Reflection

From the group presentations, I learned that organized crime originated from the 18th Amendment prohibiting alcohol. Many of the gangsters involved in gangs were bootleggers or smuggled alcohol. The gangs back then are nothing like gangs nowadays. Back then gangs were run like businesses and the interest was about money. Today gangs fight each other because of territorial disputes, not really because of profit. I also learned that many gangsters got involved when they were young and that many of them were the children of immigrants. Many of the gangs joined up with each other, for example George Baby Face Nelson and John Paul Chase joined the Dillenger gang and stayed with them for a while, even traveling up to the Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin. However, some gangs were terrible enemies as one can understand from the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre. Al Capone and his men dressed as cops and lined up 7 men from George "Bugs" Moran's gang, in a parking garage, and were shot with machine guns even after they were dead. Organized crime was, and still is, part of our history and although there was much violence surrounding these gangs, some citizens viewed them as heroes.