ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes how ethnic minorities coming to America's shores and cities have utilized organized crime as one vehicle of upward mobility, removing themselves from lower-class status, advancing to middle-class power and respectability. It aims to answer various questions and describes the role of organized crime in the life of the lower-class ethnic immigrant and migrant community, and how these ambitious gangsters coexist with other ambitious newcomers seeking to "make it" through other routes of upward mobility. The questions include: why have streets such as Jefferson Avenue changed? why have the Irish, Jewish, and Italian populations moved on, and their criminals with them? and what does the future portend for the current African Americans and Hispanic residents and criminals of the Jefferson Avenues of America?
