The Purple Gang
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| Founded | 1920s |
|---|---|
| Founding location | United States |
| Years active | 1910s − 1932 |
| Territory | Detroit |
| Criminal activities | Murder, extortion, theft, armed robbery, kidnapping, gambling, bootlegging |
| Allies | The Capone mob, Fred “Killer” Burke |
| Rivals | Rival gangs, The Detroit Partnership, Fred “Killer” Burke after 1927 |
The Purple Gang, also known as the Sugar House Gang, was a mob of bootleggers and hijackers, with predominantly Jewish members. They operated out of Detroit, Michigan, in the 1920s and came to be Detroit's dominant criminal gang, but ultimately excessive violence and infighting caused the gang to self-destruct in the 1930s.
In 1917, three years before national Prohibition, liquor became illegal in in Michigan. (Henry Ford, who owned the River Rouge plant, desired a sober workforce and backed the 1916 Damon Act.) Due to Detroit's proximity to Ohio, bootleggers and other people imported booze from Toledo. Judges took a lenient view of offenders, and in 1919 the Damon Act was declared unconstitutional.
In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment was adopted, and prohibition took effect throughout the United States.Canada became a major port for running alcohol products because the Canadian federal government approved and licensed distilleries and breweries to manufacture, distribute, and export alcohol.
Like most major cities at the beginning of the 20th-century, Detroit's immigrant neighborhoods were stricken with poverty and some became breeding grounds for crime and violence. From the Hasting Street neighborhood known as Paradise Valley in Detroit's lower east side, most of the Purple Gang's core members went to Bishop School where all were placed in the division for problem children. The gang members were the children of immigrants from eastern Europe, primarily Russia and Poland, who had come to the United States in the great immigration wave from 1881 to 1914.
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Wikipedia