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Introduction

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Part of the book series: Studies of Organized Crime ((SOOC,volume 2))

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References

  1. James A. Inciardi, Alan A. Block and Lyle A. Hallowell, Historical Approaches to Crime: Research Strategies and Issues (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1977), p. 9.

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  2. Donald Goddard, Easy Money (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978). The most concise, substantive discussion regarding the Matthews organization is found in United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Barbara Hinton, William Beckwith, Charles William Cameron, James W. Carter, John Darby, Thelma Darby, David Bates and Scarvey McCargo, Defendants-Appellants, Nos. 1018, 1019, 1023, 1062-1065, 1390 — September Term, 1975. Nos. 75-1402, 75-1418, 75-1441 — 75-1445, 76-1024, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 543 F.2d 1002; 1976 U.S. App. LEXIS 6904, September 27, 1976. Barbara Hinton was Matthews’ common-law wife.

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  3. Ibid. According to Goddard, p. 362, only John Dillinger in 1931 “had such a high price on his head.”

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  4. Ibid., pp. 124–125.

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  5. Ibid., pp. 107–108.

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  6. According to Robert M. Lombardo, “The Black Mafia: African-American organized crime in Chicago, 1890–1960,” Crime, Law and Social Change vol. 38,no. 1 (2002), p 46: Policy is the name given a lottery gambling system that was once common in black communities. Players, who wager a small sum of money, select combinations of three numbers. A drum or ‘wheel’ is used in which seventy-eight capsules containing numbers from one to seventy-eight are whirled about rapidly. A blindfolded person selects twelve numbers at each of the drawings, which are held as many as three times a day.

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  7. Max H. Siegel, “8 Convicted as Members of a Drug Ring for Blacks,” The New York Times, October 9, 1975.

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  8. Hank Messick, Of Grass and Snow: The Secret Criminal Elite (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1979, p. 27) quoted in Howard Abadinsky, Organized Crime second edition (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1985).

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  9. Goddard, p. 168.

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  10. Ibid. Cameron became a target himself, though not at the hands of Philadelphia’s Black Mafia. In early February 1975, he was “kidnapped by Black Muslims, apparently for reasons having to do with his narcotics activities. The story of his three days in captivity is a sordid tale of brutality and deprivation... Suffice to say that he was released... after the payment of ransom and arrived in somewhat battered condition at a relative’s home in Brooklyn shortly thereafter.” U.S. v. Hinton et al., p. 16.

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© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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(2003). Introduction. In: Philadelphia’s Black Mafia. Studies of Organized Crime, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-48132-4_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-48132-4_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-1311-9

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