Beginnings: David Hennessey, Inter-Ethnic Relations, and Organized Crime in New Orleans

In this episode, Pettengill explores the origins of organized crime in Gilded Age New Orleans. This episode navigates the pre-mafia days of the city and emphasizes the cross patterns between criminals and law enforcement officials as well as the inter-ethnic nature of criminal enterprise throughout the era. Similar to Episode 1, listeners come away with an understanding of how poverty, inequality, and ethnic bigotry were deeply influential with respect to the emergence of organized crime in a less-than-likely focal point: New Orleans, Louisiana.