Preston Miller, the owner of the Hippodrome Theatre, one of the most popular entertainment spots in the Ward, and the final resting place of Shalesha Painter, was angry. He tried desperately to hide his anger, but his voice betrayed him. He screeched, “But Sheriff Mason, it’s your job to solve these murders. It’s affectin’ business!”
The Sheriff just grunted at this. He exhaled smoke in Preston’s direction. “Not mine, it ain’t!”
“Preston, Sheriff, what about the fact that two women have been viciously murdered?” interjected Mrs. Perditia Jones. Perditia was the owner of Perditia’s Kitchen and Salon, and an obvious connoisseur of food. She was what they called a big boned woman, with dark brown skin like dark chocolate and two big bulging eyes to match. A staple in the Jackson Ward community, she was revered by many for her business acumen and her quiet strength. “You’ve got to put some men on the street to protect us womenfolk, Sheriff,” she pleaded.
Sheriff Mason just kept puffing on his cigar. The smoke circled around the room like a death grip. Preston Miller inwardly wished he could shove that cigar down Mason’s throat, but he had a business to run and could not afford to be shut down. That’s what they wanted anyway, and he would not give them the satisfaction. Instead, he looked calmly at Mrs. Perditia Jones and replied, “I think our business is done here, Mrs. Jones. Let’s be on our way.”
Sheriff Mason quickly got up from his chair. “Now listen here, boy! Don’t go back down there to the Ward startin’ up stuff. We want to keep the peace around here, don’t we?” and he glared at Preston Miller like a hawk about to swoop down on its prey.
The vein in Miller’s forehead began to throb as he and the sheriff stared briefly into the eyes of the other.
Not wanting any more trouble, Mrs. Jones quickly offered her hand for Preston to take to assist her in removing her large frame from the chair. “Peace has already been interrupted in the Ward, Sheriff Mason,” stated Perditia Jones as she lifted her heavy frame from the chair the sheriff had not offered her when she had first come in.
Preston and Mrs. Jones walked quietly but quickly to the front door not saying a word more to Sheriff Mason. They had failed in their mission to get the assistance of the local law, not truly much to their surprise. But the committee had felt that all legal efforts must be exhausted in this matter. So, closing the door shut gently behind them, the two left Sheriff Mason’s office with as much dignity as they could muster under the circumstances.
Sheriff Mason shrugged his shoulders in a careless gesture and sat back down and continued to smoke his cigar as if nothing had ever happened. And to him, that’s just what was happening. There was no need to waste the town’s money trying to protect the Negroes of the Ward. They were gettin’ too uppity for him anyways, trying to be like the good white folks of Richmond. Them darkies think they better than us, he said to himself. They needs to be taught a lesson. “Brody, get in here!”
Deputy Brody quickly came into the sheriff’s office. The lanky young man stood trembling before Sheriff Mason. Mason scared him to no end, having seen first-hand what the popular sheriff was capable of. Brody was from a poor working white farm family on the outskirts of Richmond, Dinwiddie County, to be exact. He needed this job to help provide for his family like many of the working folks – white and Negro – in the City. So he kept his mouth shut about the things he saw and did what was asked of him.
“Yes, Sheriff Mason,” the meek voice squeaked. Brody twirled his hat in his hands nervously.
Sheriff Mason took a brief second to size up the young man. He wished he hadn’t hired him, but Brody kept his mouth shut. He followed orders without asking questions. Sheriff Mason needed more men like him. “Keep an eye on them niggers, will ya’? We don’t need them stirrin’ up more troubles for us ‘round here,” Sheriff Mason sneered from under the billowing smoke of his cigar.
Deputy Brody squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and put on his hat. “Yes, sir!” And he walked quietly out of the sheriff’s presence.
Preston and Perditia headed back to their businesses and homes in “The Deuce,” also known as Second Street. They had a lunch meeting scheduled at the café in the Sessions Hotel with other local businessmen in Jackson Ward to discuss their meeting with Sheriff Mason, the murders and their effect on their businesses.
The Sessions Hotel was a staple in Jackson Ward. Located directly on Second Street, it, along with the Slaughterhouse Hotel, was a prominent hotel in the area, and it was home to famous black athletes, musicians and actors who were forbidden to stay in hotels owned and frequented by whites because of Jim Crow. Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, a native son and famous tap dancer, was a frequent visitor of the hotel and its casino. He also performed often at the Hippodrome Theatre whenever he was in town. Duke Ellington even made time in the “Harlem of the South.”
The Ward was a home away from home for these men and women who chased a dream while oftentimes running from a rope. The Ward provided its inhabitants with safety, racial uplift and a chance to forget about their worries for a time while they entertained their own people who were more than happy to pay for a temporary memory lapse. The music flowed wild and free like the liquor before Prohibition, but even that was temporary, at least when the police patrolled the neighborhood.
By the time Mrs. Jones and Mr. Miller arrived at the hotel, the meeting had already begun. “These murders are hurting our business, ladies and gentlemen, and the white folks in town don’t give a damn because they want to see us go down,” Mr. Sessions vehemently spoke as the pair walked in forlornly.
Sessions had begun to see his sales numbers go down slightly and it worried him. He had been doing business in the Ward for a long time – invested all that he had into the Sessions Hotel. The discovery of dead women near his hotel was not exactly a star attraction.
“Well, we can’t let that happen,” interjected Preston Miller as he took a seat angrily at the table. “We just can’t!”
“Damn right we can’t!” exclaimed Sessions.
“What’d the sheriff say?” inquired Jack Johnson.
Johnson was the owner of the Johnson Insurance Agency, the largest Negro insurance agency in the area. His company sold life insurance for Negroes because the white agencies were known to not be trustworthy by the people in the Ward. They had stolen land from some of the older folks who had once been slaves and were illiterate or had created false life insurance policies that ended up paying out nothing when it came time for the families to use them to bury their loved one.
A confirmed bachelor for life, Mr. Johnson was trusted by his people. He not only was born and raised in Jackson Ward, but he personally signed nearly everyone in the Ward to a policy, making sure to explain slowly and carefully to each customer what the policy said. When he had learned of what the white insurance agencies had been doing while working on the railroads, he remembered what his father had said to him, “We takes care of our own.” He took it upon himself to educate himself about insurance, and then opened up his own shop right there in the heart of the Ward. His volcanic voice could often be heard several blocks away from his office located directly on Second Street on the corner of Broad Street.
“He said what we suspected he’d say,” replied Miller bitterly.
Johnson looked hard at the floor, and his often booming voice was now soft like cotton. “I had to pay out the Bills policy today. Not a good feelin’ to hand over a check for to bury your dead chile, gentlemen.”
“We must do something about this, gentlemen,” said Mrs. Jones who was still standing waiting for someone to offer her a seat. “Sheriff Mason is not going to help us.”
“Take my seat, Mrs. Jones,” Prometheus Jackson offered. Prometheus Jackson was co-owner of Jackson’s Barber Shop, and he was a little sweet on the widow Jones. He himself had lost his wife of 20 years a few months ago and was rather lonely. He pulled out his chair and waited for Mrs. Jones to sit, and she did so without thought to what was in Jackson’s heart. S
he had other things on her mind.
Mr. Turner slammed his bourbon down his throat angrily. “I told you so, Mrs. Jones. That man would sooner see us all back in slavery than to see us prosper.” Turner was the oldest person at the table and in the Ward. He had seen it grow over the last twenty years, his newspaper having a heavy hand in its growth. He was its unofficial mayor.
Turner was born right after slavery had ended and had seen the power of white folks and their hatred for Negroes in Richmond and all across the South. In 1875, two years before Reconstruction ended in the South and Jim Crow began, when he was 10 years old, his father was lynched by a local white mob covered in white robes and hoods. They had accused him of raping a local white woman. They had no witnesses, of course, but it didn’t matter because he was a nigger and was not allowed to testify in a court of law as a witness against a white man … or woman. But even worse, he was a successful business owner, having grown his general store into a profitable local business just outside of Richmond’s Church Hill that catered to Negroes and whites.
“They snatched him from my parents’ bed in the dead of night. I remember hearing my mother begging for mercy, but they didn’t pay her no heed. My father said he’d be okay, but she knew he lied. I was hiding under my bed as my parents had instructed me to, but I had to see what was going on. I peeked out the window of my room and I saw them string him up by his neck and then light a fire under him.
I can never get my father’s screams out of my ears and that white-sheeted mob yelling, ‘Burn nigger, burn!’ They held my mother down and only let her go when he had finally quit screaming. She weren’t never the same after that night.” Turner told anyone who’d listen to this story when he felt they were starting to believe that white folks in Richmond wanted to do right by them. The fact that some were working alongside Negroes to end segregation in the heart of the South never entered the conversation. It didn’t matter at all for Mr. Turner, who was born and raised in the vicinity of Richmond.
That memory and its anger smothered the air in the room. Everyone’s memories had gone to a dark place that was made just for them. All of them had experienced the darkness of mob lynching in some way or another. It’s what kept them close to home – to their own kind. They had worked hard to grow their businesses in the Ward and to keep their families safe. The outskirts of the Ward were fraught with unknown danger; in the Ward – in their neighborhood, their little part of the City of Richmond – they were safe because they could control what happened there. But now, it was all threatened by some lunatic who was killing innocent Negro women and dumping their bodies in Jackson Ward. They were under attack.
Prometheus Jackson was the first to return from his white-sheet nightmare. He had pulled up another chair by now next to Mrs. Jones. He slammed his fists down on the table viciously. “We can’t just sit here and do nothing, damn it!” His dark brown eyes misted over, and his lips quivered. “We can’t let this happen to the Ward. We’ve worked too hard and given our blood, sweat and tears. This is our home.”
Jack Johnson leaned back in his chair and rubbed his temples slowly between puffs on a cigar. Johnson was a formidable man in business and size, having been a railroad worker before deciding to go into insurance. His six foot, five inch frame and volcanic voice had caused him lots of trouble with white men who felt intimidated by his stature and often tried to force him into fights in order to take him down. But Johnson was not a fighter. He was a thinker and a planner, and he had thought long and hard about what he was about to say ever since Annie Hilks’ body was discovered floating in the James River. Paying out the life insurance policy for Sheritha Bills had been the icing on the cake, though. The smoke embraced his large frame gently and then made space for his words. “Why don’t we hire Sy?”
“Sy Sanford?” asked Mr. Sessions, who was slowly pouring everyone another small round of bourbon as he kept one eye on the front door of the parlor. Prohibition – the white man’s attempt to enforce morality - was choking the life out of businesses – Negro and white - that made a profit off of selling liquor. Sessions and others had to not only control the amount they gave to their customers, under the cover of darkness, of course, but also found themselves being rather industrious and inventive as they came up with new ways to get their customers what they needed when they needed it.
He offered water to Mrs. Jones, but she just glared heatedly at him until he poured her some bourbon as well. She was not a silly-framed woman. Mrs. Jones could hold her liquor – better than some in the room, in fact. Sessions smiled ruefully and then said, “How’s he gonna help us?”
“He just opened up a securities office on Jackson Street about a month ago,” explained Jack Johnson. “I insured his office.”
“Yeah, but that’s securities, not solving a murder,” replied Sessions as he returned the bourbon to its hiding place behind the bar.
Raymond Turner, who had been silent for a while, spoke up. “The Deuce” has got to be saved,” he said sternly, and stared everyone around the table down as if he dared them to challenge this. “It doesn’t matter if he’s in securities or what not, he’s all we got. The sheriff isn’t gonna do nothin’ about these deaths unless a white woman dies.”
“And that’s really gonna be a problem for us if that happens,” warned Prometheus as he twirled his empty glass around. “What are we gonna do?”
“A woman is a woman. It don’t matter her color,” chimed in Mrs. Jones. Very vocal on the position of Negro women in the community, Mrs. Jones often held classes in her own home on how to open and run a business, which she was an expert at, she said, because she had two successful businesses in Jackson Ward: the kitchen and the salon.
She was even the first woman in the Ward to vote when it became legal in the United States for women to vote in May of 1919. She had led several demonstrations in the Ward to make sure her sisters were educated on this important citizen right. It had often cost her a few dollars for bail money as many cities and states in the country refused to allow women of any hue to exercise their rights as American citizens to vote. Some people – both men and women – felt that it was not a woman’s place to be involved in things political, but women like Mrs. Jones refused to believe that they had no rights. “We’s breathing, ain’t we?” was Mrs. Jones’ rallying cry for the Negro women of Jackson Ward.
The men in the room remained quiet, smoking on their cigars or staring hard at the floor. Mrs. Jones was a formidable woman who didn’t back down, they all knew, so there was no point in starting an argument with her. She continued, “When’s man gonna learn that he can’t move without us. You're the head, but we’re the neck,” she said bitterly as she drank the rest of her bourbon. No one said anything to challenge her, though. “I say we hire the man. He’s a good man, come from a decent family down in Petersburg.”
“But he’s got a bad drinkin’ problem. How can we rely on him to be discreet?” asked Preston Miller.
“We all got our faults, Miller. Don’t go judging a man for somethin’ as natural as drinkin’. We’re doin’ it now, ain’t we?” said Turner.
“Illegally, I might add,” interjected Sessions sarcastically.
“Didn’t he serve in the war?” inquired Mrs. Jones. The men all nodded their heads in confirmation. “Well, then that explains why he drinks. War will turn a non drinkin’ man into a drinker.” And the men all nodded in agreement again, having heard numerous stories and even seen with their own eyes the effects the Civil War and even the 10-week war that many had forgotten ever happened, the Spanish-American War of 1898, had on the men in their lives.
“Well, whose gonna ask him to take the job?” Jack Johnson wanted to know. There was a moment of silence before Mrs. Jones spoke up again.
“It might be better comin’ from a woman … he might not turn down a woman’s request, if he’s a gentleman, that is.”
“Alright, then! Go and see him tonight before the show, Mrs. Jones. Tell him we need him real bad. Y’all co
ming to the show, right? Mr. Calloway doesn’t come this way too often, you know,” stated Preston Miller.
Miller bought the Hippodrome Theatre -- built in 1904 – in 1920, and had grown attached to the grand theatre. He had spent thousands to renovate it, along with the Taylor Mansion, which was next to the theatre and home to Miller and his family. He worked tirelessly to fill its seats for movies or a theatre performance, and he always succeeded. Negroes – rich, famous and in-between – traveled from great distances to come and see a show at the only Negro theatre in this part of the South.
“I’ll be a little late, but I plan to attend the show,” said Prometheus Jackson as he stood up to leave. “Mrs. Jones, I’d be obliged to escort you after your talk with Sanford?” The other men cleared their throats in an effort to fill the silence with sound before Mrs. Jones responded.
Mrs. Jones proceeded to exorcise her large frame from the small chair. She looked up at Mr. Jackson and replied softly, “We’ll see how it all goes.” Jackson smiled shyly and the other men quickly resumed talking.
“Mrs. Sessions wouldn’t hear of missing Mr. Calloway. She is a huge fan, and this is my anniversary present to her as well. Before you go, Johnson, when should we all meet again?”
“Mrs. Jones, ask Sanford if he’d meet with us a week from now to get an update on the case,” said Turner. “We’ve got to put an end to this matter soon. Things gettin’ mighty riled up in this world lately.”
Everyone agreed to meet in a week’s time and proceeded to leave the hotel. They felt lighter in spirit than when they had first sat down for the meeting. Little did they know they’d meet again before the week was up to commiserate not only over another murder, but over news from up North. Wall Street was in trouble.
Chapter 3
Sy Sanford had served in the Army as a captain during World War I. He was a soldier in the infamous 369th Infantry of the 93rd Division, known as the “Harlem Hellfighters.” They were one of the few Negro soldiers to see war in France and had served well even though they had not been well trained as American soldiers because of racism. In fact, they were trained as French soldiers because the American government felt that France had much more experience training Negro soldiers after their use of French colonial troops from Senegal.
Murder on Second Street: The Jackson Ward Murders (Sy Sanford Series Book 1) Page 2
