After New York Times feature, tales of Black gang underworld by Delaware man gain buzz

After being challenged by an elder hall monitor at Howard High School of Technology to make an impact on someone else's life, then-senior Brian Valmond became a mentor of sorts to a 15-year-old freshman named Brandon Wingo.

It was 2016 at a school where gang violence swirled and plenty of students could use a positive role model.

But eight months after Valmond struck up a relationship with Wingo at the beginning of the school year, the unthinkable happened on May 19 ― a date still seared into Valmond's memory.

Wingo was walking from school in the middle of a sunny afternoon on Clifford Brown Walk when the young basketball player was shot in the head and killed, shocking not just the Howard community, but the entire city.

He was murdered as part of a feud among Wilmington teens that the city prosecuted as criminal street gangs.

As a 17-year-old Valmond processed the loss of Wingo and the exposed depth of street gangs in the city, it also inspired a curiosity in him about the history of Black gangs and the criminal underworld.

"It was grim," Valmond says of the atmosphere at the school following Wingo's violent death. "The air was just different."

A year after Wingo's killing, Valmond launched a series on his then-Twitter, now X account (@_valtown_). It's there where he digs into telling the stories of figures in the world of Black gangs in America from the '60s through the '90s, along with their sometimes-intersection with popular culture and hip-hop.

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Over the years, the self-described "history junkie" has built up an ardent fanbase and now has nearly 180,000 followers.

Seven years after he launched his series, Valmond, 25, has a spinoff docuseries on YouTube and companion podcast, which helped lead to what he calls a "career highlight" earlier this year: a full-page feature story in the New York Times by well-respected pop music critic Jon Caramanica.

"The Black Underworld, Now Online" read the Sunday, Jan. 7 headline, which led to a steady stream of calls and messages from producers, book agents and others in the entertainment industry looking to possibly collaborate with the Wilmington-area street historian/filmmaker, who began the project toiling in Delaware libraries researching the stories he retells.

"All the hard work is now paying off ― every experience, every hardship," Valmond says.

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Valmond was born in Queens, New York, and was 6 when his parents moved to Delaware.

He grew up in a Bear neighborhood where drug dealing was the norm and where many friends his age ended up living in that world.

For his part, Valmond was able to keep his distance.

"I was an outsider," he says. "I'd be the kid that went to school and got a lot of questions from teachers asking why I was hanging out with some of these people. I grew up with them and they were my friend group, but we went in different directions."

He soon realized that they were on dissimilar paths. While his friends had grown up in unstable homes, his family life was sturdy, having been raised by strict Caribbean-born parents who tracked his after-school activities.

By the time he got to Howard, he already was familiar with street life even if he wasn't actively involved. But entering Howard, he quickly realized he was now in the city with all the dangers that come with it.

"These were city kids and I started learning about their experiences and trying to help them get through things," says Valmond, who was drawn to learning about their world ― not living in it.

That's why the school hall monitor saw Valmond as a good kid who could maybe help guide some students in need of help, leading to his meet-ups with Wingo in his senior year.

Around that same time he spoke with his former English teacher, Lindsay Hoeschel, to tell her that he wanted to tell stories. He wasn't sure what he was going to do after high school, feeling directionless.

"You have a real special ability to write and you should take it and do something with it," Hoeschel urged him, pointing him towards screenwriting and storytelling.

He now looks back and says, "That conversation was life-changing."

Hoeschel remembers that talk, too: "I was the excited, silly, weird English teacher jumping up and down and clapping and saying, 'Make sure you do it because you're amazing!"

She also remembers reading the first assignment he wrote for her class about a decade ago. "When you are constantly reading and grading pieces, certain voices stand out to you and his passion really came through," she says.

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When the initial shock of Wingo's death began to fall away month after month, Valmond decided to lean into his dream the following year.

Soon he found himself in Delaware's public libraries researching hustlers who ran American streets for years before he had even been born: "I really wanted to tell the stories that people didn't know. These are not mainstream stories."

ValTown's unearthed tales of gangs and drug kingpins finds fans

Using his then-Twitter page as the venue for his stories happened by accident while Valmond was in college at Wilmington University.

The one-time Def Jam Recordings intern read a tweet about Ronald Reagan, quoted it and then just continually replied to himself starting a long thread, even before the service had a thread feature.

"It blew up and I just kept it going," he says of his September 6, 2017 posting.

That's when he began incorporating research, historical photographs and links to videos ― anything he could find to bring these stories to life. Not to glorify them, but to tell them factually, explaining a history that largely gets sidestepped.

After growing up seeing the lives of Italian mobsters dramatized ― some argue celebrated ― in entertainment through films and televisions shows such as "The Godfather," "Goodfellas" and "The Sopranos," he realized the stories of Black gangsters were treated very differently.

"The Black underworld doesn't get that attention," Valmond says. "There hasn't been too many Black crime stores told in a beautiful way like those. When it comes to our underworld, it's villainized. The Mafia is now considered part of American history. And people love that stuff.

"I want our stories to be told in a different way. I feel we have been conditioned to hate the circumstances we grew up in ― in the sense of not being able to give ourselves any grace."

In addition to his X page, Valmond has a YouTube channel (@valtown), which hosts his "Rich in the Hood" video docuseries, and a companion podcast, which also details inner-city Black America gangs. Its second season debuts April 21.

In addition, Valmond operates a subscription Patreon page (@valtown) with additional content for $1.99 a month. His Instagram account (@__valtown) features content from all of his projects and boasts 135,000 followers.

On his docuseries, Valmond interviews the people who were there, having them reflect back and tell stories from their perspective, often resulting in a more humanizing look at the carnage that drugs and guns left behind.

Sometimes he finds himself face-to-face with his subjects, including a South Central meet-up with Ricky "Freeway Rick" Ross, a former drug lord who oversaw a sprawling cocaine empire in 1980s Los Angeles. He is the subject of a "Rich in the Hood" episode.

Valmond listened as Ross told him of his childhood; about not learning to read until he was sent to prison on a life sentence in 1996 under California's three-strikes law. (Ross was released in 2009 when it was found the law was unfairly applied in his case.)

"Hearing him really brought together why I want to tell these stories, because initially he did not want to be a drug dealer," Valmond says. "It fell into place. I mean, his own teachers were introducing him to cocaine. People who are supposed to be protecting you are feeding you this poison that you then dish out to the community. It's almost like you can't escape it."

After 180,000 followers, the New York Times comes calling

Valmond had been penning these stories for years with little to show for them other than the numbers of followers and subscribers.

It's not a money-maker for him since he doesn't have the ownership rights for the old news footage and photographs he uses. His day job is working in social media for brands, which once included the AND1 basketball sneaker brand.

But all that could now change for Valmond, who was pulled out of relative online obscurity when he landed the full-page feature earlier this year in the New York Times ― the second largest newspaper print circulation in the nation.

The must-read Times music critic and "Popcast" podcast host Caramanica had been among Valmond's thousands of followers and reached out to him last year about writing a piece about his projects.

"Being a New York kid originally, you always dream of being in the Times ― it's part of that big dream, big city mentality," he says.

And it didn't take long for him to see the impact of a Times article.

While it didn't produce a tidal wave of new followers online, it did land him (and his work) in front of plenty high-profile industry eyeballs. The e-mails and phone calls came fast. Suddenly they all knew about his homegrown, fully independent Valtown Entertainment company.

"For two or three weeks, I took the 'do not disturb' feature off my phone and just let every call come in," he says. "This whole thing has been a long grind and I've always bet on myself, so this is some heavy s---t."

Hoeschel will be watching and rooting for her former student, who showed up at Howard earlier this year to give her an autographed copy of the Times article. It hangs in her class.

"It's the most amazing thing to see a student who has a gift actually be able to utilize it and become successful," she says. "It is so easy to be deterred and let negativity or outside voices interrupt you. I'm just so proud of him."

Have a story idea? Contact Ryan Cormier of Delaware Online/The News Journal at [email protected] or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and X (@ryancormier).

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Brian Valmond's tales of gangs and kingpins past finds online audience