POISONING THE BLACK MASSES

Besides almost making monopoly over the policy racket, by the early 1950’s the Chicago Mob also began its involvement in narcotics trade and the black population was allegedly again, their main target. In fact, the Outfit’s bosses didn’t want any narcotics products floating around their own neighborhoods, but instead they mainly sold the product around the areas that were mainly filled with black population, and the saddest thing was that all of narcotics which the Mafia imported, were later mainly sold by black racketeers and gangsters to their own people and again, the city’s Northwest and South areas became the prime targets for the Mafia’s new “venture” aka heroin. In addition, as I we already saw in the previous case with the late Indiana gambling boss, Walter Kelly, it seems that somehow the line between the policy racket and the narcotics trade was quite thin.

One of the most notorious black crews that was also involved in the Outfit’s narcotics trade on the city’s Northwest Side was headed by dealers such as Amos Jones, James Bowman and Morris Taylor. These individuals were supplied by one Outfit member from around the Elmwood Park/Grand Avenue areas known as Tony Dichiarinte, who turn allegedly received his shipments from one of the east coast families, such as the Lucchese crime family in New York. But in 1951, Morris Taylor got pinched by the cops for possession of narcotics and while in jail, he decided to “spill the beans” and told the investigators that he attended several meetings with James Bowman, who in turn drove with him to the West Side where they usually met members or associates of the Outfit regarding narcotics deals. After that, everyone got arrested while on “duty”, including Bowman who received 10 years prison sentence for the sale, possession and transportation of narcotics.


Tony Dichiarinte

Another large Outfit-related dope peddling ring from around the South Side which also used black dealers was headed by Mafia individuals such as James Cordovano, Joseph DiCaro and Anthony Annerino. Sources say that Cordovano was allegedly the one who had close connection to a large African-American group, mainly with the help of one Marvin Moses, followed by Archie Robinson, Charles Venton, Thomas Matas and Melvin Harris. The interesting thing about these crews was that they also had an associate known as Jack Clayton, who in turn owned a private airplane to transport narcotics from Chicago to Kansas City, including California, Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Arkansas, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

The main problem that no one could’ve predicted was that the narcotics business was going to disrupt the lucrative policy racket, meaning many black operators started selling and also using drugs, and also some began stealing money from the policy game and later invested it in narcotics for whatever reason. There were also less and less “street runners” regarding the policy operations, while on the other hand the number of street dope dealers was getting higher and higher, including the number of addicts and also deaths of young people. Huge number of the African-American dope dealers suddenly appeared all around the South Side, and during the mid 1950’s the so-called “undisputed king of the policy operations” around the south was James Irving. The problem was that the old timers such as Irving were only interested in the policy racket since the operation alone brought them millions of dollars a year and they didn’t need any more complications such as the dope peddling business, which in fact was highly regarded by the younger generation. On top of that, by 1956 most of the old “Capone” mobsters were dead, including Sam Hunt, and so the younger generation of the Outfit, especially the Italians, began to take whatever was left by their late predecessors.

RETURN OF THE MACK

Some of the up-and-coming young black criminals saw the Italian mobsters as their role models and on top of that, they saw future criminal success in the narcotics trade, something which they previously rarely received from their black superiors in the policy racket. One of those younger and quite ambitious black criminals was Nolan Mack, a known enforcer, policy operator and above all, narcotics peddler, who worked closely with Outfit capo Frank Caruso, who in turn mainly controlled the Chinatown area and Near South Side, but also had some interests around the much larger South Side. Besides Caruso, Mack was also allegedly connected to another Outfit dope peddler known as Americo DePietto who in turn belonged to the so-called leading West Side mob.


Nolan Mack

Mack had a criminal record with over 20 arrests, like back during the 1940’s when he served time twice for burglary and bank robbery, and was considered as “savage criminal”, mainly because Mack had very “short fuse”, high temper and was always “bullet on”. He was arrested numerous times for beating up people for just looking at him the wrong way, while his first narcotics violation occurred back in 1955 and from that point on, he was arrested 10 more times for peddling narcotics until he was imprisoned in 1957 and was sentenced to 5 years, but served only 4. Shortly after his release from prison, the first thing which Mack did was executing the murder of his ex-partner in the drug business, Shelby Faulk, who was found shot to death in his white Cadillac in an alley at the rear of 7304 Union Av., allegedly because Faulk tried to take over Mack’s business while the latter was absent.

Because of the protection which he already established in his deal with the Outfit, Mack had the power to place in line every drug dealer and policy operator that crossed his path, and in the eyes of the Outfit, Mack was the perfect man for the job mainly because he was able to demand respect within the black community with the help of fear and intimidation, and “Mafia-type” guys like Caruso and DePietto also knew on how to exploit individuals like that and to make the whole business relationship quite lucrative. So, DePietto introduced Mack to another Italian dope peddler known as Joe Battiato who in turn handled the narcotics stash from his apartment at Belden Avenue, and every time when Mack visited the location, the two exchanged two brown paper bags, which obviously contained money and heroin. Mack allegedly had an easy way to sell the product on the streets in no time, mainly because he had a large crew of drug dealers and most of them worked at food stands, barber shops or even worked as janitors or taxi drivers, and few of the most prominent ones were Opal and Charles Cole, Louis Pierce, Charles Armstrong, Charles Brooks, LaFauncie Johnson and Eddie Clark. The whole point was to maintain the deal between the Outfit’s Westsiders, who financed most of the narcotics shipments, and the South Side mob which distributed the product around the local neighborhoods.


Americo DePietto

Mack did not possess any personal police or political connections, but instead that was the job for his friends in the Outfit who acted as “protectors” for their street dealers. For example, one day, the cops found two pounds of pure heroin worth around $100,000 (or around one million dollars in today’s cash) in Mack's apartment, but shortly after he was released on all charges on the grounds that the arrest and confiscations were made without a search warrant. During the arrest, Mack allegedly said to one of the agents that he would kill the next officer who will attempt to arrest him. Also, sometimes Mack and the Outfit were able to receive information if anyone from Mack’s crew was talking to the cops. One such example occurred in January 1963, when one of Mack’s street dealers, Louis Pierce, was constantly “harassed” by the cops by always raiding his home and arresting him in public places, meaning the government managed to stir the thoughts of suspicion among the crew members, including their leader. That same month, 48 years old Pierce was found shot to death in his car in front of his home at 4115 Vincennes Av. Several months later, the body of 30 years old Charles Brooks was found in the Fox River, after experiencing the same government tactic.

But like most criminal stories, everything went smooth until the government decided to place 24/7 surveillance over the black gangster and some of the agents constantly wondered around the “Black Belt” with hope to find anyone who was willing to talk. Luckily, on October 25, 1963, two federal agents received information that Mack was about to drive 2 kilos of heroin with his car from one point to another. Reports say that that the main cops who was assigned to follow Mack, was narcotics agent Wayne Valentino. As they approached State Street, Mack noticed that he was being followed and suddenly curbed Valentino's car, thus forcing him to smash into a lamp post. Valentino quickly radioed agent Gayle Ruhl for backup, who in turn took up the pursuit on the expressway, and when Ruhl came close behind, just west of the Loop on the expressway, Mack slammed on his brakes and stopped the car. So, agent Ruhl pulled his car in front of Mack's but before Ruhl could jump out, Mack again hit the gas and smashed his car from behind and sped northward. Ruhl quickly took up the chase again and at California Avenue on the Northwest expressway, Mack stopped again and so did agent Ruhl with his auto.

Regarding the previous case in which Mack threatened the cops that if anyone of them ever tried to arrest him again, he was going to kill someone, and so the black gangster was obviously telling the truth. Suddenly, Mack jumped out from his car as Ruhl got out of his own and also showed his badge, Mack quickly ducked behind his car and fired three shots at Ruhl who in turn dropped beside his auto and returned fire as traffic sped by on the expressway. The windows of both cars were shattered by bullets or fragments, since Ruhl felt glass splattering across his face as he fired his gun. With all of the blood crawling down his face, the federal agent cautiously made his way alongside his car and approached the rear of Mack's auto, and then the agent saw Mack's foot sticking out from behind the car and yelled “Raise your hand any higher and I'll kill you!". Mack continued to raise the revolver and Ruhl suddenly fired his gun several times thus forcing the gangster to slump back on the pavement as other agents and police pulled up. Shortly after that, Nolan Mack was pronounced dead at Belmont hospital which was the end of one of Chicago’s most notorious black gangsters, but was followed by a legacy that largely contributed to the creation of the different and also quite notorious black criminal element from around the Chicago area. In addition, Mack’s older brother Ranza continued working for the Outfit regarding the sales of narcotics, but two years after his brother’s death, Ranza was sent to seven years prison on narcotics charges.


Investigators doing a search on Mack’s car

THE LEGACY

All of the previous collaborations between Chicago’s black criminal gangs and the Outfit, made a lot of money for the Italian leaders but also brought the black crime bosses on a much higher level in both the world of corruption and within the so-called “street life”. For example, back in 1958, Benjamin F. Lewis became the leading black alderman and official representative for the old 24th Ward. Previously, Lewis knew all of the former black racketeers and “Policy Kings” who ruled most of Chicago’s black population and in fact, that’s how he got his votes to became an alderman but not without the Outfit’s protection. Sources say that the prime Mob guys who had direct contact with the black alderman were Dave Yaras and Lenny Patrick, two of the Outfit’s most feared Jewish members. In addition, another report says that besides Yaras and Patrick, the Outfit’s North Side leader and caporegime Ross Prio also allegedly had ties to Lewis, with the help of two if his close associates.


Alderman Benjam Lewis

During the early 1960’s, according to one confidential informant who allegedly heard a story from one imprisoned narcotics dealer, that the main black criminal in the dope business at the time was one fella only known as “Tennessee” aka Thomas “Shaky Tom” Anderson. There are not much details out there regarding Anderson’s early criminal career or his first contacts with the Chicago Outfit, except that he was connected to the Mob since the late 1940’s, when he used to work as a bookkeeper and that he had full university education and later operated a grocery store on Chicago’s South Side from where narcotics were allegedly sold on daily basis. According to some reports, Anderson received his accounting training at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee; for which he was nicknamed by some of his “street colleagues” as “Tennessee”. Anderson’s criminal sidekick was one 300-pound African-American enforcer known as James “Kid Riviera” Williams who never finished 4th grade, and this scary fella also had connections all around Chicago mostly on the South and North sides, like for example being pictured by the government for having meetings with high level members of the Outfit. These two fellas were the prime operators in the policy business, crap games operations and also narcotics, for certain individuals of the Outfit such as Ross Prio, Ken Eto, Gus Alex, Frank Caruso, Lenny Patrick, Dave Yaras, the English aka Inglesia brothers and above all, Ralph Pierce.

The other most interesting and almost unbelievable information that same informant also gave to the government, was regarding Anderson’s deep involvement in the narcotics business and also in the murder of Alderman Benjamin Lewis. Back in 1958, Lewis became the first black Alderman to represent the 24th Ward and some sources say that he “desperately” wanted to be independent but as long as Mayor Richard Daley’s organization controlled the “ghetto vote”, he had to take his orders. Other reports say that both Lewis and Anderson knew each other since the “old days”, and when Lewis became alderman, he allegedly began financing some of Anderson’s narcotics dealings, mainly heroin, with the help of frequent loans or investment money regarding the purchase of the product.


“Shaky Tom” Anderson

I believe that to have a 24th Alderman as financier in narcotics dealings was a delicate situation which could’ve been seen only in the city of Chicago at the time, meaning both Anderson and Williams managed to achieve something that was never previously achieved by any other black racketeer or gangster from the Chicago area, at least not since the days of Oscar De Priest. By dealing with high profile criminals, such as the ones from the Outfit, somewhere down the way they became dependable on these individuals, and that’s what happened to Lewis. Story goes that Alderman Lewis allegedly received a huge loan from Anderson, who in turn received the cash from the Outfit, meaning it was all “Mob money”. And so, in the old days if you took cash from the Outfit, it was obviously expected from you to return the money with interest, no matter who you were, or else.

So, one thing led to another and in February 1963, Lewis was found shot in the back of his head three times, while being handcuffed to a chair in his own office. Even though the government arrested every possible Outfit member and associate from the 24th Ward, including Patrick, Yaras and the English brothers, still the real assassins were Anderson and Williams but the government wasn’t able to connect them to the murder. The only “evidence” against the black gangster duo was that they reportedly had threatened Lewis’ shortly before the murder, same as many other criminals. The cops also interrogated hundreds of other suspects but in the end, the police file remained to be about three feet thick which ended with a sentence such as “Lewis was probably not cooperating with the criminal element in the 24th Ward”, and the whole case remained unsolved.


Lewis’ murder scene

Reports that after the assassination of Alderman Lewis, the black gangster duo completely took over all policy and narcotics operations around the 24th Ward, and also kicked up percentage to their peers in the Mob. From that point on, both Anderson and Williams also controlled an “army” of crap game operators, and also had a bunch of apartments where most of the games occurred. At the front of every building, they had a “look-out” equipped with a walkie-talkie radio, with the other half of the two-way radio set in the apartment above. The apartments were usually equipped with well-stocked bars, with a bartender and bar maids who furnished relaxation for those who became tense while handling the dice. The thing was that besides gamblers, these establishments were very often visited by narcotics users and addicts since many of the operators or bartenders were in fact drug dealers for Williams in his dope peddling business. Williams also had a sort of a “commission” of enforcers and operators such as Vernon Bailey who operated on the West Side, Sammy Bell on the South Side and Sandy Wilborn on the North.

Like many of the former policy kings such as the Jones bros and others, by 1964 sources say that Anderson already had millions of dollars stashed in his personal safe and quickly decided to leave the U.S. and spent most of his time in Mexico. Other government reports also stated that Anderson was probably still receiving certain income from all of the illegal operations that were under Williams’ control, mainly from around the Chicago and Northwest Indiana areas. Williams also allegedly created many emerging juvenile crime gangs, a situation that obviously started to look quite ominous on the horizon. For example, when one of Williams’ black drug dealers known Orville Drake died back in 1961, he left to his own kid Fred a large box full of heroin, which contained enough dope for his son to sell it on the streets for the next few years.


James “Kid Riviera” Williams

In June 1965, two of Williams’ prime policy runners, Johnny Williams and John Butler, were arrested by the cops regarding their involvement in the policy racket. According to Johnny Williams, during this period “Kid Riviera” began losing most of his illegal operations, allegedly because of his close connections to the Outfit. Besides Williams and Butler, other black associates which were arrested during different police raids included Cornelious Haynes, Lester and Jesse Hoskin, and Carl Irving. So, in April of 1966, the “good times” for “Kid Riviera” Williams were about to be finished forever because the feds managed to hit one of his main gambling and at the same time, drug peddling places. That “faithful day”, 15 policemen entered on the first-floor of a ten-story building at 2118 Warren Blvd. and arrested almost 50 men and women, which some of them were gamblers, while the rest were drug addicts. The cops also managed to arrest the main operator Vernon Bailey, who in turn tried to hide half-a-pound of heroin but failed. The problem was that Williams managed to elude the whole government operation and was never caught by the feds, but instead it is possible that he also fled the city like his predecessors and mentors, for at least few years.

BREAKING THE CHAINS

During the late 1960’s, both the Outfit and the black gangs were under huge pressure from the government, mainly because of the numerous confidential informants and also the raids of their various illegal operations. Finally, some of the black criminals began realizing that their connections to the Outfit in fact brought the full pressure from the government, thus creating the idea of their full independence within Chicago’s underworld. The younger generation of black criminals finally learned the lesson that their previous most lucrative racket the policy wheels were slowly becoming an “old man’s game”, meaning there were less and less policy wheels around the Chicago area, while on the other hand the number of drug dealers was constantly on the up and up. But before all of that, as we already saw, the black crime gangs and the Chicago Outfit had more than few decades of collaboration behind them, and they also had few more future ventures to accomplish as one alliance, a situation that made Chicago’s Italian mob as a “mentor” for the newly created black gangs which “mirrored” or reflected almost all syndicate activities, such as gambling, loan sharking, prostitution, extortion, dog fights and above all, narcotics.

During the late 1960’s and early 70s, one of the so-called most powerful and also “half-independent” black criminal gangs, was the “Blackstone Rangers” street crew. This group was either direct or indirect product of the Chicago Mafia, mainly because at first, they were allowed to operate in the same areas which were controlled by the Outfit, and they also had numerous joint operations, same as the old days, but later or at the same time the Blackstone Rangers began controlling their own areas both around the city’s North and South sides. The government found evidences regarding the alliance between the Blackstone gang and the Chicago Mafia, with the help of constant surveillance that witnessed the meetings between one of the Mob’s so-called “emissaries” and Blackstone Rangers representatives. The Outfit’s representative was one associate known as Morris Lasky, who worked for the Outfit’s North Side crew under Ross Prio, Dom DiBella, Joey DiVarco and Joe Arnold, including high level members from the Elmwood Park crew such as Jack Cerone who in turn was the Mob’s acting boss from 1967 until 1970. On the other side, the Blackstone Rangers were usually represented by two of their top members Charles “Reico” Cranshaw and Mickey Cogwell, or sometimes by their “frontman” William Stratton, under the rulership of their alleged leader Jeff Fort.


Morris Lasky


Charles Cranshaw

For example, in March 1969, Lasky travelled on the Outfit’s orders to south suburban Harvey, allegedly to gain control over the P&P Club at 15038 Page Avenue. A meeting occurred at the offices of James Haines, the mayor Harvey, which also included Lasky and Stratton. Sources say that Lasky told the mayor the ownership of the joint will be in his name, but liquor license will be in Stratton’s name. Ten days earlier, Lasky obtained $24,000 from DiVarco and Arnold regarding the “deal”, but the problem was that the mayor notified the authorities before anything illegal ever occurred and so, their licenses were refused. Later, Lasky, Cogwell and Cranshaw tried to take over the Four Brothers Drugs and Liquor Store at 1100 E. 47th St. Lasky allegedly even planned to place several doctors in the offices who in turn would prescribe the drugs which will be sold through their drug store. The problem was that in June that same year, Cranshaw was arrested for large quantity of marijuana, several unregistered firearms, and also a stolen expensive fur coat. During the search, the cops also found several business cards and one of those was under the name of Shorts Unlimited at 843 N. State Street, the firm that was ran by DiVarco and Arnold.


Joey “Caesar” DiVarco

This shows us that the Outfit, or their North Side crew, was still in alliance with some of the most powerful black gangs, but what about the Outfit’s old South Side and West Side crews? The answer lies in the deaths of some of the Outfit’s leaders and also the “deaths” of some of their crews that occurred at the same time. There were more than several factors that played major roles in the creation of Chicago’s “first” completely independent black crime gangs, especially the changings which occurred within the Outfit at the time. For example, the old First Ward/South Side group that was previously created by old time bosses such as Phil D’Andrea, Bruno Roti Sr. and Frank Ferraro, was now diminished only to First Ward politics and the Chinatown area under the auspices of Gus Alex, Frank Caruso, Pat Marcy and Ralph Pierce, meaning they didn’t care much regarding their old interests around the South Side, which previously included almost all black policy wheels and prostitution rackets, mainly because of the huge government “heat”. Even Fiore Buccieri, the most notorious West Side boss who took over every territory that was previously abandoned by the Alex/Caruso group, still stopped mixing with the black population and stood away from their rackets and areas.

On top of that, in 1972 the Outfit’s top leader Paul Ricca died, a situation which somehow signaled the beginning of the end of the ever-powerful Chicago Mafia. Ricca’s death was followed by the ones of Ross Prio, Frank LaPorte, Fiore Buccieri, Sam Battaglia and many others, including the imprisonments and constant government “heat, mainly because the Outfit was still the number one target when it came down to America’s Cosa Nostra. In March 1972, both DiVarco and Arnold were indicted on tax evasion charges and three months later, they were convicted by a federal grand jury. Again, the new Outfit’s leadership obviously had a lot of trouble at the time in keeping their organization in one piece and to maintain their illegal income, meaning they became weak and so their black criminal accomplices finally saw the chance to become fully independent.


Capone’s original successor Paul Ricca

So, during the early 1970’s the Outfit became quite vulnerable and the new leadership tried to avoid any additional problems, since they already had problems of their own, both with their own membership and the government. In plane words, death and penitentiary have decimated the leadership of the Chicago Mafia, something that was noticed not just by the government but instead also by other ethnic crime groups, such as the Blackstone Rangers and even the Latino gangs. Many new black crime leaders had seen their mentors and predecessors cheated and bilked by white Mafiosi for too many decades, and they weren’t about to make the same mistake. In fact, the so-called “curse of Teddy Roe” began to reveal itself when the black gangsters refused to pay their street tax or to have any type of association with the Outfit. Some sources say that there was even some type of “conflict” between the Outfit and the Blackstone Rangers, mainly because of the so-called street tax, in which the old Mob bosses had to “swallow” their pride and continued to live on without their “product” or their old “friends”.



After that, the so-called Blackstone Rangers became known as the “Black P. Stone Nation”, an organization that started spreading all around the country. Also, since the new leadership of the Chicago Outfit under Tony Accardo, Joey Aiuppa and Gus Alex, officially banned its membership from dealing with narcotics, both the black and Hispanic gangs began entering the illegal trade like never before. Ten years later or during the early 1980, the FBI came out with a report regarding two of Chicago’s most notorious black crime gangs that were allegedly products of the Black P. Nation, and their deep involvement in the narcotics trade, especially the selling of heroin, cocaine and marijuana on the city streets. Besides illegal drugs, many leading black gangs were also involved in stealing legal pharmaceutical drugs and later re-selling them to street addicts, and the level of violence and also number of drug-related murders went on a much higher level. More than forty years later or today, the situation didn’t change much because Chicago’s so-called black crime gangs are responsible for more than 80% of all fatal shootings and all types of homicides that occurred in 2024 around the Cook County area, a situation which is a far cry from the days of former black crime leaders and organized racketeers, such as “Mushmouth” Johnson, Sam Young, Oscar De Priest, Big Jim Martin or the Jones brothers.

Cheers