MURDER IN THE GARMENT DISTRICT

A painstaking reconstruction of a sensational 1949 murder and a tumultuous era that marked the beginning of the long decline of American labor unions.

Union organizer William Lurye received a hero’s funeral after he was stabbed to death by a mob assassin in New York’s Garment District. However, it soon became clear that Lurye was not quite the noble idealist eulogized by David Dubinsky, president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. On the contrary, his moral complexities reflected those of labor itself in a less-regulated era in which the law of the jungle often prevailed. A grand jury indicted two men for Lurye’s murder—Ben Macri, an associate of crime boss Albert Anastasia, and hired hand Johnny Giusto—but both beat the rap: Macri was acquitted amid suspicions of witness tampering, and Giusto vanished. In this well-researched but less-than-riveting history of the murder and aftermath, Witwer and debut author Rios, both professors at Penn State Harrisburg, show the seismic effects of the case: It helped lead to congressional hearings on labor racketeering that pitted a relentless Robert F. Kennedy against Teamster head Jimmy Hoffa, a televised spectacle that dealt unions a blow from which they have never fully recovered. To a striking degree, write the authors, “the growing level of income inequality in the United States has coincided with the historic decline in rates of union membership.” Timely as that message is when presidential candidates have made workers’ wages and benefits a key campaign issue, the book loses much of its suspense with Macri’s acquittal halfway through; much of the later material covers events that deepen the context for Lurye’s murder without advancing that central story. Some of that content—particularly regarding the remarkably brave women who risked their lives to organize garment workers in northeastern Pennsylvania—is fascinating, but a stronger narrative thread might have extended its reach further beyond its natural home in the college classroom.

A worthy but imperfect marriage of true crime and a history of labor racketeering.