Mafia Kingfish

The area around New Orleans was the settling place for thousands of Sicilian immigrants in America. With those immigrants came the traditions and beliefs of the "Old Country, including the establishment of a Mafia organization. This organization brought with it the money making schemes and established a new name, the Black Hand. Extortion, numbers, and robbery were the major forms of money making for the Black Hand. The influence and power of the Mafia increased to a point in which many areas of the city were under their control. The docks, market areas, and areas of prostitution were realms in which their power rivaled that of the police. And as their power and influence grew the connections with politicians were cemented providing a level of protection for the crimes being carried out. Competition soon arose between rival gangs and bloodshed began to take place on the streets of New Orleans. When major wars arose the police and politicians would provide a display of efforts to control the Black Hand. In particular one police chief at the turn of the century attempted to divide and conquer the various organizations and cut into their profits. The reply from the Black Hand was the assassination of the police chief in an effort to protect profits. Public response was the formation of a group that attacked the men tried for the crime along with hundreds of other Italian American. It was declared that this action had destroyed the Black Hand and organized crime families would no longer have a position of power in the New Orleans area. That was a mistake, because in the future the area would come under the power of one the country's most powerful Dons, Carlos Marcello.

Marcello at an early age had begun to study the street toughs found in the market districts of New Orleans. His study led him to the conclusion that he would be able to survive and grow in influence in this underworld. By the age of 18 he felt he was ready to assume a position of leadership on the streets. He collected together a gang of toughs and began a career in robbery knocking over banks. After a short period of time he was captured by the police and sentenced to a jail term. But the political connections amassed by Marcello's friends soon got him out the sentence. Marcello's next move took him into the bar business and into further contact with made men of the Mafia. By the age of 25, he had gained enterance into the world of the Mafia as a made man. The Louisiana Mafia operated along different lines. It was more a spontaneous grouping of individual entrepreneurs, linked sometimes by family ties, but not always. In many ways it more resembled the Sicilian [Mafia] than its American counterparts. The only one operating in the area, it did not have to worry about territorial disputes, and so could concentrate energy and activities on its real purpose -- to make money. Many members of the Louisiana [Mafia] operated their own businesses and ran with a degree of autonomy that was unheard of in the other similar crime groups that had developed across America.

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