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African-American Organized Crime
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, African-American organized crime emerged following the first and second large-scale migration of African-Americans from the South to major cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and later the West Coast. In many of these newly established communities and neighborhoods, criminal activities such as illegal gambling (e.g. the numbers racket), speakeasies and bootlegging were seen in the post-World War I and Prohibition eras. Although the majority of these businesses were operated by African Americans, it is often unclear the extent to which these operations were run independently of the larger criminal organizations of the time. Colloquially, black West Indian American criminal organizations operating in the US, such as the Yardies, Shower Posse or Jamaican posse, may occasionally and mostly erroneously be included under the label of "African-American organized crime", but they are usually classified as culturally and ethnically separate crimi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City. Paleo-Americ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northeastern United States
The Northeastern United States, also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast, is a geographic region of the United States. It is located on the Atlantic coast of North America, with Canada to its north, the Southern United States to its south, and the Midwestern United States to its west. The Northeast is one of the four regions defined by the U.S. Census Bureau for the collection and analysis of statistics. The region is usually defined as including nine U.S. states: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The U.S. Census Bureau–defined region of the Northeastern United States has a total area of with of that being land mass, making it the smallest region of the United States by both land mass and total area. The Northeastern region is the nation's most economically developed, densely populated, and culturally diverse region. Of the nation's four census regions, the No ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Casper Holstein
Casper Holstein (December 7, 1876 – April 5, 1944) was a prominent New York mobster involved in the Harlem " numbers rackets" during the Harlem Renaissance. Early life His birth name was Egbert Joseph and changed his name in honor of his maternal grandfather Holstein. Born of mixed African and Danish descent in St. Croix, Danish West Indies, Casper Holstein moved to New York City with his mother in 1884. His father was a landed mulatto who owned a butcher shop and owner of a large farm. His mother was the daughter of an officer in the Danish Militia. Attending high school in Brooklyn, he enlisted in the United States Navy following his graduation. During World War I, he was able to revisit his birthplace while stationed in what had become the United States Virgin Islands. After the war, Holstein worked as janitor and doorman in Manhattan eventually becoming a messenger, and then head messenger, for a commodities brokerage on Wall Street. Rebirth of the Harlem numbers racket ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), Central Park North on the south. The greater Harlem area encompasses several other neighborhoods and extends west and north to 155th Street, east to the East River, and south to Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard (Manhattan), Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Central Park, and 96th Street (Manhattan), East 96th Street. Originally a Netherlands, Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem's history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, with significant population shifts accompanying each cycle. Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish American, Jewish and Italian American, Italian Americans in the 19th century, but African-American residents began to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jamaican Posse
Jamaican posses, often referred to simply as ''posses'', are a loose coalition of Jamaican gangs, based predominantly in Kingston, London, New York City and Toronto, first being involved in drugs and arms trafficking in the early 1980s. Jamaican posses have links to the main Jamaican political parties, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People's National Party (PNP). The JLP posses dominate the west and south of Kingston and other smaller towns, while the PNP posses are mainly found in the eastern and central side; there are a few that state they are not allied to either political party. These are often in the northern slums of downtown Kingston. In the United Kingdom, these Jamaican gangsters would be referred to as yardies in reference to people who lived in "government yards" ("yard" is a Jamaican slang for home and surrounding areas). "Yardie" is an adjective describing any one from Jamaica in the aftermath of Hurricane Charlie, which hit Jamaica in 1951. They are stro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shower Posse
The Shower Posse is a Jamaican gang, started by Lester Lloyd Coke, which is involved with drug and arms smuggling. Its home is in Tivoli Gardens in Jamaica, but it primarily operates in the Canadian province of Ontario and the US states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The gang has a strong international presence among expatriate Jamaican communities in North America. In the United States, a branch was founded by Vivian Blake and it has a prominent role in the New York City drug trade. The gang also has a large presence in Toronto. Name There are differing reports on the origin of the name. One theory is that it comes from the promises of its associated politicians to shower supporters with gifts. Another view is that it is a reference to the gang showering opponents with bullets."No remedy for 'Posse'; International drug cartel calling the shots in Toronto's northwest end." Drew Halfnight. ''National Post''. 8 May 2010. p. A14. A third theory is that the gang got its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yardies
Yardie (or Yaadi) is a term often used, particularly within the Caribbean expatriate and Jamaican diaspora, to refer to people of Jamaican origin, though its exact meaning changes depending on context. The term is derived from the Jamaican patois for home or "yard". The term may have specifically originated from the crowded " government yards" of two-storey concrete homes found in Kingston and inhabited by poorer Jamaican residents, though "yard" can also refer to "home" or "turf" in general in Jamaican patois. Outside of Jamaica, "yardies" is often used to refer to Jamaican gangs or organized crime groups and gangsters of Jamaican origin, nationality, or ethnicity. In this sense, the term is sometimes used interchangeably with the term "posse" or "Jamaican posse" to refer to crime groups of Jamaican origin, with the term "posse" used more frequently in North America and "Yardies" being used more frequently in the United Kingdom. Yardie gangs or Jamaican "posses" are involved ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Indian American
Caribbean Americans or West Indian Americans are Americans who trace their ancestry to the Caribbean. Caribbean Americans are a multi-ethnic and multi-racial group that trace their ancestry further in time mostly to Africa, as well as Asia, the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and to Europe. As of 2016, about 13 million — about 4% of the total U.S. population — have Caribbean ancestry. The Caribbean is the source of the United States' earliest and largest Black immigrant group and the primary source of growth of the Black population in the U.S. The region has exported more of its people than any other region of the world since the abolition of slavery in 1834. The largest Caribbean immigrant sources to the U.S. are Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Haiti. U.S. citizens from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands also migrate to the US proper (known as Stateside Puerto Ricans and Stateside Virgin Islands Americans, respectively). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prohibition Era
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacturing, manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic beverages. The word is also used to refer to a period of time during which such bans are enforced. History Some kind of limitation on the trade in alcohol can be seen in the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1772 BCE) specifically banning the selling of beer for money. It could only be bartered for barley: "If a beer seller do not receive barley as the price for beer, but if she receive money or make the beer a measure smaller than the barley measure received, they shall throw her into the water." In the early twentieth century, much of the impetus for the prohibition movement in the Nordic countries and North America came from moralistic convictions of pietistic Protestants. Prohibition movements in the West coincided with the advent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighting occurring throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died in genocides within the Ottoman Empire and in the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war. Prior to 1914, the European great powers were divided between the Triple Entente (comprising France, Russia, and Britain) and the Triple Alliance (containing Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). Tensions in the Balkans came to a head on 28 June 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rum-running
Rum-running or bootlegging is the illegal business of smuggling alcoholic beverages where such transportation is forbidden by law. Smuggling usually takes place to circumvent taxation or prohibition laws within a particular jurisdiction. The term ''rum-running'' is more commonly applied to smuggling over water; ''bootlegging'' is applied to smuggling over land. It is believed that the term ''bootlegging'' originated during the American Civil War, when soldiers would sneak liquor into army camps by concealing pint bottles within their boots or beneath their trouser legs. Also, according to the PBS documentary ''Prohibition'', the term ''bootlegging'' was popularized when thousands of city dwellers sold liquor from flasks they kept in their boot legs all across major cities and rural areas. The term ''rum-running'' was current by 1916, and was used during the Prohibition era in the United States (1920–1933), when ships from Bimini in the western Bahamas transported cheap Caribbea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Speakeasies
A speakeasy, also called a blind pig or blind tiger, is an illicit establishment that sells alcoholic beverages, or a retro style bar that replicates aspects of historical speakeasies. Speakeasy bars came into prominence in the United States during the Prohibition era (1920–1933, longer in some states). During that time, the sale, manufacture, and transportation ( bootlegging) of alcoholic beverages was illegal throughout the United States. Speakeasies largely disappeared after Prohibition ended in 1933. The speakeasy-style trend began in 2000 with the opening of the bar Milk & Honey. Etymology The phrase "speak softly shop", meaning a "smuggler's house", appeared in a British slang dictionary published in 1823. The similar phrase "speak easy shop", denoting a place where unlicensed liquor sales were made, appeared in a British naval memoir written in 1844. The precise term "speakeasy" dates from no later than 1837 when an article in the '' Sydney Herald'' newspaper in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
