The Black Hand: Terror by Letter in Chicago Review

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The Black Hand: Terror by Letter in Chicago ReviewR M Lombardo, a sociologist, and political scientist at Loyola University Chicago also brings a 35 year career as a Chicago Police patrol officer and administrator of police and Sheriffs Departments to his meticulous translating the criminal world of the Mafia `Black Hand' and `Omertarism' of Chicago's Little Italy, circa 1920s. This historiography of the `Black Hand' squads includes an elucidating frame to the `legendary' reportage on the little known `White Hand' resistance among Italian Business and Community leaders in further amplifying the invulnerability of the Black Hand's chronic criminality. Lombardo additionally identifies a collection of small gangs of criminals and individual offenders, many of whom weren't Italian during the Black Hand's formative years. His remarkably constrained tracking and analysis is solidly pragmatic and insightful in validating his research and sociological perspectives. This is especially evident in the interpretation of the historical and legendary media and journalistic fantasies of `Black Hand' crimes and their enervating impact on social spontaneity and community accords. And not so ironically, these media accounts remain imbedded in current day portrayals and distortions. Much of this reportage still holds an integral élan to the archaic canon of scientific racism.
Lombardo's skill in recognizing the terror dynamics experienced by innocent Italian and Sicilian families in being either targeted or immobilized by a palpable fear of a "Black Hand" letter entering their lives parallels a ghetto survival mentality. Although wrapped in 21st century technology and weaponry, much of the psycho-sociological terror of fleshless bones exposed in the current Mexican drug cartel violence organically replicate the grip of `Black Hand' tactics and terror; media circumspection, self censoring, and silence. The ambushes, the kidnapping, the hired killers, the support of hidden influences were all mirrored in the Mafian system of Italy at the time. The 1909 assassination of the skilled New York Police Detective Joseph Petrosino in Sicily took the lid off the myth and the reality of the `Black Hand,' resulting in a huge reactive police interdiction and collateral stigmata of American Sicilians and urban Italian communities in major cities of the United States. Lombardo has provided a detailed case study of this entire incident and implications of `Black Hand' interdiction policies. Prof. JMaghan, Forum for Comparative Correction, Chester, CT
Of especial note is Lombardo's summary chapter, The Social Construction of Deviance. Here the reader is given a concise and fascinating umbrella of the factors feeding xenophobic and anti-immigrant crime portends and social positioning, including crime myths as modes of the "social reality" of crime. These myths provided `news' that was ripe for the distortion and innuendo by insatiable media mules. "There is even a report that the term Black Hand was entirely made up by a Chicago newspaper reporter in order to create an attention-grabbing story. Noteworthy, is the fact that `Black Hand' crime labeling began at the height of "yellow journalism" in the United States. Lombardo also traces the influence of these factors to other societal problems; rape, sex crimes, crimes of violence, and white slavery. And, most noteworthy was the retaliation by vigilante movements, mob violence, episodes of lynching and virulent outcry for immigration reform to impede foreign criminals from entering the United States. How contemporary can you get? Incongruously to this day, the murder of Detective Petrosino in March 1909 remains as a lodestone to the perennial Mafia and `Black Hand' intrigues and speculations. Prof. JMaghan, Forum for Comparative Coprrection
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