Al Capone became famous in the 1920s as one of the most notorious
criminals in American history. He considered himself a businessman, but
his business was organized crime. Even in the twenty-first century,
Capone remains a symbol of the Roaring Twenties.
Capone was born on January 7, 1899, the fourth of nine children of
Italian immigrants. His father was a barber and his mother a seamstress.
Capone grew up in a rough neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York,
where he learned at an early age how to survive street life. As a teen, he
joined several youth gangs.
Capone dropped out of school at the age of fourteen after getting
into a fight with a teacher. He joined the Five Point Juniors, a younger
branch of a criminal organization called the Five Point Gang. Capone
learned racketeering (illegal business transactions) through his gang affiliation. During this time, he also held legitimate jobs.
Earns his nickname
At one point, young Capone worked as a bartender, where he made the
mistake of insulting a female patron. The woman’s brother defended his
sister’s honor by slashing Capone’s face three times with a knife. Capone’s
facial scars never disappeared, and they earned him the nickname
“Scarface.”
While still a teen, Capone met Mae Coughlin, a department store
clerk two years his senior. Coughlin and Capone married in December
1919 just after Mae gave birth to Albert Francis “Sonny” Capone. Sonny
was their only child.
In 1921, Capone received an invitation from a gangster he knew
from his Five Point Gang days to move to Chicago, Illinois, and join the
operation of James Colosimo (1877–1920). Capone moved his family to
the city just as Prohibition (the constitutional ban on the manufacture
and sale of alcoholic beverages that was intended to improve society) was
beginning. Despite the new law, people still wanted to drink alcohol.
Gangsters (the popular term for members of organized crime) knew this
and realized they could make a great deal of money by providing the illegal beverages. The sale and distribution of illegal liquor, known as
bootlegging, quickly became a focus of organized crime, alongside gambling and prostitution.
Becomes a household name
Soon after his arrival in Chicago, Capone became second in command
of organized criminal activity on the south side of the city. His boss,
Johnny Torrio (1882–1957), was the man who had apprenticed him in
his early gang days and summoned him to Chicago. Torrio recognized in
Capone a shrewd businessman who did not act without careful consideration.
Capone and Torrio formed relationships—not all good—with other
criminal organizations across the country. Their main enemy was George
“Bugs” Moran (1903–1959), who ran crime on the north side of
Chicago. Moran’s gang tried to kill Capone and Torrio in January 1925.
Capone and Torrio survived the attempt, but Torrio was seriously
wounded and retired to Italy, leaving Capone in charge.
Capone’s empire included speakeasies (places where illegal liquor
was sold and consumed), gambling establishments, prostitution rings, nightclubs, racetracks, and liquor distilleries. He earned as much as
$100,000 a year and protected his businesses by paying police officers
and political leaders on the side. With these powerful authority figures
accepting his bribes, Capone made Chicago nearly lawless. It was a city
of intense violence and corruption.
Everyone knew who Capone was. With a penchant for flashy suits
and jewelry, he made quite a spectacle wherever he went. He was not all
bad, as he used his wealth to help the needy. Capone opened one of the
city’s first soup kitchens during the Great Depression (1929–41).
Shocks the nation
As the 1920s progressed, the level of organized crime violence escalated.
This increase in crime only served to make the public outcry against
Prohibition even louder. On February 14, 1929, an event of catastrophic
violence occurred that shocked the nation.
Capone’s feud with Moran was well-known. A recent attempt on the
part of Moran to kill a close associate of Capone’s led Capone to seek revenge. Moran’s gang used a garage as a drop-off site for shipments of illegal liquor. Seven members of that gang were at the garage on February
14, 1929, when a group ambushed them. The men were dressed as police officers, so Moran’s men assumed this was a raid on their bootlegging
operation and turned to face the wall with their hands in the air. The
uniformed men were Capone’s gang dressed in stolen outfits. They shot
the men facing the wall as well as more members of the gang who burst
in. Moran’s men were gunned down with nearly two hundred bullets.
Although Capone was in Florida at the time, he was widely credited with
what came to be called the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Capone was
never prosecuted.
President Herbert Hoover (1874–1964; served 1929–33) responded to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre by cracking down on organized crime, and on Capone in particular. The mob boss was imprisoned
for a year, and when released, faced even greater pressure to cut back on
his illegal pursuits. The Justice Department set up a squad of special
agents headed by Eliot Ness (1902–1957). Ness and his nine men became known as the Untouchables, and they worked around the clock to
fight organized crime, especially bootlegging, police corruption, and
racketeering. Ness and his men finally brought Capone down, but not for murder
or racketeering. The gangster was sent to prison in 1931 for failing to
pay his income taxes. He owed the government more than $200,000.
During his trial, Capone attempted to bribe the jury into finding him
innocent. At the last minute, however, the judge switched jury members,
and Capone was convicted on four counts of tax evasion, a charge that
landed him in jail for eleven years.
During his imprisonment, Capone lost his influence as a mob boss.
He spent his last years in jail ill, as the syphilis (a sexually transmitted disease) he had contracted as a teen came back in its final form. Capone suffered brain damage and spent his final years living quietly in Florida. He
died in 1947 at the age of forty-eight.