Murder in the Garment District by David Witwer

Author:David Witwer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2020-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

7

THE CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS: REVELATION AND RHETORIC

In August 1957, Life magazine produced a two-page photo spread of the McClellan Committee’s hearings in New York City that provided an iconic portrait of labor racketeering in the Cold War era. The spread captured a moment during the second week in which an impeccably dressed John Dioguardi snarls as a cigarette dangles from his mouth, while another man—the newspaper reporter Dio has just punched—falls out of frame. Entitled “Strong Arm Dio Doing What Comes Naturally,” the photo emphasized the contrast of Dio’s high-end style and streetwise menace. Or rather, as the short accompanying article put it, “The brutishness he had tried hard to mask” by dressing as a respectable businessman “erupted uncontrollably on the face of gangster Johnny Dio.”1 Versions of the photo had already appeared in the national daily newspaper coverage of the incident. Dioguardi’s snarling face became one of the most widely used images from the most extensive investigation into labor racketeering in the 1950s. By 1959, the Reader’s Digest journalist Lester Velie would note that “Johnny Dio” had “become a household word synonymous with union racketeering.”2

He embodied a central message promoted by the McClellan Committee hearings: the existence of nefarious ties between notorious gangsters and powerful union leaders that made labor racketeering a national threat. Th s was a depiction of labor racketeering that tapped into Cold War era concerns. It emphasized organized crime’s expanding influence and the danger presented by unscrupulous union leaders whose growing economic and political power created a new internal danger to America, on par with the threat of communism. But in showcasing that message, the McClellan Committee hearings failed to present the quotidian reality of labor racketeering as it affected the lives of real workers. The voluminous records compiled by the committee’s diligent staff make it clear that they had amassed all of the information needed to tell this story. The investigators had encountered the grim reality of union corruption and come to know the victims as individuals with dignity whose stories were compelling and important. But those same committee records indicate that committee leaders chose to focus their hearings on a more politically expedient message, one that would center on Johnny Dio.

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