THE BLACK HAND FORUM

cavita wrote: ↑Mon May 24, 2021 8:03 am

Hired_Goonz wrote: ↑Mon May 24, 2021 7:56 am Great write-up, I love your threads on Rockford. I have to say that what I found most shocking and interesting about the whole thing was that this guy had a black wife back in the 60s! Did they stay married the entire time, was that son who was mentioned biracial? I'm wondering if this was something that the Rockford wiseguys held against him, because that doesn't seem like it was too common or condoned in those times and especially in that culture. Although obviously as mentioned they had to appreciate the in it gave him with the black gambling underworld of the city. But I'm curious if he was disrespected by any of the Rockford LCN guys. I myself am married to a Nubian queen and have biracial kids so I give respect to the jungle fever pioneers who blazed the trails for us all.

Dingo was married a couple times, both with black wives and yes, his children were biracial. No one held that against him as he wasn't a made member but I'm sure it did give him an "in" with the black community. There were certain white men that had that connection to the black community that worked on behalf of the Rockford LCN.

Hired_Goonz wrote: ↑Mon May 24, 2021 7:56 am Great write-up, I love your threads on Rockford. I have to say that what I found most shocking and interesting about the whole thing was that this guy had a black wife back in the 60s! Did they stay married the entire time, was that son who was mentioned biracial? I'm wondering if this was something that the Rockford wiseguys held against him, because that doesn't seem like it was too common or condoned in those times and especially in that culture. Although obviously as mentioned they had to appreciate the in it gave him with the black gambling underworld of the city. But I'm curious if he was disrespected by any of the Rockford LCN guys. I myself am married to a Nubian queen and have biracial kids so I give respect to the jungle fever pioneers who blazed the trails for us all.

Patrickgold wrote: ↑Sat May 22, 2021 6:30 pm

SolarSolano wrote: ↑Fri May 21, 2021 6:48 am Bobby Panozzo was alleged to have a loansharking operation in Rockford when he was indicted a few years ago. I always wonder what is going on there now.

Where did this info come from? I never heard this. I know Marco D’Amico had some operations up there but never heard of Panozzo having anything to do up there. He was a jack of all trades type of guy when it came to the Outfit. Robberies, extortion, loansharking, gambling, money laundering and prostitution

Patrickgold wrote: ↑Sat May 22, 2021 6:30 pm

SolarSolano wrote: ↑Fri May 21, 2021 6:48 am Bobby Panozzo was alleged to have a loansharking operation in Rockford when he was indicted a few years ago. I always wonder what is going on there now.

Where did this info come from? I never heard this. I know Marco D’Amico had some operations up there but never heard of Panozzo having anything to do up there. He was a jack of all trades type of guy when it came to the Outfit. Robberies, extortion, loansharking, gambling, money laundering and prostitution

Patrickgold wrote: ↑Sat May 22, 2021 6:31 pm

cavita wrote: ↑Fri May 21, 2021 8:32 am

SolarSolano wrote: ↑Fri May 21, 2021 6:48 am Bobby Panozzo was alleged to have a loansharking operation in Rockford when he was indicted a few years ago. I always wonder what is going on there now.

When I get back to Rockford I'll ask around about Panozzo. As far as what's going on there now, nothing ever stopped. Gambling is still huge- plenty of bookmakers taking bets and the floating card and dice games are still prevalent.

How do you think the casino will effect these operations when it is finally opened up?

cavita wrote: ↑Fri May 21, 2021 8:32 am

SolarSolano wrote: ↑Fri May 21, 2021 6:48 am Bobby Panozzo was alleged to have a loansharking operation in Rockford when he was indicted a few years ago. I always wonder what is going on there now.

When I get back to Rockford I'll ask around about Panozzo. As far as what's going on there now, nothing ever stopped. Gambling is still huge- plenty of bookmakers taking bets and the floating card and dice games are still prevalent.

SolarSolano wrote: ↑Fri May 21, 2021 6:48 am Bobby Panozzo was alleged to have a loansharking operation in Rockford when he was indicted a few years ago. I always wonder what is going on there now.

PolackTony wrote: ↑Tue May 18, 2021 7:19 pm

Philly d wrote: ↑Tue May 18, 2021 6:34 pm

PolackTony wrote: ↑Tue May 18, 2021 2:55 pm

B. wrote: ↑Tue May 18, 2021 1:52 pm Detroit, Kansas City, St. Louis, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Tampa, New Orleans, and Pittston are others that seem to have stayed almost entirely Sicilian with just a couple exceptions that we know of.

Colorado was mostly Sicilian but the Denver (and apparently Wyoming) group was mostly non-Sicilian. We have so few confirmed Colorado members it's hard to say.

San Jose was heavily Sicilian as well but had some important Calabrian members who transferred to SJ.

Dallas is interesting because they were small and had longstanding Sicilian roots but had Calabrian representation across the state.

Kind of interesting how aside from Cleveland and Chicago, most of the midwest families were heavily if not entirely Sicilian.

Thanks, the families that you cited are of course all ones that I’ve always thought of as mostly if not all Sicilian. I didn’t know about the non-Sicilians in CO and Dallas, however.

Chicago and Cleveland have/had the largest Italian communities in the Midwest (Detroit also, but they might just be an outlier here), so I wonder if part of it is simply that there was a much larger community within which LCN took root, leading to different recruitment dynamics and social networks. Chicago was of course more like NYC, Boston, or Philly in terms of the scale of Italian settlement and community formation than the cities where these smaller Sicilian “colony” type families emerged. I suspect that Cleveland was similar, but I don’t know enough about the patterns of settlement and community development there.

Cleveland more than Detroit?

My impression is that the Detroit metro area and Northeast Ohio have pretty much equal Ital-American populations (~300k), assuming of course that this is an appropriate apples-to-apples comparison. Detroit metro has a larger population so, while roughly equal in absolute numbers, Northeast OH is bigger in relative terms. So it’s appropriate to say Chicago, then Detroit/Cleveland in number 2.

SolarSolano wrote: ↑Fri May 21, 2021 6:48 am Bobby Panozzo was alleged to have a loansharking operation in Rockford when he was indicted a few years ago. I always wonder what is going on there now.

cavita wrote: ↑Thu May 20, 2021 5:57 am

SolarSolano wrote: ↑Wed May 19, 2021 7:12 pm

cavita wrote: ↑Wed May 19, 2021 6:02 pm

Patrickgold wrote: ↑Wed May 19, 2021 5:57 pm Cavita, what about the Saladinos. Where in Sicily where they from?

There were two different Saladino families in the Rockford area. One came from Roccamena, Sicily and the other from Marsala, Sicily. Gumba's family was the Roccamena one while the family of Joe W. came from Marsala. The newspapers always listed them as cousins, which they were not, but they were as close as cousins growing up.

Is Joe still alive? He was a very rough individual if I remember correctly. That's also what surprised me about Rockford - its not necessarily a rough place its more of a large suburb that has pockets of shitty areas but those neighborhoods those guys grew up in were not like Grand Avenue and Taylor Street that were infested with vice and poverty - it was more or less small town people - so its interesting how rough and serious those guys were all the same. If Gumba was working for Angelo LaPietra - and I'd love to know how that came to be - he was clearly as capable as these other guys from these rough neighborhoods.

Joe is still alive. He's 75 and I wouldn't fuck with the guy- he's always had that cold stare. He's another guy that never had any property or possessions put in his name so there was nothing for the government to seize especially when he did federal time a few years back. The only guess I have as to how Gumba connected to LaPietra was through Rockford underboss Frank Buscemi, though when Buscemi was living in Chicago he was a Northside guy. I'd love to know the genesis of all that as well.

SolarSolano wrote: ↑Wed May 19, 2021 7:12 pm

cavita wrote: ↑Wed May 19, 2021 6:02 pm

Patrickgold wrote: ↑Wed May 19, 2021 5:57 pm Cavita, what about the Saladinos. Where in Sicily where they from?

There were two different Saladino families in the Rockford area. One came from Roccamena, Sicily and the other from Marsala, Sicily. Gumba's family was the Roccamena one while the family of Joe W. came from Marsala. The newspapers always listed them as cousins, which they were not, but they were as close as cousins growing up.

Is Joe still alive? He was a very rough individual if I remember correctly. That's also what surprised me about Rockford - its not necessarily a rough place its more of a large suburb that has pockets of shitty areas but those neighborhoods those guys grew up in were not like Grand Avenue and Taylor Street that were infested with vice and poverty - it was more or less small town people - so its interesting how rough and serious those guys were all the same. If Gumba was working for Angelo LaPietra - and I'd love to know how that came to be - he was clearly as capable as these other guys from these rough neighborhoods.

cavita wrote: ↑Wed May 19, 2021 6:02 pm

Patrickgold wrote: ↑Wed May 19, 2021 5:57 pm Cavita, what about the Saladinos. Where in Sicily where they from?

There were two different Saladino families in the Rockford area. One came from Roccamena, Sicily and the other from Marsala, Sicily. Gumba's family was the Roccamena one while the family of Joe W. came from Marsala. The newspapers always listed them as cousins, which they were not, but they were as close as cousins growing up.