The Baldies and the Story of an Anti-Racist Minneapolis Skinhead Gang

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TPT premiered a new documentary that delves into one of Minneapolis’ little-known stories: that of the Baldies, a 1980s multiracial skinhead gang that fought neo-Nazis on the streets of Minneapolis, and turned then organized into Anti-Racist Action, a national network of anti-racist punks. We chatted with director and producer David Roth, who uncovered the history of the Baldies while filming a web series on Minnesota’s premier punk scene, Minnesota Hardcore.

“At the very end, I interview some of the bands and they bring up the Baldies. And I’m like – oh my god, yeah, I remember the Baldies, ”Roth says. Some of them had been his classmates at Southwest High School. Before the Baldies were the Baldies, they were a multiracial bunch of punk kids hanging out on the patio of Hennepin McDonald Avenue and on the roof of the Walker Library. Uptown gave them a less than warm welcome, so they hung out under a nearby underpass.

Eventually the group turned to skinhead culture, which originated in the UK in the 1960s. They emulated the style – spaghetti straps, bomber jackets, shaved heads and Doc Marten boots who, at the time, required an international mandate – and music. Skinhead culture has its roots in ska music: before being associated with neo-Nazism, the skinhead movement was born out of an alliance between young white and working-class Jamaican communities in the UK, where ska and reggae were celebrated and finally mixed up. with punk rock.

Back then, gangs were big in movies: The group loved The Warriors and The Wanderers, which featured a gang of skinheads called the Baldies. They decided to give them their name. Thus were born the Baldies. Their tenets were music, style and a working class ideology against racism and unity.

“If a youth culture has a brand identity, music to support it and an ideology – those three things, a fashion scene or a social scene and music – I think music is really important,” Roth says. “This culture is also a bonding thing, isn’t it? I think sometimes what we look forward to is like a brand, and music, to bring everyone together.

But the Baldies quickly faced a new challenge in their scene. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how it started, Roth says, but oral histories say that a local punk named Paul Hollis traveled to California and returned with a white power ideology, with the intention of starting his own gang. . He founded the White Knights, a white separatist skinhead group. The Baldies and White Knights were savvy opponents, often clashing at shows and in the city. Nationally, neo-Nazism in skinhead culture was on the rise, and its media staging obscured the movement’s true roots in anti-racism and working class solidarity.

“I think a lot of times it’s our record of a subculture. In the 1980s, punk rockers were the enemies of a series of horror and thriller films where they killed people, ”says Roth. “As villains, it was a very cinematic thing easy to say – these kids are weird. And skinheads are the villains most often in the documentaries themselves.

Not in this doc, however. Roth explores the next chapter in the history of the Baldies – their evolution into Anti-Racist Action, a larger organization that clashed with local neo-Nazi skinheads, showed up at rallies to protest and organized nationally by coordinating with anti-racists. punks in Milwaukee, Chicago, Portland, Columbus, Toronto and elsewhere. To see more, you’ll have to watch it yourself: The Baldies is available to stream at tpt.org.

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