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Facts About These Notorious Law Breakers and Their Criminal History

Khalid Elhassan May 20, 2020 34 min

Al Capone - Bugsy Siegel — 1930s mobsters. Eugene Cannevari Collection

5. Maintaining Order

Forest Whitaker as Bumpy Johnson in ‘Godfather of Harlem’. Los Angeles Sentinel

Bumpy Johnson died of a heart attack in a Harlem restaurant, clutching his chest and keeling over around 2 AM on the morning of July 7^th, 1968. His death was dramatized in the movie American Gangster, which depicted him expiring in the arms of his surrogate son and successor, Frank Lucas, who would revolutionize New York’s drug trade.

Bumpy Johnson had dominated the Harlem crime scene for decades, maintaining some measure of order on the street. After his death, various contenders scrambled to fill his shoes. Their competition led to a marked increase in violence and chaos on the streets.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.