Black Hand (extortion)
Black Hand (Italian: La Mano Nera) was a type of extortion racket. It was a method of extortion, not a criminal organization as such, though gangsters of Camorra and the Mafia practiced it.[1]
Origins
The roots of the Black Hand can be traced to the Kingdom of Naples as early as the 1750s. However, the term as normally used in English specifically refers to the organization established by Italian immigrants in the United States during the 1880s who, though fluent in their Southern Italian regional languages, had no access to Standard Italian or even a grammar school education. A minority of the immigrants formed criminal syndicates, living alongside each other. By 1900, Black Hand operations were firmly established in the Italian-American communities of major cities including New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Chicago, Scranton, San Francisco, and Detroit. In 1907, a Black Hand headquarters was discovered in Hillville, Pennsylvania, a village located a few miles west of New Castle, Pennsylvania.[2] The Black Hand in Hillville established a school designed to train members in the use of the stiletto.[2] Although more successful immigrants were usually targeted, possibly as many as 90% of Italian immigrants and workmen in New York and other communities were threatened with extortion.[1][2]
Typical Black Hand tactics involved sending a letter to a victim threatening bodily harm, kidnapping, arson, or murder. The letter demanded a specified amount of money to be delivered to a specific place. It was decorated with threatening symbols like a smoking gun or hangman's noose and signed with a hand imprinted in black ink; hence the Sicilian name 'Il Mano Nero (The Black Hand) which was readily adopted by the American press as "The Black Hand Society".[1]
The tenor Enrico Caruso received a Black Hand letter, on which a black hand and dagger were drawn, demanding $2,000. Although Caruso decided to pay, he again received a demand for $15,000. Realizing the extortionists would continue to demand money, he reported the incident to the police who, arranging for Caruso to drop off the money at a prearranged spot, arrested two Italian-American businessmen who retrieved the money. On occasion, Black Handers threatened other gangsters and usually faced retaliation.[1] In Chicago, the notorious Shotgun Man murdered dozens of people in broad daylight on the same street corner during a decade-long reign of terror.
If law enforcement closed in, gangsters answered with their usual style: assassination. Victims include New Orleans police chief David Hennessy and NYPD lieutenant Joseph Petrosino. They intimidated potential witnesses even in the courtroom.[1]
The Black Hand practice in the United States disappeared in the mid 1920s after a wave of negative public opinion led organized crime figures to seek more subtle methods of extortion.[1]
References
Further reading
- Critchley, David. The Origin of Organized Crime: The New York City Mafia, 1891-931. New York, Routledge, 2008.
- Dash, Mike. The First Family: Terror, Extortion and the Birth of the American Mafia. London, Simon & Schuster, 2009.
- Lombardo, Robert M. "The Black Hand: A Study in Moral Panic." Global Crime. 6:3-4 (2004).
- Pitkin, Thomas Monroe, and Cordasco, Francesco. The Black Hand: A Chapter in Ethnic Crime. Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams, & Co., 1977. (An excellent social historical study of the Black Hand during the early years of the twentieth century—when the influx of Italians was the greatest—using a variety of print sources.)
- Wallin, Geoff. "In Little Italy, Mum's the Word About Mob." Chi-Town Daily News. July 3, 2007.