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.

With motoring still in its infancy at the turn of the 20th century, female drivers were few and far between. In 1905, Dorothy Levitt put women drivers on the map in spectacular style. But before she became a world-record-holding car racer, she held an altogether different kind of record. Setting the fastest speed on water, she hit a whopping 19.3 miles per hour in 1903, the first to achieve such a feat. But that was as nothing compared to her other accolades.

Starting in 1905, Levitt set three world records in under two years. Setting the bar for the “longest drive by a lady driver,” she travelled over 400 hundred miles in two days. Then, she set the first-ever Ladies’ World Speed Record, driving at 79.75mph. The following year, she smashed her own ceiling with a top speed of 90.88mph. Unsurprisingly, she was dubbed the “Fastest Girl On Earth.”

Despite having been born in 1815, long before the invention of the home computer, Ada Lovelace wrote software. Having become interested in maths as a child, thanks to her mom’s insistence on a good education, Lovelace spent much of her adult life elbow-deep in mathematical problems. And in 1842, she wrote what would come to be considered the first-ever computer program.

While translating an Italian paper involving a machine that could calculate enormous sums, Lovelace hit upon the idea that this analytical engine was capable of much more. To prove it, she then wrote the software for the first-ever computer program. Although the engine was never built, this 19th-century visionary has long been credited with recognizing the potential of computers long before anyone else.

Yes, Henrietta Lacks is technically immortal. And the story of this woman’s contribution to humanity is, frankly, astonishing. Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951, and a biopsy of the tumor was taken, as is routine. And once they were in the lab, doctors soon noticed something unusual about her cells.

Lacks’ cells seem to behave vastly differently to other people’s; specifically, they survive much longer in lab conditions. This amazing longevity means that researchers actually have the time to study them, something with which they had previously struggled. While Lacks herself died in 1951, her cells live on even today. Thanks to her, scientists have been able to learn more about cancer, radiation poisoning and A.I.D.S.. In fact, her cells even played a significant role in the development of a polio vaccine. Her incredible biology makes her one of the most important women in medicine.

Nellie Bly, born Elizabeth Cochrane in 1864, did many remarkable things in her life. As a journalist, she essentially invented undercover journalism when she spent ten days as a patient in an insane asylum. Her subsequent exposé told a bleak picture of abuse and neglect and led to changes at the hospital in question. And then she did something else arguably even more amazing.

Spurred on by the journey completed by Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days, Bly decided to attempt to emulate the feat of its fictional hero. Incredibly, she beat that time by a whole eight days, using just trains and boats. And she did it entirely alone, in 1899. The journalist even held the world record, briefly, for circumnavigating the globe.

Sarah Breedlove, better known to her customers as Madam C. J. Walker, was a 19th-century entrepreneur and giant of the beauty industry. Specializing in make-up and hair-care products she made herself, the company employed thousands of women at the height of her success. But that’s not why she’s on the list.

Breedlove’s product range was so successful that at one point, it was estimated that roughly 20,000 American women had trained to use and sell her products. And with such a large company came, it seems, a very tidy profit. When she died in 1919, she was the richest self-made woman in the United States. And with an estate worth close to $600,000, which in today’s money is about $8 million, you can see why.

While everyone has heard of Neil Armstrong, not quite as many are familiar with Valentina Tereshkova. Which is a shame, as not only did she become the first female astronaut, she was also the youngest. In addition, the Russian is still the only woman to have undertaken a solo space flight. And her incredible records don’t end there.

In total, Tereshkova spent three days in space, circumnavigating the globe a whopping 48 times. During that single mission, she spent more time in space than all the American astronauts combined had at the time. And, on her return, she produced yet another first. The Russian cosmonaut married a fellow space traveler in 1963; their daughter Elena is the first child born to two parents who have both left the Earth.

This flamboyant athlete was as well known for sporting six-inch nails and bright, asymmetric outfits as for smashing records. And during the 1988 Olympics, Griffith Joyner did all of those things in style. Having missed the 1980 Moscow games because of a U.S. boycott, Flo Jo made her Olympic debut at Los Angeles in 1984, where she scooped a silver in the 200m. But by the time the Seoul games rolled around in 1988, she was really hitting her stride.

During those summer games, Griffith Joyner took home one silver and three gold medals. And the speed records she set in the 100m and 200m races still stand, more than 30 years later. All of which means the sprinter was, and remains, the fastest woman the world has ever seen.

Rachel Carson’s talent for popular science ‒ taking complex subjects and making them easier to understand ‒ actually changed America. The aquatic biologist and second-ever female employee of the Fisheries and Wildlife Service, she spent years researching and studying the effects of the pesticide DDT. And what she discovered shocked the country.

By studying the wildlife most affected by the chemical, as well as the humans that used it, Carson uncovered scandalous levels of destruction and illness. And, it seems, DDT was causing all of it. She revealed the results of her research in the 1962 book Silent Spring. The work then became the impetus for a grassroots environmental movement, which resulted in the banning of pesticides including DDT. The author’s ideas reportedly also led to the 1970 creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Over the course of Beulah Henry’s illustrious career, she successfully registered 49 patents and invented more than 100 wondrous things. Receiving her first patent at 25, for an ice-cream freezing machine, she went on to become an independent businesswoman, famous for her creativity. And believe it or not, that all started with umbrellas. Or, more specifically, parasols.

Henry, like many women of the early 20th century, carried a parasol. They were expected, however, to match the holder’s outfit, which meant owning multiple sun-shades. The inventor decided that wasn’t good enough, and came up with a version that included removable fabric panels. She also invented a typewriter that could duplicate documents long before the concept of photocopying had occurred to anyone. And, unusually for the age, she not only received credit for her ideas, she also got paid.

Once described as the “the world’s most beautiful woman” by movie producer Louis B. Mayer, Hedy Lamarr was far more than just a pretty face. Having escaped an abusive marriage in Europe before making it big in Hollywood, the star’s career then took a very unusual turn. And it involved military equipment.

The actor’s relationship with millionaire Howard Hughes gave her access to a team of engineers who would build anything she invented. But this wasn’t just the whim of an eccentric recluse. Lamarr was a keen scientist, and reportedly gave aviator Hughes the idea for more aerodynamic plane designs. And then she invented a frequency-shifting radio guidance system for the U.S. military. And those very ideas underpin both today’s Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technology.

Mathematician extraordinaire Katherine Johnson once described herself as a “computer who wore skirts.” In fact, during her time at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (N.A.S.A.), so valued was her software-like brain, that she even checked the results of any digitally-completed work. And if not for her, humans might not have set foot on the moon.

Before anyone had heard of Neil Armstrong, Johnson successfully calculated the trajectory for America’s first-ever manned space flight in 1961. And when it came time for a lunar mission, the mathematician was front and center, making sure the Apollo craft hit its target. In 2016, her achievements, long overlooked, were celebrated in the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures.

Bold, inventive and, some would say, reckless, Dorothy Lawrence refused to take no for an answer when it came to following her dream. After the outbreak of World War One, she wanted to report from the front lines in France. After several newspapers turned her down, the would-be journalist came up with a novel way to get the story.

Lawrence made her way to France as a freelancer, and made friends with some British soldiers. She then persuaded them to smuggle out an army uniform for her, and teach her to march properly. The potential reporter then darkened her skin with boot polish, cut her long hair, and even dragged a razor across her face to imitate shaving rash. Disguised as Private Denis Smith, she spent ten whole days in the trenches before giving herself up.

Aside from being one of only a few women to ever achieve the rank of rear-admiral, Grace Hopper also invented something that has today become commonplace. Believe it or not, her work led to the creation of the phrases “bug” and “debug” with regard to computer programming, after a moth flew into a system she was working on. But that’s not the only reason she’s on this list.

Hopper invented a computer program that allowed those systems to translate English into their own language in the 1950s. Her ideas have since become the basis for many high-level programming languages that are still used today. But her achievements don’t end there. When she retired from the Navy aged 79, she was the oldest commissioned officer on active duty. And in recognition of her work, the computer scientist received the Defense Distinguished Service Medal in 1986.

After working as a nurse in occupied France during the Second World War, Andrée Borrel joined resistance fighters. She worked at first helping Jews and British soldiers escape to Britain, but eventually found herself in England. Recruited by the government to work undercover in her native country, Borrel was trained and tasked with setting up a freedom fighters network near Paris. And to get there, she did something no other woman had done.

Borrel became the first woman to parachute into enemy territory in September 1942. There, she was the second-in-command of a resistance organization before the Gestapo arrested the freedom fighter in 1943. Executed by the Nazis roughly a year later, the British government recommended a posthumous award for the heroine. The application praised “her great bravery and devotion to duty.”

Even as a teenager, it’s safe to say Alice Coachman excelled at sport. While still at high school, she broke the national record for the high jump. Once at college, her winning streak continued with records in the 50m, 100m and 400m relay. And she also dominated on the basketball court as her team won three conference championships. Then she set her sights on the Olympics.

Coachman was aiming for the top prize in the high jump at the 1940 games. Due to the Second World War, however, both they and the 1944 games were canceled. The athlete eventually got to compete at the 1948 Olympics in London, where she smashed the record with a 5ft 6in jump. King George VI himself presented her with the gold medal, the first ever won by a woman of color.

Mary Edwards Walker was unusual for her time, and not just because she was often arrested for wearing men’s clothes. She qualified as a doctor in 1855, the lone woman in her graduating class, and went on to become the Union Army’s first female surgeon. And it was during the Civil War that she won her medal.

As far as Walker was concerned, her job wasn’t confined to treating wounded Union soldiers. In fact, she would often cross battle lines to treat injured civilians and enemy fighters. And while assisting a Confederate doctor during an amputation, she became a prisoner of war. Arrested, bizarrely enough, for being a spy, the surgeon spent four months in captivity. For this heroism and bravery, President Andrew Johnson personally awarded her the Medal Of Honor. She remains the only woman to receive one.

Due to the illegality of talking about, sending or receiving birth control at the turn of the 20th century, many women found it difficult to plan their pregnancies. Margaret Sanger saw the problems unplanned parenthood could cause and she was determined to do something about it. And her steely resolve eventually resulted in a change to federal laws.

Opening America’s first-ever birth control clinic in 1916 led to Sanger’s arrest and incarceration. Her conviction sparked a movement across the country, leading to more clinics. After several legal victories for the movement, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually agreed with the campaigner. It took nearly 50 years, but contraception was finally legalized nationwide in 1965.

If the phrase “tough as nails” had a human inspiration, it could well be Wilma Mankiller. Over the course of her life, she battled injuries from a horrific car crash, breast cancer and kidney failure, among other things. Health problems never slowed her down, though, and after a stint as social worker, Mankiller made history.

At the end of 1985 Mankiller became the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation. On the way she faced sexism, death threats and attacks on her personal property. Yet despite this opposition, she won by a narrow margin. The leader remained in power for nearly a decade, focusing on social programs such as school-building. But she also made the conglomerate that contains all of the Nation’s commercial interests multi-million-dollar profits.

While Francis Crick and James Watson are famously credited for unveiling the structure of DNA, that simply wouldn’t have been possible without Rosalind Franklin. The Cambridge-educated X-ray crystallographer and chemist had a vital role in the discovery, but at the time, she had no idea of the part she’d played.

While working on the same problem as Crick and Watson, Franklin had taken some X-rays that hinted at DNA’s double-helix structure. However, the images were reportedly shown to Crick and Watson without the crystallographer’s knowledge. And it was these illicit results that led the pair to the answer for which they had been hunting. Their female colleague wasn’t credited for her contribution, and it’s only in recent times that she’s been recognized at all.

Mountaineer Junko Tabei’s list of firsts starts in 1969 when she formed Japan’s original ladies climbing club. Despite facing harsh opposition from her male counterparts, who believed women should concentrate on raising children, Tabei would go on to reach the summit of some of the world’s most challenging climbs. And it all began in 1975, on Mount Everest – just after she nearly died in an avalanche.

Using home-made sleeping bags and gloves patched with recycled car seats, Tabei reached the top of the 29,000-foot mountain in May 1975. Even an avalanche, it seems, couldn’t stop her. From there, she took on one of the most grueling mountaineering trials on Earth: the Seven Summits Challenge. Climbing the highest mountain on each of the seven continents took 17 years, but she completed the trial in 1992. As a result, the climber is the first woman ever to have done it.

Having graduated from high school at just 15 years old, it was clear that Antonia Novello would go on to great things. While studying medicine, she was Michigan University’s first female Intern of the Year. From there, she set up her own private practice, but wanted to help people on a grander scale. So, in 1979, she joined the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.

While on active duty, Novello devoted her time to pediatric A.I.D.S. research. That put her on the White House’s map and in 1990, President George W. Bush appointed her Surgeon General. Not only was she the first woman to hold the position, she was also the first person of Hispanic descent in the job. During her three-year tenure, she exposed the rise of A.I.D.S. among women and children, and campaigned against the marketing of tobacco to kids. By the time of her retirement, she’d achieved the rank of vice admiral.