The Black Hand Organization

North Olean History - Who Were The Black Hands?

WHO WERE THE BLACK HANDS?
As I was growing up in the 1930’s I would hear the name “Black Hand” mentioned in a whisper or in a hush, hush voice. Who were they? I always wanted to hear more, but no one seemed to know more. I was then too young to read the newspapers until I discovered the many stories years later while searching through the rolls of microfilm at the library.

The following article, which best explains who the Black Hands were, was taken from an unknown 1908 New York newspaper relating to the background of the Black Hands.

“New York has a large population of Italians more or less ignorant and helpless. Dumped ashore from the big immigrant ships, they settle in the slum districts of the metropolis. Many of them are from Sicily and others from the lower end of the Italian peninsula, which on the map looks like the heel and toe of a boot. Their own government likes to boot a certain class of them out of that country into the United States. This class is made up of criminals. Some of them have served prison sentences at home. Others have led lives of brigandage in the Sicilian or lower Italy style without being caught at it. But all of them believed that there is more liberty in America, and they come here expecting to carry on their criminality with a lesser degree of molestation than they find at home.

These ruffians are banded together in a society of a vendetta short, known to Americans as the Black Hand. The symbol of their threat is a black hand impressed upon the letters that they send to their victim. These letters demand money on pain of swift and horrible death. Their victims are fellow Italians. These poor people know the weight of the Black Hand, having felt it in their native land. They are aware that refusal to comply with the demands of the criminals means death. Scarcely a day passes without as least one murder, attempted murder or job of dynamiting in New York by the members of the famous organization. The aggregate of money that they exhort from those who comply with their demands is enormous.

The Black Hand hovers like a dark and threatening cloud over the daily life of thousands of Italians in New York as well as in other cities throughout the United States where Italian colonies exist.”

THE BLACK HAND “MYTH”
The following article was from a 1908 Rochester paper. “According to Gaetano d’Amato, former president to the United Italian Societies in New York, the “Black Hand” was a myth so far as his own countrymen were concerned. He stated that there was no such organization in New York, in the United States or in Italy. He said that Spain was the only country in which such a society exists, but “Black Hand” Spaniards have not yet made their appearance in the United States in any substantial extent.

He asserted that there were Italian robbers and blackmailers among us, who wished to be regarded as acting for a powerful secret association because of the prevalence of such a belief then to have a terrifying effect on their intended victims. Actually, however, each one acts independently and for his won individual benefit. The term “Black Hand” while having no definite meaning had powerful effect on the imagination and thus served its purpose when used by shrewd scoundrels for their own purpose.

Everybody knew that the great mass of Italians in the United States were industrious, honest, orderly and law-abiding. But there was another class, small in number, consisting of confirmed criminals who had left Italy for the good of the country, and who had succeeded in getting into the United States by the carelessness of immigration officials.

Mr. d’Amato said, “Italian outlaws are enabled to reach this country today with almost the same facility as the honest Italian so far as the laws of the United States are concerned. True, the ex-convict cannot obtain a passport from the Italian government and sail on an Italian ship, but there is nothing to prevent his crossing the frontier and leaving from any port outside of Italy to which he may make his way. Many of the most dangerous of the Italian criminals in the United States have come here by the way of England and Canada, and many others have shipped as sailors from Italian ports and deserted their ships on reaching this country.

“The Neapolitan, Sicilian or Calabrian desperado, once he had reached these shores, finds the condition ideal for levying tribute upon the feebler folk among his countrymen. In nearly all the larger cities, particularly of the East and Middle West, he will find them living in colonies by themselves.

Reputable Italians were as much interested as anybody in keeping these outlaws out of the county or in deporting them as soon as they were caught in criminal operations. Meanwhile the unpleasantness of a so-called “Black Hand” outrage was in no wise mitigated by the assurance that the term was but a name employed for psychological purposes. Myths and superstitions are often more potent than armies with banners.

Did we have Black Hands in Olean?
Read the 'Black Hand' Stories and decide for yourself.
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By: Eileen McCartan Smith, Olean, NY All rights reserved.

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