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Summary
Summary
The thrilling and true account of racketeering and union corruption in mid-century New York, when unions and the mob were locked in a power struggle that reverberates to this day
In 1949, in New York City's crowded Garment District, a union organizer named William Lurye was stabbed to death by a mob assassin. Through the lens of this murder case, prize-winning authors David Witwer and Catherine Rios explore American labor history at its critical turning point, drawing on FBI case files and the private papers of investigative journalists who first broke the story. A narrative that originates in the garment industry of mid-century New York, which produced over 80 percent of the nation's dresses at the time, Murder in the Garment District quickly moves to a national stage, where congressional anti-corruption hearings gripped the nation and forever tainted the reputation of American unions.
Replete with elements of a true-crime thriller, Murder in the Garment District includes a riveting cast of characters, from wheeling and dealing union president David Dubinsky to the notorious gangster Abe Chait and the crusading Robert F. Kennedy, whose public duel with Jimmy Hoffa became front-page news.
Deeply researched and grounded in the street-level events that put people's lives and livelihoods at stake, Murder in the Garment District is destined to become a classic work of history--one that also explains the current troubled state of unions in America.
Author Notes
David Witwer is a professor of history and American studies at Penn State Harrisburg and the author (with Catherine Rios) of Murder in the Garment District as well as Corruption and Reform in the Teamsters Union and Shadow of the Racketeer. Witwer also worked in the Labor Racketeering Bureau of the New York County District Attorney's Office and served as a staff researcher at the New York State Organized Crime Task Force.
Catherine Rios is an award-winning filmmaker and writer, an associate professor of humanities and communications at Penn State Harrisburg, and the author (with David Witwer) of Murder in the Garment District.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Witwer, a Penn State Harrisburg history professor, and his colleague Rios, a filmmaker and humanities professor, deliver an insightful analysis of the period in the 1950s when American labor unions acquired a reputation for corruption and criminality that lingers today. Discrediting accusations of widespread moral failures by union leaders, Witwer and Rios argue that long-standing relationships between businessmen and mobsters made it nearly impossible to organize workers in certain industries without engaging with gangsters. Organizers who resisted the mob, including William Lurye, whose brazen, broad-daylight murder in New York City's Garment District the authors use as a framing device, found themselves vulnerable to violent attacks, with little redress from police or government officials. Witwer and Rios argue that accommodations worked out between labor and organized crime were part of the "operational codes" of the period, and document how such agreements enabled labor leaders to win rights and concessions for workers, but left them vulnerable to congressional investigations and anti-union legislation. Witwer and Rios amass a wealth of detail to complicate the prevailing narrative around the subject, and make a strong case that the reputation of labor unions as inherently corrupt is overblown. This granular, revisionist history will resonate with labor activists and history buffs. (May)
Kirkus Review
A painstaking reconstruction of a sensational 1949 murder and a tumultuous era that marked the beginning of the long decline of American labor unions. Union organizer William Lurye received a hero's funeral after he was stabbed to death by a mob assassin in New York's Garment District. However, it soon became clear that Lurye was not quite the noble idealist eulogized by David Dubinsky, president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. On the contrary, his moral complexities reflected those of labor itself in a less-regulated era in which the law of the jungle often prevailed. A grand jury indicted two men for Lurye's murder--Ben Macri, an associate of crime boss Albert Anastasia, and hired hand Johnny Giusto--but both beat the rap: Macri was acquitted amid suspicions of witness tampering, and Giusto vanished. In this well-researched but less-than-riveting history of the murder and aftermath, Witwer and debut author Rios, both professors at Penn State Harrisburg, show the seismic effects of the case: It helped lead to congressional hearings on labor racketeering that pitted a relentless Robert F. Kennedy against Teamster head Jimmy Hoffa, a televised spectacle that dealt unions a blow from which they have never fully recovered. To a striking degree, write the authors, "the growing level of income inequality in the United States has coincided with the historic decline in rates of union membership." Timely as that message is when presidential candidates have made workers' wages and benefits a key campaign issue, the book loses much of its suspense with Macri's acquittal halfway through; much of the later material covers events that deepen the context for Lurye's murder without advancing that central story. Some of that content--particularly regarding the remarkably brave women who risked their lives to organize garment workers in northeastern Pennsylvania--is fascinating, but a stronger narrative thread might have extended its reach further beyond its natural home in the college classroom. A worthy but imperfect marriage of true crime and a history of labor racketeering. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Table of Contents
| Introduction | p. 1 |
| 1 A Murder in the Garment District: Power and Pressure | p. 7 |
| 2 Shots in the Dark: Violence and Apathy | p. 29 |
| 3 The Workings of Racketeering: Blood and Profit | p. 53 |
| 4 An Organizer's Fight for Justice: Rage and Dignity | p. 81 |
| 5 A Pattern of Accommodation: Allies and Enemies | p. 105 |
| 6 The Uses of Fear: Ambition and Manipulation | p. 131 |
| 7 The Congressional Hearings: Revelation and Rhetoric | p. 161 |
| 8 The 1958 Dress Strike and the Ethical Practices Committee: Resistance and Resignation | p. 191 |
| Afterword: The Enemy Within | p. 227 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 237 |
| Notes | p. 241 |
| Index | p. 281 |
