Meyer Lansky, Mogul of the Mob
Meyer Lansky grew up in a poor Jewish, immigrant household. Each week the family would scrimp and save to have the Sabbath meal, known as cholent. Each Friday night, young Lansky would take the meal to the bakery with a nickel to pay for the privilege of cooking the cholent. Each Friday night, Lansky would also walk past corner crap games. One week, Lansky, fascinated by the amount of money people were throwing around, bet his cholent nickel. Lansky was sure he would win and bring home much more money for his family. "I handed the money over to the banker, sure I was going to win and to my dismay, I lost it!" Lansky recalled later.
Lansky promised himself he would never let his family down again and he would be a winner and beat them all. Lansky began to study the games and looked for the secret to win. Finally he figured it out, and began to win. He played the games for weeks all over the Lower East Side, amassing a small fortune that he kept under his mattress.
In a few years, Lansky became a "shtarke," or a person who will commit violence for a price. It is with this job that Lansky's name first shows up on the criminal record books. At sixteen he was charged with felonious assault, but the charges were dismissed. Later he was arrested for attempting to be a pimp. He pleaded guilty to this and was fined two dollars.
Lansky was walking home one day when he was approached by a group of Sicilian boys, led by Salvatore Luciano, later known as Charlie "Lucky" Luciano. Luciano demanded Lansky pay tribute to his gang. Lansky refused and proved he was a dangerous force. It was then that Luciano and Lansky reached an understanding that never left the two.
Between 1914 and 1920, Lansky formed his gang. Five boys joined Meyer Lansky in an attempt to fight off the Irish and Italian gangs. Later Benny Siegel, AKA Bugsy, joined the group, and he and Lansky became closer than brothers. The gang known as the "Bugs and Meyer mobsters" and were "equal opportunity thugs". No one was safe from the mobsters. They harassed all different immigrants, Jewish, Irish and Italian alike. The men opened a truck rental garage to front their operation, which also gave them access to a warehouse.
In the novel The Bread Givers, there was a Jewish family, the Smolinsky family, that had immigrated from Russia to America. The family consisted of four daughters, a father, and a mother. The family lived in a poverty-stricken ghetto. The youngest of the daughters was Sara Smolinsky, nicknamed ?Iron Head? for her stubbornness. She was the only daughter that was brave enough to leave home and go out on her own and pursue something she wanted without the permission of her father. The Smolinsky family was very poor, they were to the point of which they could not afford to throw away potato peelings, and to the point of which they had to dig through other people?s thrown out ash in order to gather the coal they needed. They could not afford to buy themselves new clothes or new furniture.
With only a dollar twenty-five, Madame Haupt helped Ona give birth, but failed to give them their life. With that dollar twenty-five, Ona lost her life and left Jurgis alone forever. That same day little Kotrina earned three dollars, Jurgis took it and got drunk. This American lie struck him hard, the least he can do was to get drunk and forget about life for a while.
First, the main character, he is in a terrible situation, far from home, hungry, poor and his wife may die due to illness. We don't know his full past ,or know how much he or Laura’s hardships can be related to race. the author tells a story of an unfortunate individual who has suffered, and that the bingo game represents his chances of escaping his situation. As the author goes on to explain, "He felt a profound sense of promise, as though he were about to be repaid for all the things he'd suffered all his life. Trembling, he pressed the button" (42). If we look back at the time and the age of this short story his race and suffering are associated with one another. The bingo game comes off as a means for the main character to overcome and rise above his unpleasant situation. Our main characters luck is only temporary, because, Policemen come into play and fight the button away from him and beat him over the head. “Regardless, the main character is still the focus of the unfair world and a system in which he lives. The wheel lands on the evidently winning "double zero," but that's unluckily exactly the amount of money he is going to get” ("Protagonist in King of the Bingo Game.”). With still being broke, he will not have enough money to pay Laura's medical bills. By the end of the story, the main character is in an even worse situation than where
Alphonse Gabriel Capone was the most notorious bootlegger in American History. He was born on January 17, 1899 and died of a heart attack on January 25, 1947. Capone grew up in Brooklyn and became a member of the Five Points Gang. During a street fight he had received a scar on his face that gave him the nickname “Scarface”. Capone quickly moves up the ranks in the mafia world, often noticed for his toughness, in 1919 he grabbed the attention of mobster John Torrio of Chicago. Capone was promoted to bodyguard of the mob boss James Colosimo. When Capone moved to Chicago, bootlegging was just starting to blow up. These bootleggers pounced on the opportunity to completely control the business of making, importing, and distributing alcohol and all alcohol products. Alcohol wasn't the only flourishing industry for the the mob, they also did trade in
the crime. Even though I knew Stankos was a psychopath, I decided to look up the case.
...ssed as police officers, cornered and shot seven members of a top rival gang in the back. Such levels of violence were horrific however it appeared that no-one might touch him till 1931, wherever where was finally convicted for tax evasion instead of the four hundred murders he was presumed have committed.
Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was a man unlike any other, a man who strove to be better than what he was, and who grew up with nothing yet died with everything (Carter 179; PBS par. 1; Bugsy Siegel Encyclpaedia par. 3). Unlike many who give up in life because of the many problems they may face, Bugsy Siegel strove to be better than his father was (Carter 179). Eventually, Siegel began forcing peddle cart vendors to give him payments for protection from himself (PBS par. 2; Carter 179). Thus began Siegel’s transformation to a true mafia man running around with “Lucky” Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and the Murder Inc. which Siegel himself created (Southwell 212; PBS par. 4; Carter 180; Bugsy Siegel Encyclopaedia par. 2). Siegel was on top of the world, he was in charge of Murder Inc., had many mistresses, and his dream of a Gambling Oasis in the Desert was starting to take-off ( Carter 187; Southwell 212); however, tragedy struck one summer evening after the suave Siegel was murdered in his mistress’ home on June 20, 1947 (Carter 189). Bugsy Siegel affected millions of lives worldwide, whether through his psychotic acts as a mafia hit man, or his revolutionary idea of the gambling oasis, that is now Las Vegas (Southwell 212; Carter 179; Bugsy Siegel Encyclopaedia par. 3). Siegel’s tragic death, furthermore, shall forever be in the history books as a tragedy that would forever cripple the world’s chance of being something greater than it is.
The story then progresses to the event, otherwise known as the lottery which evidently takes place at the center of the village. As the event starts, everyone convenes in the middle of the town and the only person who is not there is Clyde Dunbar whose wife is forced to take two sl...
Al Capone was one of the most known of all of the gangsters. He was one of the biggest gangsters in the underworld of chicago. Al capone was a sharp dresser a classy gentleman. Capone was the best at what he did. capone originally liyed in naples which is in italy .
They were gangsters that caused problems for the community. These gangsters would go up to kids and try and jump them into their gang. For them, the more members they had, the more “territory they had.” One problem that major cities around the world have is gangs. Most of these gangs are made up of juvenile delinquents looking for trouble.
Sammy the Bull, lesser known as the infamous Salvatore Gravano, is the highest-ranking member of the Mafia ever to break his blood vow of silence and turn against his boss, Mafia giant John Gotti. In 1992, Gravano realized he was about to take the fall for Gotti, so he became a federal witness. His testimony eventually led to convictions of dozens of key Cosa Nostra figures, including Gotti, who is now serving a life sentence without parole.
himself in a defiant way and disobeyed all authority in his life. His brother Pete helped
On the morning of June 27 of a recent year, the 300 villagers of an American village prepare for the annual lottery in a mood of excitement. The horrible tradition of the lottery is so old that some of its ritual has been forgotten and some has been changed. Its basic purpose is entirely unremembered, but residents are present to take part in it. The children in the village created a “great pile of stones” in one corner of the stoning square. The civic-minded Mr. Summers has been sworn in and then he hands a piece of paper to the head of each family. When it is discovered the Hutchinson family has drawn the marked slip, each member of the family Bill, Tessie, and the children is given another slip. Silence prevails as suspense hovers over the proceedings. After helplessly protesting the unfairness of the first drawing, Tessie finds that she holds the marked slip.
Vito Corleone is the head of the Corleone family. Vito is an intelligent Mafia leader known as the Godfather. The Godfather
In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery”, she tells about an annual lottery drawing which takes place in a small town. This lottery has been around for over seventy years. During the lottery drawing, the head of each family goes and pulls a piece of paper from the black box. Whoever had the piece of paper with the black spot on it had to be stoned to death. Shirley Jackson uses many types of literary devices such as symbolism, conflict, and irony to support her overall purpose of writing this short story.