Word: mafia
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sinister drama, the Mafia's bloodletting accounts for only an insignificant fraction of the killings that occur every year in the U.S. The rising toll sometimes seems to validate H. Rap Brown's mordant dictum: "Violence is as American as cherry pie." In 1970 there were 16,000 criminal homicides in the nation-one every 33 minutes. With the carnage mounting-up 8% from the previous year and 76% over the decade-the U.S. is maintaining its long-held, unhappy distinction of leading advanced Western nations in the rate at which its citizens destroy one another. Philadelphia...
...family structure to crumble and is weakening some of the once-powerful crime dynasties. According to Historian Humbert Nelli, the Mafiosi's respect for authority-a trait that used to cement loyalties-is decaying. For this reason, more and more Mafiosi are deciding to go straight. In one Mafia family that Ianni studied, only four out of 27 fourth-generation Italian-Americans are connected with organized crime. Of the remaining 23, one is a university professor, and all the rest are doctors, lawyers or legitimate businessmen...
...other force for change in the Mafia is less subtle. It is what Ianni calls "drastic action"-the kind being carried out on the streets of New York...
...Named for a Mafia contingent that originated in the Sicilian town of Castellammarese del Golfo...
...family, in New York Mafia usage, is a gang of from 75 to 1,000 men, all of Italian descent, who are bound by a loyalty oath of blood and fire and organized into regimes, or squads, under the command of capos, who in turn take their orders from the underboss and the boss. Family members are often but not necessarily related by blood...