by Brad Ricca
As nightfall came, crowds of between fifty and seventy-five thousand people paraded the streets. They were singing, shouting, and banging tambourines past the cafes and stores. Hayes, Grace, and some men walked the streets to see if the Italians had complied. The display was not nearly as brilliant as it would have been with the carbide lighting, but his order had been obeyed—above him was a beautiful constellation composed entirely of candles. For the entire festival, there were only six arrests, all for the usual reasons involving drunkenness. Even the massive celebratory fireworks proceeded safely. A few days later, however, Michael Cica, an eleven-year-old boy in the neighborhood, placed a leftover firework in a tin can. He and his friends put a match to it, then turned, running at top speed and laughing. The explosion caused the tin can to be driven through his body, killing him instantly.
A few days later, the phone rang for Grace at the People’s Law Firm. The voice on the other end said that if she ever appeared near the church again, she would be murdered. A few hours later, there came the same message, but in a different voice. This was repeated all day long. Later that day, while walking to court characteristically late—possibly with a shopping bag from Thurn’s under her arm—Grace was startled by a dark man hiding behind a column. He whispered to her. “Don’t even go to Harlem,” he said, in a thick Italian accent. She could barely understand him. “Your life is in danger,” he said, “and so is that of Commissioner Hayes.” The man disappeared quickly, leaving Grace stunned. She knew that this was retaliation for the acetylene lanterns, but she wasn’t going to let idle threats stop her, especially in Little Italy. So later that day, Grace went to see a client, Gaetaro Ligmanti, on Grand Street. An hour after, she was called to the phone. She sighed, preparing herself for the usual threat, when a new voice told her that this client’s life was not worth a penny, as he had been named a victim of the Black Hand.
Grace clicked the phone and hurriedly asked to be connected to the nearest station house. She repeated what the man had said. The station cop promised her immediate police protection. A cop was stationed outside her office on 156 Leonard Street, and a plainclothes man followed her when she traveled to certain sections of the city. She had heard the three-word name that was among the most ominous in the city: the Black Hand.
* * *
Every New Yorker had read of or knew someone who had opened a letter with no return address, only to find it covered inside with primitive drawings of black crosses, daggers, and skulls, all dripping with black ink meant to look like dripping blood. There would usually be a simple, ungrammatical message asking for money—or sometimes worse: a note claiming the abduction of one’s son or daughter. These letters were almost always signed the same way: with the ink-bloody imprint of a black hand.
The Black Hand was understood to be a secret criminal organization or, possibly, a loose collection of individual criminals—bombers, kidnappers, murderers, and extortionists—that the police believed was largely Italian. The public feared them. Newspapers ran accounts of the Black Hand’s criminal exploits almost daily. Everyone knew the process: if you received a Black Hand letter, you were instructed to hand over money or suffer the consequences. The letters would say ominous things like, “We have you.” Once you paid, you were usually left alone.
There were many stories about the origins of the Black Hand. The papers reported on a similarly named vigilante group active at the turn of the century. This group would also send strange, threatening letters, but only to people who took advantage of the weak or downtrodden. Different rumors based the origin of the organization in Sicily and claimed it had links to a centuries-old mixture of Catholicism and witchcraft. Black Handers were said to subject new members to elaborate occult rituals. Magazines ran exposés of Black Hand societies and their mysterious membership manuals, though there were clearly more mysteries than facts.
The majority of Black Hand letters asked for small sums, and they were usually targeted at successful Italian business owners. If someone didn’t pay, they would usually just move on to the next mark. But sometimes their violence would escalate beyond all reason. The Black Hand frequently used dynamite, usually to blow up the doors of people who would not pay. Photographs of these ruined thresholds appeared on front pages across the city. Black Handers were also known to kidnap people, especially young children, and hold them for ransom. There were many stories of toddlers who, once their parents had finally saved enough to free them, no longer recognized their own parents. No one was immune. Some said the whole thing was just newspaper-driven nonsense. The others just locked their doors.
The Black Hand had resurfaced again around 1905, sending letters and marking doorways throughout Little Italy and Harlem. Some said they were getting even bolder. One Sunday, Father Vincent Sorrentino, of the Church of Our Lady of Loreto, revealed that the Black Hand had threatened the church itself on Assumption Day.
“Is it not an awful thing,” the father said, his voice trembling, “that a priest, the pastor of his flock, when called upon to visit the dying must carry a revolver in his pocket that the Blessed Sacrament may reach the person about to die.”
The police had also discovered Black Hand strongholds on the city’s outskirts, most notably in Westchester. In the quiet forest stretching into Pennsylvania, police patrols looked in the dark for the mysterious Queen of the Black Hand, who had been leading a gang that was terrorizing local merchants with letters, bombings, and even shootings. They also found, hidden in the woods, a Black Hand school filled with dummies and stiletto knives.
In East Harlem, the head of the largest Italian criminal gang was Giuseppe Morello. Known as the Clutch Hand because of his deformed right hand, Morello built a gang—a family—of notorious gangsters by sharing territory, unifying bloodlines, and being merciless to his enemies. His brother-in-law was the Wolf, Ignacio Lupo, and together they laid the foundation for bigger families to come. Morello was called the capo di tutti capi, the “boss of the bosses.” The Wolf alone was thought to have murdered sixty people on Morello’s orders. They were especially known for gruesome barrel murders, whereby the victim’s body would be cut in two and folded into a barrel before being buried or shipped to an unwitting recipient. When Morello was finally busted several years later on a counterfeiting charge, agents found Black Hand letters ready to be sent, hidden in the diaper of the baby his wife was carrying on her hip. Most of the letters began with “Dear Friend,” but ended with a threat of mortal violence. They all carried the same import:
FRIEND: The need obliges us to come to you in order to do us a favor. We request, Sunday night, 7th day, at 12 o’clock you must bring the sum of $1000. Under penalty of death for you and your dears you must come under the new bridge near the Grand Street ferry where you will find the person that wants to know the time. At this word you will give him the money. Beware of what you do and keep your mouth shut …
The spectre of the Black Hand—as it appeared in newspaper accounts and rumors on the streets—hung over Grace as she walked in and out of her office in Little Italy. She was steadfast, as always, but she knew that the danger she faced was real. After a few weeks, the phone calls finally subsided and the police removed Grace’s protection from the Black Hand. But she still looked over her shoulder. The woman in black had been marked like a page in a book. She wondered who had that book and how long that mark might last.
* * *
One warm night at Bible House, a woman came to see Grace. She spoke very fast, and her eyes looked as if she had been crying. The translator said that the woman’s husband had gone missing from the city. Grace had heard stories like this before. The woman kept shaking her head when Grace’s translator said “kidnapping.” Something else was going on here.
Grace questioned the woman further. Her husband’s last job had been with the S. S. Schwartz Employment Agency at First Street and Bowery. After the woman left, Grace did some checking into the company but could find nothing beyond a thin line in the city directory. The
husband’s disappearance—and his fate—seemed, on the surface, a complete mystery.
A few weeks later, the woman returned to Bible House, accompanied by her husband, a big Russian man named Bennie. Grace was happy that the mystery had been solved, but neither the woman nor her husband, who looked ill, seemed very happy about it. The woman started speaking swiftly and loudly as she turned her husband around. As his wife started to lift up the back of his shirt, Grace modestly started to turn away. She stopped when she saw the man’s bare back, marked with raised stripes.
The man’s name was Bennie Wilenski, and he was fifty years old. He was impossibly thin for such a tall man. He looked like a shadow. His brow was wet with flop sweat and from the heat. He sat down on Grace’s step, shivering.
“Six weeks ago,” Bennie said, “I read an advertisement in an East Side paper, offering splendid work for good men.” It sounded like a good idea for an out-of-work Russian Jew. The agency agreed to pay thirteen dollars for passage to Florida; the money was to be deducted from his wages at fifty cents a week. Bennie said that he and forty-one other men boarded a Clyde Line steamer for Jacksonville. The good prospect was looking worse by the moment. The men were forced to sleep on hard decks and actually refused the food because it was so bad-tasting.
After three and a half days, the dirty boat reached Jacksonville, where the heat felt like a wool coat. According to Bennie, they were met by representatives of the Hodges Milling Company and a man they called “the boss.” They then took a day-and-a-half train ride to Maytown and Buffalo Bluff, their new place of employment. They were shown to their new homes: low huts that the boss called “dog houses.” By now, they were all very hungry.
“Five men slept on mattresses on the floor and five on shelves higher up,” said Bennie. “There was no table to eat from. The cabins were full of dirt and vermin and you put your food on your mattress and ate it there. We were all half-starved. The superintendent told us we could buy what we wanted at the grocery store. The prices were awful. A glass of ice water was five cents. The weather was very hot. It is a swampy country full of mosquitoes.”
Grace looked at this big man, shaking and sweating. He continued his story.
“We were watched all night by Negroes with revolvers. At four o’clock every morning, the watchmen woke us up. We had only a few moments to eat our crackers and fish and then we had to walk for two hours into the swamp, where we handled logs all day long. When we staggered from the heat, and overwork, they dashed water on us to revive us. The foreman beat us. When we stopped to eat a few soda crackers at noon the foreman kept driving us to hurry up. If we didn’t move fast enough, sometimes he would knock the cracker out of a man’s hand and yell ‘Hurry up!’ and beat him.
“At the end of one week,” Bennie said, “I was informed that I had earned $6.30, but I owed the company $7 for food. I knew this was false, but what could I do?” Bennie explained that if they stopped to rest, they were beaten on their bare backs with switches. He told of a kid named Jake Leonard from Essex Street who dropped right into the swamp from exhaustion. Wilenski grabbed some water and threw it on his face. The bosses beat both of them. No water was given to the men unless they paid for it.
“The men were always trying to escape at night,” Bennie said. “We would open the only window at the back of the house and let them out. Sam Fink got away to the woods three times, but they always got him back. I hear they have put him in prison now, because down in Florida, if you owe money to a corporation and try to run away you are a criminal.”
Bennie continued his story. After working for ten days, he received a $30 money order that somehow found its way to him from his wife in New York. The foreman intercepted it but let Bennie keep $10 of it because he felt bad about the water incident. But $10 was enough for Bennie to discharge himself. He paid his fee, then made his way through the swamp to Jacksonville and then borrowed more money from a Jewish Relief Society to get back home. By the time he had reached the city, he was a nervous and physical ruin. He was being seen by Dr. J. Schlansky for injuries to his back.
Grace sent some men to snoop around the S. S. Schwartz Agency, and they found a lot of activity and willing men waiting in line. Meanwhile, Grace persuaded Bennie to testify, and they got Schwartz arrested. The agent claimed that he knew nothing of the actual conditions at the turpentine camp, which was run by the Hodges, O’Hara & Russell Company. Schwartz also pointed a finger at a man named J. Francis de Lauzieres from something called the Southern Agricultural Colonization Society.
When Schwartz was finally arraigned, it was on a charge of peonage—forced human slavery through debt—in violation of section 5535 of the Revised Statutes. As the U.S. government prepared its case, Grace found several other men to corroborate Bennie’s story. One such man was Edward Schoch, who worked at Buffalo Bluff and was paid ten cents for a fortnight’s worth of work. He returned with a severe case of ague. As Grace was taking down his affidavit, Edward’s face started burning up, and he had to be taken to the hospital.
After collecting more bits and pieces of information, Grace tracked down J. Francis, the Sunday school teacher at the Italian Episcopal Church of San Salvatore on Elizabeth Street. Schwartz had initially revealed Francis as one of the plan’s masterminds. Francis said he knew nothing about the company except what he had been told by B. F. Buck, leader of the Italian-American Agricultural Society. So many societies, Grace thought. All of these people looking for ways to join together. Francis told her that Buck earned two dollars a head for recruiting workers for the camps. Francis also said, in a whisper, that Buck had the backing of Bishop Bonaventure F. Broderick, who was listed as the treasurer of the group. They had Schwartz, but Grace knew that he was only one tentacle of a larger creature, an “atrocious, bloodthirsty system.” Grace needed to see it for herself. She needed to go to Florida.
Grace found an investor for her trip south to explore the conditions at the work camps. The S. S. McClure Company, the publisher of McClure’s magazine, was the place for good, solid muckraking. They agreed to pay three hundred dollars for Grace’s travel expenses. All Grace had to do was write about what she found. Grace smiled and agreed. This wasn’t what she normally did, of course, but it would serve her purposes. No one could talk her out of it.
Before Grace left New York, she worked up an itinerary of the places she planned to investigate, just in case she disappeared while undercover. She took the list to her sister Jessie, who lived with her family at 9 Park Avenue. Jessie, who was fashionable and had a personality full of laughter, had married a businessman and lived the life of a New York society woman. The sisters were close, but obviously different. Jessie respected her sister’s intelligence and passion for justice and helped her whenever she could. So, though she shook her head, Jessie smiled, list in hand, and told Grace that she would pray for her.
For her trip, Grace finally decided it might be time to ditch her black attire. So she paid a visit to her friend Martha Bensley Bruere to borrow a coat. Martha was entertaining her society friends, as usual, but immediately fetched a blue silk coat for her friend. Grace still wore a black hat, of course, but she borrowed one that was trimmed with a gorgeous flower instead of her traditional veils. As Martha piled clothes onto Grace’s arms, she asked her what she was going south for. “Professional business,” responded Grace.
“Oh, detective work!” Martha said. She was a society lady herself, unlike Grace, and was also a writer of some renown. Grace didn’t know if Martha wanted more information for her gossip circle or details for a story. Not that there was a difference anymore. Grace responded in a vague, but truthful way. “Some very strange stories,” Grace said. “I can’t get the facts from this distance; so I’ve got to go.”
Once Grace left Martha’s apartment, her friend remarked, reaching for more tea and cookies, that such an adventure was “so like her—to feel that the wrongs of anyone within her country’s gates were her concern: to treat the whole Unites States as though it w
as just a household and she a careful housewife dispensing domestic justice!” Martha also dispelled the notion that Grace’s recent divorce had anything to do with her leaving the city.
Grace traveled through the South for seven weeks in the fall of 1906, leaving New York on a train at 12:25 and settling in for a trip that would get her into Florida by 12:10 the next day. They served chicken, roast turkey, and chicory salad on the train. Fruit, toasted crackers, and coffee were also offered in slightly shaky containers. Once Grace arrived on steady ground under the palm trees, she disappeared.
Grace made her way through Florida, Mississippi, and Arkansas by hiding in wagons or disguising herself as an old woman selling scissors. Some of the workers even reported a shabby-looking man in a hat hanging around some of the turpentine camps, sometimes taking notes in a book. Sometimes, she used her maiden name of Winterton to throw off any possible discovery. She watched from the forest, hidden, as men hacked into the tall loblolly pines with their hatchets. They fixed tin pots with curved rims onto the bare trees and cut notches on the side so that the sap seeped slowly down into the pail. A week or so later, the men lugged the full, heavy pots out to the angled still that smelled like licorice.
At some point during Grace’s tour of the South—and perhaps before it even began—she stopped taking notes for an article and started gathering affidavits. In the lumber mills and the copper, coal, and phosphate mines, Grace began collecting evidence against the same evil she had heard about, and seen, at Buffalo Bluff—slavery through forced debt, or peonage. Grace was terrified about how far this practice might reach. After the Civil War, the South, rich in natural resources, needed laborers to replace the freed slaves. Unfortunately, there were still many landsmen unwilling to pay fairly for them.