Your welcome TooDoped and more to come. One thing though is that they did carried weapond on themselves of course.
Thats right since Ive seen at least few articles in which some of those rich black racketeers were robbed (stickup style) by low level street thugs, although by the 1960s things changed with trigger happy individuals like Mack, Riviera and Shaky Tom.
1960s is the shift for the entire Chicago underworld. Continuing the Policy racket era with more highlights from the book.
After Policy Sam left the game , Giveadam Jones was the front runner. The next city elections came with a challenge for the Thompson-DePriest machine due to the State's attorney Maclay Hoyne. This resulted in DePriest being indicted by Grand Jury and Henry Teenan turned state witness. DePriest beat the case but dropped out the political race. Despite this turn of event, Policy Sam returned to the game in 1923 via a bankroll from Julius Benvenuti. Sam launched the Interstate-Springfield Policy Wheel.
Next part covered your area of research involving the fued between Capone & the Northside Mob. A comment on Al Capone & his association with the Black Belt by Charles E Gaines: " Al Capone was the greatest friend that Black folks ever had..he lived down the street from my fathet...If Capone would have listened to his Black lawyers, like Ed Morris, he'd never have gone to jail."
Again, great stuff and thanks.
Thats right, during the 60s a shift occurred within Chicago's underworld, mainly because of the feds and also because of confidential informants. Believe it or not, Ralph Pierce gave a lot of info on the policy operations and other Outfit-connected gambling schemes. And its quite interesting that the large number of policy runners "transformed" into street drug dealers and in fact, the leading black racketeers already had their game set up and they only needed to change their "product" or "satisfaction" for the poor population. Thats why, during that same time, some Outfit leaders wanted to control the dope trade with the help of their black associates, but the Outfits top admin said "No!". In fact, that was one of the main breaking points between the Outfit and their former black associates.
Regarding Capone...yes, I think ive seen that comment before and we all know its because of Torrio's/Capone's Italian and Irish political connections which largely contributed to the prostitution, policy and numbers, clubs and other rackets that were controlled by black racketeers, including their music. In return, the black gangsters gave their ppls votes. Neither Colosimo, Torrio, Capone nor Ricca ever had any problems with black OC, until the younger and more greedy Italian generation came on the scene. And if you think about it, even after Giancana's so-called "attack" on the black rackets, there was still some type of "peace" and business agreement between the two ethnic crime groups. Some of the black crime groups already had the power to go against the Outfit but they didnt do it, not until the late 60s/early 70s.
