Black Crime Bosses Joined the National Crime Syndicate, an Umbrella Group For American Organized Crime
En route to establishing “The Council” was “The National Crime Syndicate”, an umbrella group for all organized crime in the US, whose ranks included the country’s major black crime bosses. The Syndicate was the brainchild of Johnny Torrio, (1882 – 1957), who is best known as the founder of the Chicago Outfit – the criminal empire inherited and made infamous by his successor, Al Capone.
Torrio was a visionary. When Prohibition began, he saw the opportunity for fabulous riches in making alcohol and selling it at a steep markup, now that it was illegal. So he came up with the idea of buying breweries, now closed and on the market for pennies on the dollar. He would operate them illegally to supply the thousands of speakeasies, brothels, and nightclubs in Chicago and the surrounding region.
However, his boss, Big Jim Colosimo, rejected the idea on grounds it would drag him into unwanted confrontations with other criminal outfits, all of whom wanted a piece of the illegal alcohol business. The potential profits were too big, however, so Torrio, with the assistance of his protege, Al Capone, bought the breweries without telling their boss. When Colosimo started getting suspicious, Torrio had him killed, took over his empire, and created The Chicago Outfit.
Turf wars with Irish-American gangsters got Torrio ambushed outside his apartment with a fusillade of gunfire, in which he took bullets to the jaw, lung, abdomen, groin, and legs. He was spared from a finishing shot to the head by the killer’s gun jamming. The near death experience convinced Torrio to get out while he still could, and in 1925 he handed the reins to Capone and retired. The retirement did not last long, and by 1928, Torrio was back in the game as a mob consultant and respected emeritus figure.
In 1929, he set up the National Crime Syndicate – a loose confederation of several ethnic organizations. It consisted mainly of the American mafia and the Jewish mob, plus African American crime bosses such as Bumpy Johnson, and Irish-American outfits, among a total of 14 different organization. It functioned until the 1960s, and it was one of the templates, alongside The Commission, that was used to model the black mafia’s “Council” in the 1970s.