Low Road

by Eddie B. Allen, Jr.

  “Boy, put that down! What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Unfazed by the presence of the handguns, Myrtle slapped his face twice, as if he were still just a child. Donnie had fucked up, and it damn sure wouldn’t be the last he heard about it from his mother. But at least her intervention might have saved him a trip to the County.

  His failure notwithstanding, Donnie’s quest for the big hustle, for untouchable criminal status, was as driven as it had ever been after he got home from Jackson. So it was by fate and circumstance—combined with their common interest in money—that Donnie became close friends with a woman who was called Miss Hattie. A senior citizen who was given the respect of an elder in the community, Miss Hattie was of an age that had brought her wisdom in more ways than one. The old lady operated an after-hours establishment and whore joint. She supplemented her income through the production and sale of bootleg corn liquor. Joanie would look down toward Miss Hattie’s house and laugh at the sparrows in the alley when they tried to fly after pecking at fermented corn kernels that had been thrown out. Miss Hattie shared her bootlegging secrets with Donnie, who decided he would become a distiller and sell his product to other after-hours social clubs in the city, like Miss Hattie’s. But having paid little attention to his science classes, he knew little about chemistry. The first makeshift still he opened for production overheated and exploded. Donnie would try again. Determination could be a motherfucker.

  * * *

  “United States of America versus Donald J. Goines.”

  The clerk at the Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Michigan announced the case in traditional fashion. Not “United States of America versus Bad Ass Nigger” or “United States versus Public Enemy Number One.” Even without the flashy introduction, however, Donnie knew it: This was the federal system. For better or worse, he had finally made it to the big time. It was another sentencing day, August 2, 1965. The Honorable Wade H. McCree Jr. took to the bench and addressed the young man before him.

  “Mr. Goines, you are before the court for the purpose of having sentence pronounced for the offense of unlawful possession of a still, sugar syrup solution, and unlawfully working in a distillery, of which you were found guilty by a jury when you were before the court previously.”

  From the beginning, it had looked pretty bad for Donnie. The prosecution spelled out its allegations against him: Under an assumed name, Donnie rented the lower section of a two-family flat in Detroit. His landlady declined to lease him the upstairs, but gave him the keys to it. Donnie later advised her that he had done the service of letting the upper for her to Johnnie Young, a brother who worked for Ford. Later investigation determined that no such person existed. A fed had placed the building—and presumably its occupants—under surveillance after he smelled fermenting whiskey coming from the home. Donnie was spotted at one point carrying two cement blocks into the second-floor apartment and was seen the following morning with his cousin, Curtis Stewart, entering the upstairs together. They remained inside for about twenty minutes. Not long after that, an agent watched Donnie and Curtis deliver fuel to the site of the distillery. While he was on his way to work later the same day, November 23, 1964, authorities for the government’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division took Donnie into custody. Curtis was snatched up just as quickly. Having acquired a search warrant, feds went into the flat and investigated. There on the second floor, a 110-gallon drum, or “stillpot,” was discovered propped up on blocks of cement. Inside the stillpot were 100 gallons of sugar solution. Also strewn about the upstairs were “various barrels and jugs, some with whiskey mash inside,” a report indicated. Empty sugar bags littered the apartment, and some were even found on the first floor, where Donnie was a tenant. There were all the makings of a fledgling criminal empire, and Donnie, the would-be king of it, had been at the center. The government felt there was “ample” evidence to convict him.

  Donnie had waited as Curtis faced the judge. He didn’t make out so bad, all things considered. Two years probation sounded like a sweet deal compared with federal jail time. The harshest words Curtis received had been issued for a matter completely unrelated to the whiskey still.

  “Oh, you have got a bad traffic record,” McCree told him. “In fact, it is a disgraceful record, I would say. There appear to be ten traffic violations over about a ten-year period.”

  “I don’t have any moving violations,” Curtis interjected.

  “Pardon me?”

  “I don’t have any moving violations in there.”

  Curtis explained that the offenses were for illegal parking during the time when he worked as a cab driver. After that, McCree decided maybe the background data in front of him wasn’t so bad. “There are some problems of nonsupport of your family, which troubles me,” the judge briefly lectured. “There are no felony convictions, though. You have never apparently committed a crime involving moral turpitude or requiring felonious intent.”

  A few more moments of questioning revealed that Curtis was training at Washington Trade School to become a steel fitter. In five days, he would complete the program. Soon, he was practically shining like new money in the courtroom. Curtis was going to get a chance to avoid being locked up. Instead, he’d get to take his pick of two or three available job opportunities at a rate of almost three dollars an hour. He could virtually walk away as if the federal conviction had never even happened. McCree closed with the remaining words of the lecture he had begun a few minutes earlier: “Now this is in consideration of the following facts: First, you have this family to support; second, you are re-training and you are equipping yourself to do this in a better way; and third, you have no previous felony convictions. Now, this means that if you make good, as we hope you will, we will close your file two years from now. If you violate any of the terms of your probation—and the probation office will give you those terms, and they are my terms—you will be brought in and the sentence here will be executed. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Curtis received instructions to make his probation appointment, and was told to have a seat. Judge McCree took his time as he prepared to share and discuss what he had learned about the remaining defendant in the courtroom. Donnie listened. “I have ordered a presentence report, which was prepared for me, and it reflects a great deal about your background,” McCree began. “I will tell you what it shows me. It is not altogether good. Oh, we start in 1958—there are some minor ones earlier—with a charge of Junction City, Kansas, where you received a twenty-day sentence, apparently involving some prostitutes working for you in and about an army base. Do you remember that?”

  Donnie spoke up. He attempted to cast the charge in a not-so-seedy light.

  “I did twenty days for vagrancy, your Honor.”

  “That was the official charge,” McCree noted, “but it is reported as involving that kind of activity. Then, in Flint, a twenty-dollar fine and thirty days for frequenting a house of prostitution. Do you remember that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then July 19, 1959, in Detroit, Michigan, a ten-dollar fine and thirty days in the house of correction on a charge of aiding and abetting. Was this the same kind of activity?”

  “Similar.”

  Judge McCree continued studying the report as he spoke.

  “I am overlooking some driver’s license and other traffic offenses. Then we get a serious one. January 25, 1961, assault with intent to rob, armed, in the Recorder’s Court, this is Judge Murphy—was that Judge George Murphy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  McCree seemed less than impressed with what Donnie presented of himself. It wasn’t hard to foretell what was to come. Leniency didn’t seem detectable in the judge’s tone.

  “A conviction and a sentence of two to twenty years in Michigan State Prison with parole June 25, 1962. It is reported that you carried a gun and that you and two other persons were involved in an attempt to rob a known numbers operator. I suppose if you were paroled in
1962 for two years, the parole had just expired when this offense took place.”

  Again, Donnie tried to mitigate the damage.

  “Sir,” he started, “maybe six months. I got off on early parole for good behavior.”

  “Six months.” McCree pondered. “Yes, that is a bad record, Mr. Goines, for a young man thirty years old.”

  Actually, Donnie was still twenty-nine. His birthday wasn’t for another four months. Finally, McCree laid the real numbers down for him.

  “The maximum penalty for this offense is $1,000 or two years on count one; $10,000 or five years, or both, on count two; $5,000 or one year, or both, on count three; and $1,000 or one year, or both, on count four.

  “Now, I will ask you, have you anything to say or any evidence to present in mitigation of punishment before the court pronounces sentence?”

  Donnie gathered a response: “Well, I am working now is about all I can say on my behalf. You have my record. I would like to get the opportunity to get probation, if possible.”

  “I can’t consider you for probation in light of this record. You have had prior felony convictions, and you know your way around. This isn’t the first time. This was a pretty deliberate thing … It appears that you owned the apparatus. It was a pretty deliberate thing. This isn’t a little activity.”

  With that, the judge served Donnie his fate. He was given eighteen months with “a chance to impress the parole authorities.” The federal pen at Terre Haute, Indiana, would become his new home for a year. Such was the penalty for criminal ingenuity. Myrtle and Joanie made the trip from Detroit to visit their forever-felonious loved one. Donnie would appeal the sentence but with little success. Through his lawyer, he contended there was insufficient evidence and argued that McCree had erred in his reading of a statute to the jury. Too little, too late was the appellate court’s response. It was 1968 when he returned to society again. Although he couldn’t have known it, Donnie’s incarceration might have been a blessing for his own protection this time around. For truly only God could have known what might have happened if Donnie had been walking the streets in the early hours of July 23, 1967.

  There was a private club, located above the Economy Printing Co. on the east side of Detroit’s Twelfth Street, which called itself the United Civic League of Community Action. The name might have meant damn near anything, considering the times. After all, the brothers, the sisters—even a lot of the white kids—were for action in the community. Cops said, however, that the only rhythm jumping off in this joint was booze. The club might have been one of the clients Donnie had in mind when he set up the whiskey still. The so-called blind-pig establishment was suspected of illegally serving drinks after 2:00 A.M. Officers prepared to raid the building in a mission to shut the motherfucker down. It was still about an hour before daybreak, and there was still a crowd inside the club. Completely unsuspecting, the partiers not only were minutes away from being arrested as the police took their positions but also were about to become a part of one of the most horrific incidents in the city’s history. It was Sunday.

  The cops made their move inside. As they began to bring out the 82 people arrested, a crowd of about 200 formed and started talking shit to the officers. When words began to seem insufficient, somebody threw a bottle. Then a brick that went crashing through the back window of a squad cruiser. Soon afterward, a fire was started and the first of what would be hundreds of stores was looted. Detroit was about to be turned upside down. The crowd at the scene had become a mob. Officers had few options for calling in backup because it was nearing the end of summer and a number of cops were on vacation. As a matter of fact, there were only a scant 193 policemen patrolling the entire city of a million-plus at the time when the chaos broke out. As it became obvious that the officers were overwhelmed, looting and hell-raising spread along Twelfth, down to Fourteenth, Linwood, Dexter, and Grand River avenues. One of the city’s two black congressmen, John Conyers Jr., braved his way out into the madness. He was joined by Detroit’s lone black councilman, Reverend Nick Hood. The pair hoped that they could use their rapport and influence with the people to get them to disperse. They hoped to preserve what was left of the community. But nobody was hearing it. Not today. By that evening, mayhem had spread to the East Side. Plundering and devastation was rippling through neighborhoods like tremors. Glass was shattered from countless numbers of windows and doorways. Debris covered the ground as if it were confetti dropped from the sky. Entire walls were removed, and roofs were torn off by fire devastation. Piles of broken wood, concrete, and ashes collected on the floors inside of what remained from blocks of ravaged structures.

  Probably hundreds saw the uprising as an opportunity to feed themselves and their families by breaking into grocery establishments. All of the shelves in an A&P supermarket were ripped off. The canned goods and meat had all been stolen from the store. Barbecue sauce covered the floor like blood where a diligently arranged condiment display had been knocked over by raiders. Just about every Caucasian-owned-and-operated business in the community was a potential target, as the rebellion’s participants—many genuinely frustrated, many just opportunistic—determined that this was a chance for them to take what had long been rightfully theirs. Liquor was hauled out of drug stores by the case, while others went after more valuable possessions. In the warmth of July, the victorious could be spotted strolling up Twelfth with fur coats draping their bodies. Then there were armfuls of clothing and jewelry, TV sets, radios, and other small appliances that traveled just as conspicuously. And thefts progressed to physical violence. Perhaps finding little worth the take at his shoe-repair shop, attackers seized the old man who owned it, pulling and dragging him out into the middle of the street, where he was beaten without mercy. A number of shop owners in the hottest areas chose to arm themselves, fearing that their livelihood was at risk. Black shop owners placed signs with sayings like SOUL BROTHER in their windows, reminiscent of the blood used to mark door frames in ancient Egypt during the Passover. They hoped, in some cases vainly, that the mobs would spare their businesses, just as it was told in the Old Testament how the Creator spared the lives of firstborn children in Hebrew homes. No one could truly know what could be expected. Unlike the ’43 disturbance, this was an explosion of tensions and hostility that was borne of economic circumstances and was directing itself primarily at the city’s economic foundation.

  As early as Sunday afternoon, it had become clear to Mayor Jerome Cavanagh that the hurricane of larceny, arson, and violence was too large for city resources to contain. Known for his liberal social views, the mayor had won 85 percent of the black vote in his 1962 election at age thirty-three. He had successfully solicited $230 million in federal funding, a good chunk of which was slated for programs that would benefit the Negro community. Only a year earlier, Look magazine had named Detroit an all-American city, under Cavanagh’s leadership, so it came as rather a shock that his constituents were in such an uproar. The best of his mayoral efforts had clearly been insufficient for the legions of folks who scoured the neighborhoods in search of places to burn and pillage. The efforts had clearly been insufficient for the sense of security lost among shut-in families who feared that this rage might literally spill over into their backyards. Too afraid to go out and buy bread and milk. Unsure of whether they would even find bread and milk at the market, judging by the damage they saw broadcast on their televisions or heard discussed on their portable radios. Governor George Romney was notified by his legal advisor that Mayor Cavanagh had requested assistance. The situation escalated when sporadic sniper fire was reported. Danger had begun to rain down from rooftops. His police force rendered ineffective, Cavanagh sought the support of the National Guard. On Sunday evening, a curfew was issued between the hours of 9:00 P.M. and 5:00 A.M. Romney declared a state of emergency, sending 400 state police officers and 7,300 Guard members into the eye of the storm. Many of the reserves, however, were ill-prepared to respond to such a major uprising. These were young men w
ho, in numerous cases, had only joined the Guard to avoid being drafted and sent to Asia to fight in the Vietnam War. They quickly proved no more capable of containing the violence.

  By now it was Monday, and the mayhem had not ceased in twenty-four hours. At 3:00 A.M. Romney phoned the vice president, who referred him to Attorney General Ramsey Clark for assistance with federal troops. But it was Tuesday morning by the time 4,700 airborne soldiers actually arrived at the danger zone dressed in full battle gear. As Washington debated with Romney—and the head of the troops who’d traveled to the scene attempted to demand a written request for assistance for the second time—the number of blazes being set reached its peak. More than 600 fire alarms had been registered, but firefighters were forced away by the raiders before they could do any good. The wasted time may have also cost one man his life. Among the thousands of black folks who had taken over the streets, Walter Grzanka, forty-five and Caucasian, might have been risking his safety when he ventured into hostile mob territory. But it probably became apparent that he, like plenty of others, was only out to take advantage of the situation when he headed toward a market on Fourth Street. The decision would cost him. Grzanka became the first casualty of the massacre when he was shot by the market’s owner as he ran away from the building. His take seemed a paltry one for having put so much at stake. Cops found nine pairs of shoelaces, four packages of tobacco, and had seen cigars in his pockets.

  Now it was Wednesday morning. As in ’43, armored vehicles, including tanks, rolled down public streets. All of the additional military enforcement was beginning to make an impact. More than 3,000 arrests were made that day. So many people were taken into custody that the county jail had no chance of holding them. They were transported and housed in Jackson, at Milan Penitentiary, in surrounding county facilities, on city buses, in the police garages and gymnasium, and even at the public bathhouse on Belle Isle. It was a haphazard system of holding suspects, but considering the circumstances, no method would be quite perfect. With such a critical matter on their hands, it would have been hard to fathom that officers David Senak, Ronald August, and Robert Paille could find the time to terrorize three young men who were not even involved with the chaos. Seventeen-year-old Carl Cooper, eighteen-year-old Fred Temple, and nineteen-year-old Aubrey Pollard were among several black men gathered at the Algiers Motel with two white women, who had records for prostitution. Cops responded to yet another report of sniper fire Wednesday night, this time at the inn. Cooper, Temple, and Pollard had records for only minor offenses, and there was no conclusive evidence that they committed any offenses or provoked police in any way, upon the officers’ arrival at Algiers. Still, all three of their lives ended that night. They had been shot at close range with 12-gauge shotguns, two autopsy investigations concluded. August, Paille, and Senak were handed a menu of charges in connection with the murders. Cops were said to have used racial and sexual taunts as they knocked around motel guests, taking the property under siege. Though August and Paille admitted to shooting two of the young men, they claimed self-defense, and no one was ever convicted. The whole affair resembled a northern version of the Scottsboro episode but with a more immediate and tragic ending for three teenagers.