Civil Rights / LCN

I been thinking about this after watching the 60s: The Decade That Made America on CNN. How much effect did the Civil Rights Movement on LCN political connections?

Whats LCN?

If anything, it was an opportunity for it to enhance its political connections. Given that an early 70s Time Magazine cover headline was the Mafia, Big Bad, and Booming, I take it that the Mafia used the movement to find new avenues through which to exert its corrupting influence.

La Casa Nostra

It seems, according to most mob historians, that it had a negative affect on the LCN's political power. Perhaps not so much the civil rights movement in and of itself, but it being part of a larger movement for more open government and reform, which did away with much of the old political machines and institutional corruption in many cities.

the mafia was barely getting watched if at all during the civil rights movement

the feds were too occupied with keeping blacks from mobilizing

united black people is the scariest thing to the government

Question for all the civil rights historians here.

After World War 2 when Eisenhower was elected president. He wanted to pass civil rights legislation. So the president has a civil rights legislation drawn up in the mid 1950s.

It was not passed because the democrats control both houses in the mid 1950s

Is this true or not true ?

President Eisenhower signed two Civil Rights Acts, in 1957 and 1960. So the statement is untrue. Both acts were met with widespread opprobrium in the South.

Spot on, Lilo .

But try explaining opprobrium to him .

Wasn't it the democrats in the south that was the problem?

It was racists and conservatives/libertarians in both parties who were the problem. In the South most of these people were Democrats because of history going back to the Civil War. Northern Democrats i.e. FDR attempted to paper over these differences.

As more black people got the right to vote and became formal citizens many of the Southern white Democrats switched parties, a gradual process which started with Goldwater's opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and sped up with Nixon's Southern strategy. Post 50s and 60s changes the Democratic Party could no longer hold together a coalition which included Southern segregationists, Midwest farmers, and East Coast Liberals among others.

Two good books exploring this phenomenon are John Hope Franklin's "Mirror to America" and Jeremy Mayer's "Running on Race".

Seems blown over in the public school system that Democrats from 1860's to the 1960's controlled the south and were the racists. Conservatives dont get the thanks they deserve, except for a few but in large are stereotyped as the "racist white people" party.

Thanks for the informative post and definitely give those 2 books a read.

To answer the original question posted by the OC,

Look at the Greg Scarpia case as an example of the intersection of the Civil Rights Movement and the LCN.

Also on another note there is a long history of animosity between white supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and LCN.

One of the biggest influences of the civil rights movement on LCN was Joe Columbo's Italian-American Civil Rights League. The name and the tactics were inspired by the civil rights movement. Columbo claimed Italian Americans were just as victimized by stereotyping and prejudice as were blacks. He used the same tactics, including picketing, public demonstrations, and pressuring news media.

It was a noble idea, but the wrong guy was leading the crusade. The hypocrisy of a guy like Colombo leading that movement would be tantamount Bernie Madoff claiming that he was a victim of anti-Semitism. It's absurd when you think about it.

Cool!