Joseph Bonanno - Mob Re-organization

Mob Re-organization

After Masseria's death, Maranzano outlined a peace plan to all the Sicilian and Italian gang leaders in the United States. Under this plan, there would be 24 gangs (to be known as "families") throughout the United States, each of whom would elect its own boss. In New York City, five Mafia families were established, headed by Luciano, Profaci, Gagliano, Vincent Mangano and Maranzano respectively. At the head of the whole organization would be the capo di tutti capi (the boss of all bosses), namely Maranzano. This final article of the plan did not please many of the gangsters, especially Luciano. As a consequence, Luciano arranged Maranzano's murder.

Bonanno was awarded most of Maranzano's crime family. At age 26, Bonanno became one of the youngest-ever bosses of a crime family. Years later, Bonanno wrote in his autobiography that he didn't know about the plan to kill Maranzano, but this is highly unlikely; Luciano would have almost certainly had him killed as well had he still been loyal to Maranzano.

In place of the capo di tutti capi in Maranzano's plan, Luciano established a national commission in which each of the families would be represented by their boss and to which each family would owe allegiance. Each family would be largely autonomous in their designated area, but the Commission would arbitrate disputes between gangs. The purpose of this organization was to prevent another bloodletting like the Castellammarese War, and according to Bonanno, it succeeded. The establishment of the Commission ushered in more than 20 years of relative "peace" to the New York and national organized crime scene, and Bonanno wrote: "For nearly a thirty-year period after the Castellammarese War no internal squabbles marred the unity of our Family and no outside interference threatened the Family or me."

Bonanno was nicknamed "Joe Bananas", a name he despised; his family was sometimes called "the Bananas family" after his nickname. A much safer nickname to use around him was "Don Peppino", a diminutive of his original Italian name.