The Folks Nation is an alliance of street gangs based out of Chicago and has since branched throughout the United States. They are rivals to the People Nation. Within the Folks Nation alliance there are individual gangs or nations called "Mobs" which all have their own unique colors, handsigns, logos and organization. In the begining, most of these gangs had to sign a charter to join the Folks alliance, but today any independent gang can join the Folks alliance with the permission of a high ranking person already part of a gang under the Folks alliance. Within the Folks alliance there are sub-alliances of Folks mobs, most notably the "Disciple Folks", "Insane Folks", "Gangster Folks" and "Almighty Folks" sub-alliances. These sub-alliances are used to share hoods and resources between more than one Folks Nation mob without conflict over turf. Some Folks mobs are known be a part of more than one sub-alliance, for example the Insane Gangster Satan Disciples who are part of 3 Folks Nation sub-alliances. Each Folks Nation mob consists of "decks" which are individual groups within the mob who control they're own hood. For example, the Gangster Disciple (the biggest Folks Mob) consists of many decks including: "Goonsville" (67th - 69th & Aberdeen - Chicago), "Gangster City Outlaws" (Cabrini Green Projects - Chicago), "Hellzone" (Cicero, Ill) and "6 Trey Outlaws" (Ebetts Field Projects - New York City).

The Folks Nation was formed on November 11, 1978 in the Illinois Department of Corrections. The Black Gangster Disciples, under the leadership of Larry Hoover were the first to bring the Folks Nation concept about. The Black Gangster Disciples organized a meeting of several Black, White, and Latino street gangs. Amongst the gangs were the Black Disciples, Spanish Cobras, Imperial Gangsters, Simon City Royals, Latin Eagles, Satan Disciples, and the Latin Disciples. The term "Folks" was said to be chosen as a moniker because of the word being an acronym: "Follow the Orders and Laws the King Sets". The "King", being Larry Hoover, who apparently had a vision to unite and then control all of the gangs in Chicago.

Nations in the Folks alliance show their affiliation by identifying to the right side, for example, they wear hats with the brim broke to the right, right pants leg rolled up, bandanas hanging out of their right pockets, earings in their right ear, etc.

Gangs that were allied on the streets, easily united in the prisons. For example, the Black Disciples, and Black Gangster Disciples were once the same organization, so it was naturally an easy formation to become part of same alliance. It was also a common occurrence for gangs who had a good relationship with other street gangs, to bring them into their respective alliance. For example, the Simon City Royals have always had a good relationship to the Insane Popes (Northside), therefore, when the Royals joined the Folks alliance, the Popes followed suit.

Many Folks Nation Mob members can be found on TheHoodUp.com, which is a notorious virtual gathering-place for many other gangs as well. The reason many Folks and other gang members choose to communicate with each other on TheHoodUp.com over other sites is because of the ability to remain completely anonymous and avoid being tracked by the "internet-police" while being able to communicate with other gang members from around the world. TheHoodUp.com is also known to be frequented by local law enforcent, so members of the site have created a unique method of communicating with each other called "starring", where they replace multiple letters in a word with an asterisk(*) and only those who can fill in the blanks will know who or what their talking about.