Private Hamilton was killed.
Scott had a record which showed he had been committed eight times as a juvenile delinquent on charges of larceny, and in 1943 was sentenced to from two to five years for auto stealing. Thereafter he was involved in six charges of robbery.
But the U.S. Attorney’s office refused to prosecute the Negroes and the police were advised that if they insisted on going through with charges before a judge, the DA’s office would nolle prosse the case, because they did not believe “a conviction could be obtained” against colored people who had so unfortunately become involved in the killing of a policeman. But when a policeman kills a Negro in the line of duty, the politically chosen District Attorney is frequently highpressured by the N.A.A.C.P. into bringing murder charges.
We have pointed to the misguided tendency to minimize the size and extent of the Negro population. If more than half of Washington’s population is not black, the per capita crime rate is even more appalling.
Like white crime, Negro crime is organized and syndicated. This does not mean every rapist, hold-up man and car-thief takes orders from above. But it means that when he gets in trouble he does seek certain directed sources for bail-bonds, lawyers and fixers.
Policy-sellers, bookmakers’ runners, reefer peddlers and junk salesmen are employed by an organization which protects them also.
The process, as it works here, will be described in detail in the chapters devoted to crime and law enforcement, as it is part of the general picture of organized evil.
In Washington, as in other cities, Negro crime on the consumer and go-between levels is operated and controlled by Negroes. They report to, kick back to, and make their fixes at upper levels with, white criminals. The topmost control rests in the hands of the international Syndicate, the Mafia, the Unione Siciliano. The Washington Negro crime-ring has more autonomy than usual, because there are few Sicilians and even fewer interested in crude crime. The national Syndicate prefers not to show its bloody hands openly in the capital, but lurks in the background--in New York, principally.
The most powerful Washington Negro is the aforementioned Puddin’ Head Jones. Jim Yellow Roberts is the boss of dope and reefers. He makes his buys in wholesale lots in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, direct from the importers. While temporarily embarrassed by a jail sentence, Roberts continued to run the Negro dope trade.
“Whitey” Simpkins is king of the Black Belt’s numbers racket. Johnny W. Carter, who owns the Club Bali, a black-and-tan resort, is one of the gamblers’ chiefs. Their payoff is a percentage which eventually reaches the Syndicate through channels which will be set forth in detail in the chapter devoted to dope and gambling in Washington.
One of Washington’s most important Negro underworld figures is Lamarr (Polly) Brown who has been implicated in every form of illegality from operating after-hour clubs to the sale of narcotics. Odessa Madre, known as the “Queen of the Fences,” is just what her honorific implies.
Following the white pattern, the largest, gayest and most colorful Negro section is also laid out in NW. This part of town abounds with colored flats where a white man may take a white or colored woman. These holes sell gin without licenses, provide bedroom accommodations for those who want them, and girls for those who don’t have them.
Many Negro cab-drivers pimp for white girls, first getting acquainted with them when they pick them up as passengers. They set them up in apartments, most of which are in NW, and sell their services to white or colored men. These cabbies also handle reefers and after-hour liquor.
If you rode with us in Washington, through the NW colored section, these are some of the things we could have shown you:
First, we parked our car at the corner of 10th and B Sts., in front of the Lincoln Barbeque. We waited five minutes, a colored man came out of the restaurant and took our order for bootleg liquor. It happened after two, when the bars were closed. His prices were moderate, no more than 50 cents to a dollar above the established tariff. But the stuff was moonshine and cut.
Let’s go to 1919 14th Street NW. This house was formerly the Star Dust Club, an after-hour drinking and gambling place. Now it’s a shoeshine parlor. It’s owned by William J. “Foots” Edwards, a notorious Negro gambler. If you want a game, you can find stud in the basement.
The dark corner of 5th and K looks quiet and serene. The colored damsels who parade past here singly and by twos are not. Stop your car at the corner and they will come over and solicit you. Business all night. If you’re a Negro you’ll know where to take them. If you are a white man they’ll go along in your car to an alley or steer you to a buggy rooming-house. Another corner frequented by dusky hustlers in search of white trade is 9th and Rhode Island.
At about this time, we’ll run through the 7th Street district, which is the Broadway of the NW Negro section, with the chief shops, restaurants, night clubs and theatres. You can make pick-ups anywhere around 7th, Georgia and Florida Avenues, but these streets are brightly lighted, so most white men who want to change their luck play the darker streets. And there it is not unusual to see white girls brace black men.
In addition to sex on sale at the corner of 7th and Florida, you can buy reefers or policy slips.
U Street, from 7th to 15th, is another bright light belt in the colored section. The Dunbar Hotel and the Whitelaw are the swank Negro inns. The Dunbar was once the aristocratic white Courtland Hotel. In its basement is the 20-11 Club, one of the Nation’s best-known colored cabarets, which caters to the cream of the colony and is patronized also by white novelty-seekers. Rich and visiting Negro celebrities check in at the Dunbar. So do Feds and cops, who have occasionally made pinches there for narcotics and morals violations. In the 20-11 Club you can pick up girls of any race.
On the corner of 7th and T are three hot spots--the Off Beat Club, for musicians, the Club Harlem, and the Seventh and T Club. We saw them serve drinks after hours and cater to fairies of all shades, female white thrill-chasers and Negro reefer addicts.
Washington, like Chicago, is a city of alleys in every block of residential property and many business squares, bisected by the rear passages. As in Chicago, they are conducive to crime, afford dark, narrow lanes for rape, assault, robbery and the pleasanter crimes of crap shooting and soliciting.
In some Negro sections where housing is at a premium, they live in shacks in the alleys. These are some of the slums already referred to--not many, but picturesque and odoriferous. One of the best-known is an alley oddly named Temperance Court. If white people lived there it would be fashionable at premium rents; it is similar to the aristocratic Washington Mews in New York’s Greenwich Village. But it is inhabited by some of the lowest members of the Negro race in Washington--and that means low.
Temperance Court is between 12th and 13th, T and U Streets, near the 13th precinct station. More dope peddlers and ginmill operators are annually arrested in this block than on any other street of comparable size anywhere in the world. You can buy anything you want there--girls, bootleg whiskey, cocaine and marijuana, stolen property, guns and knives, articles of perversion and sadism. Anything but a virgin past the age of puberty.
A notorious dope peddler operated there until recently and may still be there when this comes out. He is John Frye. He has so many children, some sleep on the roof, four on a bed, and there is always a new baby in the carriage. Narcotics agents said he hid junk in the baby’s diaper. A competitor in the same block was Wilbur Kenny, known to the cokies merely as “Y.”
Another byway in the NW Negro section, which is unpublicized in the slick magazines, is Goat Alley, off 7th Street, near M. This is terribly tough, with reefer peddlers, two-dollar wenches, a mugging a minute and murders common. Close by the Negro sections of crime and perversion is Ledroit Park, once surrounded by the mansions of aristocracy. This is back of Griffith Stadium, which, like Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox, is engulfed in a sable sea. Baseball lovers must travel through miles of dangerous streets to the stadium.
Nearby is Freedman’s Hospital, the world’s leading institution of its kind for colored people, one of the outstanding institutions in the world. Its internes are Howard University medical graduates, and among these are great doctors. They get plenty of practice. The worst Negro assault cases go to Freedman’s. On Friday and Saturday nights the floors of its emergency wards look like slaughterhouses. Knifings are frequent; shootings run second. Even on weekdays the place teems with police interviewing victims.
Garfield Hospital, also near a large Negro community, is the second in assault cases.