senator from Tennessee, launched an investigation into organized crime and held televised public hearings that represented the first time any part of the federal government publicly recognized the existence of the American Mafia. Declaring War on the Mafia, The 1950s & 1960s Even though the illegal activities of these crime families were known to law-enforcement agencies, they were ineffectual at stopping the Mafia’s growth, in part because mobsters frequently paid off public officials and business leaders and bribed or intimidated witnesses and juries. America’s capital of organized crime was New York City, which had five major Mafia families. ![]() By the mid-20th century, there were 24 known crime families operating in cities across the country, comprised of some 5,000 “made,” or inducted, members and thousands of associates. In 1931, mobster Lucky Luciano (1897-1962) masterminded the establishment of the Commission, which would serve as a central governing body for the more than 20 Italian-American crime groups, or families, then operating in the United States.Īfter Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the American Mafia moved beyond bootlegging and entrenched itself in a range of illegal ventures, from drug trafficking to loan-sharking, while also infiltrating labor unions and legitimate businesses such as construction, waterfront commerce and the New York garment industry. In the United States, the Mafia developed as a separate entity during the Prohibition era of the 1920s, as Italian-American neighborhood gangs morphed into sophisticated criminal enterprises through their success in the illicit liquor trade. Capone emerged from prison in 1939, too sick to return to his criminal life. (Some Italian mobsters escaped to the United States, where they became involved in the bootleg liquor business and the burgeoning American Mafia.) Following World War II, the Mafia rose again as mob-backed building companies worked to dominate the 1950s construction boom in Sicily.ĭid you know? Al Capone, head of organized crime in Chicago in the 1920s and involved in everything from illegal gambling to murder, was ultimately brought down by a 1931 conviction for income-tax evasion. Mussolini viewed the Mafia as a threat to his Fascist regime and launched a brutal crackdown in which more than a thousand suspected Mafiosi were convicted and thrown in prison. By the 1920s, the Sicilian Mafia was facing a challenge from Prime Minister Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), who came to power in 1922. By the later part of the 19th century in Sicily, Italy, criminal gangs who had become known as the Mafia flourished by using violence and intimidation to extract protection money from landowners and merchants.
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