History of La Cosa Nostra
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History of La Cosa Nostra
UNK
Dr. Neal
CJ 380
12.01.2011
Envision a world where crime is king; a world where mobsters were more influential than political figures, controlled law enforcement, and ran cities to line their own pockets. They stole from whom they wanted and murdered those that got in their way. While it sounds like something out of a movie, it actually happened here in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. The American Mafia has evolved over the years as various gangs assumed and lost dominance: the Black Hand gangs around 1900; the Five Points Gang in the 1910s and ‘20s in New York City; Al Capone’s Syndicate in Chicago in the 1920s.
Since the 1900s, thousands of Italian organized crime figures, mostly Sicilian Mafiosi, have come illegally to this country. The Italian Immigrants crowded into older lower class neighborhoods of American cities, sometimes given names such as “Little Italy”. These neighborhoods suffered from overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions. Living together in such closed communities created little more than a microcosm of the society they had left in Europe (par.3, Black Hand). Some criminals exploited this fact, and began to extort the more prosperous Italian’s in their neighborhood creating a crime that would eventually snow-ball into an epidemic known as ‘The Black Hand’ (par.3, Black Hand). The extortions were done anonymously by delivering threatening letters demanding money, signed with crudely drawn symbols, such as a knife or a skull. People paid the Black Hand extortionists in the fear that American law had no understanding, or power, to help them (par.4, Black Hand).
Many who fled here in the early 1920’s helped establish what is known today as La Cosa Nostra or the American Mafia (par. 10, FBI). La Cosa Nostra, or the LCN as it is known by the FBI, consists of different “families” or groups that are generally arranged geographically and
History of La Cosa Nostra
UNK
Dr. Neal
CJ 380
12.01.2011
Envision a world where crime is king; a world where mobsters were more influential than political figures, controlled law enforcement, and ran cities to line their own pockets. They stole from whom they wanted and murdered those that got in their way. While it sounds like something out of a movie, it actually happened here in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. The American Mafia has evolved over the years as various gangs assumed and lost dominance: the Black Hand gangs around 1900; the Five Points Gang in the 1910s and ‘20s in New York City; Al Capone’s Syndicate in Chicago in the 1920s.
Since the 1900s, thousands of Italian organized crime figures, mostly Sicilian Mafiosi, have come illegally to this country. The Italian Immigrants crowded into older lower class neighborhoods of American cities, sometimes given names such as “Little Italy”. These neighborhoods suffered from overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions. Living together in such closed communities created little more than a microcosm of the society they had left in Europe (par.3, Black Hand). Some criminals exploited this fact, and began to extort the more prosperous Italian’s in their neighborhood creating a crime that would eventually snow-ball into an epidemic known as ‘The Black Hand’ (par.3, Black Hand). The extortions were done anonymously by delivering threatening letters demanding money, signed with crudely drawn symbols, such as a knife or a skull. People paid the Black Hand extortionists in the fear that American law had no understanding, or power, to help them (par.4, Black Hand).
Many who fled here in the early 1920’s helped establish what is known today as La Cosa Nostra or the American Mafia (par. 10, FBI). La Cosa Nostra, or the LCN as it is known by the FBI, consists of different “families” or groups that are generally arranged geographically and
References: GangRule.com, The Black Hand. (2011). Retrieved 6:52, December 7, 2011, from http://www.gangrule.com/gangs/the-black-hand Italian Organized Crime, (2011). The Federal Bureau of Investigation website. Retrieved 2:32, December 7, 2011, from http://www.fbi.gov/aboutus/investigate/organizedcrime/italian_mafia Mafia in the United States. (2011). The History Channel website. Retrieved 5:25, December 7, 2011, from http://www.history.com/topics/mafia-in-the-united-states. The Five Families. (2011). The Investigation Discovery website. Retrieved 2:32, December 7, 2011, from http://investigation.discovery.com/investigation/mobs-gangsters/five-families-03.html The Gambino Family. (2002). The Gambino Family website. Retrieved 6:52, December 7, 2011, from http://www.gambinofamily.com/carlo_gambino.htm