Legend of Lucchino: The Man Who Took On the Mob

In booming Pennsylvania coal country, immigrant Italians were exploited by corporations and terrorized by mafiosi. One brave insider turned against them, risking everything to stand up for workers.

Illustration by Julie Benbassat | Story edited by Brendan Spiegel

On a balmy night in July of 1920, Sam Lucchino walked home alone from work in Pittston, Pennsylvania. God only knows what weighed on his mind as he made that fateful stroll up Railroad Street toward the boomtown’s “Italian colony.”

The miner’s strike likely dominated his attention. Earlier in the day, Lucchino had met with a higher-up at the Pennsylvania Coal Company, where 10,000 men walked off the job, rallying against the company’s collusion with vampiric third-party subcontractors, who were bleeding the rank-and-file workers dry. By then, Sam, a former mobster turned detective, saw protecting Pittston’s Italian immigrant community as his life’s mission, and he was knee-deep in the mess.

Walking alone late at night was dangerous. Sam’s brother, Peter, usually accompanied him. But Peter was away, and for 10 years, Sam had lived as a marked man on Railroad Street, within spitting distance of those who wished to see him de…