Dear Readers,

I hope everyone is enjoying the World Cup. Alas, my team, Serbia, failed to qualify, so I am a neutral observer. However, after seeing so many videos of joyous Scottish fans enjoying their time in Boston, I am looking for someone to designate me as an honorary Scot. If anyone knows how to accomplish this, let me know. I have seen Braveheart and every episode of Outlander, if that boosts my chances.

For my longtime followers, you’ve probably been wondering why there’s been a distinct lack of posts of late. It is because I have been busy working on my PhD. As of this summer, I have completed all the coursework, and I am now taking the dissertation prep course in which I am drafting my dissertation prospectus. After that, I’ll start my comprehensive exams later this summer and wrap them up in the fall. Then, it’ll be time to dissertate! I’m not sure if dissertate is really a verb or not, but, if it isn’t, it should be. My dissertation preparation class requires me to write a blog aimed at the general public that outlines my dissertation topic, my research questions, and what I expect to find as I dive into the archival research.

The working title of my dissertation is “Crooked Coast: Organized Crime, Vice, and the Gulf Coast, 1940-1985.”  The title should give you a general idea of what the dissertation will be about, but I will explain it a bit further. Organized crime did not become a topic of serious academic study until the 1960s, which is something that I found quite remarkable when I set out to dive into the historiography. The early works on organized crime were written by criminologists/sociologists, rather than historians, as at the time of their work, it was more current event, or recent past than history. Also, these early works looked at organized crime as more of a Northeastern/Chicago/Philadelphia phenomenon, with the Gulf Coast either ignored or given scant attention.

This is where my dissertation fills in the gap. It will seek to situate organized crime along the Gulf Coast within the overall illicit vice/criminal enterprises in the country, while also explaining why and how organized crime on the Gulf Coast differed from syndicates in the rest of the country. I hope to show that rather than syndicates operating in isolation in Galveston, New Orleans, and Biloxi, the Gulf Coast really had one single vice network, made possible by the port economy. Port cities, segregation, and the political environment along the Gulf Coast combined to produce a criminal syndicate that, while clearly part of the broader “mafia” networks in the country, were, at the same time, a reflection of the unique nature of Gulf Coast society.

Though there has been some work on various aspects of coastal criminal syndicates in the South, they all have certain limitations. Some were written at a time in which the events were ongoing, and thus lacked access to released FBI files, while others were built primarily on newspaper reports, with all the accompanying issues that come from sensationalized news coverage. To avoid those pitfalls, this dissertation will be grounded in archival research, with newspaper accounts and oral histories subject to careful verification.

Broadly defined, my dissertation will be on 20^th Century American crime history.  However, the history of crime in America intersects with urban, political, and racial history as well. Crime does not exist in a vacuum, and crimes are also a reflection of the society they spring from. As a central piece of my argument is that the unique history of the Gulf Coast gave rise to a unique type of organized crime, those other historical methodologies are important in my work as well. Likewise, my dissertation is not a recounting of tales of specific criminal acts, but rather it seeks to understand why and how things happened. As a retired detective, I always remember that juries wanted to know why the crimes happened, even though, contrary to what you see on TV, motive is not an element of a crime that must be proven in court. But, the why still matters. In the case of my work here, why organized crime functioned as it did, and how that had an impact on Gulf Coast politics and economics is more important than merely discussing what they did.

So how do I plan on going about researching this? As I mentioned earlier, this study will be grounded in archival research. One of the major sources is the 6,000 page FBI file on Carlos Marcello, the head of the New Orleans syndicate, which is now available. Also of interest are the investigative files of Texas Ranger Clint Peoples at the Dallas Public Library. Ranger Peoples help bring down the Maceo syndicate in Galveston, and his case files and notes will be particularly illuminating. The Society for Retired FBI Special Agents have an ongoing oral history project with transcribed interviews with dozens of former agents who speak on a variety of topics, including organized crime. These interviews give an inside account of the successes and frustrations of agents working on the Gulf Coast and serve to compliment the released material in Marcello’s file. The Rosenberg Library has a variety of material in their vertical files which touch on Galveston’s heyday in the 40s and 50s where the Maceo’s made sure that visitors had plenty of sun, sand, sex, and gambling. The New Orleans City Archives has a materials relating to the New Orleans Police Department during this era, a collection dedicated to the famed red-light district, Storyville, which, although it was shut down prior to the time period examined in my dissertation, is useful for backstory, and investigative files and testimony from the 1950s when New Orleans put together a commission to study vice in the French Quarter. Senator Kefauver led the first Congressional hearings on organized crime in the United States in the 1950s. His papers are located at the University of Tennessee, and, thankfully, digitized. Attorney General Robert Kennedy had an intense dislike of organized crime, and devoted much time to trying, unsuccessfully, to stamp it out. His papers, located at the JFK Presidential Library, are also valuable as they show the Federal Government’s game plan for trying to eradicate organized crime. They are largely digitized as well.   

One thing that my dissertation will (intentionally) not look at is what role, if any, Carlos Marcello had in the Kennedy Assassination. It has long been alleged by some that he orchestrated the events in Dallas in 1963. Whether he did or he didn’t is beyond the scope of my dissertation. I want to stick to what I can prove with the evidence that I find. Diving into that topic would send my entire dissertation off on a side quest that would yield nothing that could prove that Marcello called the shots, pun intended.

Like all dissertations, this is a work in progress, and I fully expect to uncover more leads and identify more sources as my work moves forward. I know my long-time readers have followed me through writing and publishing two novels, and now you are going to be dissertating along with me! But your patience will be rewarded. Once I have completed my dissertation, I will finally finish the sequel to Molly’s Song.

Until next time, take care of yourselves, and each other.

Regards,

L.H.