Word: la
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Mafia," literally, means swank, or dolled up, but it probably derives from a Sicilian term meaning beauty or pride. In the context of crime, Mafia applies to the older, strictly Sicilian element of the Mob. "La Cosa Nostra," or Our Thing, is a broader term that means the modern American-born organization...
...Illinois, La Cosa Nostra exerts major influence in a dozen Chicago wards and dictates the votes of as many as 15 state legislators. Known as the West Side Bloc, a newspaper euphemism to avoid libel suits, the Mob opposes anticrime bills in the state legislature, forces gangsters onto the payroll of Mayor Richard Daley's Chicago machine, and corrupts the city police department. Salvatore ("Momo") Giancana may be hiding in Mexico, but his stand-ins, Tony ("Big Tuna") Accardo and Paul ("The Waiter") DeLucia still pack influence. Example: When a Justice Department report charged 29 Chicago policemen with being grafters...
Even the judiciary is not beyond reach, and the Mob has a special set of instructions for judges on the payroll. An FBI "bug" placed in the First Ward Democratic organization on La Salle Street, a favorite gathering place for Chicago gangsters, overheard the following conversation between Illinois Circuit Court Judge Pasqual Sorrentino and Pat Marcy, a friend of the Chicago LCN family. What should he do, Sorrentino asked, if federal agents questioned him about his associations with gangsters? Marcy's answer: "Stand on your dignity. Don't answer those questions. Tell them they're trying to embarrass you. Stay...
...total dollars bet at a race track, for example ?and puts down as little as 250 or as much as $1. In some places $10 bets are allowed. The bet taker himself, called the policy writer, is too small?and too vulnerable?to be a formal member of La Cosa Nostra. He works instead under contract as a "sharecropper...
CENTURIES before La Cosa Nostra was heard of in the U.S., the Mafia operated-even as it does today-as a brigand government in much of Sicily. Though many Italian immigrants had come to the U.S. to avoid just such oppression as the Mafia offers, a few among them formed a new Mafia in the new country. In the crowded "Little Italys" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the thugs found easy prey among people who had been taught to dread the terrorists' Black Hand...