by PolackTony » Wed Aug 23, 2023 12:35 pm
stubbs wrote: ↑Wed Aug 23, 2023 8:03 am
The best book on the Maceos and that era in Galveston, if anyone is interested, is called
The Maceos and the Free State of Galveston: An Authorized History by Kimber Fountain. It’s a quick read and she actually talked to Maceo family members who are still alive.
It’s been a year or two since I read it, but from what I rememeber
the Maceos weren’t made members , but seemed to be independent operators. They resisted getting hooked up with the New Orleans family. But, they still had some connections, I think mostly with the Dallas family. I believe they also had an interest in a hotel in Dallas with one of the members there.
I've gone through Fountain's book. It's a nice read and contains a lot of good information on local Galveston history and the extended Maceo-Fertitta-Serio family (who were already intermarried and linked to each other back in Palermo). But the claim that the Maceos were "independent" was solely based on Fountain's personal opinion, and it is evident that she simply didn't have access to sources that would be in the position of actually proving or disproving the Maceos' membership and/or formal affiliation. This is of course a common issue with books of this sort, particularly those written about mobsters outside of NYC and prior to the FBI's targeting of LCN as such. This is not a dig at Fountain, who does guided tours and is a writer for the Galveston Monthy Magazine ( "Exploring Your Island Paradise"). She obviously knows a lot about local history but demonstrates a poor understanding of the mafia. For example, from my reading, she appears totally unaware that a Dallas Family existed and assumed that if the Maceos were affiliated with the mafia it would have to have been with the "Marcello outfit" (she makes no mention at all of guys like the Piranios, Civello, Angelica, Attardi, etc). While the book is a must-read for anyone interested in the Maceos, it doesn't help us to interrogate the question of the Maceos' formal status vis-a-vis the mafia.
In the concluding paragraph of Chapter 1, Fountain states her claim:
Admittedly, the evidence is circumstantial, but what is known of the Maceos’ early history is adequate to establish a substantial degree of certainty that they were not members of the Sicilian Mafia. Regardless, the peculiar mindset that they eventually developed, influenced but not overtaken by their heritage, would elevate them far above a stereotype.
At the end of the same paragraph:
The level of class, sophistication and diplomacy they infused into an otherwise tawdry profession would grow to outrank that of any mafioso. Despite the labels thrust upon them, the raw, unadulterated version of who the Maceos were and what they accomplished when they stepped off that ship after the most uncomfortable three weeks of their lives, is enough to unequivocally prove that the Maceo vision was unlike anything the world had ever seen.
So, in Fountain's opinion, the Maceos were not mafiosi. Why? They were just too classy, they totally didn't fit the "stereotype" of mafiosi (unlike such notoriously low-class
cafoni as Dr. Giuseppe Romano, Dr. Filippo Noto, Dr. Mario Tagliagambe, Cola Schirò, polymath Tony D'Andrea, Mike Merlo, etc).
Good thing Fountain was here to set the record straight, otherwise we'd continue to "marginalize" the Maceos by erroneously calling them mafiosi. Fountain, as it turns out, already knew that they weren't criminals, let alone mafiosi, before she even really began researching them in earnest (from the introduction to the book):
[O]ne thing I have never done is marginalize the key characters of the Free State, as is so often the case. They are drawn as caricatures and painted with a Hollywood brush into portraits with labels like “gangster,” “mobster” and “Mafia" [...] Fortunately, I had made up my mind about the Maceos long before I was confronted with this historical distortion. The way I interpreted it, Sam and Rose Maceo were nothing short of geniuses who had found a way to elevate a city to enormous prosperity during some of the bleakest decades in United States history. I did not see them as thugs or even as criminals[.]
In a later chapter, Fountain also goes on to opine that Sam Maceo, in spite of the fact that Vincenzo Vallone was managing Maceo's High Hat club in Houston, had nothing at all to do with narcotics and the Maceos were unfairly caught up in an FBN dragnet despite "doing their best to maneuver around a Marcello drug ring that had forced its way into Galveston waters". As further support for the implausibility of Sam Maceo being involved in narcotics trafficking, she cites that he was on public record claiming that he barely drank and that local LE and the Galveston press (at least some of whom I think it's safe to presume were in the Maceos' pocket) stated publically that the Maceos were "independent" of any criminal networks outside of Galveston. Her bibliography includes no references to any FBN or FBI files, congressional hearings, or court documents.
cavita wrote: ↑Wed Aug 23, 2023 7:07 am
Don't know what year this was..probably 1960s
This was from a 1958 memorandum that the FBI received from the FBN, reproducing information from a 1950 FBN list of 850 individuals "suspected by the Bureau of Narcotics of being adherents of the Mafia in the United States". Unless somebody happens upon some new evidence in an FBI file in the future, the FBN intel on the Maceos is probably the best that we're gonna get, though their use of "member of the Mafia" here of course can't be taken at face value as necessarily indicating that Sam Maceo was a made guy.
-------
Interesting to note also that Johnny Roselli admitted to knowing Sam Maceo during his testimony at the Kefauver Hearings in 1951:
[quote=stubbs post_id=266389 time=1692803014 user_id=5332]
The best book on the Maceos and that era in Galveston, if anyone is interested, is called [url= https://www.amazon.com/Maceos-Free-State-Galveston-Authorized-ebook/dp/B082Z68WFK] The Maceos and the Free State of Galveston: An Authorized History[/url] by Kimber Fountain. It’s a quick read and she actually talked to Maceo family members who are still alive.
It’s been a year or two since I read it, but from what I rememeber [b]the Maceos weren’t made members [/b], but seemed to be independent operators. They resisted getting hooked up with the New Orleans family. But, they still had some connections, I think mostly with the Dallas family. I believe they also had an interest in a hotel in Dallas with one of the members there.
[/quote]
I've gone through Fountain's book. It's a nice read and contains a lot of good information on local Galveston history and the extended Maceo-Fertitta-Serio family (who were already intermarried and linked to each other back in Palermo). But the claim that the Maceos were "independent" was solely based on Fountain's personal opinion, and it is evident that she simply didn't have access to sources that would be in the position of actually proving or disproving the Maceos' membership and/or formal affiliation. This is of course a common issue with books of this sort, particularly those written about mobsters outside of NYC and prior to the FBI's targeting of LCN as such. This is not a dig at Fountain, who does guided tours and is a writer for the Galveston Monthy Magazine ( "Exploring Your Island Paradise"). She obviously knows a lot about local history but demonstrates a poor understanding of the mafia. For example, from my reading, she appears totally unaware that a Dallas Family existed and assumed that if the Maceos were affiliated with the mafia it would have to have been with the "Marcello outfit" (she makes no mention at all of guys like the Piranios, Civello, Angelica, Attardi, etc). While the book is a must-read for anyone interested in the Maceos, it doesn't help us to interrogate the question of the Maceos' formal status vis-a-vis the mafia.
In the concluding paragraph of Chapter 1, Fountain states her claim:
[quote]
Admittedly, the evidence is circumstantial, but what is known of the Maceos’ early history is adequate to establish a substantial degree of certainty that they were not members of the Sicilian Mafia. Regardless, the peculiar mindset that they eventually developed, influenced but not overtaken by their heritage, would elevate them far above a stereotype.
[/quote]
At the end of the same paragraph:
[quote]
The level of class, sophistication and diplomacy they infused into an otherwise tawdry profession would grow to outrank that of any mafioso. Despite the labels thrust upon them, the raw, unadulterated version of who the Maceos were and what they accomplished when they stepped off that ship after the most uncomfortable three weeks of their lives, is enough to unequivocally prove that the Maceo vision was unlike anything the world had ever seen.
[/quote]
So, in Fountain's opinion, the Maceos were not mafiosi. Why? They were just too classy, they totally didn't fit the "stereotype" of mafiosi (unlike such notoriously low-class [i]cafoni[/i] as Dr. Giuseppe Romano, Dr. Filippo Noto, Dr. Mario Tagliagambe, Cola Schirò, polymath Tony D'Andrea, Mike Merlo, etc).
Good thing Fountain was here to set the record straight, otherwise we'd continue to "marginalize" the Maceos by erroneously calling them mafiosi. Fountain, as it turns out, already knew that they weren't criminals, let alone mafiosi, before she even really began researching them in earnest (from the introduction to the book):
[quote]
[O]ne thing I have never done is marginalize the key characters of the Free State, as is so often the case. They are drawn as caricatures and painted with a Hollywood brush into portraits with labels like “gangster,” “mobster” and “Mafia" [...] Fortunately, I had made up my mind about the Maceos long before I was confronted with this historical distortion. The way I interpreted it, Sam and Rose Maceo were nothing short of geniuses who had found a way to elevate a city to enormous prosperity during some of the bleakest decades in United States history. I did not see them as thugs or even as criminals[.]
[/quote]
In a later chapter, Fountain also goes on to opine that Sam Maceo, in spite of the fact that Vincenzo Vallone was managing Maceo's High Hat club in Houston, had nothing at all to do with narcotics and the Maceos were unfairly caught up in an FBN dragnet despite "doing their best to maneuver around a Marcello drug ring that had forced its way into Galveston waters". As further support for the implausibility of Sam Maceo being involved in narcotics trafficking, she cites that he was on public record claiming that he barely drank and that local LE and the Galveston press (at least some of whom I think it's safe to presume were in the Maceos' pocket) stated publically that the Maceos were "independent" of any criminal networks outside of Galveston. Her bibliography includes no references to any FBN or FBI files, congressional hearings, or court documents.
[quote=cavita post_id=266382 time=1692799647 user_id=72]
Don't know what year this was..probably 1960s
[/quote]
This was from a 1958 memorandum that the FBI received from the FBN, reproducing information from a 1950 FBN list of 850 individuals "suspected by the Bureau of Narcotics of being adherents of the Mafia in the United States". Unless somebody happens upon some new evidence in an FBI file in the future, the FBN intel on the Maceos is probably the best that we're gonna get, though their use of "member of the Mafia" here of course can't be taken at face value as necessarily indicating that Sam Maceo was a made guy.
-------
Interesting to note also that Johnny Roselli admitted to knowing Sam Maceo during his testimony at the Kefauver Hearings in 1951:
[img]https://theblackhand.club/forum/ext/dmzx/imageupload/files/247629e8b8696171ac40a0f7c38371b6.jpg[/img]