So, after looking over some material on our three candidates (Billy the Kid, Henry Ford, Al Capone), I came up with some points about each of them:
Billy the Kid: To me, he is the most “legendary” of the group. Since Ricky already did a bit of digging and asked some good questions, I just researched some of the surface information and looked around to make sure there would be enough material to create a decent syllabus of readings. There should be plenty. A quick search of Fondren reveals pages and pages of books about him, as well as newspaper clippings and songs and poems. Also, there has been a movie adapted from his exploits every decade since the 1930s. Beyond the abundance of resources, there is a lot about his legendary status to be explored. Why did people criticize the sheriff’s killing of an armed and dangerous outlaw as “unfair”? What made people so attached to him? Was he some sort of vicarious scapegoat for the people of the time, someone they could pin crimes on and imagine his reckless life as their own? At this stage, I’m inclined to pursue him as our legendary figure.
Henry Ford: Henry Ford is different than either Al Capone or Billy the Kid. Most of what he did was well documented, so he is not the “shrouded in myth” kind of legendary, but instead he attained massive amounts of respect by innovating and revolutionizing industry. It is hard to believe one man pioneered as much as he did: the 40-48 hour work week, a relatively high minimum wage, the assembly line, and the car for the working man. There are a few questions that warrant asking: how do people reconcile such an undoubtedly great career with his apparent anti-Semitism? Did he really invent everything people attribute to him, and what does that say about the public’s perception of inventors? There is plenty of material on him as well, but I think I would prefer to work on Billy the Kid.
Al Capone: As another criminal, many of the same broad questions can be asked of him as Billy the Kid, especially about his perception by the general public. The most basic: why was such a criminal admired by people? Is this a distinctly American thing? Society teaches us that crimes and therefore criminals are bad, but there appears to be some threshold where a person goes from inconsequential and looked down on to revered. What defines that threshold? In Al Capone’s case, we could look at the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre and other, lesser known crimes to see how they are remembered and how they affected his image. There is tons of information on him as well, to the point where we might become overloaded trying to slog through it all to find interesting, quality readings for the class. Overall, I like the allure of Billy the Kid’s western escapades a bit more than the straight gangsterism of Al Capone.
In the next week or two, we should read through some of the books in the library or scholarly journals online to get a sense of what we’re up against!
Some of the questions you raise about why Americans seem to admire and remember criminals are also raised in the readings we will be doing for our week on “Bandits.” Another good place to look at to answer some of those questions may be Richard Slotkin’s work, such as his book Gunfighter Nation, which is referenced in this shorter article.