page_title: Crime in Harlem
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Crime in Harlem / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Former drug lord turned entrepreneur Frank Lucas at the November 2008 Big Apple Convention in Manhattan. This photo was created by Luigi Novi. It is not in the public domain, and use of this file outside of the licensing terms is a copyright violation. If you would like to use this image outside of the Wikimedia projects, you may do so, only if I am properly credited, either by linking the photograph to this page, or with an easily visible credit placed near the photo in each instance in which it is used. Please credit authorship as follows: &#160;© Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. Please maintain the original file name in all uses. You can see a gallery of some of my other photos here. If you have any questions, you can contact me by sending me an email or leaving a note at the bottom of my Wikipedia talk page.
context_page_description: Greater Harlem, in the northern section of the New York City borough of Manhattan, has historically had high poverty and crime rates. Crime in Harlem is mainly related to petty theft, murder, drugs and prostitution. As of 1995, the leading cause of death among black males in Harlem was homicide. According to a survey published in 2013 by Union Settlement Association, residents of East Harlem perceive crime as their biggest single concern.
context_section_description: Greater Harlem was seen as sophisticated in the later part of the nineteenth century. Over the years, however, organized crime by gangsters of Italian, Jewish, and Irish origin, such as colorful personalities as Lucky Luciano, began to rise in Harlem. This gradually built its notorious reputation.
  Since the 1920s, greater Harlem has been known as a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Black residents began to arrive en masse in 1905, with numbers fed by the Great Migration. In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the focus of the "Harlem Renaissance", an outpouring of artistic work without precedent in the American black community and it even came to be known as "the capital of black America". However, with job losses in the time of the Great Depression and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly.
  In Italian Harlem an organization titled “the Black hand" had emerged between 1901 and 1921 in Second Avenue which indulged in blackmail. There were unsuccessful attempts by the Italian residents of Harlem in the 1930s to improve their housing situation. They failed, resulting in their migration out of Harlem; highly unhealthy slums contributed to this. The Italian community living in Harlem who were seen in the streets as much as in their houses even established a "boys club" (started in 1927) in their midst to divert attention and to wean away the boys from the influence of the gangs. The Italian part of the Harlem constituted  immigrants of 64 regional societies in 1934 and many of them observed festivals in the church of mount Carmel. They were also segregated from the Spanish part of the Harlem.
  In 1931, Dutch Schultz, a mobster, exercised control over the wealth of Harlem residents with perpetration of violence and blackmail involving banks, restaurants, and clubs taking advantage of his political and police contacts. After he was killed in 1935, the mantle of control fell on the Genovese Crime Family, who ruled the roost for the next 50 years.
  During World War II, newspapers like The New York Times sensationalized the crime situation and claimed that it was going up. However, the ground situation did not reflect this view, because in 1942, there was a reduction in crime rate.
  Like in Chicago, New York City during the mid-20th century saw a dramatic increase in organized criminal rackets and the gangsters of Harlem have been among the most notorious in American history. Gangsters such as Frank Lucas, hailed as the "baddest dude on the mean streets of Harlem", operated a gang which smuggled heroin into the states from Vietnam in US warplanes in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Major riots broke out in Harlem in 1964, violently suppressed by the police.
  Cheap crack cocaine in East Harlem, which became a major issue in the 1980s, as author Russell Leigh Sharman puts it was "largely responsible for the devaluation of human life in East Harlem: it radically affected the economy of violence in relation to the illegal drug trade."
  Since New York City's revival in the late 20th century, greater Harlem has been experiencing social and economic gentrification. However, Harlem still suffers from many social problems. Large portions of the population receive a form of income support from the government, with 34.9%, 43.3%, and 46.5% of the populations of West, Central, and East Harlem receiving aid.
caption: Frank Lucas, a Harlem gangster
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