The St. Valentine's Massacre: Corruption in Chicago

Podcast recorded on Thursday, 5 pm, in the library. A. Irving will edit and submit the podcast. K. Cheng has written this final blog post.

At first glance, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre was the result of intense gang rivalries in Chicago over alcohol bootlegging during the Prohibition era. Before the discovery of seven corpses in a single location, the American public tolerated gang-on-gang violence as long as they could have their beer, wine, and liquor. The police force, meanwhile, was corrupt and turned a blind eye to the illegal activity in exchange for bribes. Prohibition enriched Al Capone's South Side gang and Bugs Moran's North Side gang and led to a power struggle in which times of peace were few and far between, much like how the war on drugs in modern times leads to gang turf wars in modern urban areas.

Seven members of Bugs Moran's gang gathered near a garage on February 14, 1929, all looking their best. At 10:30 am, a police car drove up to the garage. Four or five men got out, two wearing police uniforms and the others carrying two machine guns. A brief spray of bullets mangled the seven gangsters, and the murderers got back into the police car and drove away. When investigators arrived on the scene, the only lead they could get was from Frank Gusenberg, one of the victims, who uttered the phrase, "Cops did it," before demanding to be sent to the hospital.

Despite the efforts of local police force and the FBI, the mystery of who killed the seven still remains today. The federal government wanted to pin the blame on Capone, but they could not find any solid evidence to condemn him with. The machine guns used in the murders were found in the possession of Fred Burke, but he was neither charged with nor questioned about the massacre. The most recent theory that has been debunked was that William White, one of Chicago's most vicious criminals, killed Moran's men to get revenge on Moran for killing his cousin. The mystery may never be solved, but the massacre was able to indicate to the American people that Prohibition had been too much, and the event was a catalyst for social progress.

Wednesday, 9:00 AM: Library

• We talked about the script, shared our ideas for transitions and bumper/background music, discussed the amount of time that we needed to fill and determined when the best time would be to include the "callers with questions" portion of the podcast in the recording.
• We are sending each other the sections of the script that we prepared and going from there.
• Andrea is responsible for recording the voices of two "callers"-- this will be an all-female cast holding a discussion about gang violence!
• From here we are working separately to get the script finalized. We will begin recording tomorrow and we discussed possible locations for the recording session.
  

Tuesday, 7 PM, Library

• Meeting time was primarily used to discuss the annotated bibliography returned by Mrs. Murphy (we need a few stronger sources) and to share ideas and information prior to making a working script for the podcast.
• Mrs. Murphy turned us onto a new source entitled "The Valentine Day Massacre: A Study in Ammunition-Tracing", which Andrea did not find when she searched JSTOR because of the alternate spelling "Valentine Day". Thank you Mrs. Murphy!
  
• We are making intense use of time. Kerry is drafting notes to send to Andrea (who has already sent an outline of her notes to Kerry) so that we can work on parts of the script before the next meeting (Wednesday morning), pool our ideas at that time, and finalize it.
• Prior to our next meeting we will both listen to the podcast "The BackStory of American Inventions" posted to Moodle by Mrs. Murphy to get ideas flowing!
  

May 15, 8 pm: Library

All sources used so far have been sent to K. Cheng to organize into the Annotated Bibliography.

The meeting was primarily used to discuss when to meet again.

K. Cheng will send A. Irving the overall outline of the script so A. Irving will know where her input is needed.

A. Irving has installed Audacity.

Script Outline:

• Greetings to Audience and Introduction to Topic
• Prohibition and the Rise of Organized Crime
• South Side Italians and Al Capone vs. North Side Irish and Bugs Moran
• Actual massacre and seven victims
• FBI Investigation and Al Capone's arrest
• Conspiracy theories
• The Massacre in Pop Culture
• Caller complains about the violent content of our show; we respond by pointing out that she can change her station anytime she likes
• Conclusion: Mention that Netflix has movies about the Massacre, and sign out with happy message

Schedule for meetings this week (subject to change):

• Monday: G block to put information into an outline
• Tuesday: After 8'o clock check to format information into dialogue
• Wednesday: A and G block to start recording
• Thursday: After school to finalize details. If more time is needed, a Friday meeting will be scheduled.

For some reason, my first post vanished. I've scrapped what I could from memory.

Meeting: 5/11/2011, 8 pm to 9 pm, Library

• K. Cheng listened to the Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast on the history of chocolate. She decided the script should have the radio hosts speak in happy and casual tones about morbid subjects. The first paragraph of the script was written.
• A. Irving found the FBI files from the investigation and decided to use the Wikipedia page to help format the script: introduction, then chronological description of events, followed by pop culture influences
• A. Irving is assigned to research the events and culture that caused the massacre, the massacre, and its victims. K. Cheng is assigned to research the investigation that follows, the general public's response to the massacre, and the pop culture that results from it.

Meeting: 5/13/2011, E block, Library

• K. Cheng has found that general public was not very responsive to it due to the prospect of bootlegged alcohol. An article from Chicago magazine has introduced new conspiracy theories about Al Capone's innocence and the real mastermind behind the massacre.
• A. Irving has made profiles of the seven victims of the crimes and learned some basic background on the two opposing mobs.
• K. Cheng has been assigned to compile the annotated bibliography. A. Irving will send her any sources.
• K. Cheng will write script portion for pop culture.

May 11, 2011, 8 pm to 9 pm in the library: A. Irving, K. Cheng

Meeting Highlights

• Garage Band has jazz music that can be used as background.
• A. Irving installed Audacity; K. Cheng was assigned to use it during recording
• Opening sentence of podcast (by K. Cheng): (cheery jazz music opens) Happy Valentine's Day everyone. We here at The Pushers are celebrating today of love and red hearts. Specifically, we are celebrating with our love of bullets as they pierce the hearts of our rivals and make them burst with red blood. That’s right! Today we are celebrating the anniversary of Chicago’s notorious St. Valentine’s Massacre!
• Discussed format of show. Wikipedia page for St. Valentine's massacre was used as template for topics: Begin by discussing rivalry between Italians and Irish that led up to massacre, then describe the event and the victims, followed by the investigation, and close with recommendations on other sources and cite depictions of event in fiction.
• A. Irving found copies of original FBI on investigation of the massacre
• A. Irving will research events before and during the massacre: prohibition that created organized crime, the Italian-Irish rivalry that led up to it, the victims, etc.
• K. Cheng will research events following the massacre: the FBI investigation, what happened to respective gangs, pop culture and urban legends

Next meeting: E block on Friday

Next Meeting
May 11, 2011
8:30 pm
Library
Discuss overall structure of script for podcast.
Current Assignments
A. Irving: Research the massacre
K. Cheng: Research the massacre and update blog