Organized Crime in Chicago: Beyond the Mafia

3. The Black Mafia

3 the Black mafia This chapter studies the participation of African Americans in organized crime in Chicago. The history of African American involvement in organized crime is confusing, to say the least. Although a number of authors have recognized black participation in the policy (lottery) gambling racket, they also argue that African Americans lacked the political associations and organizational skills necessary to participate in criminal activity on the same level as the once-prominent Italian American crime syndicates. For example, St. Claire Drake and Horace Clayton reported in 1945 that Negroes never got more than “petty cuts” from gambling and vice protection. In their more recent book, African-American Organized Crime, Rufus Schatzberg and Robert Kelly add:“Throughout the early period of white gang development , African Americans were not visible in the structure of any significant organized criminal process. Indeed,African-American criminals who entered the twentieth century had no documented history of a leadership role or any significant active affiliation with any organized crime group.”1 In a related article, Kelly goes on to state: There was in effect no “Mafia” or syndicate structure among these minority groups.They did not evolve around a common code of behavior or rules governing relationships between and among various groups; the protection they paid to operate illicit goods and services was not of a magnitude that would have significant political impact; and there were no examples of networks influencing an election, delivering a vote, funding a political candidate, or dabbling in union affairs. The scale of corruption was modest, highly localized, and tied to the particular criminal activity involved.2 It was not until 1974 that Francis Ianni predicted the emergence of a sophisticated“Black Mafia.”Ianni argued that traditional Italian American organized crime was being displaced by African Americans and in some cases Puerto Ricans. Ianni’s argument was rooted in ethnic succession theory. Ethnic succession is the process by which different immigrant groups have used the provision of illegal vice activity, such as prostitution, gambling, and narcotics, as a means of social mobility.The Italians, just like the Irish before them, had found jobs, educated their children, and moved to the suburbs. The ethnic vice industry that they had dominated for so long was now the prerogative of America’s newest urban immigrants—minority Americans.3 Ethnic succession theory, coupled with the almost complete absence of any published account of African American criminal groups, has led to the popular belief that black Americans did not participate in what came to be known as organized crime in America’s urban centers. This chapter will explore the participation of Chicago blacks in organized criminal activity during the period between 1890 and 1950.This analysis will also demonstrate that African American vice syndicates existed in the South Side of Chicago, just as Irish and Italian vice syndicates flourished in other areas of the city. Although they did not participate in bootlegging,African American criminal syndicates ran speakeasies and after-hour nightclubs and participated in illegal casino and policy gambling for almost fifty years. African American organized crime groups differed from other criminal groups only in the fact that they continued to independently exist long after Chicago’s other ethnicbased criminal syndicates fell under the dominance of Italian mobsters. The Black Metropolis The reason for the lack of a common understanding of African American organized crime can best be attributed to the segregated nature of Chicago’s black community during this period in history. Chicago’s South Side was a “black metropolis” that had its own elected officials, business community, and underworld, all of whom had little interaction with “white” Chicago. Following the example of Chicago School researchers, this chapter begins with a brief review of black migration and settlement in Chicago. Understanding the establishment of Chicago’s black community and its relationship to the larger political, economic, and social organization of the city is critical to understanding the development of organized crime among Chicago’s black population. The discussion then centers on the history of the ethnic vice industry that flourished in Chicago’s African American community during the first half of the twentieth century. Explaining the social history of black involvement in vice activity is essential to establishing the fact that African Americans formed sophisticated criminal organizations rivaling those of other ethnic groups. 58 chapter three Although Chicago’s first permanent resident, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, was a Negro...