More research on the Purple Gang

 After doing a little more research, I found this: "Detroit's Infamous Purple Gang was one of the most notorious organized crime groups of the 20th century. The gang  evolved from a juvenile street gang through their rise to power and eventual self-destruction. They exemplify the dark side of the  Prohibition-era in Detroit history. Detroit had a gold rush atmosphere and a thriving black market during the 1920s that attracted gangsters and unsavory characters from all over the country."

Detroit News July 16, 1999
Article by Paul R. Kavieff:  http://apps.detnews.com/apps/history/index.php?id=183#ixzz2KEgZFLa4

Rum running

"With the advent of Prohibition in Michigan on May 1, 1918, the young delinquents quickly graduated from nuisance types of street crime to armed robbery, hijacking, extortion, and other strong arm work. They became notorious for their high profile manner of operation and their savagery in dealing with enemies.


     The four Bernstein brothers, Abe, Joe, Raymond, and Isadore (Izzy), soon became the recognized leaders of the mob. The Purple Gang was never a tightly organized criminal syndicate but a loose confederation of predominantly Jewish gangsters. By the early twenties, the Purples had developed an unsavory reputation as hijackers, stealing liquor loads from older and more established gangs of rumrunners. The Purple Gang always preferred hijacking to rumrunning and their methods were brutal. Anyone landing liquor along the Detroit waterfront had to be armed and prepared to fight to the death as it was common practice for the Purples to take a load of liquor and shoot whoever was with it. In the early years, the Purple Gang preyed exclusively on other underworld operators, insulating them from the police.

     The young Purple Gangsters came under the tutelage of two older and established Detroit mobsters in the early twenties named Charles Leiter and Henry Shorr. These two men operated a legitimate corn sugar outlet on Oakland Avenue known as the "Oakland Sugar House." Leiter and Shorr became the mentors of the Purples using the younger men for strong arm work, extortion of local businesses, and to muscle in on the alley brewers to whom they sold bootleg supplies. As a result, the Oakland Sugar House Gang was born, in reality only an early phase of the Purple Gang's evolution.

     With their numbers swelled by the influx of mobsters from other cities who came to Detroit to cash in on the golden harvest of Prohibition, the Purple Gang prospered. The mob soon branched out into other rackets. During a period of strife in the Detroit area cleaning industry, the Purple Gang was used as terrorists by corrupt labor leaders to keep union members in line and to harass non-union independents. This conflict became known as the Cleaners and Dyers War. Bombings, thefts, beatings, and murder were all methods employed by the Purples to enforce union policy. They were paid handsomely for their services. The labor war ended with the Purple Gang Trial of 1928 in which all of the Purple Gangster defendants were eventually acquitted. The gang emerged from the trial unscathed and became the dominant power in the Detroit underworld. The Purples ruled the Detroit underworld for approximately five years from 1927 to 1932.

In September 1928, Purple Gang defendants were found not guilty of extortion in the "cleaners and dyers war." This photo shows the prosecutors, defense lawyers and defendants during the trial before Judge Charles Bowles.

     The gang rose to underworld prominence rapidly after a machine gun massacre at the Milaflores Apartments in March of 1927. Three imported gunmen suspected of killing a Purple Gang liquor distributor were butchered in the ambush. Fred "Killer" Burke, famous for his role in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago in 1929, was hired by the Purples as the machine gunner. Two other notorious Purple Gang gunmen also participated.

     During the late twenties, the Purple Gang reigned supreme over the Detroit underworld, controlling the city's vice, gambling, liquor, and drug trade. They also controlled the local wire service which provided horse racing information to all of the Detroit horse betting parlors and handbooks. The gang even became the suppliers of Canadian whiskey to the Capone organization in Chicago. This arrangement was made after Capone was told by the Detroit underworld to keep his operation out of the city. Capone thought it more prudent to make the Purples his liquor agents rather than go to war with the gang.

     For several years the Purples enjoyed almost complete immunity from police interference as witnesses to crimes were terrified of testifying against any criminal identified as a Purple Gangster. Jealousies, egos, and inter-gang quarrels would eventually cause the Purple Gang to self-destruct.

The "Collingwood Manor Massacre" in 1931 took the lives of Hymie Paul, Isadore Sutker and Joe Lebowitz. This illustration from the old Detroit Times shows how the bodies were found in the apartment.

     In 1931 an inter-gang dispute ended in the murder of three Purples by members of their own gang. The three men had violated underworld code by operating outside the territory allotted to them by the Purple Gang leadership. Three members of the "Little Jewish Navy," a group of Purples who owned several boats and participated in rumrunning as well as hijacking, decided they would break away from the gang and become an underworld power themselves. The three men, Hymie Paul, Isadore Sutker aka Joe Sutker, and Joe Lebowitz, were lured to an apartment on Collingwood Avenue on September 16, 1931. They believed they were going to a peace conference with Purple Gang leaders. In reality, they were only going to their deaths. After a brief discussion, the three unarmed Purples were shot to death by the Purple Gangsters they had gone to meet. A bookie named Sol Levine, who had transported the three men to the fatal rendezvous, was arrested soon afterwards and was quickly frightened into becoming a State's witness. Levine had been allowed to live because he was a friend of Ray Bernstein. The State had a live witness to the murders and Levine's testimony was devastating. Three of the four Purples involved in the incident which became known as the Collingwood Manor Massacre were quickly arrested. Irving Milberg, Harry Keywell, and Raymond Bernstein, three high ranking Purples, were convicted of first degree murder in the Collingwood Manor Massacre and sent to prison for life.

     Although the Purples remained a power in the Detroit underworld until 1935, long prison sentences and inter-gang sniping eventually destroyed the gang's manpower. The predecessors of Detroit's modern day Mafia family simply stepped in and filled the void once the Purple Gang self-destructed.

From The Detroit News: http://apps.detnews.com/apps/history/index.php?id=183#ixzz2KEha69oG

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Back to the drawing board

Had to readjust my New Year's Resolutions a bit. I decided to re-write my entire first memoir....all twenty two chapters. Based on lots of good feedback from agents, I radically changed the format of the first six chapters and carefully crafted some of the chapters. This, of course, has left my new memoir sitting on a corner of my desk, but at least I'm writing....lots, and every day. And, I have continued to write articles, and keep up my four blogs and the one for the Louisville Bed and Breakfast Association.

My focus, in the re-write, was on going deeper with my story, especially in terms of the narrator and how she changed over time. I also tried to emphasize and develop some of the conflict that arose between her and other characters. I've had to look at this work as you would a work of fiction and make sure all the major parts; such as, character development, dialogue, plot, story arc, etc are well crafted. This is no easy task, especially for a memoirist who isn't used to applying fictive techniques.

Anyhow, I will be back to my second memoir soon. I first want to send out more queries on the re-write. I only sent it to a small group the first time. I got good feed-back and a lot of good suggestions for making the work better.  Thanks to all the agents who were so positive. It gave me hope.


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Writing Resolutions

In 2013, I will be focused on selling my bed and breakfast and moving to New England. It's a big undertaking and requires a lot of planning, organizing, and time. My resolutions for the New Year are not completely worked out but they will all center around finding time to write while carrying out my plan to move by the summer of 2014.

I resolve to work with my two realtors, one here in Louisville and the other in Vermont to come up with a plan to sell my Victorian home (which is also my bed and breakfast), hold an estate sale (to pare down the furniture I'll take to Vermont), and  find a condo in and make a smooth transition to a small town near my daughter in Burlington.

I further resolve to make time to work on my new memoir, while still running my business and making plans to move. I will spend half my writing time on the extensive research my new project demands and half on creative sessions to develop a first draft. In addition I will  post on my book and writing blogs at least twice a month and continue to develop my platform on social media sites.

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Emergent memoir update

Monday (12/17): Since last I posted about my new memoir, I 've gotten lots of comments suggesting that I emphasize the sensational parts of my story, such as my mother's relationship with a member of the Purple gang during the 1920s and the incidences up in the mountains of North Carolina when my grandpa and his bothers were making Moonshine and running from the revenue agents. (I love long sentences!)

I am not averse to hanging out my dirty laundry, as I've learned that my family is not much different from most. We all have our dirty little secrets we'd rather not disclose, but it's important to me as a writer of memoir to be honest and authentic. Not that I'm looking for shocking events from my family's lives to expose but, if it's an integral part of the story, I do not want to be afraid to write about it.

The Purple gang connection has piqued my curiosity. In addition, I received an email from the brother of an on-line writer friend, who is writing a book about that era and the gang. He wants to exchange information, and I'm tempted to do so, only I really don't have a lot of information. So, I've decided to do some research about how my mother met this person, where she was living, and what she was doing at the time. 

Tuesday (12/25): I've started my research on the "Purples" and, honestly, what I've found so far is somewhat frightening. I'm not sure I want to pursue this. And, I can't believe my mother would have been involved with a man who was part of this gang.  She was a gentle person, beautiful and loving. At least as far as I know. But I only really "knew" who she was, after I became an adult. Before that, I saw her through the eyes of a child.......(more later)

Saturday (12/29): With Christmas over and my family gone, I've returned to my research. I'm going to give it another try even though the last exploration turned up some awful things about the Purple gang that turned me off temporarily. Today, I'm trying to figure out how and where my mother met her gangland boyfriend who, according to my sister, wasn't her boyfriend for very long. 

Seems my grandmother was in the room when my mother received a Christmas gift from him. It was a huge box that contained a sable coat with a diamond ring in the pocket. Guess the family, including my mother, had thought he was a nice young middle class boy with a crush on their daughter. When Roxie (my grandmother) saw the coat and ring, she freaked out and made my mother send it back and break up with him. Roxie, the matriarch,  always had good instincts and suspected immediately that he was part of  the Purple gang which, at that time, was running rampant in Detroit. Guessing again,  he may have looked like someone she saw in the newspaper.



  

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My Next Big Thing

I had the pleasure of being selected to participate in a blog hop called My Next Big Thing. I was tagged by professor, blogger,  and creativity expert Michele Tracy Berger and asked to respond to the following ten questions concerning my most recent project.

1.  What is the working title of your book?
I’m working on my second memoir, Roxie, Alfred, and Me. I just started it and have only completed a few chapters, but have come up against some issues I didn't have to deal with in my first memoir. It's an interesting challenge.

2.  Where did the idea come from for the book?
If you've ever had wonderful grandparents, grandparents you were very close to and loved more than anyone in the world, then watched as they withered away with age and died, you will understand my story. I knew no more caring and generous people in my life. They loved me, they listened to me, and they understood me like no one else did. They were creative, intelligent, and lived life to the fullest. My grandfather, Alfred, was my pal and wanted me by his side to share his love of the sea. My grandmother, Roxie, watched out for me. She was sensitive to my feelings and respected me as a individual. The pain of losing them has never really dissipated. I write this in memory of the two of them and in hopes of finally facing and dealing with the loss of them.

They are both in my heart  and will always be. And, even though it has been years since they passed away, within six months of each other, my emotional feelings remain close to the surface. I don’t know if it’s possible but I’m hoping, by writing about them, I will be able to talk about them openly without tears flooding my eyes and falling down my cheeks.

3.  What genre does your book fall under?
I am a non-fiction writer who frequently writes journal articles and essays. But I have a penchant for memoir. This will be my second one in book form, and I’m sure there will be more after this one.

4.  Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Max von Sydow, now 82 years old, would be the perfect actor to play my grandfather. In fact, my grandfather looked a lot like him, especially after his hair turned snow white. There’s a shyness and a creative intelligence about von Sydow that my grandfather also possessed. Despite being Swedish, I’m sure von Sydow could capture my grandfather’s voice and stature.  Both men were thin and tall, close to 6 ft. 4 inches. “I'm a family person” wrote von Sydow. ”… rather private and enjoy my work. I like nature and being outdoors. I'm a gardener at my summer home and like to travel.  I really don't know myself too well.” This quote by von Sydow could have been my grandfather talking. It sounds so much like him. (They are both from middle class families.)

Although a little shorter than my grandmother, there is a striking resemblance between Rosemary Harris, the actress and Roxie.  My grandmother had the same beautiful smile and bright, intelligent eyes. Again as with von Sydow, Harris is not an American but, being an actress, I’m sure she could portray Roxie in speech, stature, and mannerism with no problem.

5.  What is the one-sentence synopsis of your manuscript?
A story about family and significant relationships and events that leave an indelible mark on one young girl’s entire life.

6.  Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I have recently decided to self publish my first memoir and, since I think this one will be much better than the first, I will be looking for an agent in hopes of getting it published traditionally.

7.  How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I am not finished with the first draft yet. I usually write pretty fast. I love the feeling of just letting the story flow out onto the pages without monitoring, then seeing what emerges. When it has some shape to it, I let a couple of alpha readers take a look at it before going on to the re-write process. After a few re-writes, I send it to my Beta readers for more feedback and then I’m on to the final crafting. My first memoir took six weeks for the first draft, then almost two years of re-writes and crafting. However, before I self publish it, I’m going to do even more re-writing. It never really stops until you put the kibosh on it and just let it go.

This memoir is going much more slowly than the first. What's different is the increased amount of research I'm having to do. Besides trying to remember what happened over fifty years ago, to whom it happened and where, I'm having to research information on World War II, Cherokee Herb Doctors, moon-shining in North Carolina, and much more. Another issue that’s slowing me down is the time line. There were no documents, diaries or journals to refer to when I started this memoir, only vague memories. Family members were long gone, except for my sister, who doesn’t remember very much. So getting the time line straight is really difficult.


8.  What other books would you compare this story to within the genre?
The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls, and Tender At The Bone by Ruth Reichl.

9.  Who or what inspired you to write this book?
My grandparents and my family are my inspiration. I have two daughters and two grandchildren whom I’d like to share my early life with. I would also like to share, with my sister, a different perspective of our parents and grandparents than she had when we were growing up. Finally, I hope readers can either connect with my stories or marvel at the wonderful relationships I was afforded in my crazy family.

10.  What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest? I come from an extraordinary family of writers, artists, moonshiners, plumbers, carpenters, professional musicians, chefs and so on. I am in hopes the mixture of divergent personalities, talents, and interests will make for some pretty entertaining reading. My grandmother was extremely funny and at times had us rolling on the floor in laughter. Despite being crippled, my beautiful mother dated a gangster (a member of the Purple Gang in Detroit during the 20s) ‘til my grandmother found out and told him to get lost. My grandfather and his three brothers spent a lot of their early lives in North Carolina moon shining and outwitting the revenue officers. My father was a professional musician who met my mother in her beauty salon (after she broke up with the gangster) when he came in to get a manicure. There were so many real characters in my family, I don’t have to make anything up.

The following writers and authors will be discussing their latest projects on their blogs or websites. Visit their blogs and comment. Keep the circle moving.

Nov. 26: Julia Hanna http://mystories.sweetbeariesart.com/2012/11/26/my-next-big-thing-a-writing-blog-hop/ "I am working on a novel which I can best describe as contemporary fiction that re-envisions the traditional romance novel. It is about how a woman can be happy for the rest of her life even if she does not get married. Being an old maid is not some reprehensible thing."

Nov. 29: Thelma Zerkelbach http://www.widowsphere.blogspot.com/
Thelma will talk about her new memoir Stumbling Through The Dark, a story of an interfaith couple facing the greatest spiritual challenge and of a woman who lost her husband but eventually found herself

Nov 30:    Marcia Meier www.marciameier.com/
" I plan to talk about my completed memoir, Sweeping Down the Sky"

Dec. 3rd: Carol Clouse:  http://www.carolclouse.com/
"My project focuses on Native American philosophy in conjunction with sustainability in Architecture."

Dec. 4th: Susan Bearman:  http://2kop.blogspot.com/

"I wrote and self-published a picture book called the Animal Store Alphabet Book 
(http://alphabetanimal.com) based on my husband's pet shop. My illustrator and I 
launched a successful $10,000 Kickstarter campaign to fund the printing and 
distribution of the book and companion products (coloring book, poster, canvas 
prints and book bag)."

Dec. 5th: Valerie Neiman http://valerienieman.blogspot.com/
Valerie will talk about her  new book, Backwater, a taut crime novel and coming-of-age story, as a teenage girl struggles for her identity – and her life – against the backdrop of her cousin’s murder.

Dec. 7th:  June OHara www.juneohara.com
"I'm finishing up a humorous memoir about being a psychotherapist and having my own breakdowns, neuroses and humorous life circumstances."


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Emergent Memoir

Author's notes: This project is just getting underway. It may be too early to start posting excerpts as I haven't even finished the first draft. But I want to explore different approaches and test the content to see if a story about me and my grandparents might appeal to readers. Aside from ny children, no one in my family is still alive except my sister and she doesn't remember much. I've been able to unleash quite a few memories because I spent a lot of time with and was very close to them. But the memories are coming from all directions and I've found dealing with the time lines rather difficult. 

Also, there's a lot of research necessary to the various locations and events in the story, which is slowing down my flow (a major part of my process).  My voice as a young child seems to be coming through, which is good, but I sense there are a lot of emotional feelings that are trying to get out. It's a little scary, but I want to dig deeper and open myself up completely. 




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Early excerpts from a new memoir

Roxie Alfred and Me 

Chapter 1 

Author's Notes: I've done my first rewrite of this introductory section. I like the idea of starting right in the middle of the action but, in this case, felt compelled to start out by mentioning how close I was to my grandparents. I think it flows well and doesn't bog down in a lot of backstory. And the third graph leads right into the first scene. (The first 10 c0mments below were written before the rewrite) 

 
     I grew up not particularly close to my mother, or my father for that matter. And I never stopped to figure out why.  It was what it was. Besides, my grandmother was more like a mother to me.  Not because she loved me any more, but because there was a rapport, a special bonding between Roxie and me like no other I've ever had.

     Roxie was the rock of the family, the glue that held it together. She was smart, caring, and funny. She was a farmer's daughter who married a farmer's son. Both were capable and hard working. They stayed married for over fifty years, despite some serious ups and downs. I can still hear her calling: "Aaaal - fred" whenever she needed him..

But he wasn't Alfred to me. To me and my sister, he was Papa and we adored him. He could be cantankerous and argumentative, but not to us. To us, he was kind, generous, and funny. He told us stories, sometimes the same ones over and over, but we didn't care.  Bebe and I would go into his smelly little room and jump up on the bed and he would take us away into a land of his imagination. He had been a seaman and a ship's cook at one time, so most of his stories were about the sea.
   

* * * *

     The strong smell of pipe tobacco swirled around our noses whenever we entered his room. It was very small with a narrow brown metal bed built high off the floor and pushed into one corner. It was covered with a home-made quilt and khaki army blanket. Three pillows were stacked one on top of the other at the head. There was nothing on the small window above the bed except a tan paper shade. Next to the bed, was an old Oak table with spindled legs. The large square table top was littered with everything from fishing tackle to car keys to smelly tobacco.


     We poked our heads in the door.

     "Papa, can we come in?"

     Papa jumped up. His  brown leather bedroom slippers clicked against the linoleum floor as he shuffled to the door and opened it wide, letting out some of the stuffy pipe tobacco-tinged air.  He stood, all 6 foot 4 of him, in the doorway, his beautiful full head of white hair nearly reaching the door jam.

     "Good afternoon, ladies. Do come in."

     "We came to hear some stories" I said.

     "And to have our backs scratched," my little sister, Bebe, chimed in.

     Papa's  favorite silver lighter glistened in a beam of sunlight which had somehow made it's way into the dark room. An open closet with no door stood across from the foot of the bed. Homemade pale yellow curtains were pushed to one side revealing a scant collection of worn clothing. Next to the closet was a narrow dresser where he kept all his underwear and valuables. There were two shelves tacked up over the dresser housing cardboard boxes filled with letters, cards, and old newspaper articles. A picture of Roxie sat on one side of the dresser.

     "Okay" he said. "But first, let's see what we can find in my magic purse."

     We scrambled up on the high bed, grabbing onto the army blanket and bed posts to steady our climb.

     "What's in it? What's in it?" We both giggled, as papa opened up the silver clasp on the tiny leather change purse.

     "Well, let me see now." He peered slowly into the bottom of the change purse. Bebe and I held out breaths, our eyes wide with excitement.

     I slid as close to papa's side as possible and Bebe jumped up and ran around to his back, grabbing him by the shoulders and peering over one side to get a look into the change purse. She was so excited, she nearly toppled forward over the edge of the bed. But papa caught her just in time.

      "Alfred, there you are." Roxie appeared at the doorway.  She wiped her hands on the front of her faded apron. "I've been calling you. It's dinner time. Come on girls. Your mother will be here soon to pick you up."

     Roxie was tall and still beautiful. Her shiny black hair was evidence of her Cherokee heritage. She and Alfred met in North Carolina where they were born, and married. Both were raised in large God fearing Baptist families, the kind that stuck together no matter what, and were slightly rigid and dogmatic in their thinking. But Roxie was amazingly liberal. She eventually rejected her Baptist upbringing for the Unitarian Church. She had a strong personality, was assertive, and outspoken. She definitely ruled the roost at home. Alfred complained a lot but usually, although grumbling loudly, did everything she asked.

     Roxie pulled on both oven mitts, opened the oven door and lifted out a golden brown  roasted chicken, and baked yams. I leaned over to see what she'd left in the back of the oven. There two pies side by side just waiting for us to finish our meal. I was sure one was apple and the other cherry, both my favorites. 

     Bebe and I washed our hands and sat down  close to papa who was already at the head of the table. Roxie returned to the oven and came back with a steaming bowl of rice and a covered baking dish full of collard greens and salt pork. Bebe and I hated cooked greens, but they were always the first thing papa reached for...............

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The Making of a memoir (the process)

Author's notes: This is not in story form yet. I've just collected data and research together here. I've loosely pulled together information for 11 chapters so far. I'm posting some of the information to see if readers and writers think a story of this nature would be interesting. I've already started writing this chapter as a story and will post it as soon as it's complete enough for a first draft. I really don't have a title yet for this chapter. Please bear with me. Thanks to all who are taking a peek. I have a specific system I use for writing larger works and a lot of it involves letting the story emerge on its own.

My Mother and Father Meet and Fall in Love
Info to be used in  Roxie Alfred and Me
a work in progress

My mom, the flapper: 1928

      My parents met in Detroit when my dad was booked into the Webster Hotel as a musician with the band. My mother had a small hair salon on the lower level. She had come up from North Carolina with her family (Roxie, Alfred and my aunt, Florence, whom we always called auntie Flo.) at age seventeen. My aunt was three years older.

     When they arrived in Detroit in 1925, they moved into the Webster Hotel where Roxie had gotten a job as housekeeper and Alfred became the engineer. My grand parents had the good sense to send both of their daughters to trade school, my aunt to secretarial school and my mom to beauty school. When my mom finished beauty school, the people who owned the hotel let Alfred build a nice little beauty shop in a spare room on the lower level. Soon, my mom was in business cutting and styling hair and doing manicures.

     Once he discovered the hair salon on the lower level, Daddy would wander down often to have his nails done and talk to the cute owner. I guess the band was staying in the hotel. The way it turned out, they were there long enough for my parents to fall in love. I don’t know if daddy left town and came back or if he just stayed after meeting my mom. Either way, they ended up getting married. That happened in 1928. Two years later, I was born.

     Prior to meeting my father, my mom dated a member of the Purple Gang. Of course, she didn’t know he was a gangster until he started taking her to places where his cohorts hung out and then made the major mistake of giving her an expensive fur coat with a huge diamond ring in the pocket. When Roxie saw that, she and Alfred forbade mom to ever go out with him again. Roxie was smart and knew a man flaunting that kind of money could only be up to no good. Mom broke up with him immediately. She was only nineteen and, besides you didn’t cross Roxie. No way. No how. I remember mom telling me years later how handsome he was and how nice he was to her. But I kept thinking wow, that’s pretty scary, never mind the handsome and nice part.

My mother: 19 years old

     I can’t imagine my mother with a gangster. She wasn’t the type you would think a gangster would be attracted to. She was very naive and sweet….a darling little girl from the south, with the most adorable face and dimples. She was soft spoken and not particularly flirty, nor did she ever wear overtly sexy clothing. It’s still puzzling to me to this day. Maybe I just have  a stereotypical idea of what a gangster would be attracted to. 

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