Joseph Colombo, Sr. – “The Civil Rights Mafioso”

The League’s power soon was such that the federal government agreed to drop its use of the term Mafia, Cosa Nostra, and other terminology that insulted the Italian people, instead just referring to organized crime, as well, “organized crime”, never naming the Sicilian brotherhood as such.

Joseph (Joey) Colombo, Sr. - aka "Joseph LaPore" - was born in 1923. He was raised, reared, and resided in Brooklyn his entire life. After getting married and starting a family, he bought a home at 1455 86th Street in the Bay Ridge/Dyker Heights section, where he and his wife, Lucille, would raise their five children.

He also had a beautiful five-acre estate in Blooming Grove in the town of Newburg in Upstate New York.

Note: Several of his minions, including Carmine Persico and Thomas Ocera, also owned large upstate retreats (in Saugerties and Nyack).

Singer Connie Francis and Joe.

The son of an original Profaci Family member named Antonio (Nino) Colombo, he also had three sons who would all follow him into the life to some degree (Anthony, Joseph Jr., and Christopher) creating three generations of made men.

Young Colombo would quit high school to join the U.S. Navy, serving two years of duty. Upon his return to the States, he gained employment on the Brooklyn docks through his underworld connections.

By this time, he had gravitated to the gambling rackets, learning how to operate various crap games and taking numbers.

He soon was in the good graces of boss Giuseppe Profaci, the undisputed capo of the Family. ( I am certain that Colombo struggled with the knowledge that it was Profaci who ordered his father’s death).

Nonetheless, young Joe Colombo forged ahead and was soon formally inducted, owing no doubt to his dad’s former status within the borgata.

As a newly-minted “soldato”, he quickly set about establishing his presence within the local Brooklyn underworld. And, soon, he was running a steady, weekly large-scale floating dice game.

He had started to put money “on the street” and began to solicit associates under his “wing”, forming his own crew now that he officially had his “badge”.

His activities included floating dice and card games, bookmaking, policy, shylocking, extortion, business infiltration, and strong-arm enforcer.

As an up-and-coming mafioso, Colombo specialized in the rackets mentioned above, but he would eventually rise up to be the Family Boss, and, in that context, Joe would be involved, by proxy, in all the rackets operated by his borgata.

In 1938, his father Nino would be found with a young woman in an abandoned automobile on a Brooklyn Street. Both had been strangled to death sitting next to each other.

It was said that they were killed for violating a sacred Mafia rule against having an affair with the wife or mistress of another mafioso. Joe would “swallow” this tragedy as he continued into mob life himself.

He was suspected of having been formally inducted by the late 1940s. Colombo would quickly rise from a soldier to command his own regime as a key Family “Capo”.

He would maintain that status until 1964, when he would be tapped by Carlo Gambino and other top leaders to take the helm of the old Profaci Family, becoming boss after a formal Family vote taken down in South Florida at a secret meeting held by the various caporegimes with the pivotal backing of Gambino.

Side Note: He had ingratiated himself with Gambino after betraying his own Family leader, Joe Magliocco, who had commissioned Colombo to help kill bosses Gambino and Tommy Lucchese, confiding to Gambino all about the murder plans. This act of betrayal would set his future course.

He was astute enough to know that attempting to kill two Family bosses was suicide, so he made the fateful choice to alert them.

Once in the boss' seat, Colombo, who at age 41 was the youngest Mafia boss in the country, would show just how sharp his business acumen and leadership skills were. He quickly reorganized the borgata, retiring older skippers for the leadership of younger men, and expanded various key rackets throughout New York City and Long Island where the Family’s power bases were.

Although Boss, police informants reported that he also maintained a personal regime of 18 soldiers who reported directly to him. Additionally, this crew had numerous key associates, many of whom would become inducted men in future years. This crew included members:

Carmine Persic0, Jr.

Joseph Yacovelli

Anthony Peraino

Anthony Abbatemarco

Michael Savino

Ambrose Magliocco

Anthony Magliocco

Salvatore Badalamenti

Calogero LoCicero

Rocco Miraglia

Modesto Santoro

Salvatore Profaci

Thomas DiBella

Anthony Ricciardi

Ralph Tropiano

Lawrence Gallo

John Cutrone

Nicholas Bianco

.... and key associates:

Joseph Iannaci

Nicholas Mainello

Joseph DeCicco

Peter Candarini

Joseph Candarini

Frank DiBiase

Charles DeMarco

Joseph Taglianetti

Albert Mugnolo

Joseph Pergola

Frank Proto

As you see from the above names, many were top gunsels and/or had been problems in the past. In assigning them to his crew, the benefits were twofold. It created a solid enforcement arm within the borgata, and it allowed him to keep a closer eye on any malcontents or potential troublemakers.

Early on, he listed employment as a longshoreman on the Brooklyn docks. Years later, he was ostensibly employed as a real estate salesman for Cantalupo Realty Co., in Brooklyn, where he would go every day, spending a good portion of his morning and early afternoon receiving visitors and holding court with his mob troops.

He also frequented Kaplan Buick and Renata’s Luncheonette a few blocks away as makeshift headquarters where his various crew captains and close associates knew they could reach him if need be.

By 1966 to '67, 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 had rebuilt and reorganized the Family into one of the most powerful Mafia Families in the nation.

Arrested again.

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 personal 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 attorney’s 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.

The League’s power soon was such that the federal government agreed to drop its use of the term Mafia, Cosa Nostra, and other terminology that insulted the Italian people, instead just referring to organized crime, as well, “organized crime”, never naming the Sicilian brotherhood as such.

It was powerful stuff!.... and Joe Colombo held the key.

For several years, the FBI didn’t know whether to “shit or go blind” as the old saying goes. They felt crippled.... and by a man who was, in their eyes, an actual honest-to-goodness Mafia leader, no less!

The League's strength also forced the famous director Francis Ford Coppola to delete all use of the term Mafia or other related phrases in The Godfather movie, and he had to rewrite the entire script so as not to incur Colombo’s wrath.

Colombo also demanded that Italians actors actually play many of the Italians in the film itself and demanded several other “concessions” so the various labor unions attached to the film would not picket or go on strike.

Television was not immune either. Soon, famous TV commercials such as Alka Seltzer’s popular ad “measy meisy thatsa somma spicy meataballa you hava there” was taken off the air as being derogatory to the Italian people.

The Godfather and Alka Seltzer

These examples are just a few of the many, many powerful dictates that the Civil Rights League accomplished.

Militant Jewish Defense Leader (JDL) leader Meir Kahane would join Colombo and stand side by side with him defending their joint people against many perceived slights. The NAACP also strongly backed Joe.

In short, Joseph Anthony Colombo was becoming a major force in the United States.

He was invited for interviews on the popular Dick Cavett Show and other prime-time television shows.

Even the U.S. president, at the time, had taken notice and was giving Colombo and his Italian-American Civil Rights League a wide berth. It was the early 1970s and civil rights and injustice were on everyone’s mind.

Well, after getting “de-balled”, the FBI soon became enraged and more determined than ever to bring down not only Colombo but every Italian hood in the city. They didn’t like being put in check and wanted to destroy the league and Colombo at all costs!

They would soon go on a relentless campaign to harass, investigate, and arrest Colombo hoodlums at a record rate. If you were Italian and so much as spit on the sidewalk, they would haul you in for arrest.

By late-1970 to early-1971, Joe Colombo started to feel the collective punch of the feds.

In short order, he found himself buried under a series of indictments for heading a $5,000,000 policy-gambling ring, a perjury rap stemming from his testimony before a rackets grand jury, and conspiracy charges for mediating a dispute between Colombo mob members in a $750,000 Long Island jewel heist.

Anthony Colombo at the Italian-American Civil Rights League rally.

Nonetheless, Joe moved onward and forward with his plans in the spring of 1971 for the second annual Columbus Day Rally of his beloved Italian-American Civil Rights League at Manhattan’s Columbus Circle.

The rally the year before in 1970 had been a resounding success, drawing almost one-million attendees with celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Governor Rockefeller, Mario Cuomo, Congressman Mario Biaggi, Meade Esposito, U.S. Rep. Peter Rodino, automobile magnate Lee Iacocca, and many other big names in the world of politics, Hollywood and big business all lending their support to this worthy cause.

But this time around would be different.... much different!

The FBI pressure and constant intensified investigations were talking their toll on all Five Families, and the bosses weren’t happy. They advised Joe that he better step down and name a more legitimate person to head the League.

Although the League was now a multi-million dollar venture and a powerhouse of influence, to have a sitting boss of a borgata at the helm was more than stupid, and they had had enough!

Joe flatly refused to listen to reason. And with that fateful decision, would forever change the course of mob history and sign his own death warrant in the process. It was his baby! His pride and joy. And nobody, but nobody could run it better or was gonna tell him what to do!

Well, the rest has been forever consigned to underworld history and mob lore. His attempted assassination would leave him paralyzed and bedridden until his death in 1978 at the young age of 54 years old.

Popular opinion (that was put forth by law enforcement, the media, and even some in the underworld) believe he was “hit” by the other New York bosses, Carlo Gambino specifically, for defying their edicts. That Crazy Joe Gallo had led the conspiracy.

But others more in the know, his son Anthony and close associates included, hold firm to the theory that his shooting was orchestrated by a combination of higher-ups in the FBI, other governmental powers in Washington, and possibly even sources such as the CIA or other covert agencies that thought he was gaining way too much power and influence, and needed to be stopped!

If you look at the nature and sheer logistics of the shooting -- the black gunman with a press pass, his black woman accomplice, a gun secreted within a specially designed camera, his ease at gaining access to Colombo up by the podium, how Jerome Johnson (the shooter) was immediately assassinated simultaneously as he pulled the trigger on Colombo, how his woman accomplice disappeared into thin air within seconds of the hit, and how nobody.... but nobody, inside the mob or out, has ever tied anyone in the Mafia to the actual incident.

Crazy Joe Gallo

With all potential evidence instantly evaporating into thin air...... weakly claiming that Crazy Joe Gallo did the hit.

Joe Gallo couldn’t find his ass with two hands, let alone orchestrate something this complex and grandiose.

It all points to a very sophisticated conspiracy. And I dare say, far more sophisticated than the Mafia would ever...could ever...plan or pull off!

Sad but true! Sound familiar? The grassy knoll theory of the John F. Kennedy assassination. The killing of his brother Robert Kennedy. Martin Luther King. The Bay of Pigs Invasion...and so on and so forth.

Anyone in this country that becomes enough of a threat, especially back in that era, was open for premature extinction! ..... far-fetched you say?

Not to Anthony and Joseph Colombo Jr., and not to the many other mob guys who have whispered this theory over the decades among themselves!

In fact many guys were actually so spooked for years afterward, they chose not even to discuss the subject.

The fact that Anthony himself waited till the very end of his life to write about it and expose it to the public shows the level of apprehension on the part of his own blood family to wait decades later to breathe a word about their true feelings on the subject.

This world can be a very complex place! And the so-called “good guys” often don’t wear white hats. And the bad guys are not always who you think they are!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfgwuESJqHE&t News footage after Colombo was shot.

Joseph Colombo, Sr. – “The Civil Rights Mafioso”

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Joseph Colombo, Sr. – “The Civil Rights Mafioso”

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You May Also Enjoy

Vincenzo (Vinny) Aloi – Businessman Mafioso

Anthony (Tony Long) Ricciardi – “Kid Chocolate”

Anthony Frangipani – “Tony the Frog”

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