MAFIA INCIDENT

MAFIA INCIDENT. On 15 October 1890, during a police crackdown on the local Sicilian Mafia, New Orleans chief of police David C. Hennessey was assassinated. Nineteen men were indicted. The evidence marshaled against the first nine defendants was overwhelming, yet no one was convicted. The acquittals were denounced the following morning at a mass meeting of more than six thousand people. The mob marched on downtown New Orleans and lynched eleven of the accused. The Italian government vehemently protested the lynchings. In April 1892 President Benjamin Harrison, seeking an end to the brewing diplomatic crisis with Italy, offered a $25,000 indemnity to the families of the victims and expressed his regrets for the incident. Full diplomatic relations were restored.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Coxe, John E. "The New Orleans Mafia Incident." Louisiana Historical Quarterly 20 (October 1937).

Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988.

Pierce Butler/A. R.

See also Crime, Organized; Nativism.