Nick Poppy at the New York
Post offers a piece on a new book about an Italian-American police officer who
fought the Black Hand.
The terror might come in the mail, or in an
envelope slipped under the door. Or a note tacked to the wall. Pay up, it would
say. Give us the money. Or your child dies. Go to the police, your child dies.
The letter would be unsigned.
But everyone would know who had sent it: the dreaded Society of the Black Hand,
a shadowy criminal organization that targeted Italian immigrants to the US in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The recipients of such a note
had few options. If they did nothing, the Society might make good on its
promises. Its threats weren’t empty — the Society was responsible for bombings,
arson, kidnappings and murders. The Society’s targets could meet the extortioners’
exorbitant demands, and pay the hard-earned ransom — though inevitably, that
would lead to demands for more money.
Because they were immigrants
and because they were Italian, Black Hand victims typically could count on
little help from officials. In New York, the bulwark against Black Hand was
extraordinarily thin, but also very tough. It consisted chiefly of one man: a
dark-suited, opera-loving bruiser of a cop with a photographic memory, a sixth
grade education and fists like iron, named Joseph (Giuseppe) Petrosino.
For more than 20 years,
Petrosino waged an almost single-handed war against the Society of the Black
Hand. It was as much a war for the place of Italian immigrants in American
society, for their rights to exist and to be seen as Americans worthy of legal
protection.
It’s a story recounted in
Stephen Talty’s engrossing new book, “The Black Hand: The Epic War Between a
Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History”
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
You can read the rest of the
piece via the below link:
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