One Righteous Man : Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York (9780807012611)

by Browne, Arthur

  All you needed was a supply of alcohol and a serving place out of the immediate reach of federal agents or cops. Ranging from the seedy to the elegant, speakeasies grew so common that a New York Sun columnist would eventually write that “the history of the United States could be told in eleven words: Columbus, Washington, Lincoln, Volstead, two flights up and ask for Gus.”33

  Vast quantities of illicit liquor poured forth, none more plentiful than bootlegged goods financed by Arnold Rothstein. Described by his lawyer as “a man who dwells in doorways, a mouse standing in a doorway waiting for his cheese,” Rothstein smelled plenty. He locked in contracts with distillers in Scotland, transferred the cargo to Irving “Waxey Gordon” Wexler, who controlled smuggling along the New York–New Jersey coast, and passed the alcohol to Lucky Luciano, who built a distribution network for clandestine drinking spots. Together, Rothstein and Luciano grew fabulously wealthy from a criminal enterprise that was unique for seeming a godsend to millions.

  Each man’s success was remarkable in its own right. Rothstein pulled his off despite being snared—and dodging jeopardy—in the gambling scheme that fixed the 1919 World Series. Luciano, meanwhile, organized a one-hundred-man army that would morph into a powerful Mafia crime family after Prohibition’s repeal. With Rothstein selecting his wardrobe and instructing him in dinner table etiquette, Luciano enjoyed outlaw celebrity while purchasing ever more influence with ever more money—including cash delivered directly to police headquarters.

  Reminiscing with Hughes, Battle cast alcohol enforcement as one more straightforward police duty. If he felt that the entire police department had been sent on a destructive fool’s errand, he chose survival over principle amid the rising corruption. At home, he could talk to Florence, the Chief, and Wesley about cops who were selling protection to bootleggers, cops who were trafficking in seized contraband, cops who were letting cargoes drift ashore on the waterfront, but on the job Battle kept his mouth shut and followed orders. He took no action without express prior approval. Like every cop, he had seen how crossing someone big had very nearly destroyed a man who was as tightly wired at the top of the department as a man could be.

  On January 19, 1919, Inspector Dominic Henry led a raid on a West Side apartment in which, he discovered, Rothstein was playing craps. As cops wielded a battering ram, someone inside opened fire with a revolver. The shots wounded two detectives. Nothing came of the bloodshed until newspapers questioned why the police and district attorney had failed to file charges. Finally, a grand jury indicted Rothstein, only to have a judge dismiss the case amid reports that the doorway mouse had bought his way out for $32,000. In the ensuing furor, Henry was charged with perjury, convicted and sentenced to two to five years in Sing Sing prison. He escaped that fate only through the intercession of an appeals court, his near miss hammering home to cops the danger of barging through the wrong door.34

  INSPECTOR SAMUEL G. BELTON commanded the Special Service Division. The son of Irish immigrants and a widower, Belton had joined the force in 1891, the era of rampant vice and rampant graft; had made good in the Tenderloin when Devery transacted business at the street-corner Pump; and had bonded with Enright as a trustee of the Lieutenants Benevolent Association. When a coveted lieutenancy opened, Enright’s influence gave Belton command of a fifty-officer squad that enforced public health laws. When Belton was about to be denied promotion to captain with the expiration of a civil service list, Enright secured special authority to boost his friend’s rank. And, finally, Enright identified Belton as the cop he trusted to navigate the shoals of politics and Prohibition.35

  To the men of the division, Belton could be both a powerful patron and a protective shield. Wanting both, Battle could only strive to meet his demands. Often, those entailed infiltrating a speakeasy, gambling house, or brothel to observe criminal activity, an especially tough challenge for Battle. Many a white-run joint wanted nothing to do with a black man, and many a black operator knew who Battle was. He hit upon an audacious solution: Battle asked Belton for permission to work with a raw black recruit who would be unknown as a cop and who could be trained to go undercover where Battle couldn’t. The request went up the chain and came down with a positive response.

  Battle found an excellent undercover man in twenty-one-year-old Harry F. Agard. Although he was the son of African Americans, Agard could be mistaken for Chinese because his skin tone was golden and his features had an Asian cast. Especially important: Agard had a memory that was almost photographic.

  Under Battle’s direction, they embarked on well-chosen investigations, Agard working his way inside a gambling operation or speakeasy and Battle staging a raid when signaled. Belton dispatched them on several occasions to bust fan-tan games in Chinatown, exploiting Agard’s appearance and his initiative in learning rudimentary Chinese phrases. More often, Belton targeted drinking spots here, there, and everywhere in Manhattan.

  On West Fifty-Third Street off Broadway, Battle remembered, “there was a certain loft where the best bonded liquors, choice wines and champagnes were sold illegally.” Agard got in and emerged holding a bottle, the proprietor at his shoulder. Battle took the proprietor into custody and found “more than fifty-thousand dollars’ worth of excellent stock.”

  “It took several patrol wagons to haul all this liquor to the stationhouse,” he told Hughes, adding, seemingly with a chuckle, “Some of it never got there,” as fellow officers made off with alcohol for their own enrichment. The courts disposed of the rest.

  “No warrant, no evidence! Case dismissed,” a magistrate declared over Battle’s protest that he hadn’t needed a warrant under the circumstances. “The place reopened that evening with a champagne party attended by large numbers of Broadway celebrities and politicians,” Battle recalled.

  As enforcement of an unpopular law undermined the criminal justice system, the vagaries became more pronounced. Battle won the conviction of Greenwich Village bootleggers after staging a raid that discovered barrels of whiskey and copper stills. But he was thrown out of court after busting a speakeasy on Third Avenue at 125th Street. He set before the judge a healthy sample of the liquor he had seized, along with three .45-caliber handguns. Again, he remembered, “The judge barked, ‘Lack of evidence! Case dismissed.”1

  Then, a spectacular crime gave Battle the opportunity to prove his mettle as a detective. Shortly after ten-thirty on the night of December 18, 1921, three men bearing concealed guns walked through the majestic doors of the Capitol Theatre on Broadway. Built at a cost of more than $65 million (in twenty-first-century dollars) the Capitol had fifty-three hundred plush seats, a wide screen on which to display silent films, a broad stage for song and dance numbers, and a pit for a seventy-member orchestra. The imperious Major Bowes served as impresario. Later to gain fame by staging that era’s American Idol, he drew throngs with movies featuring stars such as soon-to-be “King of Hollywood” Douglas Fairbanks.36

  Man’s Home, a drama about a businessman whose wife falls in with bad company, was playing as the gunmen donned masks and made their way to the theater’s business office. “Stick your hands up and be quiet,” the leader ordered as they burst in on three men and one woman.

  The robbers bound the men with wire, left the woman untied, closed them in a closet, and escaped down a fire escape and into a cab with $10,000.37 The newspapers played the story big. The detective squad of the West Forty-Seventh Street stationhouse got the case. They had little to go on. Then, through contacts among black New Yorkers, Battle met a source late at night in Central Park. The man named two of the bandits and said the Capitol’s elevator operator, William Singleton, had laid out how they should pull the robbery.

  Singleton was African American. Battle tracked him down, took his confession, and hauled him to the stationhouse. Brimming with excitement at having cracked the most publicized crime of the day, he delivered Singleton to the detectives, only to discover that the tough Irishmen had no intention of allowing an African American to outsh
ine them. They spat that the case had been none of Battle’s business and ordered him to get lost. Worse, the white detectives stole his accomplishment with lies. The newspapers reported that Daly, Cordine, Ferguson, Garrity, and Manning had identified Singleton and secured the confession.38 Major Bowes showed his appreciation by giving Battle and Agard lifetime passes to the Capitol’s shows. That was all the reward they got.

  DESPITE THE DEPARTMENT’S overt racism, Battle continued to believe that Enright was a man of surprisingly liberal racial views. The commissioner had promoted former Pennsylvania Station railroad cop Wesley Redding to become the department’s first full-fledged black detective. He had also given important recognition to African American officers in general. Then and today, cops formed associations based on ethnicity, religion, and other markers of group identity—Irish cops in one society, Italians in a second, Jews in a third, and so on. Battle’s fellow officers broached forming an organization of their own. Initially, he resisted. The concept of blacks symbolically separating from whites seemed to run counter to his belief in integration. His colleagues told Battle they were seeking only an equal privilege that would allow for mutual assistance. Battle accepted their nomination as the man who would ask Enright for recognition.

  Battle presented the petition. Enright said no. Blacks had numerous opportunities to join the many associations that were open to all cops, he said. Battle pressed his point, telling Enright that “like other groups we wanted our own distinctive organization.” Enright reconsidered and gave departmental approval to the Guardians Society. Battle became the first president of an organization still in existence nine decades later, and he credited Enright for playing square.

  ATOP ELEVEN STEPS, the front door opened into finer living space than Battle had ever imagined he could provide for Florence, Jesse, Charline, and Carroll. Parlors, studies, bedrooms, dining area, kitchen, baths, and two staircases filled four handsomely appointed stories. There was a full basement and a backyard with a garage that had been built for a carriage. On July 12, 1922, Battle placed the title to the townhouse in Florence’s name, counting himself the beneficiary of the white man’s race foolishness.

  The family’s new home was the work of a developer named David King, who had set out in 1890 to build an unparalleled neighborhood. With financing from the Equitable Life Assurance Society, he purchased a Harlem tract between Seventh and Eighth Avenues and commissioned three architects to design 146 row houses. King assigned the block front on the south side of West 138th Street to James Brown Lord, who had drawn notice for the Beaux Arts beauty of a now-landmarked Manhattan courthouse. Lord gave his residences a Georgian look and sheathed their exteriors with red brick and brownstone. The work of designing the north side of West 138th and the south side of West 139th went to Bruce Price, whose portfolio included a Yale University lecture hall. Price used yellow brick, white limestone, and terra-cotta to fashion houses in the Colonial Revival style. The renowned Stanford White, architect of the Washington Square Arch, drew from the Italian Renaissance for homes along the north side of West 139th. He covered them in rusticated sandstone and rose-colored bricks accented by pink mortar.

  As beautiful as the row houses were, King found few takers amid a severe economic downturn. Equitable Life foreclosed, and the value of the company’s investment fell further as developers flooded the area with new housing. This was the era when real estate mania swept Harlem in anticipation of subway construction. After the bubble burst, Equitable Life leased the properties to rent-paying businessmen and professionals. The company held to a whites-only policy for almost all of the next two decades. Finally, in 1919, relinquishing hope of a white resurgence, Equitable Life put the row houses up for sale to all comers. From September that year through 1920, blacks took ownership of fifty-four of the residences, with many more buyers soon to come, including Battle, who purchased 255 West 138th.

  As Harlem was the place to live for African Americans, the row houses were the place to live in Harlem. Barbers, waiters, dressmakers, and domestics who aspired to upward mobility became neighbors to doctors and lawyers, as well as to a concentration of pathbreaking entertainers and racial “firsts.” The homeowners were seen as strivers, and the blocks took on the name Strivers Row.

  Harry and Ethylene Pace were among the first to welcome the Battle family. The Paces lived in an abutting townhouse. A year younger than Battle, Harry Pace was born in Georgia and studied at Atlanta University when Du Bois served there as a professor. He worked for a time as business manager of an ill-fated journal edited by Du Bois, then embarked on ventures in insurance and banking that took him to Memphis. There, Pace met W. C. Handy, the musician now known as “The Father of the Blues.” Pace joined Handy in songwriting under the aegis of the Pace and Handy Music Company.

  He saw their future in New York. The recording industry was coming to life in the city, but the phonograph companies were no more open to blacks than any other area of commerce. Handy would remember confronting “the beast of racial prejudice,” while Pace recalled: “I ran up against a color line that was very severe.” Undaunted, he founded a publishing and recording business for African American music. When the Strivers Row townhouses came on the market, Pace purchased 257 West 138th and Handy bought 232 West 139th. Pace set up shop in the basement and recruited twenty-three-year-old Fletcher Henderson to serve as music director of the Pace Phonograph Corporation’s Black Swan record label. Henderson would soon purchase the row house two doors down from Handy’s and go on to lead an orchestra that pioneered the smooth sound of swing. When Battle moved in, Pace had an eight-man orchestra and a sales network in major cities. He advertised with the slogan, “The only genuine colored record. Others are only passing for colored.”39

  Around the neighborhood, Battle shared the enthusiasm generated by Pace, Handy, and Henderson as they sold the talents of African Americans. Often, a fourth musical great would come across the street from 236 West 138th to revel in the burgeoning of blacks in entertainment. No one had enjoyed more success than Eubie Blake. The son of former slaves who took to the piano as a child, Blake had teamed up with Noble Sissle to write Shuffle Along, a musical comedy that took Broadway by storm in 1921 with tunes like “I’m Just Wild About Harry.” As Battle moved onto Strivers Row, the show was within a few days of ending a 484-performance run. The chatter was about how Blake was taking Shuffle Along on the road for a tour that eventually extended for two years.

  Across the rear drive, Battle met Vertner Tandy, New York’s first licensed black architect and owner of 221 West 139th. Down the sidewalk, at 221 West 138th, he encountered Will Marion Cook, the preeminent black composer and conductor of an earlier generation. Harry Wills, the black heavyweight boxing champion, was around the block at 245 West 139th. Love of boxing drew Battle naturally to Wills. Known as “The Black Panther,” Wills came up from New Orleans to become successor to Sam Langford, the black champion who had helped train Wesley for firehouse combat.

  Now, as Battle joined him on Strivers Row, Wills was angling for a bout with reigning world champion Jack Dempsey. On the very day that Battle took the deed to his new home, the newspapers reported that Dempsey had signed a statement of intent that read: “The said Jack Dempsey agrees to box the said Harry Wills for the heavyweight championship of the world.”40

  Among all his neighbors, Battle had perhaps the most in common with Dr. Louis Tompkins Wright, who lived diagonally across the street at 218 West 138th. Eight years younger than Battle, Wright was born in Atlanta and raised as the stepson of a pioneering black doctor. He was fifteen when white-on-black violence swept the city. With gunfire crackling, his stepfather pressed a rifle into his hands with the order: “Son, you cover the front of the house. I’ll cover the back. If anybody comes through the gate, let ’em have it.”

  Schooled at historically black Clark Atlanta University, he set his sights on studying medicine at Harvard. He submitted his academic transcript and letters of recommendation and arrived at the
school for an interview, at which time the director of admissions discovered that he was black. Wright refused to leave without the interview he had come for. Finally, exasperated, the biochemist asked, “Mr. Wright, do you have any sporting blood in your veins? Will you agree, if I ask you a few questions here today that I will never be bothered with you again in life?”

  Wright underwent a grilling about chemistry, won admission, and graduated fourth in the class of 1915. Setting out to specialize in surgery, he applied for positions at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston City Hospital, and Boston’s Peter Bent Brigham Hospital—and was offered only a laboratory job at Mass General, one that would deny him contact with patients. Regretfully, Wright put aside his principle that hospitals should be peopled by doctors and patients of all colors and took a position at historically black Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, DC. There, he proved wrong the widely held beliefs that African Americans were more susceptible than whites to diphtheria and that the recently discovered Schick test for immunity to the bacterial lung disease was useless on black skin. With the outbreak of World War I, Wright enlisted in the medical corps. His record included a study that taught how best to accomplish small pox immunizations.

  Home from the war and married, Wright moved to Strivers Row and opened a practice on Seventh Avenue. His office was a short distance from Harlem Hospital, the community’s sole health-care institution and part of the city’s public hospital system. It may as well have been miles away. The staff was all white, while the patient census was increasingly black. Wright applied for a position. Under community pressure, hospital chief Dr. Cosmo O’Neill appointed Wright as Harlem Hospital’s first black staff physician—but only as clinical assistant visiting surgeon, meaning that he could treat ambulatory patients for a few hours a week without pay or admitting privileges. O’Neill’s attempt to blunt the impact of Wright’s presence was to no avail. His superiors demoted O’Neill from hospital superintendent to monitoring ambulance traffic.