Italian American Civil Rights League

The Italian American Civil Rights League is presented through its rallies, local chapter, and connections to Joseph Colombo and Russell Bufalino. In the book’s account, the League’s public visibility had a dangerous consequence: the publicity surrounding its rallies drew attention to the alleged mob and, in Sheeran’s understanding, contributed to the decision to target Colombo.

Rallies and Publicity

A rally organized under the League’s name at Columbus Circle became the setting for the 1971 attack on Joseph Colombo. Sheeran recounts that Joey Gallo arranged for a gunman to shoot Colombo in front of his family and relatives. Colombo remained in a coma for several years. The attack’s public setting mattered in the account: it violated the expected protocol of striking a boss away from his family and made an already conspicuous organization part of a violent episode.

Sheeran attributed the sanction for the attack to Colombo’s refusal to stop holding rallies. As he understood it, the events brought too much attention to the alleged mob, and Colombo would not heed efforts to persuade him to end them. This is Sheeran’s explanation of the motive, not an independently established statement of the League’s formal aims or of the decision-making behind the attack.

Chapter and Recognition

The League also had a chapter in Russell Bufalino’s area of upstate Pennsylvania. Sheeran says he received the chapter’s man-of-the-year award and kept its plaque in his room. That detail places him within the League’s local circle of recognition, alongside his close association with Bufalino, while the account provides no further description of the chapter’s activities or structure.

The organization thus occupies two sharply contrasting roles in the narrative: it offered a public platform for Colombo, whose rallies became a source of unwanted exposure, and it provided a local setting in which Sheeran was honored. The book gives no fuller institutional history, but these details connect the League’s public-facing activity to the private alliances and violence surrounding its prominent members.