Vito resided in Wyandotte, while Salvatore, known as “Sam” headquartered his operations out of Eastern Market. The Adamo mob was involved in the typical ethnic underworld rackets of the time, which included making beer and wine, extorting protection money from local citizens, and the Italian lottery. Starting around 1905, the Adamo brothers were leaders of a Mafia gang on Detroit’s lower eastside that preyed on the Italian community and that most likely constituted the first semblance of modern day organized crime in the Motor City. The Black Hand racket was sometimes used by Salvatore and Vito Adamo, immigrant brothers from Alcamo, Sicily who arrived in Detroit around the turn of the 20 th Century. cities had special Black Hand squads or Italian squads in their police departments to investigate and deal with these crimes in the Italian community. This extortion racket became so widespread that most large U.S. There were always examples in the Italian community of what happened to people who ignored these letters. Not trusting local authorities and superstitious, they paid. The victims of Black Hand letters often attributed them to be the work of the Mafia or Cammora. Crude drawings of daggers dripping with blood, skull and crossbones, or a black handprint would complete the letter. All that was required was to write an anonymous letter to a prosperous individual in the community threatening to murder him or his wife, kidnap their children, or destroy their place of business if certain extortion demands were not met. Although organized underworld groups such as the Mafia and the Cammora engaged in this racket, it was an extremely popular form of extortion often carried out by small time criminals with no affiliation to any organized crime group. This new breed of criminal first came to the attention of local police as the result of the Black Hand extortion racket. These Italian and Sicilian gangsters were either looking for greener pastures or were forced to leave their homeland because they were wanted by the authorities. Along with these many hardworking and law abiding new Americans came Old World criminals. After arriving at eastern ports they were attracted to Detroit and its industrial prosperity. While the future Purples were still in short pants shaking down hucksters and rolling drunks, local Mafia gangs were already well established on Detroit’s lower eastside.ĭuring the great wave of immigration between the years 18, many Italian and Sicilian people left their homelands for U.S. With the advent of National Prohibition at midnight January 16, 1920, the soon-to-be infamous Purple Gang and the men who would soon together create the traditional Detroit mafia began to claw their way to the top of the city’s underworld. Literally anything legal or illegal could be easily purchased there.
The illegal Detroit gambling industry, which included everything from alley crap games to fancy roadhouses, was actually making the Detroit underworld more money than the $250,000,000 a year alcohol rackets. Opium dens operated openly throughout Detroit.
By the mid-twenties an estimated 500,000 cases of Canadian whiskey were coming across the Detroit River every month.ĭespite this staggering figure, more whiskey and beer than that was actually being made in Detroit by an extensive alley brewing industry. Detroit’s proximity to Ontario, Canada made it an opportune place for rumrunners and smugglers. Detroit went from approximately 1,800 licensed saloons before state Prohibition in 1918 to a conservatively estimated 25,000 blind pigs by 1925.
When statewide Prohibition became law on May 1, 1918, Detroit became the first city in the nation with a population of over 250,000 to go dry. During this period both the Chicago and New York underworlds often grabbed the headlines of major newspapers with their own beer wars and gangster escapades, yet the Detroit underworld in many ways was worse. This prosperity, coupled with National Prohibition, also made the Detroit area a hot bed for underworld gangs. The rapidly expanding automobile industry and the major manufacturing plants were attracting job seekers from all over the world. In 1927 Detroit, Michigan was the fourth largest city in the United States with a population of more than 1.5 million people.