 a term they used to talk about the five families in New York. Am I wrong? You're not wrong. In the older days, leading up to probably the 1950s, the mob was just one organization, often referred to within the Italian community as the Black Hand. Right. If you watch the movie Godfather, for example, there's a few references to that, and some of the old-timers even got the Black Hand tattoo put on their bodies.