Black Hand (extortion)

Black Hand (Italian: Mano Nera) was a type of extortion racket, active in the United States from the early 20th century to the 1920s in Italian-American ghettos or neighborhoods, and committed mainly by criminal immigrants from southern Italy. The first reported use of the term "Black Hand" was in 1903 in New York City, but the practice gradually declined after 1915 and ceased to exist around the 1920s, during the period when the first Mafia families in the U.S. —more organized and structured— started to emerge.

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