Fascinating Facts About the Birth of the Italian-American Mafia

19. New Orleans Origins

Many assume that the Italian-American Mafia had it its roots in New York City. After all, the Big Apple is home of the Five Great Crime Families, the Godfather, and melting pot extraordinaire. It was also the first destination of millions of Italian immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who disembarked and were processed into the US at nearby Ellis Island. However, the Italian-American Mafia first emerged not in NYC, or even Chicago, but much further south, deep down in Dixie. In 1869, the New Orleans Times reported that the city’s Second District was overrun with “well-known and notorious Sicilian murderers, counterfeiters and burglars, who, in the last month, have formed a sort of general co-partnership or stock company for the plunder and disturbance of the city“.

18. Italian Immigration to South America Branched Off to the American South

The favored destination of southern Italian immigrants in the nineteenth century was not America, but Argentina and Brazil. The latter countries’ Latin culture, Romance languages, Catholic religion, and warmer climes were more hospitable and easier to adapt to than the US. New Orleans became a secondary destination because of its extensive trade with those southern locales. By the 1870s, Sicilian immigrants Carlo and Alberto Matranga had established the Matranga crime family in New Orleans, operating out of a salon and brothel. They expanded their activities from prostitution to labor racketeering and a lucrative extortion racket known as the Black Hand. They also collected “tribute” from Italian laborers, as well as from a rival Italian crime family, the Prozenzanos, who monopolized South American fruit shipments.

17. When the Mob Murdered a Police Chief

In the 1880s, the Matrangas warred with the Prozenzanos over control of the New Orleans waterfront, and each family brought in more and more Mafiosi from Italy. The violence spilled over, putting pressure on the authorities to act. New Orleans’ police chief launched an investigation into Mafiosi activities, only to be assassinated for his troubles in 1890. Unable to identify his killers, he stated “the Dagoes shot me“, before he breathed his last. The assassination created a backlash, and nineteen New Orleans Mafiosi were arrested and prosecuted. In a first trial of nine, the defendants successfully tampered with the jury. Despite ample evidence, six were acquitted, and three had hung juries. As seen below, the public reaction was drastic.

16. Massacring the Mafiosi

The following day, March 14^th, 1891, a mob of thousands, including prominent New Orleans citizens, broke into the prison housing the defendants. They lynched eleven – the biggest single mass lynching in US history. That had a salutary effect on the Italian-American Mafia. Unlike Sicily and southern Italy, where criminals could brazenly defy the authorities and society, with little to fear from either, America was different, with limits to what criminals could get away. From then on, the Mob adopted strict rules against targeting law enforcement, even preemptively killing colleagues seeking to go after cops or prosecutors.

15. The Mafia’s Growth in New York City

By the early twentieth century, Italian criminal gangs had formed in the Northeast. Most notably in New York City, as America became increasingly attractive to Italian immigrants. They were small scale operations, little different from other NYC gangs, generally operating in Italian neighborhoods and preying upon Italian immigrants. That changed in 1920, after passage of the 18th Amendment and the introduction of Prohibition, banning the manufacture, transport, or sale of alcohol. Making alcohol illegal did not reduce the high demand for alcohol, however, and simply created an environment of widespread tolerance of crime in order to provide a thirsty public with the booze it craved. Essentially, Prohibition took a major American industry, hitherto operated legally, and gifted it to organized crime.

14. Prohibition Turned Out to be a Godsend to the Mafia

Potential profits from the sale and distribution of illegal alcohol were astronomical. That was coupled with widespread tolerance by much of the public, as well as many cops and politicians who did not see the sale or consumption of alcohol as particularly immoral. It made bootlegging irresistible to criminal entrepreneurs across America. Prohibition thus gave a boost to organized crime in general, and to the Italian-American Mafia in particular, as Italians gangsters were particularly well positioned to take advantage of this new environment. Italian hoodlums, thanks to the Mafia in the Old Country, could draw upon a tradition of sophisticated, organized, hierarchical, and disciplined criminal organizations. They had a model, as well as experienced personnel who could readily duplicate the system in the US.

13. One Thing Mussolini Did Right: Crackdown on the Mafia

Just as Prohibition produced a business boom for organized crime in the US in general, and the Italian-American Mafia in particular, Benito Mussolini and his Fascists came to power in Italy. No Italian government before had managed to keep the Sicilian Mafia and the Camorra in check. Nor did any Italian government since. Mussolini crushed them. Farcical buffoon he might have been, but that was one thing the Italian dictator pulled off. The Sicilian Mafia and Camorra throve, and still do, in Italy’s corrupt political culture. They worked the system and mastered its intricacies, subverted politicians, police, and judges by bribes or threats, and bent them to their will until organized crime became a state within the state. The Fascists did not share power or tolerate challenges, however, and Mussolini was neither concerned with nor constrained by legalities in dealing with the Sicilian Mafia and Camorra.

12. It Took World War II to Inadvertently Bring the Mafia Back to Life in Italy

Mussolini bypassed the criminal justice system and sent in the army and Black Shirts to round up Mafiosi, killing any who resisted. Mafiosi had long intimidated civilians, strutting as scary tough guys. They discovered that soldiers were scarier and tougher. Fortunately for the Italian-American Mafia, Mussolini’s crackdown in Italy forced many Mafiosi to flee. The push factor at home coincided with a pull factor in America, where Italian-American crime families were booming. Thus, Italian Mafiosi fleeing Italy swelled the ranks of America’s Mafia just when their services were most needed. It was not until World War II and the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy that the Camorra and Sicilian mafia were reborn, when the US Army employed their remnants to help administer the occupation. Wartime exigencies required the use of whatever was at hand to help win and save American lives, and the Mafiosi were committed anti-Fascists, after all.

11. The Nearly-Forgotten Early Mafia Boss: Paul Kelly

Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli, better known as Paul Kelly (1876 – 1936), was an early New York City Mafiosi. He emigrated to the US as a teenager, took up boxing, Anglicized his name to Paul Kelly when he turned professional. Kelly invested his prize money in a string of brothels in the Italian immigrant district east of the Bowerly, then founded the Five Points Gang – the Big Apple’s last dominant street gang. He recruited and gave a start in the criminal life to many youths who eventually became the biggest names in American organized crime, such as Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Seigel, and Meyer Lansky. Kelly’s career was also significant because it marked Italian organized crime’s transition from street gangs and into the organized hierarchical structure of crime families.

10. When the Mob Established Itself in the Big Apple

Paul Kelly added athletic clubs to his properties, which operated as fronts for street gangs that he increasingly controlled and consolidated. He melded his criminal activities with politics, and lent Tammany Hall his support during elections. The most notorious instance took place on primary day in 1901, when Kelly unleashed 1500 gang members against an incumbent who had campaigned to keep brothels out of his ward. Kelly’s goons ensured the incumbent’s defeat by beating up his supporters, blocking polling booths, and voting early and often for the challenger. One gang member boasted that he had voted 53 times that day. Such influence won Kelly political favors that kept him out of legal trouble, or made it go away and helped lessen its impact when it did arrive.

9. From Street Crime to Organized Crime

When a rivalry with another street gang led by a Monk Eastman spilled into street violence, Tammany Hall ordered Kelly and Eastman to settle their differences in a boxing ring. The match ended in a draw, and when street fighting resumed, Eastman was arrested for robbery. Tammany Hall withdrew its protection, and he was convicted and sent away for ten years in Sing Sing, leaving Kelly as NYC’s unchallenged top gang boss. After surviving a messy assassination attempt in 1905 that involved a bloody public shootout, Kelly was arrested but soon released because of his connections. Tammany Hall ordered him to tone it down, and Kelly reduced his direct street gang involvement. Moving into labor racketeering, he got himself appointed vice president of the Longshoremen’s union, for which he provided muscle during labor disputes, until his death of natural causes in 1936.

8. The Old School Gangster Who Gave Al Capone His Start

Born in Calabria in southern Italy, and arriving in the US at age eight, Francisco Iole, better known as Frankie Yale (1893 – 1928), was an early New York Mafiosi and hitman, who once employed Al Capone in his operations. As a teenager, Yale joined the Five Points Gang, and quickly developed a violent reputation as a ferocious fist fighter and brawler. He was first arrested in 1912 at age nineteen for disorderly conduct. He started his organized crime career running a protection and extortion racket, and in 1913 was arrested for robbery and assault of a dry goods store. He walked after the store owner retracted his identification of Yale. By 1917, he had invested his racket proceeds into opening a bar in Coney Island, which became his base of operations.

7. The Americanization of the Mafia

Yale’s criminal enterprise typified a new trend. Italian-American Mafiosi “families” began to employ Italians from all regions, not just the boss’ hometown or district, and willingly cooperated with other ethnic gangs so long as there was money to be made. From protection, Yale branched out into prostitution, running a string of brothels, and when Prohibition arrived, he became one of Brooklyn’s biggest bootleggers. The high profits came with high risks. In 1921, Yale barely escaped an assassination attempt by rival bootleggers, getting shot in the lung while one of his bodyguards was wounded and another killed. He survived another assassination attempt a few months later, that claimed the life of another bodyguard. In yet another attempted assassination in 1923, Yale escaped with his life only because the assassins mistook an associate for Yale and shot him instead.

6. Falling Out With Al Capone

Yale traveled to Chicago in 1924 with a hit team to murder a rival of his former underling, Al Capone. He was arrested afterwards, but released when police failed to shake his alibi. Capone returned the favor the following year, when during a visit to NYC he helped Yale murder three rivals and wound a fourth in an ambush outside a nightclub. That friendship ended in 1927 when Yale, Capone’s whiskey supplier, got greedy and started hijacking the Chicago gangster’s trucks. A meeting failed to resolve matters, and Capone set plans in motion for his former boss’ downfall. On July 1^st, 1928, Yale received a call that something was wrong with his wife. He refused to wait for his usual escort of bodyguards, jumped into his armor-plated car, and sped off. He was intercepted en route by gunmen who riddled his car and fatally shot him with armor-piercing bullets.

5. “The Man Who Can Dodge Bullets“

Born in Menfi, Sicily, Giuseppe Masseria, better known as Joe “The Boss” Masseria (1887 – 1931), fled his homeland as a teenager in 1903 to escape a murder indictment, and emigrated to the US, which had no extradition treaty with Italy at the time. In America, he founded what is today the Genovese crime family, and became New York City’s leading crime boss and kingpin from the early 1920s until his death in 1931. Masseria began his criminal career in the US as an enforcer for the Morello gang in NYC’s Lower East Side. When that gang’s boss was murdered in 1916, Masseria broke off and formed his own splinter group. It was a dangerous career, and in 1922 he miraculously escaped an assassination attempt that injured six bystanders and killed two, plus a horse. That earned Masseria the nickname “The Man Who Can Dodge Bullets”.

4. Joe “The Boss” Masseria

Masseria consolidated his control over the old Morello gang, and by the mid-1920s, was among NYC’s most powerful crime bosses. After Frankie Yale’s murder, Masseria took over his territory, and by 1929, now called “Joe the Boss”, headed New York’s largest crime family. His chief deputy by then was Lucky Luciano, and his underlings included notable Mafiosi such as Frank Costello, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Seigel, Albert Anastasia, and Vito Genovese. In early 1930, rivalry with a rising competitor, Joe Maranzano, erupted into what became known as the Castellammarese War, in which over 60 Mafiosi perished. It finally ended when Masseria was betrayed by his own men, who cut a deal with his rival, Maranzano. On April 15^th, 1931, Masseria was gunned down in a restaurant by a hit squad that included future crime bosses Vito Genovese, Bugsy Seigel, and Albert Anastasia, organized and led by Masseria’s chief deputy, Lucky Luciano.

3. From “The Boss” to “The Boss of All Bosses”

Born in Castellammare, Sicily, Salvatore Maranzano (1886 – 1931) was a powerful kingpin who founded what became the Bonano crime family, and instigated the Castellammarese War against Joe Masseria for control of New York’s criminal world. Winning that war, Maranzano declared himself capo di tutti capi, or “Boss of All Bosses” – the last such occurrence in the Mob’s history. Maranzano had initially studied to become a priest before opting to become a Mafiosi instead. Emigrating to the US soon after World War I, he started a legitimate real estate business, which acted as a front for his bootlegging and other criminal activities such as narcotics, gambling, and prostitution.

2. “Little Caesar” in Charge of the Mafia

Salvatore Maranzano was a huge fan of Julius Caesar, whom he sought to emulate. He often lectured less educated American Mafiosi about the Roman dictator, which earned Maranzano the nickname “Little Caesar”. It was not meant as a compliment. In 1930, he waged what came to be known as the Castellammarese War against Joe Masseria. After Masseria’s assassination by his own lieutenants, Maranzano reorganized the American mafia, and set up a basic hierarchical structure that survives to this day. Each established family would henceforth have a boss and underboss, and beneath them would be captains, or caporegimes, in command of soldiers. Above them all, Maranzano declared himself “Boss of All Bosses”.

1.     The End of the “Mustache Pete” Mafiosi

Maranzano was an old school “Mustache Pete” who grew up and rose in Italy’s Mafia culture. He tried to impose traditional Italian Mafiosi customs and norms upon American mobsters raised in the US. That only alienated and rubbed them the wrong way. As a result, Maranzano’s reign as Boss of All Bosses proved to be farcically brief. Five months after Masseria’s murder, Lucky Luciano had Maranzano assassinated, and abolished his grandiose title. In the ensuing weeks and months, Maranzano’s allies across the US, the remaining Mustache Petes, were purged on Luciano’s orders. In lieu of a single boss, Luciano created a committee, which came to be known as The Commission, that oversaw the Italian-American Mafia ever since.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Annals of Crime – The Real Father of Organized Crime in America

Behr, Edward – Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America (1996)

Capeci, Jerry – The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Mafia (2005)

Costanzo, Ezio – The Mafia and the Allies: Sicily, 1943, and the Return of the Mafia (2007)

Critchley, David – The Origin of Organized Crime in America: The New York City Mafia, 1891-1931 (2008)

Downey, Patrick – Gangster City: The History of the New York Underworld, 1900-1935 (2004)

Duggan, Christopher – Fascism and the Mafia (1989)

Gambino, Richard – Vendetta: The True Story of the Largest Lynching in US History (2000)

Gigantino, Anthony, La Salle University Digital Commons, The Histories, Volume 4, Issue 1, Article 3 – Il Duce and the Mafia: Mussolini’s Hatred of the Mafia and the American Alliance With Organized Crime

History Collection – Mysterious Slayings and Crimes of the Victorian Era

Hortis, Alexander C. – The Mob and the City: The Hidden History of How the Mafia Captured New York (2014)

Mafia History – What Do We Know About Frankie Yale?

Mob Museum – Prohibition Profits Transformed the Mob

New Orleans Historical – Sicilian Lynching at the Old Parish Prison

Orkent, Daniel – Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (2010)

Raab, Selwyn – Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires (2005)

Washington Post, May 5^th, 2017 – Five Myths About the Mafia