Until the 1960s, most prisons in the United States were racially segregated.
As prisons began to desegregate, many inmates organized along racial lines.
The Aryan Brotherhood is believed to have been formed by a group of Irish bikers in 1964 at San
Quentin State Prison, but it may have been derived from or inspired by the Bluebird Gang.
They decided to strike against the blacks who were forming their own militant group called the Black
Guerrilla Family.
By the 1990s the AB was less about killing for racist reasons and more about power and organized-crime activities: drugs, prostitution and hits for hire.
The Aryan Brotherhood took on organized crime-like powers, and may be more powerful than the Italian crime families within the prison system.
For example, while incarcerated in Marion Federal Penitentiary in 1996, after being assaulted,
Gambino crime family boss John Gotti asked the Aryan Brotherhood to murder his attacker.
Gotti's attacker was immediately transferred to protective custody and the planned retaliation was abandoned.
In late 2002, over 40 leaders of the gang were simultaneously rounded up from prisons all over the country and brought to trial under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
The intention was to bring death sentences for at least 21 of them, to cut off the leadership of the gang, in a manner similar to tactics used against organized crime.
The case produced 30 convictions but none of the most powerful leaders received a death sentence.
Sentencing occurred in March 2006 for three of the most powerful leaders of the gang, including Barry Byron Mills (born 1948) and AB "lieutenant" Tyler "The Hulk" Bingham, who were indicted for numerous crimes, including murder, conspiracy, drug trafficking, and racketeering and for ordering killings and beatings from their cell. Bingham and Mills were convicted of murder and sent back to United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility Prison