Al capone Essay -- essays papers

Al capone There have been a lot of things written and said about Al Capone in newspapers and magazine articles, books, and movies that is completely untrue. One of the most common fictions is that like many gangsters of that era, he was born in Italy. Absolutely not true. This amazing criminal was strictly domestic, taking the Italian criminal society and fashioning it into a modern American criminal enterprise. Certainly many Italian immigrants, like immigrants of all nationalities, frequently came to the New World with very few assets. Many of these immigrants were peasants trying to escape the lack of opportunity in Italy. When they came to the American port cities they often ended up as laborers because of the inability to speak and write English and their lack of professional skills. This was not the case with the family of Al Capone. Gabriele Capone was one of 43,000 Italians who arrived in the U.S. in 1893, from Naples, Italy. He was a barber by trade and could read and write his native language. Gabriele, who was thirty years old, brought with him his pregnant twenty-seven-year-old wife Teresina, his two-year-old son Vincenzo and his infant son Raffaele. Unlike many Italian immigrants he did not owe anyone for his passage over. His plan was to do whatever work was necessary until he could open his own barbershop. Along with thousands of other Italians, the Capone family moved to Brooklyn near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Gabriele's ability to read and write allowed him to get a job in a grocery store until he was able to open his barbershop. Her fourth son and the first to be born and conceived in the New World was born January 17, 1899. His name was Alphonse, also known as Al. Al came from a large family and was the fourth oldest of nine children. As a child, Capone was very wise when it came to living on the streets of New York. He had a clever mind when it came to street smarts. As far as school goes, Al was near illiterate. Education was not a top priority for immigrants. At the age of five in 1904, he went to Public School 7 on Adams Street. The school system was deeply prejudiced against them and did little to encourage any interest in higher education, while the immigrant parents expected their children to leave school as soon as they were old enough to work. At about the age of ele ven Capone became a member of a juveni... ... was released to the care of his family. For his remaining years, Al slowly deteriorated in the quiet splendor of his Palm Island palace. Mae stuck by him until January 25, 1947 when he had a massive brain hemorrhage and died. His body was removed from his estate in Florida and transferred back to the seen of his underworld triumph, Chicago. The family held a private ceremony at the cemetery, but were afraid of grave robbers taking the body so they reburied Capone in a secret place in Mt. Carmel Cemetery. In his forty-eight years, Capone had left his mark on the rackets and on Chicago, and more than anyone else he had demonstrated the stupidity of Prohibition; in the process he also made a fortune. Beyond that, he captured and held the imagination of the American public as few public figures ever do. Capone's fame should have been a passing sensation, but instead it stuck permanently in the consciousness of Americans. He redefined the concept of crime into an organized vent ure modeled on corporate business. As he was at pains to point out, many of his crimes were relative; bootlegging was only criminal because a certain set of laws decreed it, and then the laws were changed.