The woman who brought down a notorious mob boss

The Power of One

Eunice Hunton Carter, a granddaughter of slaves, went on to become the lawyer who built the case against Charles “Lucky” Luciano, one the 20th century’s most powerful criminal kingpins. It was an assignment fraught with danger, but one Carter performed with tenacity, intelligence and a sense of mission, discovering the Achilles heel of a man who’d evaded prosecution for years.

She did so in the face of the entrenched racial and gender discrimination of the 1930s, whose impact on the historical record has only started to come clear. Her story was lost and buried for decades, and Carter—who went on to a successful legal career and advocated for social justice—is only now receiving her due.