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| gangs of new york history: The Gangs of New York Herbert Asbury, 1928 |
| gangs of new york history: The Gangs of New York Herbert Asbury, 1928 |
| gangs of new york history: Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings Eric C. Schneider, 2021-01-12 They called themselves Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings. They were divided by race, ethnicity, and neighborhood boundaries, but united by common styles, slang, and codes of honor. They fought--and sometimes killed--to protect and expand their territories. In postwar New York, youth gangs were a colorful and controversial part of the urban landscape, made famous by West Side Story and infamous by the media. This is the first historical study to explore fully the culture of these gangs. Eric Schneider takes us into a world of switchblades and slums, zoot suits and bebop music to explain why youth gangs emerged, how they evolved, and why young men found membership and the violence it involved so attractive. Schneider begins by describing how postwar urban renewal, slum clearances, and ethnic migration pitted African-American, Puerto Rican, and Euro-American youths against each other in battles to dominate changing neighborhoods. But he argues that young men ultimately joined gangs less because of ethnicity than because membership and gang violence offered rare opportunities for adolescents alienated from school, work, or the family to win prestige, power, adulation from girls, and a masculine identity. In the course of the book, Schneider paints a rich and detailed portrait of everyday life in gangs, drawing on personal interviews with former members to re-create for us their language, music, clothing, and social mores. We learn what it meant to be a down bopper or a jive stud, to fish with a beautiful deb to the sounds of the Jesters, and to wear gang sweaters, wildly colored zoot suits, or the Ivy League look. He outlines the unwritten rules of gang behavior, the paths members followed to adulthood, and the effects of gang intervention programs, while also providing detailed analyses of such notorious gang-related crimes as the murders committed by the Capeman, Salvador Agron. Schneider focuses on the years from 1940 to 1975, but takes us up to the present in his conclusion, showing how youth gangs are no longer social organizations but economic units tied to the underground economy. Written with a profound understanding of adolescent culture and the street life of New York, this is a powerful work of history and a compelling story for a general audience. |
| gangs of new york history: Five Points Tyler Anbinder, 2012-06-05 The very letters of the two words seem, as they are written, to redden with the blood-stains of unavenged crime. There is Murder in every syllable, and Want, Misery and Pestilence take startling form and crowd upon the imagination as the pen traces the words. So wrote a reporter about Five Points, the most infamous neighborhood in nineteenth-century America, the place where slumming was invented. All but forgotten today, Five Points was once renowned the world over. Its handful of streets in lower Manhattan featured America's most wretched poverty, shared by Irish, Jewish, German, Italian, Chinese, and African Americans. It was the scene of more riots, scams, saloons, brothels, and drunkenness than any other neighborhood in the new world. Yet it was also a font of creative energy, crammed full of cheap theaters and dance halls, prizefighters and machine politicians, and meeting halls for the political clubs that would come to dominate not just the city but an entire era in American politics. From Jacob Riis to Abraham Lincoln, Davy Crockett to Charles Dickens, Five Points both horrified and inspired everyone who saw it. The story that Anbinder tells is the classic tale of America's immigrant past, as successive waves of new arrivals fought for survival in a land that was as exciting as it was dangerous, as riotous as it was culturally rich. Tyler Anbinder offers the first-ever history of this now forgotten neighborhood, drawing on a wealth of research among letters and diaries, newspapers and bank records, police reports and archaeological digs. Beginning with the Irish potato-famine influx in the 1840s, and ending with the rise of Chinatown in the early twentieth century, he weaves unforgettable individual stories into a tapestry of tenements, work crews, leisure pursuits both licit and otherwise, and riots and political brawls that never seemed to let up. Although the intimate stories that fill Anbinder's narrative are heart-wrenching, they are perhaps not so shocking as they first appear. Almost all of us trace our roots to once humble stock. Five Points is, in short, a microcosm of America. |
| gangs of new york history: Jamaican Gangs of New York Desmond Skyers, 2017-10-06 In search of a better life, these new migrants arrived in New York City from the poverty-stricken and violent ghetto of Western Kingston, Jamaica. Predisposed to violence and experienced in the life of the street, they aged between twenty and thirty-five. They were different from all those that came before them from this exotic island. With the potential for a drug sale at any time, these new arrivals squared-off against one another in the streets of New York City, fighting for control of the illicit yet lucrative cocaine and crack market. From Brooklyn to Queens, Manhattan to the Bronx, the city was divided into three gang strongholds, basically no-go areas. Joe Dog and the Loyalist posse took control of South Jamaica, Queens; Blacka and the Raiders posse control Brooklyn; and Fowl and the Centralist posse controlled the Bronx. In addition to the Jamaicans, there were two black American gangs, one came out of Brooklyn and the other from Queens. When they crossed paths with the Jamaicans, it was war. Then there was the Gem Girls. This was a gang of girls from western Kingston led by a light-skinned lesbian named Patsy. These girls were as ruthless as their male Jamaican counterpart. The desire for instant gratification and material satisfaction was impetus for the violence and killings that followed. None dared to stand in their way. This violence caught the attention of the newly elected mayor Jack Jackson, who established a gang task force, headed up by a no-nonsense former Vietnam veteran named Todd Sullivan. On Todds first day on the job, he shook his head and swore. These fucking Jamaican posses are turning our city into a fucking killing zone. We are going to send every fucking one of them to prison. |
| gangs of new york history: Gangster City Patrick Downey, 2009 This title chronicles virtually every widely known Mafioso, bootlegger, racketeer and thug who terrorised New York City in the early 20th century. The murders of some 600-plus gangsters are profiled in detail. |
| gangs of new york history: Fixing Broken Windows George L. Kelling, Catherine M. Coles, 1997 Cites successful examples of community-based policing. |
| gangs of new york history: The Real Gangs of New York Wallace Edwards, 2020-09-12 ★★★ Is true better than fiction? ★★★ The subject of a classic history by Herbert Asbury and an Academy Award-nominated film by Martin Scorsese, the gangs of The Five Points in New York have become the stuff of legend. But how much is legend and how much is fact? In this short book, we examine the original gangs of the Five Points in New York and see how accurate the film was (spoiler alert: not very) and what Asbury may have gotten wrong in his original research on this era. From the Bowery Boys to the Dead Rabbits, we look at the gangs that operated not just in the Five Points, but also those who wanted a piece of the action there and engaged in gang wars that would leave even modern thugs quivering in their boots! |
| gangs of new york history: Low Life Lucy Sante, 2016-03-08 The classic social history of corruption and vice in nineteenth-century NYC: “A cacophonous poem of democracy and greed, like the streets of New York themselves” (John Vernon, Los Angeles Times Book Review). Lucy Sante’s Low Life is a portrait of America’s greatest city, the riotous and anarchic breeding ground of modernity. This is not the familiar saga of mansions, avenues, and robber barons, but the messy, turbulent, often murderous story of the city’s slums; the teeming streets—scene of innumerable cons and crimes whose cramped and overcrowded housing is still a prominent feature of the cityscape. Low Life voyages through Manhattan from four different directions. Part One examines the actual topography of Manhattan from 1840 to 1919; Part Two, the era’s opportunities for vice and entertainment—theaters and saloons, opium and cocaine dens, gambling and prostitution; Part Three investigates the forces of law and order which did and didn’t work to contain the illegalities; Part Four counterposes the city’s tides of revolt and idealism against the city as it actually was. Low Life is one of the most provocative books about urban life ever written—an evocation of the mythology of the quintessential modern metropolis, which has much to say not only about New York’s past but about the present and future of all cities. |
| gangs of new york history: A Brief History of Seven Killings Marlon James, 2015-09-08 A tale inspired by the 1976 attempted assassination of Bob Marley spans decades and continents to explore the experiences of journalists, drug dealers, killers, and ghosts against a backdrop of social and political turmoil. |
| gangs of new york history: New York City Gangland Arthur Nash, 2010-08-02 Throughout the United States, there is no single major metropolitan area more closely connected to organized crime than New York City. With the federal prohibition on alcohol in 1920, Gotham's shadowy underworld began evolving from strictly regional and often rag-tag street gangs into a sophisticated worldwide syndicate that was--like the chocolate egg crème--incubated within the confines of its five boroughs. New York City Gangland offers an unparalleled collection of rarely circulated images, many appearing courtesy of exclusive law enforcement sources, in addition to the private albums of notorious racketeering figures such as Charles Lucky Luciano, Al Scarface Capone, Joe The Boss Masseria, Crazy Joe Gallo, and John Gotti. |
| gangs of new york history: Jesse James T J Stiles, 2012-04-24 At sixteen, Jesse James began his fighting career by killing Unionist neighbours on their doorsteps. In the bloodshed and bitterness that followed the South's surrender at Appomattox, Jesse and his fellow guerillas, with their gunfights and hold-ups, became part of the intensely brutal struggle by the White South against the racial egalitarianism and Federal power fostered by Reconstruction. In the first serious biography of Jesse James in forty years, T. J. Stiles paints a strikingly new and vivid portrait of the period before the American Civil War, during the conflict and its aftermath. With groundbreaking scholarship and dazzling reinterpretation, T. J. Stiles has refashioned one of the great legends of American history. |
| gangs of new york history: Gotham Edwin G. Burrows, Mike Wallace, 1998-11-19 To European explorers, it was Eden, a paradise of waist-high grasses, towering stands of walnut, maple, chestnut, and oak, and forests that teemed with bears, wolves, raccoons, beavers, otters, and foxes. Today, it is the site of Broadway and Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, and the home of millions of people, who have come from every corner of the nation and the globe. In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. Readers will relive the tumultuous early years of New Amsterdam under the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant's despotic regime, Indian wars, slave resistance and revolt, the Revolutionary War and the defeat of Washington's army on Brooklyn Heights, the destructive seven years of British occupation, New York as the nation's first capital, the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the Erie Canal and the coming of the railroads, the growth of the city as a port and financial center, the infamous draft riots of the Civil War, the great flood of immigrants, the rise of mass entertainment such as vaudeville and Coney Island, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and the birth of the skyscraper. Here too is a cast of thousands--the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Clement Moore, who saved Greenwich Village from the city's street-grid plan; Herman Melville, who painted disillusioned portraits of city life; and Walt Whitman, who happily celebrated that same life. We meet the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Boss Tweed and his nemesis, cartoonist Thomas Nast; Emma Goldman and Nellie Bly; Jacob Riis and Horace Greeley; police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt; Colonel Waring and his white angels (who revolutionized the sanitation department); millionaires John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, August Belmont, and William Randolph Hearst; and hundreds more who left their mark on this great city. The events and people who crowd these pages guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America, and a book that will mesmerize everyone interested in the peaks and valleys of American life as found in the greatest city on earth. Gotham is a dazzling read, a fast-paced, brilliant narrative that carries the reader along as it threads hundreds of stories into one great blockbuster of a book. |
| gangs of new york history: The Bowery Stephen Paul DeVillo, 2017-11-07 From peglegged Peter Stuyvesant to CBGB’s, the story of the Bowery reflects the history of the city that grew up around it. It was the street your mother warned you about—even if you lived in San Francisco. Long associated with skid row, saloons, freak shows, violence, and vice, the Bowery often showed the worst New York City had to offer. Yet there were times when it showed its best as well. The Bowery is New York’s oldest street and Manhattan’s broadest boulevard. Like the city itself, it has continually reinvented itself over the centuries. Named for the Dutch farms, or bouweries, of the area, the path’s lurid character was established early when it became the site of New Amsterdam’s first murder. A natural spring near the Five Points neighborhood led to breweries and taverns that became home to the gangs of New York—the “Bowery B’hoys,” “Plug Uglies,” and “Dead Rabbits.” In the Gaslight Era, teenaged streetwalkers swallowed poison in McGurk’s Suicide Hall. A brighter side to the street was reflected in places of amusement and culture over the years. A young P.T. Barnum got his start there, and Harry Houdini learned showmanship playing the music halls and dime museums. Poets, singers, hobos, gangsters, soldiers, travelers, preachers, storytellers, con-men, and reformers all gathered there. Its colorful cast of characters includes Peter Stuyvesant, Steve Brodie, Carry Nation, Stephen Foster, Stephen Crane, and even Abraham Lincoln. The Bowery: The Strange History of New York’s Oldest Street traces the full story of this once notorious thoroughfare from its pre-colonial origins to the present day. |
| gangs of new york history: Gangland [2 volumes] Laura L. Finley, 2018-10-01 This two-volume set integrates informative encyclopedia entries and essential primary documents to provide an illuminating overview of trends in gang membership and activity in America in the 21st century. Gangland: An Encyclopedia of Gang Life from Cradle to Grave includes extended discussion of specific gangs; types of gangs based on ethnicity and environment (rural, suburban, and urban); recruitment and retention methods; leadership structure and other internal dynamics of various gangs; impacts of gang membership on extended family; the historical evolution of gangs in American society; depictions of gang life in popular culture; violent and nonviolent gang activities; and programs, policies, agencies, and organizations that have been crafted to combat gang activities. In addition, the encyclopedia includes a suite of primary sources that offer a look into the personal experiences of gang members, examine efforts by law enforcement and public officials to address gang activity, and address wider societal factors that make eradicating gangs such a difficult task. |
| gangs of new york history: Lost Boys of the Bronx James Hannon, 2010 Interviews with ex-members of the New York street gang made famous in the 1960s film The Wanderers. |
| gangs of new york history: The History of Street Gangs in the United States James C. Howell, 2015-06-09 This book is an historical account of the emergence of youth gangs and the transformation of these into street gangs in the United States. The author traces the emergence of these gangs in the four major geographical regions over the span of two centuries, from the early 1800s to 2012. The author’s authoritative analysis explains gang emergence and expansion from play groups to heavily armed street gangs responsible for a large proportion of urban crimes, including drive-by shootings that often kill innocent bystanders. Nationwide, street gangs now account for 1 in 6 homicides each year, and for 1 in 4 in very large cities. In recent years, the number of gangs, gang members, and gang homicides increased, even though the U.S. has seen a sharp drop in violent and property crimes over the past decade. The author’s historical analysis reveals the key contributing factors to transformation of youth gangs, including social disorganization that occurred following large-scale immigration early in American history and urban policies that pushed minorities to inner city areas and public housing projects. This analysis includes the influence of prison gangs on street gangs. The first generation of prison gangs emerged spontaneously in response to dangers inside prisons. The second generation was for many years extensions of street gangs that grew enormously during the 1980s and 1990s, particularly in large urban areas in which public housing projects have served as incubators for street gangs. The third generation of prison gangs is extremely active in street-level criminal enterprises in varied forms, often highly structured and well managed organizations that are actively involved in drug trafficking. In recent years, returning inmates are a predominant influence on local gang violence. Now, prison gangs and street gangs often work together in street-level criminal enterprises. This book identifies the most promising ways that gang violence can be reduced. The best long-term approach is a combination of gang prevention, intervention, and suppression strategies and programs. Targeted suppression of gang violence is imperative. Street-workers that serve as violence interrupters can break the cycle of contagious gang violence. |
| gangs of new york history: The Epic of New York City Edward Robb Ellis, 2004-12-21 In swift, witty chapters that flawlessly capture the pace and character of New York City, acclaimed diarist Edward Robb Ellis presents his masterpiece: a thorough, and thoroughly readable, history of America's largest metropolis. Ellis narrates some of the most significant events of the past three hundred years and more—the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr's fatal duel, the formation of the League of Nations, the Great Depression—from the perspective of the city that experienced, and influenced, them all. Throughout, he infuses his account with the strange and delightful anecdotes that a less charming tour guide might omit, from the story of the city's first, block-long subway to that of the blizzard of 1888 that turned Macy's into one big slumber party. Playful yet authoritative, comprehensive yet intimate, The Epic of New York City confirms the words of its own epigraph, spoken by Oswald Spengler: World history is city history, particularly when that city is the Big Apple. |
| gangs of new york history: A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York Timothy J. Gilfoyle, 2011-02-07 A true story more incredible than fiction. —Kevin Baker, author of Striver's Row In George Appo's world, child pickpockets swarmed the crowded streets, addicts drifted in furtive opium dens, and expert swindlers worked the lucrative green-goods game. On a good night Appo made as much as a skilled laborer made in a year. Bad nights left him with more than a dozen scars and over a decade in prisons from the Tombs and Sing Sing to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he reunited with another inmate, his father. The child of Irish and Chinese immigrants, Appo grew up in the notorious Five Points and Chinatown neighborhoods. He rose as an exemplar of the good fellow, a criminal who relied on wile, who followed a code of loyalty even in his world of deception. Here is the underworld of the New York that gave us Edith Wharton, Boss Tweed, Central Park, and the Brooklyn Bridge. |
| gangs of new york history: Gangs of America Ted Nace, 2005-09-11 'Gangs of America' traces the evolution of the corporation, one of the core institutions of the modern world. It ties political debates about multi-national trade agreements, financial scandals and scores of other specific issues into the narrative account. |
| gangs of new york history: American Notes Charles Dickens, 2021-02-26 All that is loathsome, drooping, or decayed is here. In 1842 Dickens sailed to America to observe The New World that held such fascination for the English. He went to magnificent landmarks like Niagara Falls but also included visits to mental institutions and prisons. He met President John Tyler in D.C and the well-educated Laura Bridgman, who was deaf-blind. Dickens found lots to admire, but also noted how coarse and ill-mannered the Americans were. That did not go over well with the Americans. With superb language and humour, Dickens gathered these fascinating observations in this travelogue that will have anyone with the slightest interest in cultural differences completely spell-bound. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English author, social critic, and philanthropist. Much of his writing first appeared in small instalments in magazines and was widely popular. Among his most famous novels are Oliver Twist (1839), David Copperfield (1850), and Great Expectations (1861). |
| gangs of new york history: The Bowery Boys Peter Adams, 2005-03-30 In the decades before the Civil War, the miserable living conditions of New York City's lower east side nurtured the gangs of New York. This book tells the story of the Bowery Boys, one gang that emerged as part urban legend and part street fighters for the city's legions of young workers. Poverty and despair led to a gang culture that was easily politicized, especially under the leadership of Mike Walsh who led a distinct faction of the Bowery Boys that engaged in the violent, almost anarchic, politics of the city during the 1840s and 1850s. Amid the toppled ballot boxes and battles for supremacy on the streets, many New Yorkers feared Walsh's gang was at the frontline of a European-style revolution. A radical and immensely popular voice in antebellum New York, Walsh spoke in the unvarnished language of class conflict. Admired by Walt Whitman and feared by Tammany Hall, Walsh was an original, wildly unstable character who directed his aptly named Spartan Band against the economic and political elite of New York City and New England. As a labor organizer, state legislator, and even U.S. Congressman, the leader of the Bowery Boys fought for shorter working hours, the right to strike, free land for settlers on the American frontier, against child labor, and to restore dignity to the city's growing number of industrial workers. |
| gangs of new york history: Art Gangs Alan W. Moore, 2011 Art Gangs explores the work of artists groups in New York City after 1968. From the Art Workers Coalition through Art & Language, Colab and Group Material in the 1980s, in Soho and the Lower East Side, these collectives built the postmodern art world. This is the key background story of today s politicized international art world with its constellations of collectives, a scholarly text written in an accessible style -- Back cover. |
| gangs of new york history: Paradise Alley Kevin Baker, 2009-03-17 They came by boat from a starving land—and by the Underground Railroad from Southern chains—seeking refuge in a crowded, filthy corner of hell at the bottom of a great metropolis. But in the terrible July of 1863, the poor and desperate of Paradise Alley would face a new catastrophe—as flames from the war that was tearing America in two reached out to set their city on fire. |
| gangs of new york history: The Bowery Boys Greg Young, Tom Meyers, 2016-06-21 Uncover fascinating, little-known histories of the five boroughs in The Bowery Boys’ official companion to their popular, award-winning podcast. It was 2007. Sitting at a kitchen table and speaking into an old karaoke microphone, Greg Young and Tom Meyers recorded their first podcast. They weren’t history professors or voice actors. They were just two guys living in the Bowery and possessing an unquenchable thirst for the fascinating stories from New York City’s past. Nearly 200 episodes later, The Bowery Boys podcast is a phenomenon, thrilling audiences each month with one amazing story after the next. Now, in their first-ever book, the duo gives you an exclusive personal tour through New York’s old cobblestone streets and gas-lit back alleyways. In their uniquely approachable style, the authors bring to life everything from makeshift forts of the early Dutch years to the opulent mansions of The Gilded Age. They weave tales that will reshape your view of famous sites like Times Square, Grand Central Terminal, and the High Line. Then they go even further to reveal notorious dens of vice, scandalous Jazz Age crime scenes, and park statues with strange pasts. Praise for The Bowery Boys “Among the best city-centric series.” —New York Times “Meyers and Young have become unofficial ambassadors of New York history.” —NPR “Breezy and informative, crowded with the finest grifters, knickerbockers, spiritualists, and city builders to stalk these streets since back when New Amsterdam was just some farms.” —Village Voice “Young and Meyers have an all-consuming curiosity to work out what happened in their city in years past, including the Newsboys Strike of 1899, the history of the Staten Island Ferry, and the real-life sites on which Martin Scorsese’s Vinyl is based.” —The Guardian |
| gangs of new york history: Teaching What Really Happened James W. Loewen, 2018-09-07 “Should be in the hands of every history teacher in the country.”— Howard Zinn James Loewen has revised Teaching What Really Happened, the bestselling, go-to resource for social studies and history teachers wishing to break away from standard textbook retellings of the past. In addition to updating the scholarship and anecdotes throughout, the second edition features a timely new chapter entitled Truth that addresses how traditional and social media can distort current events and the historical record. Helping students understand what really happened in the past will empower them to use history as a tool to argue for better policies in the present. Our society needs engaged citizens now more than ever, and this book offers teachers concrete ideas for getting students excited about history while also teaching them to read critically. It will specifically help teachers and students tackle important content areas, including Eurocentrism, the American Indian experience, and slavery. Book Features: An up-to-date assessment of the potential and pitfalls of U.S. and world history education. Information to help teachers expect, and get, good performance from students of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Strategies for incorporating project-oriented self-learning, having students conduct online historical research, and teaching historiography. Ideas from teachers across the country who are empowering students by teaching what really happened. Specific chapters dedicated to five content topics usually taught poorly in today’s schools. |
| gangs of new york history: Murder, Inc., and the Moral Life Robert Weldon Whalen, 2016-09-01 In 1940 and 1941 a group of ruthless gangsters from Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood became the focus of media frenzy when they—dubbed “Murder Inc.,” by New York World-Telegram reporter Harry Feeney—were tried for murder. It is estimated that collectively they killed hundreds of people during a reign of terror that lasted from 1931 to 1940. As the trial played out to a packed courtroom, shocked spectators gasped at the outrageous revelations made by gang leader Abe “Kid Twist” Reles and his pack of criminal accomplices. News of the trial proliferated throughout the country; at times it received more newspaper coverage than the unabated war being waged overseas. The heinous crimes attributed to Murder, Inc., included not only murder and torture but also auto theft, burglary, assaults, robberies, fencing stolen goods, distribution of illegal drugs, and just about any “illegal activity from which a revenue could be derived.” When the trial finally came to a stunning unresolved conclusion in November 1941, newspapers generated record headlines. Once the trial was over, tales of the Murder, Inc., gang became legendary, spawning countless books and memoirs and providing inspiration for the Hollywood gangster-movie genre. These men were fearsome brutes with an astonishing ability to wield power. People were fascinated by the “gangster” figure, which had become a symbol for moral evil and contempt and whose popularity showed no signs of abating. As both a study in criminal behavior and a cultural fascination that continues to permeate modern society, the reverberations of “Murder, Inc.” are profound, including references in contemporary mass media. The Murder, Inc., story is as much a tale of morality as it is a gangster history, and Murder, Inc., and the Moral Life by Robert Whalen meshes both topics clearly and meticulously, relating the gangster phenomenon to modern moral theory. Each chapter covers an aspect of the Murder, Inc., case and reflects on its ethical elements and consequences. Whalen delves into the background of the criminals involved, their motives, and the violent death that surrounded them; New York City’s immigrant gang culture and its role as “Gangster City”; fiery politicians Fiorello La Guardia and Thomas E. Dewey and the choices they made to clean up the city; and the role of the gangster in popular culture and how it relates to “real life.” Whalen puts a fresh spin on the two topics, providing a vivid narrative with both historical and moral perspective. |
| gangs of new york history: Ghetto Brother Julian Voloj, 2015-05-01 An engrossing and counter view of one of the most dangerous elements of American urban history, this graphic novel tells the true story of Benjy Melendez, a Bronx legend who founded, at the end of the 1960s, the formidable Ghetto Brothers gang. From the seemingly bombed-out ravages of his neighborhood, wracked by drugs, poverty, and violence, he managed to extract an incredibly positive energy from this riot ridden era: his multiracial gang promoted peace rather than violence. Among its many accomplishments, the gang held weekly concerts on the streets or in abandoned buildings, which fostered the emergence of hip-hop. |
| gangs of new york history: Unforgetting Roberto Lovato, 2020-09-01 An LA Times Best Book of the Year • A New York Times Editors' Pick • A Newsweek 25 Best Fall Books • A The Millions Most Anticipated Book of the Year Gripping and beautiful. With the artistry of a poet and the intensity of a revolutionary, Lovato untangles the tightly knit skein of love and terror that connects El Salvador and the United States. —Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Natural Causes and Nickel and Dimed An urgent, no-holds-barred tale of gang life, guerrilla warfare, intergenerational trauma, and interconnected violence between the United States and El Salvador, Roberto Lovato’s memoir excavates family history and reveals the intimate stories beneath headlines about gang violence and mass Central American migration, one of the most important, yet least-understood humanitarian crises of our time—and one in which the perspectives of Central Americans in the United States have been silenced and forgotten. The child of Salvadoran immigrants, Roberto Lovato grew up in 1970s and 80s San Francisco as MS-13 and other notorious Salvadoran gangs were forming in California. In his teens, he lost friends to the escalating violence, and survived acts of brutality himself. He eventually traded the violence of the streets for human rights advocacy in wartime El Salvador where he joined the guerilla movement against the U.S.-backed, fascist military government responsible for some of the most barbaric massacres and crimes against humanity in recent history. Roberto returned from war-torn El Salvador to find the United States on the verge of unprecedented crises of its own. There, he channeled his own pain into activism and journalism, focusing his attention on how trauma affects individual lives and societies, and began the difficult journey of confronting the roots of his own trauma. As a child, Roberto endured a tumultuous relationship with his father Ramón. Raised in extreme poverty in the countryside of El Salvador during one of the most violent periods of its history, Ramón learned to survive by straddling intersecting underworlds of family secrets, traumatic silences, and dealing in black-market goods and guns. The repression of the violence in his life took its toll, however. Ramón was plagued with silences and fits of anger that had a profound impact on his youngest son, and which Roberto attributes as a source of constant reckoning with the violence and rebellion in his own life. In Unforgetting, Roberto interweaves his father’s complicated history and his own with first-hand reportage on gang life, state violence, and the heart of the immigration crisis in both El Salvador and the United States. In doing so he makes the political personal, revealing the cyclical ways violence operates in our homes and our societies, as well as the ways hope and tenderness can rise up out of the darkness if we are courageous enough to unforget. |
| gangs of new york history: The Construction of Race and Nation in Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" Boris Kirfel, 2004-03-21 Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,3 (B), University of Cologne (Institute for the English Language and its Didactic), course: Seminar: The Cultural Analysis of Contemporary American Films, language: English, abstract: „I believe in America. America has made my fortune.“ These are the very first two sentences in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather from 1972 - exactly the same year when director Martin Scorsese decided to film Herbert Asbury’s non-fiction book The Gangs of New York. “Asbury (1891-1963) was a journalist and a pioneer historian of low life, whose Gangs of New York originally appeared in 1928, subtitled an informal history of the underworld.” (Christie 2003, p. 250) At the beginning of The Godfather: Part II, a film which is about the life of an Italian who immigrates to the United States in the 1920s, the film depicts the arrival of Italian immigrants at the New York harbor. All the passengers of the ship are full of expectation. They are looking at the famous Statue of Liberty, which welcomes America’s new citizens. “Bring us your homeless and your poor”, is written in a poem by Emma Lazarus that is graven on a tablet within the pedestal on which the statue stands. (Cf. Christie 2003, p. 253) This sequence portrays the fulfilment of the American Dream. In 2002, after nearly 30 years of preparation, Martin Scorsese’s epic Gangs of New York which is also set in New York one century before the action of The Godfather takes place, finally was released in the United States. Scorsese’s film covers a period of New York City's history, from the 1840's through to the bloody Draft Riots of 1863, when graft and corruption permeated every level of government including the police department. The Statue of Liberty had not been built at the time in which Gangs of New York is set (Cf. Metzger 2000, p. 23), and there aren’t any Italians in the film. The movie concentrates on the struggle between the so called Native Americans and a huge number of Irish immigrants who arrive with ships every day. The picture describes America’s birth from violence and the development of the country into the state which is presented in Coppola’s The Godfather and former pictures by Martin Scorsese like Goodfellas or Casino. Gangs of New York is in a way the foundation of which all the other movies by Scorsese are based on. |
| gangs of new york history: Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy, 2010-08-11 25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road: an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, Blood Meridian traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris. |
| gangs of new york history: The New York City Draft Riots Iver Bernstein, 1991-10-10 For five days in July 1863, at the height of the Civil War, New York City was under siege. Angry rioters burned draft offices, closed factories, destroyed railroad tracks and telegraph lines, and hunted policemen and soldiers. Before long, the rioters turned their murderous wrath against the black community. In the end, at least 105 people were killed, making the draft riots the most violent insurrection in American history. In this vividly written book, Iver Bernstein tells the compelling story of the New York City draft riots. He details how what began as a demonstration against the first federal draft soon expanded into a sweeping assault against the local institutions and personnel of Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party as well as a grotesque race riot. Bernstein identifies participants, dynamics, causes and consequences, and demonstrates that the winners and losers of the July 1863 crisis were anything but clear, even after five regiments rushed north from Gettysburg restored order. In a tour de force of historical detection, Bernstein shows that to evaluate the significance of the riots we must enter the minds and experiences of a cast of characters--Irish and German immigrant workers, Wall Street businessmen who frantically debated whether to declare martial law, nervous politicians in Washington and at City Hall. Along the way, he offers new perspectives on a wide range of topics: Civil War society and politics, patterns of race, ethnic and class relations, the rise of organized labor, styles of leadership, philanthropy and reform, strains of individualism, and the rise of machine politics in Boss Tweed's Tammany regime. An in-depth study of one of the most troubling and least understood crises in American history, The New York City Draft Riots is the first book to reveal the broader political and historical context--the complex of social, cultural and political relations--that made the bloody events of July 1863 possible. |
| gangs of new york history: The New York Irish Ronald H. Bayor, Timothy Meagher, 1997-09-30 As one of the country's oldest ethnic groups, the Irish have played a vital part in its history. New York has been both port of entry and home to the Irish for three centuries. This joint project of the Irish Institute and the New York Irish History Roundtable offers a fresh perspective on an immigrant people's encounter with the famed metropolis. 37 illustrations. |
| gangs of new york history: The Gangs Of Chicago Herbert Asbury, 2016-07-26 This classic history of crime tells how Chicago’s underworld earned-and kept-its reputation. Recounting the lives of such notorious denizens as the original Mickey Finn, the mass murderer H. H. Holmes, and the three Car Barn Bandits, Asbury reveals life as it was lived in the criminal districts of the Levee, Hell’s Half-Acre, the Bad Lands, Little Cheyenne, Custom House Place, and the Black Hole. His description of Chicago’s infamous red light district-where the brothels boasted opulence unheard of before or since-vividly captures the wicked splendor that was Chicago. The Gangs of Chicago spans from the time “Slab Town” was settled to Prohibition days. The story of Chicago’s golden age of crime climaxes with a dramatic account of the careers of the “biggest of the Big Shots”: Big Jim Colosimo, Terrible Johnny Torrio, and the elusive Al Capone. |
| gangs of new york history: The Warriors Sol Yurick, 2007-12-01 The basis for the cult-classic film and the inspiration for a concept album written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis, executive produced by Nas, releasing from Atlantic Records on October 18 Every gang in the city meets on a sweltering July 4 night in a Bronx park for a peace rally. The crowd of miscreants turns violent after a prominent gang leader is killed, and chaos prevails over attempts at order. The Warriors follows the Dominators as they make their nocturnal journey to their home territory without being killed. The police are prowling the city in search of anyone involved in the mayhem. An exhilarating novel that examines New York City teenagers left behind by society, who form identity and personal strength through their affiliation with their family, The Warriors weaves together social commentary with ancient legends for a classic coming-of-age tale. This edition includes a new introduction by the author. |
| gangs of new york history: Empire City Kenneth T. Jackson, David S. Dunbar, 2002 This major anthology brings together the best literary writing about New York--from O. Henry, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John Steinbeck to Paul Auster and James Baldwin. |
| gangs of new york history: The Yard Alex Grecian, 2012-05-29 As Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror in London comes to an end, a new era of depravity sets the stage for the first gripping mystery featuring the detectives of Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad. “If Charles Dickens isn’t somewhere clapping his hands for this one, Wilkie Collins surely is.”—The New York Times Book Review Victorian London—a violent cesspool of squalid sin. The twelve detectives of Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad are expected to solve the thousands of crimes committed in the city each month. Formed after the Metropolitan Police’s spectacular failure in capturing Jack the Ripper, they suffer the brunt of public contempt. But no one can anticipate the brutal murder of one of their own... A Scotland Yard Inspector has been found stuffed in a black steamer trunk at Euston Square Station, his eyes and mouth sewn shut. When Walter Day, the squad’s new hire, is assigned to the case, he finds a strange ally in Dr. Bernard Kingsley, the Yard’s first forensic pathologist. Their grim conclusion: this was not just a random, bizarre murder but in all probability, the first of twelve. The squad itself it being targeted and the devious killer shows no signs of stopping. But Inspector Day has one more surprise, something even more shocking than the crimes: the murderer’s motive. |
| gangs of new york history: Lo-Life Jackson Blount, George "Rack-Lo" Billips, 2016-12-06 Lo-Life: An American Classic takes the reader on a tripto New York City in the early 80s-a time when crimeand violence ran the streets. The infamous Lo-Lifegang emerged from this tumultuous time. Formedby crews of teenagers from the Brownsville and CrownHeights neighborhoods of Brooklyn, they made a namefor themselves by dressing head-to-toe in expensive RalphLauren clothing, or Lo. Polo apparel-and other preppy80s fashion labels like Guess, Nautica, and Benetton,among others-represented an aspirational lifestyle forthese kids from rough neighborhoods just struggling toget by. Fighting for style and survival, the Lo-Lifestargeted these brands, and would acquire them by anymeans necessary, including stick-ups, shoplifting, and hustling. A reign of terror ensued, when your new wintercoat could make you the target for a robbery-or worse. What started as an informal gang uniform organizedaround clean designs and bright colors, became adevotion to a lifestyle brand, and eventually created anassociation between the streets and luxury that wouldfundamentally change the fashion industry. Lo-Life: AnAmerican Classic documents the personal collectionsof exclusive archival vintage photographs amassed bythe crew and interviews with original members,presenting the first comprehensive oral history of thisnotorious New York collective. Lo-Life is the remarkable story of a small group of teenagersfighting to make a name for themselves who eventuallymade themselves seen, heard, and emulated globally. Love and Loyalty! |
| gangs of new york history: Nativism and Slavery Tyler Anbinder, 1992 Although the United States has always portrayed itself as a sanctuary for the world's victim's of poverty and oppression, anti-immigrant movements have enjoyed remarkable success throughout American history. None attained greater prominence than the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, a fraternal order referred to most commonly as the Know Nothing party. Vowing to reduce the political influence of immigrants and Catholics, the Know Nothings burst onto the American political scene in 1854, and by the end of the following year they had elected eight governors, more than one hundred congressmen, and thousands of other local officials including the mayors of Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Chicago. After their initial successes, the Know Nothings attempted to increase their appeal by converting their network of lodges into a conventional political organization, which they christened the American Party. Recently, historians have pointed to the Know Nothings' success as evidence that ethnic and religious issues mattered more to nineteenth-century voters than better-known national issues such as slavery. In this important book, however, Anbinder argues that the Know Nothings' phenomenal success was inextricably linked to the firm stance their northern members took against the extension of slavery. Most Know Nothings, he asserts, saw slavery and Catholicism as interconnected evils that should be fought in tandem. Although the Know Nothings certainly were bigots, their party provided an early outlet for the anti-slavery sentiment that eventually led to the Civil War. Anbinder's study presents the first comprehensive history of America's most successful anti-immigrant movement, as well as a major reinterpretation of the political crisis that led to the Civil War. |
| gangs of new york history: Gangs and the Military Carter F. Smith, 2019-09-20 Over the past several decades, there has been a continuous and growing focus on street gangs, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and domestic extremist groups. Many of these groups have members with military training, and some actively recruit from current and former military veterans and retirees. That military experience adds to the dangerousness of veteran gang members, as well as those groups they associate with. Communities everywhere are experiencing the damaging impact of gang criminal behavior. By observing gang activity from the Revolutionary War to today Smith examines the presence of military-trained, often veteran, gang members in the communities. He looks at the turning points in gang investigations in the military, and also looks at the laws and policies designed to specifically counter the criminal activity the threats of gang activity pose on a community. Grounded in current knowledge and research, Gangs and the Military successfully addresses the growing presence of criminal gang members in the United States. As well as reflects on how the authorities that counter and combat them are doing so on a national and global level. |
Gangs and Gang Crime - National Institute of Justice
On this page, find links to articles, awards, events, publications, and multimedia related to gangs and gang crime. Articles Published by NIJ The Fight Against Rampant Gun Violence: Data …
Archived | What Is a Gang? Definitions - National Institute of Justice
Oct 27, 2011 · There is no universally agreed-upon definition of "gang" in the United States. Gang, youth gang and street gang are terms widely and often interchangeably used in mainstream …
Overview of Gangs and Gang Crime - National Institute of Justice
Oct 27, 2011 · Research about gangs is often intertwined with research about gun violence and drug crime. It is clear that gangs, guns, drugs and violence are interconnected.[1] Gang …
Gangs - National Institute of Justice
Leaving Gangs and Desisting from Crime Using a Multidisciplinary Team Approach: A Randomized Control Trial Evaluation of the Gang Reduction Initiative of Denver Date …
What Should Be Done in the Community to Prevent Gang-Joining?
Sep 15, 2013 · People often overlook communities as a valuable resource in reaching kids who are at risk of joining gangs. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is that, too often, gang …
Using Restrictive Housing to Manage Gangs in U.S. Prisons
Jun 30, 2018 · Gangs remain one of the more formidable issues that corrections officials face in managing prisons. About 200,000 of the 1.5 million people incarcerated in the U.S. are …
Gangs and Sex Trafficking in San Diego - National Institute of …
Aug 31, 2016 · This study focused narrowly on one of the most understudied aspects of human trafficking in the U.S.: the role of street gangs as facilitators of sex trafficking. Researchers …
Gangs vs. Extremists: Solutions for Gangs May Not Work Against ...
Oct 26, 2020 · Much is known about the workings of criminal gangs and traits of gang members, and much of that knowledge has informed community-focused anti-gang programs. It was long …
Archived | Why Is Gang-Membership Prevention Important?
Sep 15, 2013 · Gangs are a serious, persistent problem. According to the National Youth Gang Survey, from 2002 to 2010, the estimated number of youth gangs increased by nearly 35 …
Gangs in Correctional Facilities: A National Assessment
Jan 1, 1993 · This report presents the methodology and findings of a survey of the Nation's correctional facilities to identify and examine current policies and strategies for controlling …
Gangs and Gang Crime - National Institute of Justice
On this page, find links to articles, awards, events, publications, and multimedia related to gangs and gang crime. Articles Published by NIJ The Fight Against Rampant Gun Violence: Data …
Archived | What Is a Gang? Definitions - National Institute of Justice
Oct 27, 2011 · There is no universally agreed-upon definition of "gang" in the United States. Gang, youth gang and street gang are terms widely and often interchangeably used in mainstream …
Overview of Gangs and Gang Crime - National Institute of Justice
Oct 27, 2011 · Research about gangs is often intertwined with research about gun violence and drug crime. It is clear that gangs, guns, drugs and violence are interconnected.[1] Gang …
Gangs - National Institute of Justice
Leaving Gangs and Desisting from Crime Using a Multidisciplinary Team Approach: A Randomized Control Trial Evaluation of the Gang Reduction Initiative of Denver Date …
What Should Be Done in the Community to Prevent Gang-Joining?
Sep 15, 2013 · People often overlook communities as a valuable resource in reaching kids who are at risk of joining gangs. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is that, too often, gang …
Using Restrictive Housing to Manage Gangs in U.S. Prisons
Jun 30, 2018 · Gangs remain one of the more formidable issues that corrections officials face in managing prisons. About 200,000 of the 1.5 million people incarcerated in the U.S. are …
Gangs and Sex Trafficking in San Diego - National Institute of …
Aug 31, 2016 · This study focused narrowly on one of the most understudied aspects of human trafficking in the U.S.: the role of street gangs as facilitators of sex trafficking. Researchers …
Gangs vs. Extremists: Solutions for Gangs May Not Work Against ...
Oct 26, 2020 · Much is known about the workings of criminal gangs and traits of gang members, and much of that knowledge has informed community-focused anti-gang programs. It was long …
Archived | Why Is Gang-Membership Prevention Important?
Sep 15, 2013 · Gangs are a serious, persistent problem. According to the National Youth Gang Survey, from 2002 to 2010, the estimated number of youth gangs increased by nearly 35 …
Gangs in Correctional Facilities: A National Assessment
Jan 1, 1993 · This report presents the methodology and findings of a survey of the Nation's correctional facilities to identify and examine current policies and strategies for controlling …
