How One Of America’s Most Notorious Gangsters Was Brought Down By A Boundary-Pushing Pioneer

Carter was working in law at a time when neither women nor African-Americans were reaching prominent positions. No other Black woman, in fact, had ever graduated from Carter’s law school before she did. There were clearly obstacles in front of her, yet she persisted and overcame them.

Carter rose through the ranks and eventually became part of a legal team in a high-profile case against a prominent mobster. Even now, though, she was still faced with issues to maneuver. She was assigned a role that was seen as quite minor, while her male colleagues worked on the meatier parts.

But even though Carter had been trusted with lesser parts of the case, she worked hard. And in a testament to her skills as a lawyer, she actually noticed something that nobody else had. Based on her discovery, she helped formulate a strategy that ultimately altered the outcome of the trial.

And the strategy set a template for prosecution cases that came afterwards. Carter’s vision had transformed the legal basis for tackling organized crime, and it left one particularly powerful boss behind bars. Thus her work had shaped the country in a very real way.

Around that point in the first half of the 20th century, though, the idea that an African-American woman could change society might have seemed implausible. But Carter was determined to make a positive contribution, arguably inspired by her mom and dad’s activism as she was growing up.

By the time she was in her late 20s in 1927, Carter decided to sign up to Fordham Law School. At this point, she’d already started a family, but she was determined to get to work. According to an account from her own grandson, she considered home life to be a “prison of domesticity.”

Carter’s initial experience of law school didn’t work out as planned, though. After just a year, her child fell ill and she had to take time out to look after him. She missed out on a year and a half of her studies, but she eventually returned to fulfill her childhood dream of working in law.

Thus in 1932, Carter graduated from Fordham, the first ever African-American woman to leave the school with a degree in law. And from there, she really hit the ground running. She established a practice of her own and was later recruited to the special prosecutor’s office of New York City, which was headed up by one Thomas E. Dewey.

Dewey had already developed something of a reputation for himself by the time Carter joined his team. He’d been working for the U.S. Justice Department, attempting to prosecute bootleggers operating across New York. Thanks to his efforts, some notorious figures like the big-time gangster Waxey Gordon had been taken down.

By 1935, Dewey had been given a high-profile job by New York’s governor at the time. The lawyer was charged with going after mobsters and racketeers, as there were concerns that the law was going easy on them. This role meant that Dewey was now pursuing Lucky Luciano.

Originally from Sicily, Charles “Lucky” Luciano was arguably the most important figure behind the American Mafia as we now know it. Under his leadership, the Mob developed into an enormous institution with astounding levels of money and power. Its profits were now claimed to rival those made by the American steel industry.

Luciano had arrived in America at the age of 10, where he quickly got involved with organized crime in New York. He spent his early years working for some prominent gangsters, like Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria and Arnold Rothstein. Before long, Luciano was earning millions of dollars for himself in bootlegging.

The end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s was a turbulent period for the Mob — and Luciano was at the center of it all. Rival bosses were going to war with each other, resulting in terrible violence and death. Luciano expertly worked his way through these disputes, playing different sides and eventually emerging as the head of the Genovese crime family.

Luciano was a talented planner, so he took a leading role in coordinating the activities of the Five Families. These were the major crime groups that each controlled a specific share of the New York underworld. The collective was made up of the Genovese, Colombo, Bonanno, Lucchese, and Gambino clans.

To stop violence from breaking out among the Five Families, it was necessary to organize. So Luciano started to host meetings with his counterparts from the other four groups. These meetings led to the formation of the Commission, which basically acted as a governing body for the underworld.

Luciano lived a luxurious life at the center of American organized crime. With all his riches, he was able to reside within the most prestigious of properties. He adorned himself in the finest suits while he was transported around by his own chauffeur. In short, he’d reached the upper echelons.

But flashing the cash as a leader of the Mob tended to attract a lot of attention. And so it was with Luciano, who became a target for special prosecutor Thomas Dewey in 1935. Dewey organized a team to target Luciano, with one member in particular making a valuable contribution. 

Dewey’s team was made up almost entirely of men, with Eunice Carter being the only exception. The male lawyers were ordered to build cases against Luciano in relation to things like murder, narcotics, and blackmail, whereas Carter was tasked with focusing on sex work.

Speaking to The Hill, Carter’s grandson Stephen made it clear that this job was seen as quite minor compared to those given to the men. “In other words, she was assigned to a backwater, essentially busy work, to keep the public happy,” he explained. Carter still took her role seriously, though — and she soon left her mark on the case.

As she looked into the illegal sex trade of New York, Carter realized something intriguing. She noted that several of the sex workers who’d been picked up by police over time had the same legal representatives as each other. And these representatives also had links to Lucky Luciano.

Carter informed Dewey of the pattern that she’d identified. Realizing that she was onto something, Dewey used her work as the basis for organizing a series of raids. A huge number of sex workers were then taken into police custody, with many of them unable to meet the cost of bail.

The authorities took advantage of this situation, interviewing the large number of people who’d been arrested during the raids. And they managed to extract information from a number of detainees, leading them back to the “boss of bosses.” Lucky Luciano had now been implicated in some serious crimes and was brought to trial.

Luciano’s defense was built around the notion that the alleged links between himself and sex work were weak. But in court, Dewey cross-examined the mobster and tried to get him to crack. He asked Luciano how it was possible to sustain his lifestyle by working entirely within the confines of the law.

On June 6, 1936, the trial reached its dramatic end. The verdict was in: Lucky Luciano had been found guilty. He was now set to spend several decades behind bars, maybe the rest of his life. Thanks in part to the work of Carter, one of the most powerful gangsters in America had been taken down.

Carter had been handed a job that seemed pretty minor, but she nonetheless excelled, as her grandson Stephen pointed out to The Hill. He said, “Where all the other assistants failed to tie Luciano to any criminal activity, Eunice, to everyone’s surprise, constructed the case that Luciano profited from prostitution in New York City. That was the only charge on which he was ever tried, and he was convicted.”

It must be remembered that all this occurred at a point in history that wasn’t exactly easy for either female or Black lawyers. The American Bar Association was clearly weighted against these groups at the time. Yet Carter had the strength to face down the prejudices set against her as an African-American woman.

Carter’s grandchild Stephen is a law professor at Yale, and he’s also written a book about his grandmother’s life and career. Titled Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster, his book obviously spends some time on the Luciano case. And it highlights just how difficult it would have been for his grandmother.

At one point in the book, Stephen writes of his grandmother, “She was Black and a woman and a lawyer, a graduate of Smith and the granddaughter of three slaves and one free woman of color, as dazzlingly unlikely a combination as one could imagine in New York of the 1930s... and without her work the Mafia boss would never have been convicted.”

Given the challenges she faced, Carter’s work on the Luciano case was significant in its own right. But beyond the specifics of the case itself, it also had far wider implications. The novel strategy that Carter had pursued actually served as a template for future legal processes involving the Mob.

Even though it was Carter’s intervention that ultimately brought down Luciano, however, it was Dewey who’d led the prosecution. And it was his name that people remembered most, which meant he could use his fame to move into politics. He tried to get himself elected as the governor of New York, failing on the first attempt in 1938 but winning four years later.

While Dewey’s career was skyrocketing, Luciano was languishing in prison. He’d been shipped off to New York’s Clinton Correctional Facility, which was located close to the border with Canada. This place had a reputation because of its remoteness, even picking up the nickname “Siberia.”

But that wasn’t the end of Luciano, and circumstances soon led to him becoming involved with Dewey once again. After the U.S. entered World War II, the government sought the Mob’s help with its effort. Luciano, with his strong links to people in Italy, was viewed as useful. So in return for his help, Governor Dewey committed to releasing the gangster.

True to his word, Dewey did allow Luciano to leave prison when the war had come to a close. The condition, however, was that he leave America. So the mobster took off for Italy before spending time in Cuba for a while. It’s said that he even hung out with Frank Sinatra during that time.

Yet the American government eventually pressured the Cubans to kick Luciano out of their country. Thus, he was sent packing back to Italy, where he spent the last of his days. In 1962, at the age of 64, he suffered a heart attack and passed away.

Lucky Luciano had lived his life as a leader, which was an ambition shared by his adversary Dewey. The lawyer had made it to the powerful position of Governor of New York, but he wanted more. He ran for president in 1944 and 1948, but he lost out to Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, respectively.

Despite those losses, Dewey remained a prominent figure within the American political establishment. And in 1968, President Richard Nixon asked him if he’d take up a position on the Supreme Court. Feeling his age by this point, though, Dewey declined the offer. Three years later, at 68 years old, he died.

As for Carter, she continued to work in law following the conclusion of the high-profile Luciano case. She eventually moved into the private legal sector and also became associated with several organizations as an advocate for the rights of women. In this capacity, she was even called upon for advice by the United Nations.

Not long before she passed, Carter spoke in Greece at the International Council of Women conference. Here, she said, “Skill, talent, and ingenuity prevail in woman-kind as well as man-kind. A country or community which fails to allow its women to choose and develop their individual beings in an atmosphere of freedom thrusts away from itself a large part of the human resources which can give it strength and vitality.”

Carter passed away in 1970 at the age of 70, leaving behind a powerful legacy. Not only had she taken on the Mob, but she’d also fought against the prejudices that existed against African-Americans and women. In more ways than one, then, Eunice Carter left an indelible mark on history, though she wouldn't be the first unknown trailblazer to do so — or the last.