10 American Towns the Mob Used to Control in Plain Sight

In June 1954 a reform candidate was shot dead in Phenix City, Alabama. In 1955 the same town was named an All-America City. That is the last of ten American towns in this film where illegal casinos, slot machines and back-room dice ran in the open from the 1920s to the 1960s: Atlantic City, New Jersey; Steubenville, Ohio; Cicero, Illinois; Hallandale, Florida; Saratoga Springs, New York; Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; Galveston, Texas; Hot Springs, Arkansas; Newport, Kentucky; and Phenix City. Each town gets the same check: what the legend says, and what Senate reports, court cases and newspapers actually show. Some stories hold up completely. A few grew in the telling, and we say so. Along the way: Nucky Johnson's Boardwalk and the mob's meeting there in May 1929, Al Capone's hotel on 22nd Street, the lake houses of Saratoga, the Beverly Country Club outside New Orleans, the Balinese Room at the end of a Galveston pier, the GI Revolt of 1946 in Hot Springs, the night George Ratterman was set up in Newport in 1961, and the Kefauver Committee hearings of 1950 and 1951 that put Frank Costello's hands on live television. Names, dates and places, no legends. If your family knew a supper club or roadhouse where something went on in the back room, name the town in the comments. Image credits: 39 photos from Wikimedia Commons / Openverse (public domain / CC0); archival film: Prelinger Archives (public domain); stock video: Pixabay. #americanhistory #mobhistory #smalltownamerica #1950s