Remembering "Bloody July": When the temperatures soared, and so did the body count

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) July 12, 2010 -- It was known as “Bloody July.” Eighty years ago this month, Detroit experienced a searing heat wave accompanied by a vicious gang war that pitted the local branch of the Sicilian mafia against the legendary Jewish-led group known as The Purple Gang. By the time temperatures and tempers finally cooled at the end of the month, the violence had taken the lives of gangsters, ordinary citizens, and, ultimately, the biggest media celebrity in the Motor City at the time, radio star Jerry Buckley.

1 2 3

Remembering "Bloody July": When the temperatures soared, and so did the body count

Welcome visit Our WebSite:

http://ThePurplesBook.com

The tumultuous events of July 1930 in Detroit are recounted in The Purples: A Novel , just published by longtime New York Times journalist and author W. K. Berger. The Purples (Ringer Books, 2010) focuses on the rise and fall of the notorious gang that emerged from the city’s Jewish ghetto and eventually seized control of rum-running operations on the Detroit River in the late 1920s. But as Berger’s novel shows, the tide began to turn for the Purples and other local gangsters in that Bloody July of 1930. During this period, a public that had previously been somewhat apathetic about gang violence suddenly became fed up and angry—particularly after Detroit’s favorite radio personality was gunned down in public by mobsters on July 23.

To this day, it’s unclear who was responsible for the brazen assassination of Buckley, which took place in the lobby of the deluxe LaSalle Hotel. Initially, some suspected the Purple Gang; then blame shifted to several Italian mobsters, who were prosecuted but not convicted. Certainly, more than a few people had a beef with Buckley, whose radio program had begun to assail the gangs and corrupt local politicians. But if Buckley, the Rush Limbaugh of his day, had enemies, he had a lot more supporters: More than 100,000 Detroiters turned out for his funeral.

The public outcry over Buckley’s death led to a Grand Jury investigation that drove many of the local mobsters out of town. It was the beginning of the end for the Purples, too, as the gang began to splinter into rival factions—with the final death knell coming when the Jewish gangsters turned on one another in 1931’s Collingwood Massacre (named after the downtown Detroit apartment complex where the killings took place).

The Purples: A Novel explains the origin of the gang’s name (spoiler: when the gang members were young troublemakers, a local merchant compared them to red meat that had gone bad and turned purple) and also offers up a back-story—largely speculative, author Berger says—which connects the origins of the gang to, among other factors, the virulent anti-Semitism in Detroit during the 1920s (which was fueled, in part, by Henry Ford and his notorious Dearborn Independent newspaper).

“Given all that was happening in Detroit at the time—the heavy influence of the Klan, the Palmer Raids, the popularity of Ford’s anti-Semitic newspaper—you could argue that the rise of the Jewish gangs was a reaction to a hostile culture,” Berger says. “But the Purples were far from heroic. They were brutal, and preyed on their own people.”

For more fascinating background on the life and times of the Purples and Detroit in its heyday, visit http://ThePurplesBook.com, where W. K. Berger has gathered historical tidbits about the gang and old Detroit (there’s even a section featuring Elvis Presley, who sang about the Purple Gang in his 1957 hit, "Jailhouse Rock").

More information can be found online at http://ThePurplesBook.com

purples book     purples book online     purples book trailer     purples book wk berger     shades of purple book  crime     detroit     heat waves