Mobsters Murder Anti-Mob Sheriff, Trigger Mass Lynching of Mobsters
Conventional wisdom has it that the Italian-American mafia had its roots in New York City, home of the Five Great Crime Families and the Godfather, and the destination of millions of Italian immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In reality, however, America’s first Italian mafia emerged deep in the heart of Dixie, in New Orleans.
The favored destination of southern Italian immigrants for much of the 19th century was not the US, but Argentina and Brazil, whose culture, languages, religion, and climate were more agreeable to Italians. New Orleans became a secondary destination during the 19th century, because of its extensive traffic with those South American countries. As the New Orleans Times reported in 1869, that 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.”
By the 1870s, Italian immigrants 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 extortion rackets. They collected “tribute” from Italian workers, as well as from a rival Italian crime family, the Prozenzanos, who monopolized fruit shipments.
Fighting broke out in the 1880s between the crime families, over control of the New Orleans waterfront. As each family brought in more goons from the old country, the violence spilled over, putting pressure on the authorities to act. When New Orleans’ police chief launched an investigation, he was assassinated in 1890. His dying words before expiring were “the Dagoes shot me“.
19 mafiosi were arrested and prosecuted, but in the first trial of 9 of them, the mafia tampered with the jury. Despite overwhelming evidence, 6 were acquitted outright, while the remaining 3 got hung juries. Next day, March 14th, 1891, a mob of thousands, including some of New Orleans’ most prominent citizens, gathered. They broke into the prison housing the defendants, and lynched 11 of them – the biggest single mass lynching (as opposed to massacre) in US history.
It was an object lesson that the mafia never forgot. Unlike Sicily and southern Italy, where criminals could act in brazen contempt of the authorities and society, there were limits to what could be gotten away with in America. From that day to the present, the Italian-American mafia followed strict rules against targeting law enforcement, lest doing so invite a backlash ruinous to their business and to their health.