Mafia Origins

 

There are five known Mafia families: Gambino, Lucchese, Genovese, Bonnano and Columbo. The term "Mafia" comes from (in Sicilian) "Mafiusu" which stands for "swagger" but the translation can also be interpreted as "boldness" or "bravado" in Italian. 

 The Black Hand was a name given to a type of extortion used in Italian neighbourhoods at the turn of the twentieth century. This is sometimes mistaken for the Mafia, which it is not. The Black Hand was a criminal society, with many small gangs, but they are widely referred to as the same organisation. This is because the methods of extortion were thought to be the same, when in fact there are quite a lot of differences.

 Giuseppe Morello was the first Mafia member to immigrate to the U.S. after murdering two wealthy landowners and the chancellor and vice-chancellor of a Sicilian province. He was eventually arrested in New Orleans. 

 In October 1890 New Orleans ended up being the first site of a Mafia incident that achieved national and international attention when police superintendent David Hennessey was murdered execution-style. It is still unclear whether this was a Sicilian mafia hit or whether this was a frame-up by nativists against underclass immigrants. Hundreds of Sicilians were questioned and nineteen were eventually indicted for the murder. An acquittal followed along with rumours of bribed and intimidated witnesses changing their statements. 

 March 4th 1891 the people of New Orleans organised their own lynch mob and killed eleven of the original nineteen arrested Sicilian defendants. Two were hung, nine were shot and the remaining eight escaped. 

 From the 1890's-1920 in New York City the Five Points gang founded by Paul Kelly were very powerful in Little Italy of the lower east-side. Paul Kelly recruited some street hoodlums who later became, Johnny Torrio, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and Frankie Yale. They were often in conflict with the Jewish Eastmens. There was also an influential Mafia family in East Harlem and the Neapolitan Camorra in Brooklyn. The nineteenth ward in Chicago was an Italian neighbourhood that became known as the "bloody nineteenth" due to the frequent violence in the ward, mostly as a result of Mafia activity, feuds, and vendettas.