LOS ANGELES—Thirty-four years after a handful of street organization members, male and female, laid down their weapons in Watts, the Los Angeles City Council paused on May 1 to honor a peace that outlasted predictions that it could not hold.

The body formally commemorated the 1992 Watts Gang Truce—the ceasefire that helped pull L.A. off its perch as the so-called “gang capital of the world”—

With a day of recognition that drew the truce’s surviving architects, gang interventionists, and Student Minister Abdul Malik Sayyid Muhammad (formerly known as Minister Tony Muhammad) of the Nation of Islam’s Western Region.

The men and women were inspired by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam. 

Minister Farrakhan delivered his “Stop the Killing” lecture series across the country, appealing to youth. He warned them of government and law enforcement plots to use their violence as a justification to slaughter the Black community.

While enemies and detractors were skeptical and suspicious, Minister Farrakhan embraced and applauded the urban peace efforts. He brought the Nation of Islam’s annual Saviours’ Day convention to the City of Angels in 1993, in part as a tribute to the tremendous work that produced the truce.

Minister Farrakhan’s 1989 Stop the Killing address at the L.A. Sports Arena, the acquittal of White officers videotaped beating Black motorist Rodney King and the uprising that followed helped build support for the 1992 Peace Treaty.

“I went across this country asking you to stop killing yourself, because I knew that the government was making war on Black youth, Black men in particular. Brothers and sisters, the Million Man March didn’t happen in a vacuum—I had been working on that 10 years prior! 

I crisscrossed this country saying to Black youth ‘the government has plotted against your life,’ and I opened both Bible and Holy Qur’an to show you the conspiracy,” Minister Farrakhan said in his Nov. 3, 1996, address delivered at Mosque Maryam and entitled, “Crack Cocaine—The Great Conspiracy to Destroy the Black Male.”

“The Stop the Killing tour is what gave birth and life to the 1992 Gang Truce and Peace Treaty, where the peacekeepers proved that good could come out of Nazareth,” said … Student Minister Abdul Malik Sayyid Muhammad, referencing the biblical scripture John 1:46, which states: “‘Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?’ Nathanael asked. ‘Come and see,’ said Philip.”

God used the despised and the rejected to fix their own problem, explained Student Min. Abdul Malik Sayyid.

The truce did more than help quiet a single neighborhood. Once America’s most violent city, L.A. no longer cracks the top 10, an outcome Student Minister Muhammad attributes to former gang members, those that the political class long dismissed.

The May 1 recognition, he and others argued, should be a beginning rather than a benchmark and a reminder that the brothers and sisters who ended a street war may be the ones most qualified to confront the political violence rising in its place.

Councilmembers Curren Price (District 9, which covers the majority of South L.A.) and Tim McOsker (District 15, which includes Watts) opened the program with a frank admission: this agreement was not brokered by City Hall or mandated by law enforcement.

“It came from the streets, from community leaders, from formerly incarcerated individuals, from young people who were simply tired of burying their friends,” Councilman Price said.

The truce demonstrated that peace is possible when people are empowered to lead, producing measurable reductions in violence—particularly among youth—and creating space for dialogue, healing, and investment, he explained.

Councilman McOsker called the truce a “very sophisticated, well-thought-out, well-planned, and dangerous activity,” and noted that, unlike most ceasefires, “it has stuck.”

Accepting the recognition, Daude Sherrills, an early advocate for street organization negotiations, said the truce was the product of years of dedicated work. He referenced the historic handshake by T. Dashiki Bey, also known as Twilight Bey, a former Bloods member, and a young former Crips member who identified himself only as “Twelve.”

They clasped hands at the end of three days of talks between warring L.A. gang factions in Carson on July 29, 1988—proving, Daude Sherrills said, “that the other side was a brother in (a) different color.”

He traced the birth of the truce to divine influence in the late 1980s. “We took that message very seriously,” he said of Minister Farrakhan’s “Stop the Killing” address at the L.A. Sports Arena. “At that time, I was up under Captain Shaheed [Muhammad], and we galvanized and was organizing.

And when our brother, Oliver (X) Beasley, was murdered over there on Vermont, it culminated the community to activate,” he said. The late Brother Shaheed Muhammad was a longtime Fruit of Islam (F.O.I.) captain and helper on the West Coast.

Minister Farrakhan’s 1989 Sports Arena appearance drew more than 1,500 Crips and Bloods into one room—a gathering that soon migrated to the late NFL legend Jim Brown’s home. “We met [Minister] Farrakhan at Jim Brown’s house.

And this is the evolution of the story,” Mr. Sherrills said. He also thanked other voices of the movement, including Grammy winner Stevie Wonder, who used his 102.3 FM station as a beacon for the community.

“During those historical days, during the riots, we didn’t just need a leader on the ground, we needed a voice on the airwaves. … When the city erupted, KJLH stopped the music, opened the phone lines, and gave us a platform to vent, to cry and to coordinate peace when the rest of the media only wanted to show the fire,” Daude Sherrills added.

Some of that history is documented in “Hidden History and the Power of Social Movements: The Watts Gang Treaty,” by William Aceves, then-Dean Steven R. Smith Professor of Law at California Western School of Law, now its director of the International Legal Studies Program.

Prof. Aceves recorded that the four representatives of the four gangs signed the treaty in the presence of mediators from the F.O.I. The gang leaders also sought inspiration from international conflict resolution efforts, looking to the 1949 Armistice Agreement adopted by Egypt and Israel to end the Arab-Israeli War.

The receipts, said Mr. Sherrills, settled the rest. In the first two years of the peace treaty, gang homicides decreased 44 percent, according to Mr. Sherrills.  That produced a domino effect across L.A. and the country.

Donny Joubert, president of the Watts Gang Task Force, opened the May 1 observation by giving honor to God. “None of this would have happened without God getting behind us. … I’m honored to be here today because it’s about time that we recognize how hard this work really is. Folks don’t know that,” he stated.

They are still doing the same peace work seven days a week, as in 1992 because babies growing up in the neighborhood need opportunities, he emphasized. “They need the same opportunity as anybody else,” he said, before recognizing signatories of the original treaty and their unified posture.

“We’re not going backward!” he continued. Especially now, he added, “when seniors can walk to the store unafraid of gunshots overhead.”

Despite the tremendous progress made in the past few years, there is still work to be done.

Some youths are still being lost to violence today, said Mr. Joubert. He urged that more tangible support is still needed. “Let’s put the funding where it really needs to be.

You’ve got the boots on the ground, the foot soldiers, and it’s some wars going on right now, they cannot stop, but look what we did! Look what we were able to do within our community,” Mr. Joubert said, applauding the efforts of Student Min. Abdul Malik Sayyid Muhammad.

“The brother that really stayed on us, based on coming in our community. He would have a one-on-one, a two-on-two with us. But we’d always have serious conversations, and then he’d march with us through all these communities to show the love that we have for each other,”

Mr. Joubert continued, referring to Student Min. Muhammad. He also thanked the women of the community and civic leaders, including former City Councilwoman Janice Hahn.

Terry “Bull” Jones recalled the night Dewayne Holmes, a member of the Watts community, accompanied by others from the housing projects, came to the Imperial Courts to ask him to mediate. He shared that experience with the audience.

“He said, ‘Bull, I need you. You don’t have a dog in the fight. You’re not from Watts. Mediate for us.’” He also uplifted peacemaker Cynthia Mendenhall (aka “Sister Soldier of Watts”), who he said took a backseat in public but, behind closed doors, was instrumental to peace efforts.

“And they [gang members] took everything she said to heart a lot and they acted it out. A lot of those instructions about doing peace came from her,” Mr. Jones said. 

“I was wiping my tears, but I think now, I’m going to let them fall, because we lost so much. I don’t want to say we started too late. We started, and we’re still getting it done. And we’re still pushing. We’re still in places that a lot of people don’t want to go, that a lot of people don’t want to help nobody. But we still go,” he added.

Aqeela Sherrills, brother of Daude Sherrills, has spent the last decade exporting the L.A. blueprint. He was tapped by Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka in 2014 to help build a community-based intervention strategy, he told The Final Call. They launched the Newark Community Street Team and hired 16 people from the neighborhood. 

“When we first started … there were 114 homicides. Newark had the third-highest homicide rate in the country. Last year, we had 31 homicides,” he stated.

His team recently released a qualitative and quantitative evaluation demonstrating that the Newark Community Street Team reduced violence and crime without law enforcement and without the collateral impacts of policing. He said they plan to model the work in five new cities—Austin, Texas; Cleveland; Jackson, Miss.; Miami, and Tucson, Arizona.

“There’s no reason why the Black community shouldn’t be the safest community on the planet,” said Aqeela Sherrills. “Starting with the Peace Treaty in 1992, 34 years later.

We’re in cities all across the country, and we’re not going to end until our neighborhoods are safe … until we end this narrative, because still, the number one cause of murder for Black boys ages 14 to 25 is gun violence.

This is our issue, family. This is our issue. And so, this is a call to action for Black men, because we’re standing in the gaps, and we’re doing the work.”

City Councilmember Heather Hutt (District 9) was at the May 1 commemoration. Her family has also experienced the cost of the violence the truce sought to end. “In 1992, they knew… that we would see our children live and thrive instead of just survive,”

She said. “You are peacemakers … healers from the heart, soldiers from your ancestors, and risk takers—because you sat in places that were not always comfortable,” Ms. Hutt said of those who continue the peace efforts.

Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson provided this picture of the environment from decades ago. “If you were south of Wilshire Boulevard on any day of the week and you drove for more than 20 minutes, you were going to see a funeral,” he said. “There were in excess of 1,200 homicides a year.”

The political answer at the time was jail and prison cells. But from street organizations came a call, and they did the work without permission, a grant, or any acknowledgment. “Because the media … wanted so badly for the truce to fail,” Mr. Harris-Dawson recalled. The work, he said, ultimately rewrote several narratives.

“You all changed policing around the country. I’m sitting on this chair because of the work you all did.”