Al Capone

Born Jan. 17, 1899 , Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S. Died Jan. 25, 1947 , Palm Island, Fla. byname of Alphonse Capone, also called Scarface the most famous American gangster, who dominated organized crime in Chicago from 1925 to 1931. Capone's parents immigrated to the United States from Naples in 1893; Al, the fourth of nine children, quit school in Brooklyn after the sixth grade and joined Johnny Torrio's James Street Boys gang, rising eventually to the Five Points Gang. In a youthful…thing …

…public as few public figures ever do. Capone's fame should have been fleeting, a passing sensation, but instead it lodged permanently in the consciousness of Americans, for whom he redefined the concept of crime into an organized endeavor modeled on corporate enterprise. As he was at pains to point out, many of his crimes were relative; bootlegging was criminal only because a certain set of laws decreed it, and then the laws were changed" (Bergreen).