Ragen's Colts

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Ragen's Colts was a predominantly Irish street gang which dominated the Chicago underworld during the early twentieth century later becoming part of the Chicago Outfit under Al Capone.

Originally established as an athletic club, the Ragen's Athletic and Benevolent Association was soon dominated by team pitcher Frank Ragen eventually hiring the club out to Chicago Democrat politicians for election fraud. The Democratic Party soon gained control over the Chicago City Council and Illinois legislature due to the gangs activities. The gang quickly expanded numbering 160 members by 1902 and 2,000 by 1908 earning the motto "Hit Me and You Hit 2,000". By the end of the decade the gang had financed the careers of hundreds of city officials including prominent alderman, police chiefs, and city treasurers including gang leader Frank Ragen himself who later became Chicago police commissioner. By 1920 many members of the gang had become prominent criminals and gunmen such as William "Gunner" McPadden, Harry Madigan, Joseph "Dynamite" Brooks, Danny McFall, Hughey "Stubby" McGovern, Davy "Yiddles" Miller, and Ralph Sheldon.

During the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 the gang began instigating fights between black and other Southside neighborhoods as the gang later led raids into the Black Belt, looting homes and killing several people, and blacks retaliating by attacking other Southside neighborhoods. As news of the attacks were heard other neighborhoods around the city began rioting lasting four days and resulting in 34 deaths, of which 14 black and 20 white, and over 1,000 injured. The Ragen Colts also directed their anger at the Ku Klux Klan for its anti-Catholicism. In 1921, "In September, 3,000 people from the stockyards district (of Chicago) watched as the Colts hanged in effigy "a white-sheeted Klansman."" (Tuttle)

During Prohibition the gang soon began bootlegging although member Ralph Sheldon formed his own group and began hijacking rival liquor shipments. While the gang came into conflict with the Chicago Outfit during the bootleg wars Capone, impressed with the gang, hired them as enforcers for the organization and were eventually absorbed into the organization following the establishment of the National Crime Syndicate in 1932 as many members would later become top leaders of the Chicago crime syndicate.

Several members of Ragen's Colts would leave to form the NFL football team the Chicago Maroons, later known as the Chicago Cardinals, in 1920.

[edit] References

• Kelly, Robert J. Encyclopedia of Organized Crime in the United States. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. ISBN 0-313-30653-2
• Sifakis, Carl. The Mafia Encyclopedia. New York: Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3
• Sifakis, Carl. The Encyclopedia of American Crime. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2005. ISBN 0-8160-4040-0
• Tuttle, William, M. Jr. Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 University of Illinois Prses, 1996.