Gangster: Al Capone's Childhood

Feared by many, followed by most. Who would’ve thought someone coming from a religious household would soon make the world sense the wrath of Al Capone, the criminal mastermind. The man who showed no remorse towards anyone that interfered with his principles. The one who took a different perception on life and eventually composed his own set of rules. Certainly in doing so would lead others and their lives.
The most notoriously known gangster, Alphonse Capone was the first from his family to be born in America. His parents, Gabriele and Teresina Capone, migrated from southern Italy and came to Brooklyn, New York searching for better living qualities for their eight children. His father made a living from being the local barber and his mother
He was well respected for everything he did for the city, the majority of the Italian population considered him a community leader. When he was 28 years old, his organization brought in over $105 million dollars (“Mafia”). He gave back to the city that built him his kingdom. During the Great Depression, Capone was one of the first to help out around town founding multiple soup kitchens, providing daily milk to the schools of Chicago to help fight rickets, and gave job opportunities. The government began to fail without him. Police needed his payoffs, for their civil service salaries did not cut it, newspapers needed the image of “Scarface” in order to continue selling papers, and the speakeasies needed his supply of alcohol to stay in business. Capone always knew how to get around to people. Before the civil rights era arose, Capone’s willingness to work with African Americans displayed his ability to build an extended economic alliance which contributed to his public power. One of his famous sayings was, “you can get much farther with a kind word and a gun then you can with a kind word alone.” (“Al Capone Icon”). He was a criminal who used the media to entertain and mislead the
Capone as one of the top ten most outstanding persons in the world along with Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, and Henry Ford. Overall, I believe Al Capone was a very influential man who has lead many individuals to their ideologies today. He was a very humble person who always knew family came above all. He believed in no bad way of doing business, as long as it got the job done. What I found the most appealing is that he made sure every person affiliated with him had money in their pockets and food on the table. Whether he was viewed as evil or a community leader, his presence was impossible to ignore; for he was a man with a mission that used ways like crime in order to succeed. The dominance, boundless leadership skills, and wicked ways he contained made him the blueprint of what we know as mob history. Making sure he left his imprint for many generations to come. A name whose challenged the laws of man and that will definitely live on