by Dwalin2014 » Sat Nov 19, 2016 9:15 pm
There are some questions, would be interesting to hear your opinions: I have recently watched a documentary about the gangster Frank Matthews, the one who disappeared in 1973 and was allegedly the most successful African-American mobster at those times, bigger than Nicky Barnes, Frank Lucas etc. I have read about him before already, some people say he was the only Black gangster who was a serious competition for the Cosa Nostra in the drug market. The documentary is rather detailed, but I was asking myself, how much truthful the information actually is. I mean, there are many interviews with former members of Matthews's organization and they could surely over-blow his importance and "diminish" the Italian mafia to make their friend look "cool" and "tough", but how much exactly, was there some actual basis for their words? I mean, they say for example that the Italian mob is overrated, in some deals they couldn't even gather the necessary sums of money etc, even though they were dominant in some areas, like the waterfront etc. About Matthews, they claim he was quite a significant power in the underworld, he competed with the mafia when Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese were active, many mafiosi didn't like him for both being black and being a competition, yet he bought a mansion in some upper-class neighborhood where Lucchese, Castellano and some other mobsters lived, to annoy them, and when they sent some soldiers to tell him to move away, Matthews allegedly said "if you touch one of my men, I will get into a car with a machine gun and take a ride all through Manhattan and gun down every wop I see". If he really said that and wasn't killed, that's quite impressive: Mimi Scialo, for example, was killed immediately after he tried to publicly humiliate and bully Gambino when meeting him in a restaurant. But then, if Matthews could allow himself to act tough with the most powerful Cosa Nostra bosses during the Mafia's "golden age", why didn't he do anything, when a Muslim African-American gang from Philadelphia, calling themselves "The Black Mafia", killed off 3 of his lieutenants? That makes no sense. On one hand, him being able to directly refuse submission to the mafia at the height of its power, on the other hand, being kicked out of Philadelphia by some mid-level gang without even trying to settle the score by killing some of them as payment for the killing his "underbosses". Or maybe the Italians didn't kill him NOT because they considered him to be too serious and powerful, but because he wasn't considered a threat big enough and his "glory" was all made up by those friends of his? What do you think?
The main question is: if he could avoid trouble with Gambino and Lucchese without ever recongizing them as superior to him in the underworld hierarchy, why did he do nothing after "losing face" with this "Black Mafia" gang that was definitely less powerful than the Cosa Nostra at the time?
There are some questions, would be interesting to hear your opinions: I have recently watched a documentary about the gangster Frank Matthews, the one who disappeared in 1973 and was allegedly the most successful African-American mobster at those times, bigger than Nicky Barnes, Frank Lucas etc. I have read about him before already, some people say he was the only Black gangster who was a serious competition for the Cosa Nostra in the drug market. The documentary is rather detailed, but I was asking myself, how much truthful the information actually is. I mean, there are many interviews with former members of Matthews's organization and they could surely over-blow his importance and "diminish" the Italian mafia to make their friend look "cool" and "tough", but how much exactly, was there some actual basis for their words? I mean, they say for example that the Italian mob is overrated, in some deals they couldn't even gather the necessary sums of money etc, even though they were dominant in some areas, like the waterfront etc. About Matthews, they claim he was quite a significant power in the underworld, he competed with the mafia when Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese were active, many mafiosi didn't like him for both being black and being a competition, yet he bought a mansion in some upper-class neighborhood where Lucchese, Castellano and some other mobsters lived, to annoy them, and when they sent some soldiers to tell him to move away, Matthews allegedly said "if you touch one of my men, I will get into a car with a machine gun and take a ride all through Manhattan and gun down every wop I see". If he really said that and wasn't killed, that's quite impressive: Mimi Scialo, for example, was killed immediately after he tried to publicly humiliate and bully Gambino when meeting him in a restaurant. But then, if Matthews could allow himself to act tough with the most powerful Cosa Nostra bosses during the Mafia's "golden age", why didn't he do anything, when a Muslim African-American gang from Philadelphia, calling themselves "The Black Mafia", killed off 3 of his lieutenants? That makes no sense. On one hand, him being able to directly refuse submission to the mafia at the height of its power, on the other hand, being kicked out of Philadelphia by some mid-level gang without even trying to settle the score by killing some of them as payment for the killing his "underbosses". Or maybe the Italians didn't kill him NOT because they considered him to be too serious and powerful, but because he wasn't considered a threat big enough and his "glory" was all made up by those friends of his? What do you think?
The main question is: if he could avoid trouble with Gambino and Lucchese without ever recongizing them as superior to him in the underworld hierarchy, why did he do nothing after "losing face" with this "Black Mafia" gang that was definitely less powerful than the Cosa Nostra at the time?