So we are use to seeing all the gangster tells and exaggerations of organized crime, and mobsters well not many people know the origins of the old country and how the "crime families" began.At the opening of the twentieth century, the influx of Italians in to America began to grow. From 1890 to 1900, 655,888 immigrants arrived in the United States, of whom two-thirds were men. Many Italians arrived in the United States hoping to earn enough money to return home and buy land. Coming especially from the poorer rural villages in Southern Italy, including Sicily and Campania, most arrived with little cash or education; since most had been peasant farmers in Italy, they lacked craft skills and, therefore, generally performed manual labor.
They populated various US cities, forming ‘Little Italies’, where they could easily establish a familiar cultural presence. Chain and return migration helped subdivide these new Italian communities into regional groupings. Italian neighborhoods typically grew in the older areas of the cities, suffering from overcrowded tenements and poor sanitation.Living together in such closed communities created little more than a microcosm of the society they had left in Europe. Some criminals exploited this fact, and began to extort the more prosperous Italian’s in their neighbourhood. A crime that would eventually snow-ball into an epidemic known as ‘The Black Hand’.
The extortions were done anonymously by delivering threatening letters demanding money, signed with a crudely drawn symbols, such as a knife or a skull. The following is an excerpt from one such letter:
"If you have not sufficient courage you may go to people who enjoy an honorable reputation and be careful as to whom you go. Thus you may stop us from persecuting you as you have been adjudged to give money or life. Woe upon you if you do not resolve to buy your future happiness, you can do from us by giving the money demanded. My name is Salvatore Spinelli. My parents in Italy came from a decent family. I came here eighteen years ago and went to work as a house painter, like my father. I started a family and I have been an American citizen for thirteen years. I had a house at 314 East Eleventh Street and another one at 316, which I rented out. At this point the ‘Black Hand’ came into my life and asked me for seven thousand dollars. I told them to go to hell and the bandits tried to blow up my house. Then I asked the police for help and refused more demands, but the ‘Black Hand’ set off one, two, three, four, five bombs in my houses. Things went to pieces. From thirty two tenants I am down to six. I owe a thousand dollars interest that is due next month and I cannot pay. I am a ruined man. My family lives in fear. There is a policeman on guard in front of my house, but what can he do? My brother Francesco and I do guard duty at the windows with guns night and day. My wife and children have not left the house for weeks. How long can this go on?"
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