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Please join our friends the Ravenswood Lake View Historical Society as they present, “1920’s Prohibition Wars and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”



Richard Lindberg will take you on a journey through decades of a troubled past to delve deep into the evolution of street gangs and organized violence endemic in Chicago.



Small ethnic gangs organized in ethnic slum districts of the city expanded into the well-know organized crime syndicates of Chicago’s history. Gangland Chicago is full of stories of unchecked violence, lawlessness and mayhem. Unlike other standard true crime accounts focused exclusively on the Prohibition era, this historical look-back probes the obscure and forgotten dark corners of city crime history. Lindberg details how both “organized” and “disorganized” street gangs have paralyzed city neighborhoods and have transformed the crimes of the Windy City from street thuggery and common ruffians protected and nurtured by politicians into a protected class.



Lindberg recounts the era of parlor gambling, commercialized vice districts continuing through the bloody Prohibition bootlegging wars; failed reform movements; the rise of post-World War II, juvenile gangs and the saga of the Blackstone Rangers in a Chaotic, racially divided city. Gang violence and street crime is endemic in contemporary Chicago.



There is much more to the saga of crime, politics, and armed violence than Al Capone and John Dillinger. Lindberg explores the changing patterns of criminal behavior, politics, gangs, youth crime and the failures of reform in its historic totality.



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