Detroit During the early 1900s
Detroit during the 1910s was a developing city. It was changing rapidly during this time, as the city's population grew and the economy shifted from agriculture to manufacturing. The city was home to some of the largest and most successful industrial companies in the world, including Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. However, this rapid growth and urbanization came at a cost, as overcrowding, pollution, and poverty became major problems in many neighborhoods. The young boys who would later grow up into the men of The Purple Gang grew up in one of these impoverished neighborhoods. It was known Ironically as Paradise Valley, located on Detroit's lower east side. The gang started out as little more than a group of friends who grew up in the same Jewish neighborhood. They were mostly Jewish with immigrants from Russia and Poland. Contrary to the examination of the purple gang by Robert Knapp, Robert Rockaway argues that the purple gang was much more organized and he focuses on the purple gang's shakedowns of illegal Blind Pigs, which were underground drinking establishments. Here is an excerpt from The Detroit News in April of 1928. "Ten years ago Hastings Street, then known as Detroit's ghetto, was infested with a small" group of youths -none of them more than 16 years old-who banded together to "roll drunks and finch from: hucksters wagons and from the stands of small merchants: 'The youths, by their activities, were regarded as a nuisance rather than a menace. Their petty thievings and preying on of drunks became general talk along the street in between Gratiot and Forest avenues. They were just bad boys and the residents of the section, most of them of their own race, were ashamed of them."1 These boys became a staple of the Detroit underground and its illegal industries. Still, they were not yet known as The Purple Gang. The exact origin of this name is not known but most commonly this story as told by the Detroit News gives light as to how it might have come around."Not exactly criminals were these boys: To the merchants and housewives of Hastings Street they were scalawags of bad tendencies just no good: One day a small notions shop owner, is speaking to a neighbor about the boys, and said they were somehow tainted -off-color "purple." replied the neighbor, nodding his head understandingly
"That's/what they are, purple."
"The whole bunch of them, they're all purple," agreed- the shopkeeper
"They're a purple gang." SO THEY WERE NAMED."1
Before they had their signature name they still began to embody the change Detroit was experiencing. As urbanization continued the purple gang would be only the first wave of young gangsters who would bring rampant crime to the city for generations. A supporting example of this is the gang-controlled many of the illegal industries such as prostitution and gambling. These industries would be handed down through the generations as different gangs rose and fell through the years. The Purple Gang were pioneers of these industries and were some of the first to bring gang control. This additionally added to Detroit's reputation as a dangerous and crime-filled city. Robert A. Rockaways Article "The Notorious Purple Gang: Detroit's All-Jewish Prohibition Era Mob", supports the thesis that the Purple Gang influenced organized crime throughout Detroit and the United states during Prohibition. "During Prohibition (1920-1933), Jewish gangsters became major operatives in the American underworld and played prominent roles in the creation and extension of organized crime in the United States. At the time, Jewish gangs dominated illicit activities in a number of America's largest cities, including Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, Newark, New York, and Philadelphia. One of the more notorious of these all-Jewish mobs was Detroit's Purple Gang. The gang dealt in bootlegging, gambling, extortion, drugs, and murder, and developed a reputation for being more ruthless than Al Capone's mob in Chicago. The Purple's decade-long reign of terror ended when most of the gang's members either went to prison or were murdered by rivals."2
Primary Sources
1Detroit News (Detroit, Michigan), April 1, 1928: 1. Readex: America's Historical Newspapers. https://infoweb-newsbank-com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A143B808DB2B45FAC%40EANX-164919024642B2DE%402425338-1648B74DE8E3FF84%400
Secondary Sources
2Rockaway, Robert A. 2001. “The Notorious Purple Gang: Detroit’s All-Jewish Prohibition Era Mob.” Shofar 20 (1): 113–30. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.42944836.