Aryan Brotherhood of Texas

Aryan Brotherhood of Texas

Aryan Brotherhood of Texas Logo
Founding location	Texas Prison System Texas, United States
Years active	1980s–present
Territory	Texas Prison System New Mexico Prison System
Ethnicity	White
Membership (est.)	Estimated 30,000 members in and out of prison
Criminal activities	Murder, assault, drug trafficking, extortion, racketeering, arms trafficking, hate crimes, dog fighting, fraud, human trafficking
Allies	Aryan Brotherhood, Nazi Lowriders, Hells Angels, Sons of Silence, Pagans, Dirty White Boys, Mexikanemi, Sureños, Juggalos, Ku Klux Klan, Blood & Honour, Combat 18, Gulf Cartel, New Mexico Syndicate
Rivals	Aryan Circle, Black Guerrilla Family, Bloods, Crips, Nuestra Familia, Norteños, Texas Syndicate, Latin Kings, MS-13, Outlaws, People Nation, Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice, Friends Stand United, Anti-Racist Action

According to the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (ABT) is one of the largest and most violent white supremacist prison gangs in the United States, responsible for numerous murders and other violent crimes.

Despite the similarity in their names, the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas is not affiliated with the “original” Aryan Brotherhood, the notorious prison gang founded in California in the 1960s and existing primarily in California and the federal prison systems.

In the 80s when the original Aryan Brotherhood was formed in San Quentin, a group of Texas inmates asked for permission to start a chapter in TX, though the Aryan Brotherhood denied their request but the TX inmates formed it anyway. The ABT was nonetheless established in the 1980s, following the desegregation of Texas prisons and the dismantling of the "Building Tender", or Trusty system, a system in which prison officials used other inmates to help maintain order in the prisons. These major and more or less simultaneous changes created an atmosphere of uncertainty and a lack of control that proved fertile breeding grounds for black, Hispanic and white race-based prison gangs. These gangs soon became the top predators in the Texas prison system.

The various white gangs, with names like the Aryan Society and the Aryan Brothers, mostly adopted a relatively crude white supremacist ideology. In the early to mid-1980s, most of the members of these two gangs united to become the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, while others left out of the merger later helped form the rival Aryan Circle prison gang. From its beginning, the ABT emerged as one of the most violent gangs in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, committing 13 murders in 1984–85 alone.

In March 1985, prospect Virgil Barfield carried out an Aryan Brotherhood of Texas order to kill Calvin Massey. Barfield stabbed Massey 42 times. The violent attack was caught on camera. The video clip helped prosecutors convict Barfield for the murder of Massey. Virgil Barfield was sentenced to life in prison.