The Baldies
The Baldies
TPT has premiered a new documentary that dives into one of Minneapolis’s untold histories: that of the Baldies, a 1980s multiracial skinhead gang who fought Neo-Nazis in the streets of Minneapolis, and later organized themselves into Anti-Racist Action, a nationwide network of anti-racist punks. We chatted with director and producer David Roth, who came across the Baldies’ story when he was shooting a web series on Minnesota’s early punk scene, Minnesota Hardcore.
“At the very end, I’m interviewing some of the bands and they bring up the Baldies. And I’m like—oh god, yeah, I remember the Baldies,” says Roth. Some of them had been his classmates at Southwest High School. Before the Baldies were the Baldies, they were a rag tag, multiracial group of punk kids who hung out at the Hennepin Avenue McDonald's patio and the Walker Library roof. Uptown gave them a less than warm welcome, so they hung out under a nearby underpass.
Eventually, the group gravitated toward skinhead culture, which had originated in the U.K. in the 1960s. They emulated the style—thin suspenders, bomber jackets, shaved heads and Doc Marten boots that, at the time, required an international money order—and the music. Skinhead culture had its roots in Ska music: before it ever came to be associated with neo-Nazism, the skinhead movement emerged from an alliance between young white and Jamaican working-class communities in the U.K., where Ska and reggae were celebrated and eventually mixed with punk rock.
At the time, gangs were big in the movies: the group loved The Warriors, and The Wanderers, which featured a skinhead gang called the Baldies. They decided to adopt them name for themselves. Thus the Baldies were born. Their tenets were music, style, and a working class ideology of anti-racism and unity.
“If a youth culture has a brand identity, music to back it up, and an ideology—those three things, a fashion scene, or a social scene, and music—I think music is really important,” says Roth. “That culture is a bonding thing, too, right? I think that sometimes what we're waiting for is like a brand, and music, to bring everybody together.”
But the Baldies soon faced a new challenge in their scene. It’s hard to pin down exactly how it started, says Roth—but oral histories have it that a local punk named Paul Hollis traveled out to California and came back with a white power ideology, intent on starting his own gang. He founded the White Knights, a white separatist skinhead group. The Baldies and the White Knights were streetwise adversaries, clashing often at shows and around the city. At a national level, neo-Nazism in skinhead culture was on the rise, and its sensationalization by the media obscured the movement’s true roots in anti-racism and working class solidarity.
“I think a lot of times that's our record of a subculture. During the 80s, punk rockers were the enemies in a series of horror and thriller films where they were killing people,” says Roth. “As the bad guys, it was a very cinematic easy thing to say—these kids are weird. And skinheads are the bad guys most often in documentaries themselves.”
Not in this doc, though. Roth explores the next chapter of the Baldies history—their evolution into Anti-Racist Action, a more expansive organization that clashed with local neo-Nazi skinheads, showed up to rallies to protest, and organized on a national scale by coordinating with anti-racist punks in Milwaukee, Chicago, Portland, Columbus, Toronto, and elsewhere. To see more, you’ll have to watch it yourself—The Baldies is available for streaming at tpt.org.
