By Gary Krist
Reviewed by Dennis Bianchi
After many years of trying to find evidence of when and where my Italian grandparents entered the United States, I learned that they came through the port of New Orleans sometime around 1900, a year that falls within the scope of this book. With its tradition of music, unique food and colorful history, New Orleans has been called The Crescent City, sometimes The Big Easy. Reading this book made me realize it hasn’t always been “Easy” or relaxed, but it most certainly has been colorful and violent. As an opening quote from Reverend J. Chandler Gregg states, “It is no easy matter to go to heaven by way of New Orleans.”
The book opens up with the murder of two Italian immigrants. Both had been cut and smashed with a razor and an axe. This murder and its method is a continuing drama throughout much of the book. The combination of Italian immigrants as victims and members of Italian organized crime group as suspects (sometimes referred to as The Black Hand and sometimes as the Mafia), created a culture of fear and hate towards Italian immigrants. The press only fanned the flames with outrageous depictions of the immigrants, freely using derogatory names and descriptions that one would never find in any reputable newspaper today. As the story unfolds other similar murders are committed, and a sub-plot that remains throughout the book has this mysterious individual known as “Axe Man” at its center.
As the 20th Century was about to open New Orleans had found itself in decline. At one time it was the fourth-largest city in the United States, but had dropped to ninth place. As other large American cities like New York, Chicago or St. Louis were beginning to run electrified streetcars and employ modern sanitation facilities, New Orleans’ citizens lacked running water, their streets were dirt-paved and lit with gas lamps. “New Orleans, it was often observed, was the first American metropolis to build an opera house, but the last to build a sewerage system.” The general outlook for making a business comeback was dim. The houses of prostitution were doing well, however, and one person stood out: Tom Anderson, the undisputed boss of New Orleans vice industries. Legitimate business leaders decided it was time for a change and gave license and leeway to the police chief, David Hennessy. David Hennessy was a friend of Mayor Joseph Shakspeare who appointed him to the job, with the intent that Chief Hennessy would root out the scofflaws. The chief would, first, have to clean up the police department, as many officers were involved with the illegal activities through means of graft and strong-arm extortion. Hennessy himself, in spite of his killing “a rival detective on the street, some say was unprovoked,” was considered “a man of unimpeachable honesty and character,” and went about his business with a pious authority, until one night when several men shot him dead. There were no witnesses to the shooting, but the Chief’s bodyguard, who had moments earlier walked away to attend to other matters, ran back to the scene. He claimed later that when he asked who had shot him, the Chief responded, “the Dagos did it,” a derogatory term used for Italian immigrants (a word despised by my father to the day he died). Shortly thereafter, a round-up of suspected gang members of Italian descent was conducted and nineteen men were indicted for the assassination. Following an investigation six of the nineteen were tried and found not guilty, shocking both New Orleans and many people who had been following the events through the national news. A huge lynch mob was formed and the jail’s doors were forced open. Eleven of the nineteen indicted men were murdered; five prisoners were injured and died later. Incredible as it may seem today, a grand jury cleared all of the members of the mob. To this day, no one knows who killed David Hennessy.
Present at Chief Hennessy’s funeral was a man described as one of the Chief’s best friends, Tom Anderson. As the book continues the reader will either see the irony of Mr. Anderson being present, or suspect what the connection between the two represented. It didn’t take long for Tom Anderson to be known as the man most responsible for what was to become New Orleans’ most successful industry: Criminal Vice. He became “the main target of efforts to reform and control the city.” He purchased a restaurant where he welcomed “politicians, police and demimonde friends. At Tom Anderson’s convivial establishment, such men could always find plenty of good food and fine liquor; perhaps most helpfully, they could also find private rooms where deals, payoffs, and rendezvous could be made, far from the prying eyes of strict constructionists of the law.” For the next twenty-five to thirty years he was the single-most influential person in the development of a district of New Orleans called Storyville, an area located behind the Vieux Carre’, downriver of Canal Street. It was an area that the city’s government decided it would turn a blind-eye upon when it came to vice activities. What I would have found of great interest, however, would have been the music that flourished in that district. One could argue that Jazz was born there. Louis Armstrong may be a household name today but he was a mere lad during this period. He listened closely to the music of Buddy Bolden and was mentored by Joe “King” Oliver. The bands were breaking new ground and bringing together the many races of people who inhabited New Orleans and the neighboring areas of the era. The author explains, to some extent, why Storyville met its demise and how many of the musicians found their way to new venues such in Chicago and Los Angeles.
The author uses very colorful language, perhaps a bit too colorful at times, to describe a period of time in New Orleans which brought about some lasting cultural themes: Jazz and the Mafia. It even touches on the rise of Huey Long. If I have a criticism it is that the author keeps revisiting a series of murders committed by either an axe or a very sharp blade, and at the end of the book he attempts to come to a conclusion. The problem, like the lynching and deaths of non-convicted prisoners, is that the crimes are still unsolved. The author has conveyed to the reader a good sense of a most interesting time of a very colorful American city.
