Organized Crime in Chicago
Organized Crime in Chicago

Author: Robert M. Lombardo

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2012-12-30

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0252094484

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This book provides a comprehensive sociological explanation for the emergence and continuation of organized crime in Chicago. Tracing the roots of political corruption that afforded protection to gambling, prostitution, and other vice activity in Chicago and other large American cities, Robert M. Lombardo challenges the dominant belief that organized crime in America descended directly from the Sicilian Mafia. According to this widespread "alien conspiracy" theory, organized crime evolved in a linear fashion beginning with the Mafia in Sicily, emerging in the form of the Black Hand in America's immigrant colonies, and culminating in the development of the Cosa Nostra in America's urban centers. Looking beyond this Mafia paradigm, this volume argues that the development of organized crime in Chicago and other large American cities was rooted in the social structure of American society. Specifically, Lombardo ties organized crime to the emergence of machine politics in America's urban centers. From nineteenth-century vice syndicates to the modern-day Outfit, Chicago's criminal underworld could not have existed without the blessing of those who controlled municipal, county, and state government. These practices were not imported from Sicily, Lombardo contends, but were bred in the socially disorganized slums of America where elected officials routinely franchised vice and crime in exchange for money and votes. This book also traces the history of the African-American community's participation in traditional organized crime in Chicago and offers new perspectives on the organizational structure of the Chicago Outfit, the traditional organized crime group in Chicago.

We Are Each Other's Business
We Are Each Other's Business

Author: Nicole M. Brown

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2024-08-20

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0231555903

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In the 1960s and 1970s, the Welfare Rights Movement organized at both local and national levels, advocating for poor people’s inclusion, dignity, and autonomy. We Are Each Other’s Business examines Black women’s leadership within the Chicago Welfare Rights Movement, recasting their consumer activism as a form of Black feminist technology. Nicole M. Brown calls for understanding the Black women of the Welfare Rights Movement as sophisticated strategists who engaged the tensions among capitalism, consumerism, and economic liberation. She analyzes Black women’s engagement with consumer credit, tracing how they linked consumption with citizenship and critiqued the state’s treatment of the poor. Brown offers a radical reframing of the struggle between Black women and the state as a battle of technologies, showing how Black women challenged “algorithmic assemblages of race, class, and gender” and “analog algorithms of poverty.” She also shows how racism, sexism, and classism stifled opportunities for alliances: although the Welfare Rights Movement converged with consumer and women’s rights movements, white and middle-class activists were unwilling to recognize poor Black women as fellow political actors. Bringing together historical sociology, computational methods, and intersectional Black feminist theory, We Are Each Other’s Business offers innovative and generative insights into Black women’s struggle for political and economic equity.

The Black Artist in America
The Black Artist in America

Author: Dennis Thomison

Publisher:

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13:

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Helps the user identify African-American artists and locate published reproductions of their work, ranging from the colonial period to the present.