The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe

by Booker T. Washington; Robert Ezra Park

This brings me to another feature of Sicilian life—namely, the Mafia.

I had heard a great deal about the Mafia in Italy, and about the criminal political organizations in other parts of Italy, before I came to Europe, and was anxious, if possible, to learn something that would give me an insight into the local causes and conditions which had produced them.

One of the professional story-tellers whom I encountered while I was wandering about in the market in Catania recalled the subject to my mind. He was retailing to a crowd in the market square a story that was even more exciting and interesting to me, at least, than the one which I have already mentioned. It was, in fact, nothing less than an account of the murders and outrages of the Black Hand in New York City.

At first it struck me as very curious that I should meet in Italy, the home of the Mafia and the Camorra, a crowd of people in the public square listening with apparent wonder and awe to an account of the fabulous crimes and misdeeds of their fellow countrymen in another part of the world. I had a sort of notion that the Black Hand operations would be so familiar to Sicilians that they would have no curiosity about them. It was not so, however, and after I learned that New York had an Italian population larger than Rome, larger, in fact, than any Italian city, with the exception of Naples, this did not seem so strange. There are, as a matter of fact, more than 500,000 Italians in New York City, and 85 per cent. of them are from southern Italy. Among this 85 per cent. are very many who belong to the criminal classes. The result is that the Mafia, under the name of the Black Hand, is probably as active and, perhaps, as powerful among the Italian population in New York to-day as it ever was in Italy.

While I was in Palermo I had the place pointed out to me where Petrosino, the Italian detective from New York, who went to Sicily to secure the records of some of the noted Italian criminals then living in America, was shot and killed. Petrosino was killed March 12, 1909. The killing of this American officer in the streets of Palermo served to call attention to the number of Black Hand crimes committed by Italians in this country. During the next nine months after Petrosino's death it was reported that no less than fifty "Italian killings," as they were called, took place either in New York City itself or in the surrounding territory, and from 1906 to 1909, according to statistics prepared by the New York World, of the 112 unexplained murders committed in and around New York, 54 were those of Italians. This suggests, at least, the manner in which our own country is affected by the conditions of the masses in southern Italy and Sicily.

The Mafia, the Black Hand, as it is called in America, is a kind of institution which is so peculiar and to such an extent the product of purely local conditions that it seems difficult even for those who know most about it to explain its existence. One statement which I heard in regard to the matter was especially interesting to me. It was said that the condition of mind which made the Mafia possible, the fear and distrust which divide the masses of the people from the ruling classes and the Government, was the result of the mingling of the races in the island; that the Mafia was, in short, Sicily's race problem.

It is certainly true that in no other part of Europe, with the possible exception of Spain, have the different peoples of Europe and Africa become so intermingled as they have in this island, which is one of the natural bridges between Europe and Africa. In addition to the Arabs and Saracens from Africa, nearly all the races of Europe, Germans, Latins, Greeks, have all at different times lived and ruled on the island. Near Palermo, for example, there are still the remnants of a colony of Albanians, a Slavic people who speak modern Greek, and worship after the fashion of the Eastern Church, and there are fragments and remnants of many other races still preserved in different parts of the island.

My own experience has taught me, however, to distrust what I may call "racial explanations." They are convenient and easy to make, but too sweeping, and, practically, the effect of them is to discourage any effort to improve. For example, if some one discovers that the condition in which a people happens to be found at any given time is due to race, that it is constitutional, and in the blood, so to speak, then, of course, there is nothing to do. If, however, it is due to environment, education may help. The discussion and emphasis on the fact of race have been made the excuse, in the Southern States, for a good deal of apathy and indifference in regard to the hopes and progress of the Negro. In fact, whenever I hear a politician in the South ask the rhetorical question, "Can the leopard change his spots?" I usually find that he is opposing the establishment of a Negro school or is discouraging some other effort to improve the condition of the Negro people.

The real trouble with explanations of this kind is that as soon as a man has made up his mind, for example, that a people, or class of people, belongs to a so-called "inferior race," he is not inclined to support any kind of experiment, like the building of a school, that may prove that his explanation was mistaken.

The real reason for the backward condition of Sicily is, in my opinion, not so much the intermixture of races as the neglect and oppression of the masses of the people. In 1861, when Sicily became a part of the Italian Confederation, 90 per cent. of the population were wholly unable to read or write. This means that at this time the people of Sicily were not much better off, as far as education is concerned, than the Negro slaves at the time of emancipation. It has been estimated that between 5 and 10 per cent. of the slaves could read and write.