Who is Larry Hoover?

Larry Hoover’s Life in Brief

Larry Hoover was born in 1950 in a low income family in Jackson, Mississippi. He co-founded with David Barksdale a Chicago based gangster group called Black Gangster Disciple Nation in 1969. The same group under the leadership of Larry Hoover later became Gangster Disciples and was perhaps the biggest, the most powerful and the most successful criminal gang in the history of the United States. 

Larry Hoover is widely considered to be Chicago’s biggest gangster since Al Capone. On the streets of Chicago he is known as ‘King Larry’ or ‘the Honorable Chairman.’

In 1973, he was found guilty of planning and abetting the murder of a drug dealer in a Chicago neighborhood, and was sentenced to 150 to 200 years of prison.

While in prison, he started reform and welfare programs for the gangsters involved in criminal activities. In the early 1990s, the investigators discovered that underneath that façade of social work he was secretly unifying and expanding the influence of his gangster group.

In 1995, he was indicted for running a criminal empire involved in conspiracy, extortion, money laundering, and drug-related offenses not just in Chicago but across the entire United States. In 1997, the court declared him guilty on all charges and sentenced him to an additional six life terms.

Larry Hoover’s supporters have been running a campaign for his release since the early 1990s. More recently, rap singer Kanye “Ye” West has been at the forefront of that campaign. In 2018, he met the then US president Donald Trump to press him for presidential pardon of Larry Hoover. In 2021, he, along with Drake held “Free Larry Hoover Benefit Concert.”

So far all efforts of Larry Hoover and his supporters for parole, shortening of sentence or for shifting him to a prison of less security have not borne any fruit.

Larry Hoover is currently jailed in ADX Maximum Security Prison, Florence, Colorado where he is kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. 

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