloods today. So, in a very real sense, the "founder" is actually a committee of neighborhood defenders.
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Scott and Owens are pivotal because they provided the initial spark of resistance in Compton. Without their refusal to back down, the Crips might have unified all of Los Angeles under one banner.
T. Rodgers and the Chicago Connection
Then there is T. Rodgers.
If you've watched any documentary on gang culture from the 90s or early 2000s, you’ve seen T. Rodgers. He’s often credited as the man who took the Bloods to the next level or "founded" the Black P. Stone Bloods in Los Angeles. But even his story is complicated.
Rodgers moved from Chicago to Los Angeles. In Chicago, he had been involved with the Main 21, the leadership of the Black P. Stone Nation under Jeff Fort. When he arrived in Baldwin Hills (the "Jungle"), he saw the same Crip aggression that was happening in Compton. He used his knowledge of Chicago’s highly organized gang structures to organize the locals.
He didn't "invent" the Bloods. He imported a specific type of organizational discipline and ideology that wasn't present in the more loose-knit LA street culture. He was a visionary in a dark way, and later in life, a powerful advocate for peace. He passed away in 2021, but his influence is the reason why many people point to him when asked who was the founder of the bloods. He gave the movement a sense of "nationhood" rather than just neighborhood brawling.
Why the "Founder" Question is So Hard to Answer
People love a simple narrative. We want a Steve Jobs or a George Washington. But street history is oral history, and oral history is messy as hell.
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The Bloods are a confederation. Think of it like the original thirteen colonies. Virginia had a leader, New York had a leader, and Georgia had a leader. They only became "The United States" because they all hated the British. In this analogy, the Crips were the British.
- The Brims (specifically the LA Brims): They were fighting the Crips before the Pirus even joined the fray. Some OG's argue the Brims are the "true" first Bloods.
- The Bishops and Cheetahs: Smaller groups that provided the numbers needed to sustain a war.
- The Pirus: The most famous branch, to the point where "Piru" and "Blood" are often used interchangeably, even though they are technically distinct entities within the same alliance.
The lack of a single founder is actually why the gang survived. You couldn't just cut off the head of the snake. If you took out a leader in Compton, the sets in Inglewood or South Central kept moving. It was a decentralized insurgency from day one.
The Myth of the 1972 Meeting
There’s this legendary status given to a meeting at a house on Piru Street in 1972. While it definitely happened, it wasn't a formal signing of a treaty. It was a bunch of teenagers and young men in their early 20s who were tired of getting jumped.
They decided on "Blood" because it signified brotherhood and a blood bond against the Crips. It was visceral. It was a brand born out of necessity.
The transition from a defensive alliance to a criminal enterprise happened much later, largely fueled by the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. By then, the original "founders" like Sylvester Scott were often either dead, incarcerated, or had moved on. The "Bloods" became a franchise that anyone could join if they had a grievance against the Crips.
Semantic Variations: Pirus vs. Bloods
It’s a mistake to call every red-wearing gang member a "Blood founder."
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In the early days, if you were from Piru Street, you were a Piru. The alliance with the Brims and the Falcons is what created the "Blood" umbrella. Today, some Piru sets actually distance themselves from the broader Blood identity, highlighting just how fractured the leadership has always been.
Basically, the "founder" is a ghost. It’s a collective memory of resistance.
Actionable Insights into Gang History and Research
If you are researching this for a project, a book, or just out of a deep dive into American subcultures, you have to look past the headlines.
- Check the Geography: Look at the specific streets. The "Jungle" in Baldwin Hills is totally different from Compton’s Piru Street. The leaders in those two areas were different people with different motives.
- Read the Court Transcripts: Often, the most accurate names come from 1970s police reports and court testimony, not modern YouTube documentaries that tend to glamorize the "Kingpin" myth.
- Consult Peace Activist Materials: Former members who turned to activism, like Bobby Lavender or the late T. Rodgers, provided the most context-heavy accounts of the early 70s because they were trying to dismantle the structures they helped build.
- Acknowledge the Socio-Economics: The real "founder" of the Bloods was arguably the systemic collapse of South Central LA. The loss of manufacturing jobs and the end of the Black Panther era left a lot of young men with no protection and no future. The gang was the result of that vacuum.
Understanding who was the founder of the bloods requires looking at a map of Los Angeles and seeing a dozen different fires starting at once. It wasn't one match; it was a drought followed by a lightning storm.
For those looking to understand the evolution of these groups, the best path is studying the 1992 Watts Truce. It shows how the descendants of those original founders tried to undo the cycle of violence. That era provides a much clearer picture of the hierarchy—or lack thereof—than the hazy, violent years of 1972 ever will. Focus on the transition from the Pirus to the United Blood Nation (UBN) on the East Coast in the 90s if you want to see how the "founder" myth was exported and reinvented for a new generation.