Al Capone Biography
By: Taylor Nelson
The person I chose to do a biography about was Al Capone, and the book I read was Uncle Al Capone: The Untold Story from Inside His Family, written by Deirdre Marie Capone. The infamous Chicago gangster Alphonse “Al” Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 17, 1899 and died on January 21, 1947 of a stroke. He was the fourth of nine children from his Italian Immigrant parents, Theresa and Gabriele Capone. As one of the most famous American Gangsters, he rose to fame during the Prohibition era as the mob boss of the Chicago Mafia and was known as Public Enemy number one. Al Capone had both a positive and negative impact on society. Positive impacts he had on society
was that he cared a lot for other people, unless they did something to harm his family. When the stock market crashed, Al set up the first soup kitchens around Chicago using his own money. These soup kitchens provided free meals three times a day for anyone that had lost their job due to the stock market crashing. He also told store owners to provide food and clothes to the needy at his expense as well. A negative impact that he had on society was that he was responsible for killing or organizing to kill other people, but this was mainly against other gangsters. The most famous organized killing is known as the Valentine’s Day Massacre, where Al Capone ordered the killing of seven gang members that belonged to rival gang-leader Bugs Moran.
During the Prohibition era, Al Capone became one of the most important gang members after Johnny Torrio, his former gang leader, fled the country. After Torrio left, Al Capone became the leader of the gang and was in control of bootlegging and providing alcohol for people in Chicago. Since many people were not in favor of the Prohibition law, many people didn’t care if they were breaking a law by buying and drinking alcohol. To Al Capone, he was more of a businessman than a criminal.