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Founder | Frank Ragen |
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Founding location | Canaryville, Chicago, Illinois, United States |
Years active | 1900s – 1932 |
Territory | South Side of Chicago |
Ethnicity | Irish American |
Membership | 2,000 (1908) |
Activities | Bribery, election fraud, ethnic violence, rum-running, murder, police corruption, political corruption |
Allies | Chicago Outfit, Sheldon Gang, National Crime Syndicate |
Rivals | African-American gangs |
Ragen's Colts was a chiefly Irish street gang which dominated the Chicago underworld during the early twentieth century. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, the gang became part of the Chicago Outfit under Al Capone.
Originally established as an athletic club, the Ragen's Athletic and Benevolent Association was soon led by team pitcher Frank Ragen. He hired out members of the club to Chicago Democrat politicians to do various forms of election fraud.[ citation needed ]
The gang quickly expanded, numbering 160 members by 1902 and 2,000 by 1908. It earned the motto "Hit Me and You Hit 2,000". By the end of the decade, the gang had financed the careers of hundreds of Chicago city officials, including prominent aldermen, police chiefs, and city treasurers, as well as Ragen himself. Ragen became Chicago police commissioner. By 1920, many members of the gang had become notorious criminals and gunmen, such as William "Gunner" McPadden, Harry Madigan, Joseph "Dynamite" Brooks, Danny McFall, Hughey "Stubby" McGovern, Davy "Yiddles" Miller and Ralph Sheldon of the Sheldon Gang.
The years after World War I were a time of increased social tension, as returning veterans competed with more recent immigrants and newer African American migrants from the South for jobs and housing. In several cities, such tensions erupted in rioting, often instigated by one of slightly older, more established groups to restore dominance over a newer group, often a minority. The Irish and African Americans were both concentrated in housing on the South Side and in jobs at the stockyards located on that side of the city.
The Ragen gang were believed to instigate fights between black and other South Side neighborhoods that contributed to the Chicago race riot of 1919. In one instance, the Colts donned blackface and set fire to Lithuanian and Polish homes in the Back of the Yards neighborhood in a deliberate attempt to incite the immigrant community to join them in committing heinous acts against African Americans. [1] The Ragen gang led raids from Irish neighborhoods into the Black Belt, where they looted homes and killed several people. Blacks retaliated by attacking other South Side neighborhoods. As news of the attacks spread, other neighborhoods around the city began rioting. Violence lasted four days and resulted in 38 deaths: 23 black and 15 white, and more than 1,000 injured.
The Ragen Colts also directed their anger at the Ku Klux Klan for its anti-Catholicism. In 1921, "In September, 3,000 people from the stockyards district (of Chicago) watched as the Colts hanged in effigy 'a white-sheeted Klansman'." (Tuttle) [1]
During Prohibition, the gang soon began bootlegging. Member Ralph Sheldon formed his own group and began hijacking rival liquor shipments. While the gang came into conflict with the Chicago Outfit during the bootleg wars, Capone, impressed with the gang, hired them as enforcers for the organization. The Irish Ragen gang were eventually absorbed into the organization following the establishment of the National Crime Syndicate in 1932. Many members would later become top leaders of the Chicago crime syndicate.[ citation needed ]
In 1920 several members of Ragen's Colts split off to form the NFL football team the Chicago Maroons, later known as the Chicago Cardinals.
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.
Paul De Lucia, known as Paul Ricca, was an Italian-American mobster who served as the nominal or de facto leader of the Chicago Outfit for 40 years. In 1958 he was named "the country's most important criminal" by a Senate crime investigating subcommittee. Ricca died on October 11, 1972.
Michele "Mike" Merlo was a Chicago political figure and "fixer" associated in his later years with the Torrio-Capone organization. As head of the Unione Siciliana fraternal group, Merlo wielded considerable influence both in Chicago's Democratic Party politics and also within Chicago's criminal underworld during the early years of Prohibition. Although Merlo was able to maintain peace among the city's numerous bootlegging gangs, his death marked the beginning of Chicago's bootleg wars that plagued the city for the rest of the decade.
The Valley Gang was an Irish-American street gang in Chicago, Illinois during the early 20th century, which ultimately made the transition to organized crime and became a de facto extension of the Chicago Outfit under Al Capone.
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.
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.
Salvatore Joseph "Sam" Battaglia was an American mobster and high-level member of the Chicago Outfit criminal organization.
James "Mad Bomber" Belcastro was a Black Hand gang member, extortionist, and later chief bomber for the Chicago Outfit during Prohibition.
Louis "Little New York" Campagna was an American gangster and mobster and a high-ranking member of the Chicago Outfit for over three decades.
Joseph Esposito was an American politician best known for his involvement in bootlegging, extortion, prostitution and labor racketeering in Chicago, Illinois during the Prohibition era.
James Matthew Ragen Sr. was an Irish businessman and co-founder of the Chicago-based street gang and political club Ragen's Colts.
Joseph Francis Saltis, known as "Polack Joe", was a Rusyn American Prohibition era organized crime boss who, with Frank McErlane, operated an illegal bootlegging crime family in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago, until his territory was seized by Al Capone and the Chicago Outfit. Saltis then retired to Wisconsin.
Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik was the financial and legal advisor, and later political "greaser," for the Chicago Outfit.
Walter Stevens (1877–1931) was a freelance enforcer and "hitman", popularly known as "dean of the Chicago gunmen", during Prohibition. Although having the reputation of a violent gangster, credited with the deaths of at least 60 men, Stevens was a devoted husband to an invalid wife and his three adopted children. Stevens was uncharacteristically cultured compared to his fellow gangsters, refraining from drinking and reportedly quoting classical literature from authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson and poet Robert Burns.
The Forty-Two Gang was a teenage street gang in Chicago that started during Prohibition. Like Brooklyn's Italian and Jewish street gangs of Brownsville and Ocean Hill, the Forty-Two Gang served as a "farm team" for future members of the Chicago Outfit. Forty-Two Gang members included future syndicate members Sam Giancana, Sam "Teets" Battaglia, Luigi "Cockeyed Louie" Fratto, Felix "Milwaukee Phil" Alderisio, "Mad Sam" DeStefano, Charles "Chuckie" Nicoletti, Fiore "Fifi" Buccieri, William "Smokes" Aloisio, Frank "Skids" Caruso, William "Willie Potatoes" Daddano, Joseph DiVarco, Marcello Caifano, Mario DeStefano, Bruno Tassione, and Joey "Cowboy" Miletta.
Daniel "Danny" Stanton Jr. was a Chicago mobster and labor union racketeer for the Chicago Outfit during Prohibition. An early leader of the Sheldon Gang, he later headed members of the Ragen's Colts on behalf of Al Capone in support of the Druggan-Lake Gang during the bootleg wars of the mid-1920s.
The Chicago race riot of 1919 was a violent racial conflict between white Americans and black Americans that began on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, on July 27 and ended on August 3, 1919. During the riot, 38 people died. Over the week, injuries attributed to the episodic confrontations stood at 537, two-thirds black and one-third white; and between 1,000 and 2,000 residents, most of them black, lost their homes. Due to its sustained violence and widespread economic impact, it is considered the worst of the scores of riots and civil disturbances across the United States during the "Red Summer" of 1919, so named because of its racial and labor violence. It was also one of the worst riots in the history of Illinois.
Frank McErlane (1894–1932) was a Prohibition-era Irish-American organized crime figure. He led the Saltis-McErlane Gang, allied with Rusyn American gangster Joseph Saltis and the Johnny Torrio-Al Capone led Chicago Outfit, against rival Irish-American bootleggers, the Southside O'Donnell Gang. He is credited with introducing the Thompson submachine gun to Chicago's underworld. The Illinois Crime Survey called him "the most brutal gunman who ever pulled a trigger in Chicago."
The Sheldon Gang was a Chicago criminal gang during the early years of Prohibition known for being the main rivals of the Saltis-McErlane Gang and the Southside O'Donnell Brothers. The gang's primary activities included bootlegging and hijacking of trucks and alcohol shipments.