The Historic Beauregard Keyes House sits across from the old Ursuline Convent on Chartres Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans. In the 1880s, the area saw a large influx of Sicilian immigrants that came together to form a community in the French Quarter known as Little Palermo. During the influx of nearly 300,000 Italian immigrants, some of the more nefarious of the community adopted a practice known as Black Hand (La Mano Nera).
According to Britannica, Black Hand is the extortion practice involving sending threatening notes with menacing symbols like a black hand or daggers. The Black Hand would send letters to wealthy or influential people and demand money or services with the threat of physical harm, abduction, or property destruction if refused. The practice was common for the Italian and Sicilian gangs of the time in cities like New York, Chicago, Kansas City, and New Orleans.
Newspapers of the day told stories of New Orleans citizens facing their children being abducted, their buildings being destroyed by dynamite, and their lives being taken. While The Black Hand Society terrorized neighborhoods throughout New Orleans and specifically the French Quarter, one citizen refused their demands and met them with violence.
