Atlantic City Conference

The Atlantic City Conference held between 13–16 May 1929 was a historic summit of leaders of organized crime in the United States. It is considered by most crime historians to be the earliest organized crime summit held in the US. The conference had a major impact on the future direction of the criminal underworld and it held more importance and significance than the Havana Conference of 1946 and the Apalachin meeting of 1957. It also represented the first concrete move toward a National Crime Syndicate.

Details about the conference are difficult to verify. However, it is thought that crime leaders at the conference discussed the violent bootleg wars in New York City and Chicago and how to avoid them in the future, diversification and investment into legal liquor ventures, expansion of illegal operations to offset profit loss from the probable repeal of Prohibition, and reorganization and consolidation of the underworld into a National Crime Syndicate.

In early May 1929, Meyer Lansky, the Jewish-American crime syndicate boss, was married and he and his closest underworld friends concluded that the resort town of Atlantic City, New Jersey would be an ideal place to have both a honeymoon and also a conference, allowing Lansky to mix pleasure and business, along with the rest of the bosses. The date and place was set for the weekend of May 13–May 16, making the conference the first known underworld summit of its kind, which could be considered the first concrete move towards establishing the National Crime Syndicate that eventually controlled all major criminal activities across the United States.

The Atlantic City Conference was said to be hosted by Meyer Lansky, Italian-American mobster Johnny Torrio, Charlie "Lucky" Luciano and Frank Costello. The organizing host of the conference was Atlantic City and South Jersey crime boss, Enoch "Nucky" Johnson, who provided the hotel accommodations, food and entertainment for all, while making a guarantee of no police interference.

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