Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:
- "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
- "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
- "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.
— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —
THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.
Chicago shivered through a particularly bleak October in 1930. As the U.S. economy plummeted into the Great Depression, thousands of Chicago's jobless huddled thrice daily in a long line snaking away from a newly opened soup kitchen. With cold hands stuffed into overcoat pockets as empty as their stomachs, the needy shuffled toward the big banner that declared "Free Soup Coffee & Doughnuts for the Unemployed."
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| Original caption: "Unemployed men queued outside a depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al Capone." |
The kind-hearted philanthropist who had come to their aid was "Public Enemy Number One," Al Capone.
Capone certainly made for an unlikely humanitarian. Chicago's most notorious gangster had built his multi-million-dollar bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling operation upon a foundation of extortion, bribes, and murders.
It culminated with the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre, the murder of seven Irish members and associates of Chicago's "North Side Gang." The men were gathered at a Chicago Lincoln Park garage on the morning of February 14, 1929. They were lined up against a wall and shot by four unknown assailants, two dressed as police officers. The incident resulted from the struggle to control organized crime in the city during Prohibition between the Irish North Side Gang, headed by George "Bugs" Moran, and their Italian Chicago Outfit rivals led by Al Capone. The triggermen have never been conclusively identified, but former members of the Egan's Rats gang working for Capone are suspected of a role, as are members of the Chicago Police Department who allegedly wanted revenge for killing a police officer's son.
Many Chicagoans, however, had more pressing concerns than organized crime in the year following the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Long lines on American sidewalks had become all-too-familiar sights as jittery investors made runs on banks and the unemployed waited for free meals.
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| Capone's Soup Kitchen at 935 South State Street, Chicago, Illinois. |
In early November 1930, more than 75,000 jobless Chicagoans lined up to register their names. Nearly a third required immediate relief. "The Madison Street hobo type was conspicuously absent from these lines of men," reported the Chicago Tribune, which noted that many of the unemployed were well-dressed.
A week later, the Chicago Tribune reported that the mysterious benefactor who had recently rented out a storefront and opened a soup kitchen at 935 South State Street was the city's king of booze, beer, and vice. Capone's soup kitchen served breakfast, lunch, and dinner to an average of 2,200 Chicagoans daily (The NY Times reported the Soup kitchen fed 3,000 daily).
In the soup kitchen, smiling women in white aprons served coffee and sweet rolls for breakfast, soup and bread for lunch, and soup, coffee, and bread for dinner. No second helpings were denied, no questions were asked, and no one was asked to prove their need.
You had to eat your meal there. A few exceptions were made, where food could be taken home if the unemployed man had a family to feed.
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| Interior of Al Capone's Soup Kitchen at 935 South State Street, Chicago, Illinois. |
On Thanksgiving in 1930, Capone's soup kitchen served holiday helpings to 5,000 Chicagoans. Reportedly, Capone had planned a traditional Thanksgiving meal for the jobless until he had heard of a local heist of 1,000 turkeys. Although "Scarface" had not been responsible for the theft, he feared he would be blamed for the caper and made a last-minute menu change from turkey and cranberry sauce to beef stew.
The soup kitchen added to Capone's Robin Hood reputation with a segment of Americans who saw him as a hero for the common man. They pointed to the newspaper reports of his handouts to widows and orphans. When the government deprived them of beer and alcohol during Prohibition, Capone delivered it to them. The crime boss gave them food when the government failed to feed them in their desperate days. Hunger trumped principles for anyone who felt conflicted about taking charity from a gangster. The Bismarck Tribune noted, "A hungry man is just as glad to get soup and coffee from Al Capone as from anyone else." |
| Interior of Al Capone's Soup Kitchen at 935 South State Street, Chicago, Illinois. |
In Harper's Magazine, Mary Borden called Capone "an ambidextrous giant who kills with one hand and feeds with the other." She noted the irony that the line of jobless waiting for a handout from Chicago's most-wanted man often stretched past the door of the city's police headquarters, which held the evidence of the violent crimes carried out at Capone's behest.
Every day, the soup kitchen served 350 loaves of bread, 100 dozen rolls, 50 pounds of sugar, and 30 pounds of coffee, costing about $300 a day ($5,175 today). It was a sum that Capone could easily afford since, on the same day that news of his soup kitchen broke, Capone's bookkeeper Fred Ries testified in court that the profits from Capone's most lucrative gambling houses cleared $25,000 a month.
One night, Lou Barelli, a former gangster and enemy of Capone's syndicate, walked into the soup kitchen, unaware of the owner. A gang member saw Barelli and decided to make a special bowl of soup for him. It's unknown what was done to make a poisonous spoon, but shortly after leaving the soup kitchen, Lou Barelli died; an autopsy revealed he’d been poisoned.
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A spoon from Al Capone's Soup Kitchen that makes any edible food item it touches poisonous. The person gets increasingly sicker over several hours, then... lights out! |
The press never spotted Capone in the soup kitchen, newspapers ate up the soup kitchen story. Some such as the Daily Independent of Murphysboro, Illinois, expressed displeasure at the adulation bestowed upon its operator. “If anything were needed to make the farce of Gangland complete, it is the Al Capone soup kitchen,” it editorialized. “It would be rather terrifying to see Capone run for mayor of Chicago. We are afraid he would get a tremendous vote. It is even conceivable that he might be elected after a few more stunts like his soup kitchens.”
Although he was one of the wealthiest men in America, Capone may not have paid a dime for the soup kitchen, relying instead on his criminal tendencies to stockpile his charitable endeavor by extorting and bribing businesses to donate goods.
During the 1932 trial of Capone ally State Senator Daniel Serritella, claims ducks donated by a chain grocery store for Serritella's holiday drive ended up being served in Capone's soup kitchen.
