Small families that were never on the FBIs radar

[OmarSantista]

The "Black Hand" was as ambiguous and open as the term "mob," both mean different things depending on context used.

1) Black Hand Extortion was the method of sending threatening letters demanding money under the threat of death. It was practiced by the Camorra, the Mafia, Italian gangs, non-Italian gangs, business-men and relatives getting back at each other.
2) A Black Hander could refer to an italian criminal, a Mafioso or Camorrista and used interchangeably. If I was angry at my brother-in-law and got arrested while throwing a molotov into his store in 1911, I would have been arrested for a Black Hand Crime and been labeled a Black Hander despite not being affiliated with anything.
3) Black Hand Gang/Society could refer to any group of Italian criminals depending on who the user was referring to: Italian gangs, Italian secret societies, mafia societies.
4) Black Hand Murder: gangland murders, extortion victims, unsolved Italian murders.

Today, "the Black Hand" refers to early Italian criminal affiliations, traditional and non, that existed in that 1907-1913 era. 1911 was the record for most Black Hand explosions and then it subsided. But the term carried on and ^1-4 would continue to be used in different contexts depending on the author, time, place, publication, affiliation. It's like when you go through parts of the NY Times for Unione Siciliano and there will be (Mafia) next to it, the term evolved into a meaning to symbolize OC due to 1920's Chicago even though that was never the case. The Unione was for-a-time infiltrated but it was limited to Chicago alone. But decades later the newspapers would alternate between U.S. and Mafia and people reading much later concluded there was a Unione in NYC and it took many heated arguments (me included) to prove that there was not. For a time, Maranzano was killed in his Unione Siciliano headquarters until we disproved that.

And before I'm corrected, the right way is Unione Siciliana with A, but the papers, especially in the 40's, had it down with an O.

This was such an important distinction. I was literally trying to explain the difference between the mafia and black hand to my mom yesterday and realized I was having trouble with the concept of the variations of their nature but this puts all the light on it. Thanks Angelo.