Chicago in the 1930s was one of the major centers of activity in the United States. 1930s Chicago is strongly associated with gangsters and the mafia and speakeasies to provide alcohol following Prohibition. In a dark and gloomy time during the Great Depression, many people in the city were unemployed and became dependent on food hand-outs in order to get by; many turned to crime as a way to deal with poverty. Many struggling musicians came to the city and found solace in the blues and jazz in the clubs of the city as a way to cope with their grievances. Numerous southern blues and jazz musicians made a name for themselves in the city as they had done in the 1920s. The theater scene in Chicago thrived during this period.
Unemployed men queued outside a depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al Capone, 1931
During the early days of the Great Depression, musicians from the southern region migrated to the north to Chicago and the Chicago blues absorbed them into their fold, allowing their ensembles to become very popular. The originality of each musician was brought to the fore in these ensembles.[1]
In 1930, PresidentHerbert Hoover's work on behalf of Chicago's "Al Capone problem" began to "get legs." A Washington, D.C. special prosecutor Dwight H. Green was appointed to Chicago to capture the Chicago gangsters and send them to jail, particularly Al Capone. Green had access to all the government ammunition needed for the job. However, Capone was aware of the secret plans of the Federal government with men identified to execute the job by men like Frank J. Wilson, a U.S. Secret Service agent, and Elmer Irey, the IRS head. Capone had sounded and fixed the people who mattered by sending a legal team to the nation's capitol for executing the deal. Yet, while the money was taken, it bought Capone no influence in Washington, D.C.[2]
This did not stop the IRS investigations and even his Capone underlings Frank Nitti (Francesco Nitto) were booked by the IRS and sentenced to 18 months in prison and a $10,000 fine. Capone's brother Ralph (Raffaele Capone, Sr.), was also indicted for three years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary and a $10,000 fine. On 17 October 1931, Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion following a four-day trial in Chicago. Bribes failed to help him. However, Capone had "cut a deal" with the prosecutors during the pre-trial to drop 5,000 "Prohibition" violations that could have "nailed him" for 25,000-years-to-life if convicted on all the charges. It has been said that Capone underling Gus Winkler was prevented by other Capone men from freeing him outright, with $100,000 upfront (a tax payment, not a bribe) to the federal taxman.[2]
On 24 October 1931, one week after he was convicted of tax evasion, Al Capone was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison (first, Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, then Alcatraz Island), fined $50,000 and charged $30,000 in court costs. While awaiting transfer to Atlanta to serve his sentence, Capone sat in Cook County Jail, where it was reported that he "had all the booze and women he wanted".[3]
Some time during 1931, a group of mostly college graduates in the Chicago area, called the "College Kidnappers," embarked on the bold step of kidnapping low-level, area gangsters and held them for ransom. Allegedly, the Klutas gang, named after leader Theodore "Handsome Jack" Klutas, took in a half-million dollars from these kidnappings in about a two-year span.[4]
The Merchandise Mart was completed for Marshall Field & Co. in 1930. The $32 million, 4.2 million square foot (390,000 m2) building was the world's largest commercial building.[5] It was sold it to Joseph P. Kennedy in 1945. The Adler Planetarium opened on 10 May 1930, through a gift from local merchant Max Adler.[6] It was the first planetarium in the Western Hemisphere. Adler was quoted as saying, "Chicago has been striving to create, and in large measure has succeeded in creating, facilities for its citizens of today to live a life."[6] The Shedd Aquarium opened soon afterwards in May 1930.[7] In 1931, and again the following year, the city hosted the International Workers' Olympics.[8]
At the beginning of 1930 and at beginning of 1940, the population of Chicago was 3,376,438 and 3,396,808 respectively.[9]
The Doorway to Hell (1930) was a movie made in 1930 based on the theme of organizing the various gangs in Chicago so that the gangsters do not destroy each other. It was nominated for the Best Writing, Original Story for Rowland Brown, in 1931.[10]
In 1932, the Chicago democrats got into power and Franklin Roosevelt achieved 98% votes from the Twenty Fourth ward. Eddy Kelly was elected mayor and the Chicago democrats, who ruled so overwhelmingly that they held office for nearly 70 years, until the end of the 1900s. They played a key role in the elections of Harry Truman and John F Kennedy. The Chicago democrats could deliver the votes in every other way. In 1932, Chicago as a city was about 100 years old since it was established by Jean Baptiste Du Sable, and had developed into a massive city with a huge population of 3.4 million in 1932.
In 1932, the Chicago school system was also in tatters and the banking industry went into a tailspin as many of the banks who had invested in the electric company "The Common Wealth Edison" busted during the Great Depression as the stock market crashed.[11]
The Gangster Era came to an end in 1933. It had lasted since 1919 when Prohibition began. The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era.[13]
The Century of ProgressWorld's Fair took place in 1933 from May 27 to November 1 and named "A Century of Progress".[14] On February 15, 1933, Mayor Anton Cermak was shot while standing near President-elect Roosevelt in Miami; the mayor died on March 6. In December 1933, violence broke out by communists in the city. On December 17 they attacked a parade of Ukrainians. By 1933, four years after the start of the Great Depression, unemployment reached 50 percent.[15]
In early 1933, after one of his gang turned on him, Theodore "Handsome Jack" Klutas was machine-gunned to death by cops. Thus, ending the gang's kidnapping spree.[4]
In 1929, Robert Maynard Hutchins was the fifth president of the University of Chicago when the university underwent many changes during his 24-year tenure. He had eliminated varsity football from the university in an attempt to emphasize academics over athletics.[16] He organized the university's graduate work into its current four divisions and a liberal-arts curriculum known as the Common Core was also added. In 1933, his proposal to merge the University of Chicago and Northwestern University into a single university did not come through [17] During his tenure in office, the development of University of Chicago Hospitals, now known as the University of Chicago Medical Center, was completed and enrolled its first medical students, and also at the same time the Committee on Social Thought was created.[18]
Masses of blacks migrated to the city from the south during the Great Migration of the first half of the 20th century. Many arrived in the city looking for work and settled in what became known as the "Black Belt", the chain of neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago where three-quarters of the city's African American population lived by the mid-20th century. The Black Belt was an area of aging, dilapidated housing that stretched 30 blocks along State Street on the South Side. It was rarely more than seven blocks wide.[21]
Many African Americans who moved to the Black Belt area of Chicago were from the Southeastern region of the United States. Discrimination played a big role in the lives of blacks. They often struggled to find decent housing. Immigration to Chicago resulted in overcrowding, and although there were decent homes in the African American sections, the core of the Black Belt was a slum. A 1934 census estimated that black households contained 6.8 people on average, whereas white households contained 4.7.[21]
Many Blacks lived in apartments that lacked plumbing, with only one bathroom for each floor.[21] With the buildings so overcrowded, building inspections and garbage collection were below the minimum mandatory requirements for healthy sanitation. This unhealthiness increased the threat of disease. Crime in African-American neighborhoods was a low priority to the police. Associated with problems of poverty and southern culture, rates of violence and homicide were high. Some women resorted to prostitution to survive. Both low life and middle class strivers were concentrated in a small area.
Soldier Field was the scene of the 1936 world championship games when Chicago hosted the Amateur Softball Association. Although billiards was considered to be a popular commercial sport for blue-collar workers, the number of licensed billiard parlors diminished from 2,244 (1920) to 580 (1936) due to the Great Depression.[22] On November 28, 1937, in Soldier Field, Austin High School beat Leo High School 26–0 in the annual playoff which pitted the champions of the city's Public League against the Catholic League. The crowd, estimated at 120,000, was considered to be the largest ever to view a football game in the US.[23]
On May 26, 1937, 85,000 steelworkers in five states walked out. Five Chicago-area mills were shut with 22,000 workers walking out. Republic Steel clash four days later.[24] Ten demonstrators were killed by police bullets during the "Little Steel Strike" of 1937. When several smaller steelmakers, including Republic Steel, refused to follow the lead of U.S. Steel by signing a union contract, a strike was called by the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).[25] In the melee that followed, 10 demonstrators were killed and 60 injured; 40 police officers were hurt.
1938–1939
The year 1938 saw the National League pennant won by the Cubs. A key moment in the team's pennant drive came near the end of the season when Gabby Hartnett hit a game-ending home run at a foggy and nearly dark Wrigley Field; according to legend, the ball disappeared into the fog and was never found. The Cubs went into first place, and clinched the pennant three days later. Hartnett's shot entered baseball lore as the "Homer in the Gloamin'".[26]
On 8 November 1939, two unknown gunman assassinated Chicago's Attorney Edward O'Hare. They drove close to his car on Ogden Avenue and shot him. Apparently, O'Hare had double crossed The Outfit (secretive organized crime cartel) while managing some of its affairs had leaked information about the Outfit to authorities for years.[27]
Lakefront of Chicago, 1938
After long efforts, in the late 1930s, workers organized across racial lines to form the United Packinghouse Workers of America. By then, the majority of workers in Chicago's plants were black, but they succeeded in creating an interracial organizing committee. It succeeded in organizing unions both in Chicago and Omaha, Nebraska, the city with the second largest meatpacking industry. This union belonged to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which was more progressive than the American Federation of Labor. They succeeded in lifting segregation of job positions. For a time, workers achieved living wages and other benefits, leading to blue collar middle-class life for decades. Some blacks were also able to move up the ranks to supervisory and management positions. The CIO also succeeded in organizing Chicago's steel industry. Raceway Park was a one-fifth-mile asphalt oval, built in 1938, for amateur stock car competitions.[28]
Alphonse Gabriel Capone, sometimes known by the nickname "Scarface", was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1925 to 1931. His seven-year reign as a crime boss ended when he went to prison at the age of 33.
John Donato Torrio was an Italian-born American mobster who helped build the Chicago Outfit in the 1920s later inherited by his protégé Al Capone. Torrio proposed a National Crime Syndicate in the 1930s and later became an adviser to Lucky Luciano and his Luciano crime family.
Earl J. "Hymie" Weiss, was a Polish-American mob boss who became a leader of the Prohibition-era North Side Gang and a bitter rival of Al Capone. He was known as "the only man Al Capone feared".
The Bureau of Prohibition was the United States federal law enforcement agency with the responsibility of investigating the possession, distribution, consumption, and trafficking of alcohol and alcoholic beverages in the United States of America during the Prohibition era. The enumerated enforcement powers of this organization were vested in the Volstead Act. Federal Prohibition Agents of the Bureau were commonly referred to by members of the public and the press of the day as "Prohis," or "Dry Agents." In the sparsely populated areas of the American west, agents were sometimes called "Prohibition Cowboys." At its peak, the Bureau employed 2,300 dry agents.
The Chicago Outfit is an Italian-American Mafia crime family based in Chicago, Illinois, which originated in the city's South Side in 1910. The organization is part of the larger Italian-American Mafia.
Chicago, Illinois, has a long history of organized crime and was famously home to the American mafia figure Al Capone. This article contains a list of major events related to organized crime.
Giuseppe "Joe" Aiello was a Sicilian bootlegger and organized crime leader in Chicago during the Prohibition era. He was best known for his long and bloody feud with Chicago Outfit boss Al Capone.
Roger Touhy was an Irish American mob boss and prohibition-era Chicago bootlegger. He is best remembered for having been framed by his rivals in Chicago organized crime for the fake 1933 kidnapping of Jewish-American organized crime figure and Chicago Outfit associate John "Jake the Barber" Factor, a brother of cosmetics manufacturer Max Factor Sr.
Jewish-American organized crime initially emerged within the American Jewish community during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In media and popular culture, it has variously been referred to as the Jewish Mob, the Jewish Mafia, the Kosher Mob, the Kosher Mafia, the Yiddish Connection, and Kosher Nostra or Undzer Shtik. The last two of these terms are direct references to the Italian Cosa Nostra; the former is a play on the word for kosher, referring to Jewish dietary laws, while the latter is a calque of the Italian phrase 'cosa nostra' into Yiddish, which was at the time the predominant language of the Jewish diaspora in the United States.
The North Side Gang, also known as the North Side Mob, was an Irish-American criminal organization within Chicago during the Prohibition era from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s. It was the principal rival of the South Side Gang, also known as the Chicago Outfit, the crime syndicate of Italian-Americans Johnny Torrio and Al Capone.
James "Mad Bomber" Belcastro was a Black Hand gang member, extortionist, and later chief bomber for the Chicago Outfit during Prohibition.
Salvatore "Frank" Capone was an Italian-American mobster who participated in the attempted takeover of Cicero, Illinois by the Chicago Outfit. He worked in the businesses with his brothers Al Capone and Ralph Capone.
Gus Winkler was an American gangster who headed a Prohibition-era criminal gang specializing in armed robbery and murder for hire with Fred "Killer" Burke. Winkler was a senior associate of Chicago Outfit boss Al Capone and is considered a suspect in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Winkler is believed to be the first member of the National Crime Syndicate to be murdered for talking to the FBI.
Fred "Killer" Burke was an American armed robber and contract killer responsible for many crimes during the Prohibition era. He was considered a prime suspect in the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929.
Jeremiah J. Horan was an organized crime figure and President of the Building Service Employees International Union from 1927 until his death in 1937. Although praised by newspapers for reducing the level of overt violence and graft which plagued the union under his predecessor, William Quesse, Horan nonetheless still engaged in bribery, extortion, physical intimidation, and other crimes, and permitted George Scalise to enter and rise within the organization. Horan established the kickback scheme whereby Scalise would eventually loot the union treasury of millions of dollars in member dues.
Johnny Jack Nounes, also known as the "Beau Brummell of Galveston", was a mob boss in Galveston, Texas, United States, during the 1920s and 1930s. He, with one-armed George Musey, led the Downtown Gang, one of the two gangs which controlled most of the Galveston Crime Syndicate until the early 1930s. They fought for control of the island against the rival Beach Gang led by Ollie Quinn and Dutch Voight, and later their successors, the Maceo Crime Syndicate. As the prohibition era began, his gang came to be one of the dominant forces in the Galveston Crime Syndicate. Galveston became the main port of entry for liquor supply in Texas and many parts of the Midwest. Nounes' flamboyance attracted the attention of federal authorities, leading to his conviction in 1924 and sentencing to Leavenworth Penitentiary. His prison term was short but only two years after being released he was again sentenced to prison after being caught with a shipment of liquor in Seabrook. Frank Nitti, a business partner of Nounes, was the "enforcer" for Al Capone's crime organization in Chicago as well as the future boss of the Chicago Outfit.
The era of American film production from the early sound era to the enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934 is denoted as Pre-Code Hollywood. The era contained violence and crime in pictures which would not be seen again until decades later. Although the Hays office had specifically recommended removing profanity, the drug trade, and prostitution from pictures, it had never officially recommended against depictions of violence in any form in the 1920s. State censor boards, however, created their own guidelines, and New York in particular developed a list of violent material which had to be removed for a picture to be shown in the state. Two main types of crime films were released during the period: the gangster picture and the prison film.
The Purple Gang, also known as the Sugar House Gang, was a criminal mob of bootleggers and hijackers composed predominantly of Jewish gangsters. They operated in Detroit, Michigan, during the 1920s of the Prohibition era and came to be Detroit's dominant criminal gang. Excessive violence and infighting caused the gang to destroy itself in the 1930s.
The College Kidnappers was a group of alumni from the University of Illinois who specialized in kidnapping wealthy mobsters for ransom. These mobsters were targets because they were less likely to approach the police and could pay the ransom.
↑ "History of the Office". The University of Chicago Office of the President. November 6, 2008. Archived from the original on October 28, 2009. Retrieved September 14, 2009.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
