By 1966 to 1967, Joe Colombo and his Family had become a major force within the New York underworld again. After the internal Family strife of the early 1960s Gallo-Profaci War, he rebuilt and reorganized the Family into one of the most powerful Mafia Families in the nation.
It was an achievement not unnoticed by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. They soon started a multi-pronged assault on the Family as never before. The Family’s many captains, soldiers, and associates alike quickly found themselves under law enforcement’s microscope.
Federal and county grand juries had been empaneled in both Brooklyn and Long Island to probe the Family’s rackets and assets. Dozens and dozens of Colombo’s minions were subpoenaed to testify. Recalcitrant witnesses were immediately jailed for criminal contempt of court or worse, including perjury if caught in a lie or half-truth.
The final straw came with the 1970 arrest and indictment of Colombo’s young son, Joseph, Jr., and several Family associates for the oddball crime of having melted down silver coins to extract the silver content, which was alleged to be of higher value than the coins themselves.
Joe was incensed! It was one thing to go after him, but it was quite another to attack his blood family. He saw it as an “off-limits” attack and punching below the belt by the FBI. This would be the catalyst for his forming the famed Italian-American Civil Rights League in early 1970.
Soon, he would show even more genius in his organizing of protest marches and other picketing of the FBI office in midtown Manhattan, various district attorneys around New York, and the New York Police Department, in general, for its discrimination against Americans of Italian descent.
This was a theme near and dear to the hearts of many Italians living in this country who had felt a certain bias all their lives. Colombo had hit a raw nerve, and soon, his League would grow to over one million members strong!
The FBI had a stroke! So did the United States Attorney General and just about every other politician in the nation.
