The first recorded Sicilian underworld feud in the New World occurred in the birthplace of the American Mafia, New Orleans. The Crescent City conflict occurred just after the U.S. Civil War. Raffaele Agnello, a Mafia boss with roots in Palermo, was opposed at first by a gang of Messinian immigrants. The opposition later expanded to include a Monreale-based Mafia splinter group known as the Stuppagghieri and a home-grown Louisiana militia led by native New Orleanian Joseph P. Macheca. The feud set the stage for the 1880s-90s Provenzano-Matranga conflict that led to the assassination of Police Chief David Hennessy and the Crescent City lynchings.
Author Frank Hayde left no stone unturned as he assembled a comprehensive and readable history of the Kansas City underworld. He neatly tied together generations of political shenanigans by the influential Pendergast political machine and numerous murders and illicit business ventures by the local Sicilian-Italian Mafia organization. The result is the most complete picture yet of the Kansas City underworld and of the mutualistic relationship between organized politics and organized crime.
Ciro Terranova, longtime boss of East Harlem rackets, died Feb. 20, 1938. Ciro was best known by the nickname, "the Artichoke King," which he secured by monopolizing the sale of artichokes in New York. Among his other illicit enterprises was a partnership with Dutch Schultz in the Harlem numbers racket. Terranova lost much of his power after the Castellammarese War of 1930-31. New York City police officials declared him unwelcome in the city and harrassed him with vagrancy arrests whenever he appeared there. As his personal fortune evaporated, he was permitted to move back into East Harlem. On Feb. 19, 1938, he entered Columbus Hospital. He died of a stroke the following day. All of his racketeer brothers predeceased him, dying violently. Aging brother-in-law Ignazio Lupo was in Atlanta Federal Prison at the time of Terranova's death.
America's First Mafia War
The Mafia and the Machine
Death of the Artichoke King