A BRIEF HISTORY OF ROMANCE, ARKANSAS During the fall of 1850, a six-wagon, wagon train from Kentucky came upon a little valley with a good size creek. Their leader, Ben Pruitt, thought it looked like a good place to camp for the winter, and they did. By the time spring arrived they had named their settlement Kentucky Valley and called the creek, Cliffy Creek because of the cliffs in the creek and along its sides. One of those cliffs creates a rather large waterfall just a few hundred yards from the downtown area.
In the 1920's, the 18th Amendment, which prohibited the consumption, distributing, and production of alcohol, was passed and seen as a failure as it filled the streets of America with criminals and gangsters. Americans saw the 18th Amendment as a violation of their constitution rights and often found a way to go around the amendment. For example, speakeasies, which was an illegal liquor store or night club during prohibition, began to emerge. This allowed Americans to go against tradition culture by socializing with other people who opposed Prohibition. The 18th Amendment raised crime rates within the United States.
Organized crime was relatively new to America, there were families in the past, but they had never grown to the extent they did in the 1920s. With the expansion of the availability of luxury goods and prohibition, the criminal underworld had many doors open to it. Criminal organizations started to take advantage of prohibition, bribing police, taking control
Al Capone was one of the most notorious, lethal gang leaders of the 1900's. By the time he was jailed, he had order 500 men's deaths, and there were more than 1,000 that were killed in his bootleg wars. While free, Al Capone could terrorize the lives of many, but when he was jailed in the 1930's, life became safer for the public. Al Capone did not have an usual childhood.
The article, ¨Organized Crime in the 1920’s and Prohibition¨ said that the 18th amendment caused a huge growth in the amount of illegal saloons and bars, which more than doubled. Instead of the prohibition decreasing the amount of criminal activity, it caused more. Another thing the article, ¨Organized Crime in the 1920’s and Prohibition¨ states was that organized crime flourished because of prohibition and mostly kept flourishing even after it had ended. The reason for it flourishing was because prohibition opened up a brand new money-making criminal market. The reason it kept on flourishing was because gangsters made so much money from it that they could afford to keep operating for a long time after.
The creation of illegal establishments like speakeasies would be the just the beginning of crime in the 1920s. Bootlegging, the illegal sell of alcohol became commonplace. Gangsters rose to power on the streets of cities like Chicago and New York. Criminals like Al Capone, and Charles “Lucky’ Luciano became household names. Prohibition, intended to fix America’s alcohol problem, only made it worse.
In 1920 The United States congress passed an amendment that banned the production of alcohol for recreational use but not for private use. The Prohibition Act or 18th Amendment was written to ban the selling, production, and transportation of alcohol. Famous mobsters like Al Capone and others decided to fill the void and America saw an increase in the consumption of alcohol. Rather than stopping crime in America the Prohibition Act actually created more crime with the creation of bootlegging and illegal saloons and pubs were formed.
The 1920s were filled with gangs and many changes in society. One of the those changes was the addition of the 18th. The 18th amendment was ratified January 16, 1919. It created something called prohibition which outlawed the distribution, production, and use of alcohol. Despite the law, people still continued to drink alcohol in places called speakeasies.
In 1920, the 18th Amendment to the U.S. cConstitution was authorized. A ramification of this act was Prohibition, which banned the production, travel and sale of alcohol. Prohibition was unfavorable and wearisome to enforce. The federal and local government could not handle it; the IRS was first given the job to enforce Prohibition, but it was later transferred to the Justice Department. An increase of support to ending the Prohibition occurred when illegal manufacturing and vending of alcohol started, known as bootlegging, the popularity of speakeasies soared, and violence and crimes increased to numbers never seen before.
Dec. 3, 2022 https://www.thecollector.com/organized-crime-roaring-twenties/ The main idea of this source is how illegal alcohol, hidden bars, and organized crime affected America during the 1920s. I think this because the source states, “The 18th Amendment was ratified in January 1919, which prohibited the manufacture, transport, and sale of liquor... The goal of Prohibition failed miserably, and it became a crime-filled fiasco.” This is important because we now know that when the 18th Amendment sparked a surge of organized crime and the rise of more crime bosses.
Organized crime, especially as it is thought of today, represent greed, anarchy, and a complete disregard for the lives of other human beings. With the added knowledge of hindsight, however, people today are able to better represent and highlight the important factors leading to organized crime and those who represented it. To understand the lives of those who created the organized crime of today, one must understand the circumstances of the lives of those in the 1920s. The 1920s, while seemingly pleasant and jovial, was a point of dismay and financial instability for the majority of the country. Credit became an integral part of financial upkeep, but was not a sustainable way to support the economy in the long run.
The passing of the 18th amendment resulted in a whole new era of crime. Since there were no legal places to purchase alcohol, bootlegging and speakeasies became much more common. Then, of course, there was violent crime. Alcohol became its own industry for the mafia that made gangsters like Al Capone millionaires and led to over “a thousand gangland murders” (Kyvig 196). There were gangs in major cities all over the country.
The Mafia foresaw Prohibition as a potential business opportunity for a black market and bootlegging of illegal alcohol. On January 16, 1920, the day Prohibition went into effect, a group of rum runners who worked for Italian and Jewish mobsters delivered liquor across the coast of the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, sleds of alcohol were being pulled into the U.S. from Canada by members of the Mob. Prior to Prohibition, there had been around 16,000 saloons in New York.
Prohibition and Immigration conflicts in the 1920’s were linked. The Italian mafia was under attack and a lot of its members fled to the U.S.. They organized the crime in the U.S. and created the mob. The mob made most of it 's money off of running speakeasies and bootlegging liquor. This was easy money since everyone was ignoring prohibition and wanted
