Most Powerful Man in 1920's, Al Capone

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Chicago in the 1920’s was known to be a town of relentless parties, alcohol, and violence filled streets. The mastermind pulling the strings was the world’s most notorious gangster, Al Capone, whom utilized the teachings of Frankie Yale and Johnny Torrio to become the most powerful man in the underworld. He was a man of raw brutality and wits, paying off anyone willing to help him grow in power, and kill off anyone who wouldn’t. Al Capone was not like any ordinary criminal, he set out to make the public love him as a person, yet he considered killing to be a part of business. To this day whether or not Capone was a criminal mastermind or robinhood is debatable. What stands firmly is that the Roaring Twenty’s wild demeanor is mainly at fault for shaping Al Capone into who he was, and the construction of the powerful Capone Syndicate, because jobs were scares and organized crime, although dangerous, provided a steady income.

Alphonse “Al” Gabriel Capone was born in 1899 Brooklyn, New York, into a family of Italian immigrants. His father, Gabrielle Capone, was a respected barber and his mother, Teresina Raiola, a seamstress. Both moved to America from Naples with big dreams, but they only found hardship in Brooklyn. While living in Brooklyn, Teresina gave birth to nine children; Vincenzo, Raffaele, Salvatore, Erminio, Umberto, Matthew, Rose, Mafalda, and lastly Alfonso Capone.

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Times were hard and living in a crime filled navy yard district, Al Capone at an early age began living the life of a criminal. Al Capone joined his first gang at the age of five, the Brooklyn Rippers, in 1904. This is where Al Capone’s true colors began to shine through, as he and the Brooklyn Rippers engaged in small crimes; such as stealing cigar...

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...nd a cure for his tertiary syphilis, he continued to gradually deteriorate. With no reason to stay in Chicago, Capone and his family decide to move to Miami, Florida to retire where he would spend the remainder of his life. In January of 1947 Al Capone suffered a stroke and later died of cardiac arrest, he was 48 years old.

Al Capone, not the typical rags to riches stories that are in movies. When people talk of being in the right place at the right time, this is one of those delicate situations. Where a man growing up in the 1920’s was exposed to the streets at an early age, and turned to crime because it proved to pay off well. Although Al Capone did have a strong mentality to succeed and would most likely have been the CEO of a big corporation in today’s society, the 1920’s and the prohibition era basically laid out a path for Al Capone to follow into success.

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