Season one

The Sons of Anarchy is an outlaw motorcycle club with many charters in the United States. The Charming local is the original founding chapter of the Sons of Anarchy.[3]

The Charming charter is based out of a clubhouse adjacent to the Teller-Morrow auto mechanic shop. Led by Clay Morrow, the club protects and controls Charming through close community relationships, bribery and violent intimidation. The full name of the motorcycle club is Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original; on occasion, the show will abbreviate it as SOA, though more frequently the club is referred to as SAMCRO (a rough acronym of The Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original [4]) or Sam Crow. This nickname is also reflected in the original title of the show, Forever Sam Crow.[5] The club's leathers also refer to "Men of Mayhem," Jax has worn a hat that says "Reaper Crew," and their logo is a grim reaper wielding an M-16 with a bloody scythe blade and holding a crystal ball with the anarchy "A". Another symbol of the club is the crow. (At least two female characters affiliated with the club have crow tattoos.) As for the motorcycles, the Sons mostly ride customized Harley-Davidson Dynas.

Club members have "day jobs" in local industries, most of them working at Clay's auto repair shop, but they primarily make money by illegally importing weapons and selling them to drug gangs in the East Bay, along with protection runs for local businesses by protecting valuable truck shipments from hijacking.

SAMCRO keeps meth traffickers out of Charming, which puts them at odds with the meth-distributing white supremacist "Nords" gang, the Nordics, headed by Ernest Darby. Unlike their rivals, the Sons are relatively diverse and inclusionist, openly rejecting the Nords' white supremacy. The SOA also have to deal with a rival Oakland-based MC, the "Mayans" led by Marcus Alvarez, who control the neighboring territory of northern Nevada. Other groups in SAMCRO's orbit include the San Francisco-based Chinese American mafia, the Italian American Cacuzza crime family, the True IRA of Ireland, which supplies them with illegal Russian-made guns, the One-Niners, an African American street gang (who also appeared on The Shield, thus putting the two in the same fictional universe) to whom SAMCRO sell weapons, and various affiliates in the state prison system, where many members of the club have been incarcerated at one time or another.

The club operates out of a clubhouse attached to the Teller-Morrow auto shop. The clubhouse includes a living area where Jax is currently camped out (since leaving his house to ex-wife Wendy following their divorce), a bar, a pool table and an elaborate conference table made of redwood that has a reaper logo carved into the top. The club also owns a secluded cabin in the woods and formerly had a warehouse outside of town where they assembled the illegal weapons. They start the series looking for a new warehouse space, and end the first season with most of their finances tied up in building a new one.

John Teller and Piermont "Piney" Winston co-founded SAMCRO in 1967 following their return from service as paratroopers during the Vietnam War.[6] Six of the "Redwood Original 9" members were vets; Clay Morrow was the youngest of the original members. Following John's death in 1993, his widow Gemma later married Clay.

John and Gemma's surviving son Jax (another son, Tommy, died in childhood of the "family flaw", a congenital heart defect) is second in the club's line of succession after co-founder and sitting president Clay. Jax is recently divorced from Wendy, the mother of his son Abel, who is born 10 weeks premature as a result of his mother's Meth addiction. Jax is also connected to Tara, a doctor at St. Thomas Hospital. The two were high school sweethearts.