Originally Posted By: 2a
Originally Posted By: TheKillingJoke
Originally Posted By: 2a
Originally Posted By: TheKillingJoke
"Dixie mafia" was always a term for local criminal groups that conducted fairly organized mob-like activities in the Deep South (mainly Mississippi, Alabama, rural Georgia and Florida...). I'd say they're as close to "Anglo" as it gets in the USA. They're not big "gangs" as such; I'd say they veered closer to the UK "crime firms" in terms of structure. Smaller, independent mobs with a reasonable level of organization.
Are mobs like these still active in parts of the South? Most probably, yes.

The white prison gangs like Aryan Brotherhood for instance may have that "Irish" thing going on in their history, but I'd say in places like Cali most of them have an "Anglo" background.

If I have to go by a book I read, several London mobs have made travels to the USA (mainly Florida), but I don't really think they had any real businesses going on there. I mean, OC always has to operate from a certain community. The off-the-boat British community isn't really big enough in any part of the USA, and most British that do live in the US don't really have the background OC thrives off.


To my knowledge the so called Dixie mafia wasn't organized at all . It just happened to be a network of White Southern criminals who got the mafia label stuck to them , because the feds were desperate to put away a few of their members for a long time .

Of course the Dixie mafia did have members who were more influential than others ( such as Mike Gillich ) , but even he was far from being a mob boss to my understanding .


My point is that there, of course, was never a big organized criminal structure called the "Dixie mafia". Every small mob-like outfit active in the Deep South was being described as the "Dixie mafia". Were they "organized"? Depends on what you'd call "organized". They were not "organized" in the same way you'd call the New York Families "organized". But when you're making the benjamins with racketeering activities like some of those small outfits were making (take for instance a look at Harlan Blackburn's "Cracker mob"), I'd reckon you're worthy of being described as "organized crime".


Not to be argumentative , however I do believe that the so called Cracker Mob was an actual mob group unlike the Dixie mafia . Based on what I've read Harlan Blackburn was the uncontested boss of the Cracker Mob , and he had at least one lieutenant ( Clyde Lee ) , which means that the Cracker mob was ( at the very least ) much closer to being an actual mob group than the Dixie mafia .

Of course you're right that the definition of organized boils down to semantics , yet I still think there's a big difference between groups of criminals who have an actual hierarchy and groups of criminals who just happen to work together .


Like I said your view of the "Dixie mafia" is just based on Gillich' band of crooks. At one point every small criminal firm in the deep south was being described as "Dixie mafia", just because the name stuck like glue. For instance, you had Dewitt-Dawson's organization operating in Alabama as well.
Even if we're just keeping it to Gillich' gang, "loosely organized" they may be, they still had quite a lot of people (including officials) in their pockets. Sounds OC enough to my ears.