African-American organized crime

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Although a minority during the 19th and early 20th centuries, African-American organized crime first began to emerge following large scale migrations of Caribbean and African Americans to major cities of the Northeast and Midwest. In many of these newly established communities and neighborhoods criminal activities such as illegal gambling, speakeasies and bootlegging would be seen in the post-World War I and Prohibition eras. Although the majority of these businesses were operated by African Americans, it is unclear to the extent these operations were run independently of the larger criminal organizations of the time.

1 Prohibition & the Great Depression
2 Post-WWII
3 In popular culture
4 Further reading
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Prohibition & the Great Depression

During the 1920s and 30s, African American organized crime was centered in New York's Harlem where the numbers racket was largely controlled by "Madam Queen of Policy" Stephanie St. Clair. She would later testify at the Seabury Investigation that during 1923 to 1928 the NYPD continued to arrest her runners despite making payoffs. However, the Harlem numbers rackets were largely operated by independent policy bankers such as St. Clair before its eventual takeover by mobster Dutch Schultz in the late 1930s.

"Policy became the biggest Black-owned business in the world with combined annual sales sometimes reaching the $100 million mark and employing tens-of-thousands of people nationwide. In Bronzeville, Policy was a major catalyst by which the black economy was driven. In 1938 Time magazine reported that Bronzeville was the "Center of U.S. Negro Business", and more than a decade later, Our World magazine reported that "Windy City Negroes have more money, bigger cars and brighter clothes than any other city…. The city which has become famous for the biggest Policy wheels, the largest funerals, the flashiest cars and the prettiest women, has built that reputation on one thing, money". Those attributions, however, were largely due to Policy, a business conceived, owned, and operated by African American men known by many names including "Digit Barons", "Numbers Bankers", "Sportsmen", "Digitarians", and "the 1-2-3-4 Guys"; but more often than not they were called "Policy Kings". " (from 'KINGS'The True Story of Chicago's Policy Kings and Numbers Racketeers An Informal History by Nathan Thompson)

[edit] Post-WWII

In the years following the end of the Second World War, African-American organized crime grew along with the rise of African-American social consciousness and later political and social militancy. Many of the major drug traffickers such as Leroy "Nicky" Barnes and Frank Lucas emerged during the early to mid 1960s, taking advantage of the increasing political strength during the civil rights movement. During this time of social and economic mobility, African-American gangsters were more able to negotiate with outside criminal organizations (previously dependent solely on the political and police protection of New York's Five Families) whose control over the ghettos began to wane.

By the early 1970s, the large narcotics empires created by Barnes and Lucas began expanding beyond Harlem as Lucas sought to ultimately control a large scale drug trafficking operation by gaining control of a network from Indochina directly to the streets of ghettos across the country. Other criminal groups such as Rastafarians began smuggling marijuana and cocaine in cities including New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. as well as in New Jersey, California, Florida and Toronto, Canada. Other groups such as the "Black Mafia" or "BMF" of Atlanta, Georgia and Detroit, Michigan were also heavily involved in drug trafficking, specifically crack-cocaine, during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Most recently, highly structured African-American gangs have made headlines for their ability to pull in hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal drug profits. At their peak, the Chicago-based Gangster Disciples were reported to generate $100 million in drug revenue[1]. The rise and fall of the Black Mafia Family, who made nearly $250 million through their drug trafficking ventures during the 1980s, have been brought to light after federal investigations.

[edit] In popular culture

Harlem Nights (1989)
New Jack City (1991)
Hoodlum (1997)

[edit] Further reading

Ianni, Francis A.J. Black Mafia: Ethnic Succession in Organized Crime. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1974.
Schatzberg, Rufus. Black Organized crime in Harlem, 1920-1930. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1993.
Schatzberg, Rufus and Kelly, Robert J. African American Organized Crime: A Social History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997.
Thompson, Nathan. Kings: The True Story of Chicago's Policy King's and Numbers Racketeers. Bronzeville Press, 2003. ISBN 0972487506