Fattah takes mother's activist spirit with him to U.S. Congress

But when those skeptics set foot in his mother's ''urban boys town,'' leaving behind the violence of their gangs for a sanctuary of peace, they began to appreciate the young turk's message. ''I found that we had a lot more in common,'' says Curtis Jones Jr., a ''card-carrying'' gang member who first heard Fattah speak at an anti-gang conference in the early 1970s. ''We started doing youth organizing together and I discovered a brilliant individual. He was a good person out of choice -- not of weakness.'' At 38, Fattah is the area's newest congressional Democrat and the city's highest-ranking black political figure. In many ways, his upbringing in the House of Umoja -- a cramped Philadelphia row house that in 25 years has grown to include an entire city block -- has made him who he is today. Fattah gives his mother, Falaka, the credit for being the source of ''99.9 percent'' of the activist spirit he inherited. Born Frances Ellen Brown and married Frances Ellen Davenport, Mrs. Fattah was widowed when her husband suffered a fatal heart attack while her six children were young. Through local Black Power movement activities, she met her second husband, David Fattah, and changed her name and those of her sons. She remains a practicing Episcopalian. Soon after, she discovered one of her teen-age sons was a key member of the Clymer Street gang in South Philadelphia, where the family previously lived. The only way she felt 16-year-old Robin could weaken his ties to the gang family was to make it a part of her own. So in 1968, after consultation with her husband and sons, Mrs. Fattah opened their home to wayward youngsters. ''My motivation was to save Robin's life. That was it,'' she says. ''And if I had to have the other kids in here to do it, that was it.'' Chaka's life, however, also was at stake. ''All our lives, the gangs existed in our neighborhood,'' recalls Michael Joynes, a lifelong friend who knew Chaka when the youngster lived near Clymer Street. ''A number of those members were people who we idolized. In fact, Chaka used to call himself little Rob; he wanted to be just like him.'' The idea behind House of Umoja (Swahili for ''unity'') was to make the youngsters more loyal to an extended family than to their gangs. The entire first floor was cleared of furniture, becoming a barracks-type bedroom for some 15 members who enthusiastically accepted the invitation. ''She was everybody's mother and she dispensed justice equally,'' said Jones, who lived at Umoja intermittently in 1973 and 1974 and now heads up the Philadelphia Commercial Development Corp., which fosters development. The boys came up with their own rules: no fighting and no girls. The teens resolved disputes through large group discussions. For Fattah, discussions with tough-tongued peers ''helped sharpen my debate skills because there was always a great variety of opinions about every subject under the sun.'' Mrs. Fattah says young Chaka ''was like a sponge. It excited him.'' At age 14, he and a friend persuaded First Pennsylvania Bank to turn over 10 vacant buildings on the block for expansion purposes. From 1972 to 1974, Fattah helped run gang conferences in Philadelphia, addressing crowds of teen-agers from across the city. In 1976, he organized the Black Youths Olympics between Philadelphia and Boston. One year later he expanded it to include 10 cities. The snowball was rolling. Fattah graduated from the Community College of Philadelphia and received his master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He was elected to the state House at 25, the youngest person ever elected to the General Assembly at that time. In 1987, at age 30, he was elected to the state Senate. And last year, at age 37, Fattah was one of the few Democratic freshmen to make it to the U.S. House of Representatives, defeating longtime city Democrat and first-term Congressman Lucien Blackwell. He represents a district that made former Rep. Bill Gray a national figure. ''I don't know why he's racing so hard, but he's impatient,'' says Mrs. Fattah. ''He's got too much he wants to get done, too many ideas. He doesn't have time for the trappings that go along with power. He's got a fire in his belly.'' Joynes, chief of staff for state Sen. Roxanne Jones, claims to understand his friend's lifelong passion. ''The shaping of the House of Umoja made Chaka Fattah,'' says Joynes. ''The belief in the faith and visions that his mother had in saving a dying species, which was the young, Afro-American male, really spilled over to Chaka.'' For Fattah, politics has been a natural progression, an extension of his commitment to the community, he says. ''I've had a very diverse, very exciting third of my life so far,'' the 38-year-old says, adding with a laugh, ''I plan to be around for a while.''