Running the Numbers: Race, Police, and the History of Urban Gambling 9780226690582

Citation preview

Running the Numbers

HISTOR ICAL STUDIES OF UR BAN AMER ICA Edited by Lilia Fernández, Timothy J. Gilfoyle, Becky M. Nicolaides, and Amanda I. Seligman James R. Grossman, Editor Emeritus R ecent titles i n t h e se r i e s

Ann Durkin Keating, The World of Juliette Kinzie: Chicago before the Fire Jeffrey S. Adler, Murder in New Orleans: The Creation of Jim Crow Policing David A. Gamson, The Importance of Being Urban: Designing the Progressive School District, 1890–1940 Kara Murphy Schlichting, New York Recentered: Building the Metropolis from the Shore Mark Wild, Renewal: Liberal Protestants and the American City after World War II Meredith Oda, The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco Sean Dinces, Bulls Markets: Chicago’s Basketball Business and the New Inequality Julia Guarneri, Newsprint Metropolis: City Papers and the Making of Modern Americans Kyle B. Roberts, Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783–1860 Timothy Neary, Crossing Parish Boundaries: Race, Sports, and Catholic Youth in Chicago, 1914–1954 Julia Rabig, The Fixers: Devolution, Development, and Civil Society in Newark, 1960–1990 Amanda I. Seligman, Chicago’s Block Clubs: How Neighbors Shape the City Aaron Shkuda, The Lofts of SoHo: Gentrification, Art, and Industry in New York, 1950–1980 Mark Krasovic, The Newark Frontier: Community Action in the Great Society Ansley T. Erickson, Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits A complete list of series titles is available on the University of Chicago Press website.

Running the Numbers ​ ace, Police, and the History R of Urban Gambling

​M AT T H E W VA Z The Universit y of Chicago Press | Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2020 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2020 Printed in the United States of America 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20  1 2 3 4 5 ISBN-­13: 978-­0-­226-­69044-­5 (cloth) ISBN-­13: 978-­0-­226-­69058-­2 (e-­book) DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226690582.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Vaz, Matthew, author. Title: Running the numbers: race, police, and the history of urban gambling / Matthew Vaz. Other titles: Historical studies of urban America. Description: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. | Series: Historical studies of urban America | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2019035396 | isbn 9780226690445 (cloth) | isbn 9780226690582 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Urban African Americans—Gambling. | Gambling—United States. | Lotteries—United States. Classification: lcc hv6715 .v39 2020 | ddc 364.1/720973—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019035396 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-­1992 (Permanence of Paper).

​Contents

Introduction 1 1

Politics and the Old Policy Wheel 11

2

“Are You Going to Let a Negro Name the Next Mayor of Chicago?”: Investigations and Elections 31

3

This Community Is Being Criminalized 59

4

Half of the Rest of Their Lives in Jail 93

5

We Intend to Run It 123



Conclusion: Lottery as an American Way of Life 153

Acknowledgments 165 Notes 167 Index 191

Introduction

“My father also dreamed about numbers,” writes former secretary of state Colin Powell, reflecting on his days in the Bronx during the late 1950s. “Then, one Saturday night, my father dreamed a number, and the next morning at St. Margaret’s the same number appeared on the hymn board. This, surely, was God taking Luther Powell by the hand and leading him to the Promised Land. Somehow, Pop and Aunt Beryl managed to scrape up $25 to put on the number. And they hit it, straight. I still remember the atmosphere of joy, disbelief, and anxiety when the numbers runner delivered the brown paper bags to our house. . . . $10,000 in tens and twenties, more than three years’ pay. . . . And that was how the Powells managed to buy 183-­68 Elmira Avenue, in the community of Hollis in the Borough of Queens.”1 For several consecutive generations, the numbers game, which took Colin Powell’s family from the Bronx to Queens, stood as the dominant lottery-­style gambling game in New York City and in much of the urban northern United States. The crucial attributes of the game were its simplicity, consistency, and the offer of a reasonable chance to turn small change into a sum of modest but significant value. For city dwellers, such games as “the numbers” and its close cousin “policy” functioned as sources of entertainment, employment, and even social cohesion. In many ways, the relationship between winning and losing embedded in these games achieved popular consent as a life-­governing ratio and a mechanism of wealth distribution, preferable to the ratios and patterns of distribution that prevailed in society. A great deal has changed since the days of Luther Powell and $10,000 jackpots in brown paper bags. New Yorkers continue to gamble every day. But they gamble in different ways, on different terms, and for different reasons. Contemporary New Yorkers do most of their betting with the New York State Lottery, and in so doing are likely to encounter computers to pick

2  INT RODUCT ION

their numbers for them, astronomical odds, jackpots beyond the conception of working people, and constant losing. In the 1950s, when the Powell family hit the number, no government ran a lottery anywhere in the United States. Police departments in major cities around the country tied themselves in knots contending with widespread illegal gambling. Yet three decades later, by the middle of the 1980s, the national landscape was covered in government lotteries. Television commercials encouraged Americans to bet, and police departments were minimally concerned with the issue of gambling. That remains the case today. The current status quo of public gambling represents the culmination and resolution of a series of disputes and struggles that stretch back to the early days of a thriving African American gambling economy. The numbers game, first appearing in Harlem in the early 1920s, relied on an uncontrollable, and agreed-­upon, daily published figure to generate a winning three-­digit number. Originally the game used the three digits before the decimal point in the published totals of the New York Clearing House (a respected financial institution). The game later shifted to reliance on local racetracks to generate figures. If the Aqueduct Racetrack published a daily intake total of $142,549.75, then the winning number for the day was 549, and any New Yorker could verify this outcome by looking at the right spot in the newspaper, while feeling confident that the outcome was not rigged. A correct guess on the winning number paid out $600 on a one-­dollar play. The openness of the game allowed many small-­time entrepreneurs to take bets. A thriving gambling economy, with many black impresarios, quickly emerged in Harlem. Jamaican-­born poet and Harlem resident Claude McKay, writing in 1940, classed the game among the liveliest industries in the neighborhood. He described the numbers as “an open, simple and inexpensive game of chance,” calling it “a people’s game, a community pastime in which old and young, literate and illiterate, the neediest folk and the well-­to-­do all participate.”2 This simple game swept aside the older “policy” game in the cities of the eastern seaboard. The game “policy” was a direct predecessor to the numbers. In Chicago and some midwestern cities, policy had a strong tradition of black autonomy, and thus proved to have more staying power among black bettors. The policy game generated winning numbers based on the spinning of a wheel, as players attempted to guess a combination of three winning numbers out of twelve, choosing among the numbers from 1 to 78. A hit on three numbers paid out at roughly $150 for a $1 bet. The two games are often taken to be one and the same, and the terms “policy” and “numbers” are often

INT RODUCT ION   3

used interchangeably despite the differences in game form. The similarities were deep and meaningful. For the most part, the games represented the same basic phenomenon of a low-­stakes, daily-­number guessing game. They were popular in black communities, spawning extensive networks of employees, and enmeshed in black political and social life in northern cities. During the 1920s, the numbers and policy games were operated by black gambling figures with profiles in business, politics, and philanthropy. However, with the end of Prohibition, white organized crime groups in search of new sources of revenue set their sights on the numbers and policy games. They attempted to extort and dominate the black gambling economy. Black gambling figures pushed back, and black communities often hesitated to place bets with white-­controlled outfits. White organized crime groups gained a foothold in the upper echelons of the numbers game in New York during the 1930s and made significant inroads in the Chicago policy game during the 1940s. Yet black gambling operations and their many workers and customers steadily fought to preserve their autonomy over the ensuing decades. The violent contestation over the numbers and policy games during the 1930s and 1940s, which unfolded largely in the underworld of crime, set the stage for the subsequent legal and political struggles over the fate of urban gambling. Beginning in the 1950s, these disputes came into public view in the arenas of politics and public policy. This book explores the historical development of modern government lottery gambling, situating the emergence of this phenomenon in the contested dynamics of racial power in mid-­twentieth-­century urban America. Historians of twentieth-­century American cities have paid ample attention to conflict over education, housing, and public space, yet struggles over the arrangement of urban gambling have received little notice.3 Unlike these other elements of urban life, gambling was not an undisputed public good, sought openly, conducted publicly, and governed anywhere close to honestly. However, much like education or housing, the gambling economy was indeed disputed terrain upon which racial power was expressed, resisted, and reworked. Illegal gambling, in the form of the numbers and policy, was among the largest economic activities and sources of employment for African Americans in New York City’s Harlem and on the South Side of Chicago from the 1920s through the 1970s. Meanwhile, arrests for gambling held steady among the top enforcement activities for all of the police departments of major northern cities from the 1940s through the 1960s. The fraught task of gambling suppression was a principal basis for interaction between police

4  INT RODUCT ION

and black neighborhoods, and thus a close study of the intersection of race, policing, and gambling illuminates our understanding of life and politics in the American city. The arrangements and relationships of gambling in mid-­twentieth-­ century urban America constituted a meaningful site of social and political conflict, central to the dynamics of authority, the expression of racial power, and the struggle for resources. Furthermore, as the prevailing arrangements of the 1950s and early 1960s came under strain and began to unravel, the new framework of government provided legal numbers gambling through state lotteries, which emerged during the late 1960s and the 1970s, shifted the priorities of race and resource distribution. Over the course of little more than three decades, the transformation of gambling policy recast urban gamblers from criminals into customers. This process of change, the tensions and contestations that propelled it, and the reverberations and disruptions that flowed from it are the subjects of this book. The progression of urban numbers gambling from criminal vice to civic virtue is best understood through three interwoven narrative arcs. First, an account of the outsized role of gambling in black urban communities clarifies the vulnerabilities, costs, and consequences of having an illegal activity so close to the center of black political and economic life. Second, an assessment of the policing of gambling reveals both gambling enforcement and gambling corruption to be elemental to midcentury big-­city policing and the exercise of authority. Third, exploration of the shifting legal status of gambling as a matter of policy and politics charts the passage of daily urban numbers betting from an illegal criminal activity to a legal government-­ corporate enterprise. These themes played out during the period from the early 1950s through the mid-­1980s and were most salient in the cities of New York and Chicago. More broadly, cities throughout the Mid-­Atlantic, the Northeast, and the Midwest featured a contested history of everyday gambling, as Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, and Newark, together with Chicago and New York, were all at the center of the first wave of twentieth-­century government lottery formation. These cities also shared similar dynamics, as lingering political machines and traditions of municipal corruption interacted with racial change and confronted growth-­oriented reform coalitions. In 1953 sociologist Daniel Bell offered an analysis of important transformations under way in urban politics. At the core of these transformations was a repositioning of gambling. Bell characterized gambling specifically, and “urban rackets” in general, as “one of the queer ladders of social mobility in American life.” Relying on this ladder, successive ethnic groups—

INT RODUCT ION   5

the Irish, Jews, and Italians—climbed to middle-­class respectability, as the gambling business provided money and political access.4 Bell further described gambling in the 1950s as being in the midst of a “rationalization and absorption . . . into the structure of the economy,” while the urban boss system and old patterns of crime were entering a period of decline. Bell’s analysis was shaped by the questions and tensions that dominated the preceding eighty years of urban life, particularly ethnicity and conflict between machine and reform. But Bell paid little notice to the fact that race was quickly moving to the center of big-­city politics in the 1950s. As African Americans in changing cities navigated the urban political landscape, they weighed the costs and benefits of affiliating with machine or reform. All along, the governance of gambling proved to be a central issue. At the heart of the matter was the question of whether the very same “queer ladder” that had functioned for previous generations of the urban poor would be available to black communities. While some fought for autonomous black gambling as a mode of economic mobility, others insisted that the corruption and degradation of gambling-­machine-­nexus politics had no place in the black freedom struggle. Dispute over big-­city black gambling was one important aspect of a broader national consideration of how gambling should be governed. Beyond the numbers and policy games, sports betting surged and disposable income carried bettors to legal casinos in Las Vegas. As the popularity of gambling as a leisure pursuit grew during the years of postwar prosperity, all levels of government struggled to put gambling in its proper place. Yet throughout the process of reckoning and reconsideration, black gamblers were the object of focus for the enforcement efforts by police, while numbers and policy were the essential basis for networks of police corruption. Furthermore, the popularity and irrepressibility of numbers and policy were the clear factors that ultimately called government lotteries into existence, and people of color betting in urban areas were the vital targets of emergent lotteries as an experiment of governance. While the history of urban numbers games is part of the history of gambling as a whole, conflicts over the fate of the numbers clarify and illuminate the dramatic and transformative step of government entry into the gambling business. Efforts to shape practice and policy related to gambling were infused with many of the animating tensions of the period. The politics of gambling were enmeshed in ongoing disputes over racial justice, police legitimacy, due process, taxation, welfare, work, order, and authority. As American society grappled with the question of how gambling should be conducted, urban

6  INT RODUCT ION

police arrested hundreds of thousands of people, while thousands of others took to the streets to demand their right to earn a living; reform efforts turned police departments upside down and inside out, scandals chased mayors from office, and the courts redefined due process and the Bill of Rights. Eventually, state retailing of gambling recast the relationship between government and citizen, and ultimately widespread lottery play normalized new conceptions of wealth. This process of transformation began in 1949 with a series of scandals and corruption inquiries that riveted the nation’s attention on the prevalence of illegal gambling. And as gambling and governance hurtled toward a reckoning, an array of institutions and actors pushed and pulled on the gambling economy, demanding that gambling be organized on their preferred terms. In 1950, as interest in the gambling problem heightened, Samuel J. Battle—New York City’s first black police officer, originally appointed in 1911—took to the pages of Ebony magazine to weigh in on the challenges that gambling posed for both the black community and the police. He explained that the numbers racket “presents the United States with one of its most difficult dilemmas: to continue with the so far futile efforts to suppress it, or to accept the inevitable and acknowledge the reality of its existence by controlling it in a legal way.”5 Battle understood the ways in which gambling consumed endless energy and attention from police agencies. Indeed, from the end of Prohibition through the mid-­1960s, gambling suppression was the most prominent criminal enforcement campaign undertaken by the New York Police Department, encompassing activities from long-­term investigations and surveillance of known gamblers, to clearing street corners through mass arrests of “undesirables” accused of shooting craps or betting numbers. This arrest activity in urban America was wildly discriminatory. Gambling was the principal site of racially targeted policing during the middle decades of the twentieth century, with black gambling arrests outpacing white arrests at rates of ten to one in some cities. Meanwhile, as urban police departments arrested gamblers by the tens of thousands, police workers treated the gambling economy as a resource to be drawn upon, with officers supplementing their salaries by squeezing gamblers for payoffs. Overall, gambling enforcement during the period was heavy-­handed, discriminatory, and corrupt. By the late 1950s, this dynamic of widespread illegal gambling, coupled with a massive project of suppression infested with graft and abuse, was an unstable element in the formula of urban governance. As anxieties over public safety superseded elite impulses to shape the behavior of the poor, alarm over the moral threat posed by gambling faded.

INT RODUCT ION   7

Gambling enforcement had outlived its usefulness as big-­city police departments became more concerned with maintaining order at a moment of disruptive social and political change. Obvious and prevalent societal ambivalence about the status of gambling had left the criminal laws against gambling as an insufficient basis for the strenuous exercise of authority over black life in an era of emerging civil rights. Furthermore, the Supreme Court responded to the excesses of police practice by curtailing the warrantless search, the arrest without cause, and the compulsion of testimony. Suddenly police were left without the time-­honored tools of gambling enforcement. Under these conditions, many prominent police leaders, particularly in New York, increasingly questioned the wisdom of preserving gambling as a crime to be policed. During the 1960s, as old arrangements unraveled, the possibilities for gambling as an activity to be taxed came into focus. States in the North charted an alternative path for gambling, and legislatures turned to public lotteries as both an anti-­crime measure and as a revenue source. This popular idea was rooted in the political and social anxieties of the time. In an atmosphere of heightened concern over ineffective policing of the cities, and at a time of growing bitterness over taxation to subsidize services to the poor, the notion that government retailing of an amusing game could mitigate such ills held great appeal. Yet these early lotteries, offering raffle-­style games, missed the mark. The fatal flaw was that they did not allow bettors to choose their own lucky numbers. Legislators in Illinois, New York, and other northern states quickly realized that black gamblers had maintained their loyalty to the illegal numbers and policy games, which had such a strong cultural and economic hold in black neighborhoods. As the director of the New Jersey Lottery lamented in 1973, “The game we offer is not the game they [African Americans bettors] want to play.”6 With this understanding, and with the shared assumption that lotteries could not meet their purpose without the black gambling customer, lotteries increasingly tailored their offerings to more closely resemble the games so popular on the street. This effort by lottery agencies to explicitly target the urban numbers and policy player prompted strenuous resistance from black political and civic leaders in New York and Chicago. As a Harlem activist explained to a group of legislators in 1971, if there is to be a legal numbers game, “We intend to run it, come Hell or high water.”7 Emerging black politicians such as Charles Rangel in New York and Harold Washington in Chicago pressed for legal community-­based gambling to employ the many thousands of men

8  INT RODUCT ION

and women who had staffed the illegal game for several generations. Neighborhood activists defended their gambling practices as social traditions and as significant sources of employment. Community leaders demanded the right to share in the jobs and profits available under any new legal gambling framework. At stake in the struggle was the question of who would have access to taxed gambling in the form of profits and jobs, and who would be subjected to gambling as taxation in the form of government lottery play. The anti-­tax politics of the period ultimately overwhelmed the pleas for local control of gambling as a jobs measure. In an atmosphere of economic retrenchment and racial backlash, the numbers gambling businesses of black communities in the urban North were swept aside in favor of a state monopoly. State lotteries directly entered the numbers business in the late 1970s and early 1980s, selling an exact replica of the street game in all of the northern states where black gambling once flourished. Penetration of the numbers markets of the major American cities finally enabled state lotteries to claim success after a decade and a half of failures, stumbles, and false starts. The foothold provided by state numbers allowed lotteries to introduce urban gamblers to other games, such as scratch tickets and jackpot games, as state gambling evolved from an effort to mitigate the ill effects of widespread illegal play into a truly expansionist project of cultivating gambling as a positive good. Running the Numbers: Race, Police, and the History of Urban Gambling builds on the contributions of scholars in several areas of historical inquiry. Recent works on the dynamics of race and policing clarify the context within which conflict over black gambling unfolded. Scholars of Prohibition have analyzed the ways in which alcohol enforcement fell disproportionately on black Americans. In the decades following Prohibition, the criminal laws against gambling carried forward such patterns and provided a key pretext for policing black life in the North. Meanwhile, scholars of race in midcentury urban America have shown how efforts to resist police abuse shaped the political identity of people of color in American cities. The political disputes over the policing of gambling along racial lines adds an important layer to our understanding of this phenomenon. Furthermore, tracing the historical trajectory of the gambling economy in urban life will complement the work of scholars who have examined the structures of organization and the subcultures of employment in the drug trade.8 The rearrangement of city gambling was also an important element of the reorientation of urban policing that took place in the late 1960s. Historians Risa Goluboff, Christopher Agee, and others have described the un-

INT RODUCT ION   9

raveling of a long-­standing regime of order maintenance during the period. As business-­driven, pro-­growth political coalitions challenged corrupt political machines and their police collaborators, and as the courts severely curtailed police discretion in making arrests, the gambling economy was central to these conflicts.9 A crisis of police legitimacy drove urban elites to redirect police efforts away from graft and toward public safety concerns, while the courts attempted to bring police practice under the constraint of formal law. The resulting process of police reform was halting and uneven, as rank-­and-­file officers asserted their own priorities. Police departments slowly disentangled themselves from gambling graft. Eventually gambling enforcement practices of search and arrest were constrained, and police rank and file became an increasingly vocal element in urban politics, demanding enhanced protections and higher pay.10 The historical narrative of the policing of urban gambling also offers a little recognized prelude to the aggressive policing and mass incarceration of the war on crime and the war on drugs after 1965. Recent studies have explored the ways that modern policing has criminalized the behaviors and practices of the poor. The suppression of street gambling represents an earlier generation of this principle. A growing body of work on the development of mass incarceration has characterized the vast exercise of punitive authority since the mid-­1960s. As the project of mass incarceration took shape, gambling proved insufficient as a basis for heavy policing of urban communities in an era of civil rights, and thus gambling was reorganized outside the sphere of crime. Policing was redirected to areas more connected to social alarm.11 Above all else, this study builds on analysis and scholarship focused on urban gambling. Early observers of the numbers and policy games—such as Malcolm X, Claude McKay, and St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton— emphasized themes of black enterprise, self-­determination, and mass employment. Contemporary scholars have fleshed out these themes in full. In Playing the Numbers, historians Shane White, Stephen Garton, Stephen Robertson, and Graham White situate the game in the context of black business history, classing the numbers as Harlem’s largest employer and a vital source of capital filling the void left by banks unwilling to serve black neighborhoods. This phenomenon was not confined to New York. Historian Davarian Baldwin points to the Chicago policy game as a source of financing for black newspapers, black politics, legal black businesses, black music, and black athletics. Mark Haller has posited the centrality of the policy game to the development of black politics in Chicago. Historian LaShawn Harris has provided a genuine breakthrough in our understanding of the numbers

10  INT RODUCT ION

as a source of employment, particularly for women. While the game provided black women in New York with possibilities for survival and even mobility, illegal work also complicated notions of respectability crucial to the ideology of racial uplift. Elizabeth Schlabach has characterized a similar dynamic for women working in the Chicago policy game.12 These scholars of numbers and policy have all noted that the illicit clandestine games were eventually supplanted by legalized government lotteries. Meanwhile, existing scholarship on lottery development acknowledges that public lotteries had their origins in the illegal numbers. However, the meaningful struggles and conflicts that unfolded as one arrangement of city gambling replaced the other remain unexplored. As multi-­state lottery jackpots edge toward the billion-­dollar mark in the twenty-­first century, the consumption of lottery products has emerged as a normative aspect of national culture. News reporting on record-­breaking prize levels is typically void of any sense of controversy or disquiet. Instead, it is characterized by wonder at the riches on offer and amusement at the multitudes waiting in line to buy a chance. Lottery advertising stands among the most prominent forms of governmental communication. Lottery purchase is now an uncontroversial form of consumption. Yet the current organization of daily public gambling in America originated in the settlement of disputes over race, power, and resources in the shifting configuration of twentieth-­century urban life.

1

​Politics and the Old Policy Wheel

“I’ll give your people jobs,” Chicago Mayor William “Big Bill” Thompson proclaimed to a black audience in 1927. “And if any of you want to shoot craps go ahead and do it. When I’m mayor the police will have something better to do than break up a little friendly crap game.”1 The statement was revelatory. Thompson spoke to a basic political reality: gambling enforcement practices had serious implications in black urban communities. A regime of strict or racially targeted enforcement of gambling laws had the potential to choke the neighborhood economy, undercut political efforts, and ensnare countless working people in police raids and roundups. Bill Thompson was the first mayor of a large American city to rely on black voters as a key element of his electoral coalition. He was not the last. From the 1920s through the 1950s, gambling was a critical articulation point between black electoral politics and citywide political regimes. For much of the twentieth century, gambling was a foundational element of black working-­class life in Chicago. This is not to assert that black Chicagoans gambled more than the white residents of that city or that black city dwellers in general had a special inclination toward gambling. Rather, a paucity of opportunity for economic advancement and a severely constrained field of political and social action left betting as an attractive means of achieving wealth and upward economic mobility. Organized gambling was one of the few sources of funds to spur business growth and to conduct politics. Thus, gambling was more openly visible on the streets of the South Side than in other neighborhoods. The possibilities held by a winning bet may have preoccupied the thoughts and dreams of working-­class urban African Americans more so than among their white counterparts. Furthermore, the deep interconnection between the gambling underworld and the arenas of electoral politics,

12  CHAPT ER ONE

legitimate business, and the everyday hopes and aspirations of working people left the black communities of cities such as Chicago highly vulnerable to any shifts or fluctuations in gambling enforcement policies set by citywide administrations. The political fights to sort out gambling arrangements in Chicago during the 1940s and ’50s dragged in an array of actors and institutions. Elected officials, church groups, the police department, the media, and thousands upon thousands of black Chicagoans arrested as common gamblers—all had a stake in the matter. Few emerged from the wrangling unscathed, and none emerged satisfied. All along, the basic inconsistency between the law and popular practice served to undermine the legitimacy of the municipal government and its police, while it drastically limited the possibilities for black political action. While this popular illegality was a hazard at the center of urban life, nonetheless the black community, the police, and the city government all sought to direct gambling to their own ends. In the struggle to arrange and rearrange gambling, racial power proved paramount. The police conveniently used gambling laws to exercise authority over the black community, effectively criminalizing large segments of the black working class, while also collecting tribute from the gambling economy to supplement their own salaries. Municipal administrations alternately condemned or condoned the policy game at the expense of meaningful black political action and to the advent of a public discourse truly dismissive of black claims for social justice. Through much of the 1940s in Chicago, black gambling was largely in the hands of black operators from top to bottom. The policy gambling economy, in fact, undergirded an emergent black political machine on the South Side. Yet by the end of the decade, this dynamic was under severe strain. The autonomy of the black gambling-­politics nexus was beset on all sides, with a mayoral administration attempting to bolster its reformist credentials through tough enforcement, white organized crime figures using violence to muscle in on the game, and grafting police ignoring older protection deals to claim a greater share of the black betting dollar. The politics of the postwar years in Chicago featured illegal gambling as a locus of both friction and connection between the black population and municipal governance, holding together an unstable arrangement of mis-­policed and under-­ resourced neighborhoods governed by corrupt and dismissive authority. * * * The policy game was the most popular and most organized form of gambling in the black neighborhoods of Chicago. The terms “policy” and “num-

POLIT ICS AND T HE OLD POLICY WHEEL   13

bers” are often used interchangeably, although they in fact refer to two distinct games. The policy game appeared in different forms in northern cities during the nineteenth century, taking a consistent shape during the 1870s as a practice of betting on combinations of three numbers between 1 and 78. If a player’s three numbers appeared among the twelve winning numbers drawn, then this bet, called a “gig,” yielded somewhere between $150 and $300 for a one-­dollar bet. A bet on two numbers, known as a “saddle,” paid less, while a bet on four numbers, known as a “horse,” paid more. During the nineteenth century, the winning numbers were drawn in Kentucky; results were transmitted by telegraph to the many cities in the North, where illegal policy shops dotted the landscape. At different points in time, in different cities, policy sellers divorced the game from the Kentucky drawings and generated their own winning numbers through the turning of a drum, called a wheel. A number of black Chicagoans operated their own wheels by the beginning of the twentieth century, and their results earned trust and favor among black bettors. By contrast, in New York, the policy game was dominated by white gambling figures. The African American New York population bet the game heavily, yet few black New Yorkers could be counted among the game’s entrepreneurs. Thus, when the similar game of “numbers,” with preferable odds and an inherent fairness, appeared in Harlem during the early 1920s, black bettors quickly abandoned the policy game and transferred their gambling allegiance to black entrepreneurs selling the new game. After the game of numbers eclipsed the older policy in New York, the state government neglected to create a new category of criminal gambling. Rather, those arrested for dealing in numbers were actually arrested for violation of laws against policy. While the game of policy faded from the New York streets, the terminology persisted. The Harlem numbers game was considerably simpler than policy. Numbers relied on neutral published figures to generate winning digits. In contrast, policy outfits spun their own wheels to generate the winning numbers, and thus the game was not immune to occasional fixing or foul play. Each wheel in Chicago also had its own winning numbers for the day, while in New York, one set of winning figures prevailed across the city. The simplicity and fairness of the numbers gave it an inherent advantage over policy, and the numbers easily swept policy aside in many cities. In Chicago such was not the case. In the Windy City, the older, more complicated game held strong among black bettors. The loyalty of the South Side to the policy game was rooted in the tradition of black enterprise in gambling. As the numbers spread from city to city, policy maintained its

14  CHAPT ER ONE

position in Chicago because it was intertwined in the political, economic, and social structure of the community. In African American Chicago neighborhoods, policy was a mainstay of working-­class leisure, a bulwark of legitimate business, an organizing element of politics, and a vital source of employment. Historian Elizabeth Schlabach describes jobs in the policy game as a mix of hard work, creativity, and artistry.2 Perhaps it was the creativity of the policy world that captured the attention of so many observers of the South Side. Numerous writers working as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA)–­funded Illinois Writers Project were fascinated with the ubiquity of policy and its penetration into so many areas of life. Novelists, journalists, musicians, and painters, both black and white, who depicted African American Chicago neighborhoods portrayed policy as central. The pioneering African American anthropologists St. Claire Drake and Horace Cayton gave the policy game prominent billing in their breakthrough community study Black Metropolis (1945). In assembling and synthesizing the fieldwork of more than one hundred researchers who examined the South Side during the Depression, they declared that policy stations were “almost as numerous as the churches.” Drake and Cayton never characterized the policy game as a religion, but they stated plainly, “It organizes, to some extent, the daily lives of the participants.”3 Bettors in both policy and numbers looked to their dreams to settle on their play. Northern cities were awash in dream interpretation books offering associations between an array of persons, places, or things that might appear in a dream, and specific numbers to be bet. Well-­schooled players came to know such associations thoroughly and needed no books to guide them. An informant for Drake and Cayton described veteran policy workers who were so deeply versed in the system of numerological associations that they could construct poems with the slips of winning numbers.4 The stations where people bet and the wheels where the numbers were drawn emerged as vibrant social spaces. In the words of Drake and Cayton, “A wheel is a beehive of activity, day and night. It is run by a corps of well-­ trained white-­collar experts. Usually several hundred persons are present to watch, and sometimes the crowd includes a cooperative policeman or two.” A few locations even featured a lunch counter. The drawings were made from drum-­shaped containers holding seventy-­eight numbered balls, as the crowd waited with excitement.5 African American artist Walter Ellison painted Old Policy Wheel in 1936, offering a sense of the interior of a policy wheel as a cross between a bank and a social gathering. The leisure at policy wheels mixed with work. When the winning num-

POLIT ICS AND T HE OLD POLICY WHEEL   15

bers from a particular wheel were drawn, the results were printed on standardized slips and distributed out in the neighborhood. Many of those present at the drawings were typically among the estimated two thousand walking writers who toured the city taking bets for a commission, sometimes working with multiple wheels. Some wheels featured chairs with writing arms, so the writers could attend to their work as they awaited the results. Thousands of others, many of them women, worked for the gambling outfits at the betting stations and in back office functions. According to Schlabach, a number of African American Chicago women owned their own wheels during the 1940s.6 In deference to the large number of people employed by policy, many ministers and civic leaders on the South Side often avoided criticism of the game. The economic centrality of policy was further enhanced by the widespread investment of policy money in legitimate businesses and the extension of policy money into local philanthropy. With the game largely free of violence, intertwined in the worlds of lawful business and politics, excused from condemnation by many religious leaders, and employing thousands of people, the South Side was well prepared “to accept the policy racket as a community institution.”7 The policy game may have been a community institution, however, black policy and numbers operators maintained fluid allegiances to race and class. While they were living outside the law, they were nonetheless entrepreneurial capitalists. They employed the language of racial struggle. Yet like many black capitalists, at times their interests aligned with similarly situated whites, at the expense of the black community.8 Indeed, many black gamblers collaborated with white gamblers connected to organized crime more than they let on. Black policy and numbers outfits often relied on better-­capitalized white gamblers for layoff services, hedging bets if the volume of play became too high on a given number. Such relationships were often long term and mutually beneficial. Policy operators were not securely situated within the black middle class, as the promotion of gambling betrayed the image of respectability that many black professionals sought to pro­ject. Meanwhile, their business practices relied on absorbing the scarce funds of working-­class African Americans while offering a product of questionable value in return. Despite such complications, the capital that they brought to bear and the organizational acumen they had to offer allowed policy and numbers figures to hold significant influence over black politics in many cities. And with the understanding that political conditions often accounted for the success or failure of black gambling businesses, black gamblers took politics seriously.

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Historian Mark Haller posits that black Chicago developed an independent politics in advance of black communities in other cities, largely because of the structural and economic basis provided by policy.9 The connection between policy and politics dates back to the earliest emergence of independent black gambling. The black tradition of entrepreneurship in Chicago gambling began with the successes of John “Mushmouth” Johnson. During the 1880s, Johnson operated a gambling house at 64 South State Street. In his 1935 study Negro Politicians, Harold Gosnell describes Johnson’s gambling house as “a meeting place for railroad men, waiters, porters, and professional gamblers—Chinese, Negro and White.” Johnson soon expanded into policy, able to discern that there was real money to be made from the small change of poor bettors. His successful business eventually attracted attention and ultimately prompted the passage of the state anti-­ policy act in 1905.10 Johnson died in 1907, and in his absence Robert T. Motts emerged as the most prominent figure in black city gambling. While Johnson had frequently contributed money to politicians in order to keep the police at bay, Motts took a genuine interest in politics. He organized black voters and paid his gambling workers to register new voters. Beyond seeking protection in return for his political contributions, Motts also negotiated patronage jobs for black men and women in government offices. After the death of Motts, Henry “Teenan” Jones stood as the dominant policy operator, working closely with the rising black political leader Oscar De Priest. The nascent black political leadership in the city was hardly in a position to control police activity, and thus to some degree the involvement of policy figures with the development of black politics can be understood as a genuine effort to enhance the community’s political power.11 During the 1920s, many more black Chicagoans met with success in the policy business, most notably the undertaker Dan Jackson. And with Jackson and other policy figures backing black Republican committeemen and aldermen during the administration of Republican Mayor “Big” Bill Thompson, the policy game on the South Side enjoyed genuine political protection. However, established arrangements of protection were thrown into disarray and the viability of the South Side gambling economy was put in peril with the election of Mayor Anton Cermak in 1931. While Republican Thompson used lax gambling enforcement to create alliances with influential figures on the South Side, Democrat Cermak employed gambling enforcement to squeeze black Chicago and coerce the black electorate into abandoning the Republican Party.

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Cermak transferred South Side police captains who tolerated gambling and appointed new captains who applied pressure until black voters recognized “the changing political realities.”12 Squads of detectives swept through the South and West Sides, breaking up policy games and taking gamblers into custody. Detectives insisted that they had no choice but to conduct the raids without search warrants. They claimed that if they sought warrants, word might get out to the gamblers, who would quickly move their headquarters before the police came through the door. Because Cermak’s police pursued their crackdown without warrants, the vast majority of cases were dismissed. The mayor insisted nonetheless that the raids were worthwhile, because the police destroyed all records and paperwork, bringing business to a halt and making it impossible for the gamblers to pay off their customers. Despite his frustration with the judges who consistently dismissed gambling cases, Cermak intensified the drive. He claimed that his police made 1,700 gambling arrests in a three-­week period during late 1931. “We will keep on raiding warrant or no warrant,” he declared defiantly.13 According to a black Republican committeeman, “When the jails overflowed with blacks and the requests were made for their release, Cermak let it be known that he could not do anything ‘until your people are Democrats.’”14 The strategy of coercing black voters through arrest was at least partially successful. However, the local transformation of black politics from Republican to Democrat was only truly consolidated after Cermak’s death in 1933, with the succession of Edward Joseph Kelly to the mayoralty of Chicago. Kelly afforded South Side gamblers considerable room to operate, as he cultivated political relationships with emerging black leaders and while he himself embraced a handful of racially progressive positions. Among the first key policy operators to align with the Democrats were the Jones brothers, who benefited from solid political protection under the new regime. The late 1930s and early 1940s saw a flourishing policy game and a relatively well-­funded black political organization within the Democratic Party. In this environment of widespread and open policy play, Lewis Caldwell began visiting homes on the South Side. As a young social worker studying for his master’s degree, Caldwell was in search of evidence of gambling among poor black Chicagoans. “Although the game of policy has been played among negroes for many decades, it has developed into a social vice of important consequences within the past twenty years,” Caldwell wrote in his 1937 thesis.15 Over the next four decades, as a journalist, a civic activist, and eventually a state legislator, Caldwell maintained his interest in the

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gambling game he first encountered entering home after home on the South Side. He carried with him the complex set of questions and challenges posed by the betting practices so enmeshed in the daily life of the black communities of midcentury Chicago. Caldwell undertook his study while working for the Old Age Assistance Division of the Cook County Bureau of Public Welfare, with the intent to determine “what percentage of their clients, or members of their [clients’] families bet on policy.” Using a team of five investigators, the study sampled five hundred residences and found evidence of the policy game in 80 percent. “No efforts to conceal the tell-­tale drawings were encountered,” Caldwell explained, “despite the fact that these investigators were to recommend public assistance on the basis of need for the aged member.”16 The game was broadly popular and thoroughly protected. Nevertheless, some prominent voices in the community fiercely opposed widespread gambling. Caldwell closely tracked the efforts of a number of African American pastors and civic groups to pressure the government to enforce the laws against policy. In 1935 more than three hundred pastors, laymen, and civic leaders from the Interdenominational Ministers Fellowship complained about the “crime and vice in the South Side” in a letter to Mayor Kelly. In their account, the work of groups such as the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), the Urban League, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was undermined by the lack of law enforcement and a growing disregard for the law among young and old. At the center of the problem, they stated, was “the open and notorious gambling in the form of policy and ‘bookies’ that exist in practically every block of our community, even in the finest residential sections, and close to churches.” They expressed outrage that policy stations operated with doors wide open. The pastors characterized this condition as being born of unequal treatment from the authorities and pointed out that such gambling was only permitted in black neighborhoods. “This evil disgraces our streets, sets bad examples for the youth, lowers property values, and, in general, demoralizes our surroundings,” wrote the pastors. “We crave a clean, decent, wholesome community.” They implored the mayor to take immediate steps to shut down South Side gambling.17 Kelly demanded that Commissioner of Police James P. Allman respond. The police issued reports from the commanding officers of the districts in question. As reported by Captain George P. O’Connor, “There are no policy games in the First District.” Captain John T. Cartan of the Third District wrote, “Up to the present writing no handbooks or policy wheels

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were found in operation,” and in the Fourth District “no form of notorious gambling has been observed.”18 With hundreds of policy stations operating, with thousands of people on the South Side employed as writers and runners, and with tens of thousands more placing bets on a daily basis, the Chicago Police Department of the mid-­1930s found no evidence of the game’s existence. As Caldwell observed, “Arrests of persons engaged in the policy business are unheard of today.”19 While the police ignored policy in exchange for bribes, Caldwell and many of his fellow social workers looked the other way on policy for reasons of their own. In 1933 the Illinois Relief Commission issued a bulletin, instructing that persons employed in illegal occupations be denied relief. According to the divisional director, the rule “was issued to cover circumstances arising from the prevalence of policy playing and prostitution among our clients.” As a result of this dilemma, according to Caldwell, “a majority of the investigators in the relief office admit quite frankly that they do not re­cord information pertaining to the playing of policy among their clients unless there is undeniable evidence that a sizeable income is being derived from this source.”20 The young social worker understood rightly that the policy game represented a vulnerability for almost all involved. In his analysis, going forward, “the facts do not point to any short-­time solution; but it would seem that a system of regulation might serve as the initial step toward the ultimate eradication of what must now be considered a social problem.”21 But Caldwell, with his notion of legal and regulated gambling, was of a different mind from many of the church and civic leaders of the South and West Sides. As they worked to ensure community respectability, they sought the more traditional approach of suppression by the police as a solution to the policy problem. In January 1942, many of the same church leaders and activists who had appealed in futility to Mayor Kelly to enforce the gambling laws took their complaints to the Chicago Crime Commission. The Chicago Crime Commission was established in 1919 as an independent organization comprised of private citizens to investigate crime conditions in the city. The members of the commission were typically drawn from the so-­called reform element among the city’s elite. Their private activities in ferreting out crime were intended as an indictment of both the criminals and the police who somehow failed to discover them. The concerned citizens of Chicago’s black neighborhoods arrived at the Crime Commission just as the organization was entering its most active and energetic period. The ascent of Virgil W. Peterson to operating director in 1942 breathed life

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F I G . 1  Virgil W. Peterson and the Chicago Crime Commission in 1948. Hank Walker/ The LIFE Images Collection, courtesy of Getty Images.

into the organization and unleashed a wave of investigative activity. Peterson was a trained lawyer and the former head of Federal Bureau of Investigation offices in Boston, St. Louis, and Milwaukee (fig. 1). Peterson was tireless in his pursuit of illegal gambling. In many ways, he became the driving intellectual force of national anti-­gambling politics during the 1940s and 1950s. He wrote frequently in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, the Northwestern Law Review, and newspapers and magazines across the country. His ideas about organized crime and the deleterious effect of organized gambling widely influenced judges, prosecutors, police chiefs, and elected officials well beyond Chicago.22 Peterson was of a clear mind that gambling was a crime that featured any number of victims, from the integrity of police and public officials to citizens striving to live in decent and wholesome communities. The black leaders who worked with the Crime Commission beginning in 1942 exemplified the notion of a neighborhood being victimized by gambling. They pleaded for sound law enforcement in the face of community degradation. The concerned residents of the South Side were resolute in their stand against policy despite the popularity of the game. The Rev. Joseph M. Evans

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told the members of the commission, “We have the feeling that rent bills are going unpaid because the people spend their money playing policy; that doctor bills are going unpaid; that grocer bills are going unpaid for the very same reason, that policy is taking bread out of the mouths of our children.” Another man in attendance at the meeting claimed to have observed more than one thousand people playing policy on a single day, the overwhelming majority of them being women. He described people selling stamps from relief books in order to get money to bet. A woman representing the Urban League told the commission of a neighborhood littered with policy slips. She described the game as a grave threat to community reputation and a genuine impediment to access to relief. “Policy is giving us a bad name and we are known as a set of gamblers,” she complained. “The Urban League has gone to the relief station to try and get an increase in relief for some of the people but are told they will only gamble it away.”23 The efforts of these ministers and civic leaders in collaboration with the Chicago Crime Commission resulted in a grand jury investigation of the policy rackets. In 1942 the grand jury issued indictments of twenty-­six policy figures operating on the South and West Sides of Chicago.24 Beyond the indictments, the estimations put before the grand jury—that a full 20 percent of the income of the policy business was public assistance money— resulted in assurances from the Chicago Relief Administration that “all persons found using relief cash for gambling will be denied aid in the future.”25 The cases all ultimately collapsed as those who had given information to the grand jury later refused to testify in criminal court. According to the Chicago Tribune, they “took refuge in the legal technicality that they were fearful of incriminating themselves.”26 Due to their refusal to testify, many were sentenced for contempt, among them Clifford Tavernier, a lawyer who defended numerous policy operators in court. Tavernier challenged his contempt conviction to the Illinois Supreme Court and had it overturned on Fifth Amendment grounds.27 The indictments temporarily slowed the policy operations on the South Side. This presented a moment of opportunity for intrusion by white organized crime, most notably the remnants of the Al Capone mob. The city’s most important black newspaper, the Chicago Defender, compared the incursion by the Capone group to the extortion of Harlem gambling perpetrated by Dutch Schultz during the 1930s. The Defender pointed out the irony that this takeover was poised to unfold as a result of actions by a “reform element” in the black community. Regardless, the paper predicted that the white gangsters would find the takeover “tough going,” as “the sentiment is strongly against white control of the racket.”28 Meanwhile, as the

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cases fell apart in court, the black policy operators acted rapidly to shore up support in the neighborhood.29 The failed indictments of 1942 and the repelled takeover by the Capone mob unfolded at a moment of strength and autonomy for South Side gambling. This autonomy was rooted in the ability of the rising political figure William L. Dawson to negotiate the conditions of gambling with the police and with the citywide Democratic machine. William L. Dawson was a complicated figure. His political accomplishments were substantial and important. From the late 1940s through the early 1960s, he was arguably the most successful African American in national politics. His successes involved extensive compromises with problematic actors and willing adaptations to the political and social landscapes as they presented themselves. By the late period of his career, he was held in low regard, and his reputation has recovered little since. His penchant for accommodation during the 1930s and 1940s left him thoroughly out of step with the black activism of the 1960s. He was frequently characterized as an “Uncle Tom.”30 Yet his life’s work merits historical consideration, as the narrative of his political career exemplifies a particular set of practices in black politics and offers a characterization of the political trajectory of black life. Namely, Dawson and his work represent the manner in which, and the conditions under which, black northerners entered the Democratic Party and interfaced with big-­city political machines. Originally from Georgia, Dawson became involved in Chicago politics after serving in World War I. Historian Christopher Manning describes Dawson’s basic philosophy as a pursuit of equality by means of traditional electoral politics.31 During the 1920s, Dawson was tutored in South Side politics by pioneers Edward Wright and Oscar De Priest. From these black Republicans, Dawson learned to value personal relations over ideology.32 Nonetheless, in his early career, Dawson harnessed some of the energy of racial appeals in political campaigning. Political scientist James Q. Wilson described Dawson in his early days as a popular street-­corner orator who captured crowds by holding forth on issues of race. Dawson left the Republican Party and became a Democrat in 1939. With his entry into the machine, he left behind the rhetoric of race and became a true organization man.33 Dawson’s conversion to the Democratic Party was an element of Mayor Kelly’s effort to cement black voters to his electoral coalition. In the analysis of historian Roger Biles, Kelly secured the black vote through the distribution of government aid to the South Side, by appointing black Chicagoans to municipal posts, and by selecting black candidates to stand for elective

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F I G . 2  Representative William L. Dawson (D-­IL) in 1955. AP Photo/Bill Allen.

offices.34 One such official tapped by Kelly was Dawson, who had served as Republican alderman for the Second Ward from 1933 to 1939. When Dawson lost to Earl Dickerson in an open primary in 1939, Mayor Kelly supported Dawson for committeeman of the Second Ward, giving him control over extensive patronage. In 1942, after a demagogic and nasty campaign, Dawson defeated Dickerson in the primary race for the First Congressional District and subsequently became a congressman representing the South Side of Chicago.35 Firmly inside the Democratic Party, and with the prominence of being the nation’s only black congressman, Dawson succeeded in consolidating extensive power and influence in black politics (fig. 2). Dawson’s political style during the 1940s and 1950s was decidedly retail, focusing on constituent services. As one of his loyal political lieutenants

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recollects, “I never knew him to turn away anyone who came to see him. All they had to do (they didn’t need an appointment) was to come in and say they wanted to see Bill Dawson.” The Chicago Defender saw this practice as key to his success. “One of the reasons Dawson has maintained his grip on the South Side is that his office is within easy reach—and wide open— to people who want to put a word in the ear of the precinct captain—ward committeeman—congressman.”36 Like so many black politicians before him, Dawson made ample use of the policy game. Gambling was a source of funds for his political campaigns. The policy operation was a base of employment through which he distributed patronage jobs to those in need. These policy workers were then pressed into service canvassing the district on Election Day. The congressman insisted that he never enriched himself through the policy game. Indeed, he maintained a modest lifestyle. Nonetheless, he relied heavily on policy as a foundational element of his political organization. And while policy enabled Dawson’s political organizing and his impressive electoral successes, it was simultaneously a glaring vulnerability, leaving South Side politics in a precarious position in the citywide struggle over power and ­resources. During the mayoralty of Ed Kelly, Dawson built a largely autonomous political machine on the South Side. The committeemen and aldermen in the area that comprised his district answered to him rather than to the citywide machine directly. Meanwhile, the black policy bosses further extended themselves into legitimate business activities to an extent that they enjoyed a significant degree of respect from the community. The Jones brothers— Edward, George, and McKissack (Mack)—were particularly well established in both gambling and legitimate enterprise. The Jones operation was at the forefront of the transfer of black allegiance from the Republican to the Democratic Party in Chicago. From humble beginnings as a railway worker, Edward Jones succeeded in gambling while keeping a close eye on politics. As far back as 1917, Jones was indicted along with Oscar De Priest for conspiracy to operate gambling houses.37 As the Associated Negro Press reported in 1940, the Jones brothers owned “the biggest Negro department store in the nation.” Other policy figures also had a profile in legal business. Policy man Dan Gaines owned a Ford dealership on Wabash Avenue, Jim Knight owned a shoe store, Leon Motts was a partner in the largest real estate firm on the South Side, and Julian Black managed the rise of heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis. Given the abundant employment provided by such businesses,

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and given the aid provided to other legitimate enterprises, residents of the South Side were not particularly inclined to be critical of the policy business. According to the Associated Negro Press, “The sentiment here seems to be that while policy is not generally approved, if this form of gambling is to exist on the Southside it will be tolerated only if headed by Negroes. Any attempt by a white syndicate to muscle in would be bitterly and vigorously opposed.”38 White racketeers repeatedly attempted to get a hold on the policy game. Dawson, however, exerted sufficient political influence over police assignments and captaincies to keep the mob at bay.39 Despite the indictments of 1942, the mayoral regime of Ed Kelly featured a relatively unmolested policy game and an internally autonomous black political machine led by Dawson. The exit of Kelly from the political scene threw these arrangements into disarray, highlighting the tenuous nature of the political access available to black Chicago, offered only outside of the law. A wave of corruption scandals dogged the last year of Kelly’s third term. The scandals—coupled with hostility from Polish, Irish, and German voting blocs in the Democratic coalition, largely related to Kelly’s embrace of open housing—led party leaders to abandon Kelly and look elsewhere for new leadership.40 Immediately after Kelly relinquished the party chairmanship to Jacob Arvey in 1946, white crime figures began an incursion into black-­ controlled policy. That year the kidnapping of Edward Jones for a $100,000 ransom signaled the beginning of an aggressive and sustained onslaught.41 The election of Martin H. Kennelly as mayor in 1947 made life even more difficult for black policy operators. The Democratic slate-­making committee chose Kennelly as a candidate, despite his lack of political skill and governmental experience, in large part due to his clean image and reputation for honesty. Kennelly was of Irish descent, and he hailed from the same Bridgeport neighborhood as Ed Kelly, yet he had grown far removed from his working-­class roots and he was never a machine insider. The owner of a fleet of moving vans, Kennelly was a rich man, well established in the city’s business community. He was a member of the Chicago Crime Commission and managed the primary campaign of independent Democrat Thomas Courtney, in Courtney’s unsuccessful attempt to unseat Kelly in 1939.42 In the scandal-­plagued final year of the Kelly administration, Kennelly’s status as a Democrat free from machine ties held out the possibility that the party could hold the mayoralty while cleansing its own image. Kennelly, for his part, insisted to the party bosses that he would be his own man and that government agencies would be freed from politics. Republicans and reform newspapers were little inclined to believe him. The

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Republican Chicago Tribune derided Kennelly as the handpicked candidate of Democratic machine boss Jacob Arvey. After a gambling murder in Arvey’s Twenty-­Fourth Ward, the paper howled as Kennelly remained silent on the issue. “When occasion requires he is the fine, clean businessman,” but on gambling, “Kennelly is coached to say nothing and says nothing.”43 As for the candidate’s supporters, “Every man in this town who has taken his share of the graft from syndicate gambling and wants more of it is pulling for Kennelly and Arvey.”44 With gambling under scrutiny, and with his reputation for honesty in question, Kennelly appealed to the city’s reform element with a solemn vow to “clean up commercialized vice and gambling.”45 Kennelly and Dawson got off to a poor start. Shortly after taking office, Kennelly directed the police to strictly enforce the gambling laws, bringing waves of arrests. Police Commissioner John C. Prendergast, appointed in the late months of the Kelly administration and anxious to burnish his credibility, sent his personal detail on gambling raids. He insisted that if his men could find the gambling spots, then police officers on the beat must be looking the other way. He declared that district captains would be held responsible for demonstrating that gambling is being combated, lest they face suspension.46 The mayor and the police also pressured tavern owners, threatening to revoke their licenses if gambling was discovered on their premises.47 Meanwhile, the mayor ignored attempts by Dawson to intervene on behalf of his constituents who were caught up in the raids and sweeps on the South Side. Under the previous mayoral regime, Dawson was able to exert sufficient influence over police assignments to prevent any collaboration between white gangsters and grafting police at the expense of black policy. But under Kennelly, Dawson had no such influence or ability. As a result of the arrests and the economic dislocations produced by the crackdown, anger brewed on the South Side. Many black Chicagoans suspected that Kennelly’s posturing in the name of clean government was in fact a pretext to facilitate a white takeover of the policy game.48 While Kennelly followed through on his intentions to suppress gambling in Chicago, few gambling arrests led to convictions. Raids, more often than not, were conducted without warrants. Shortly after a judge dismissed the cases of sixty-­five gamblers hauled in during a bust, Police Commissioner Prendergast publicly defended his practice of ignoring warrant requirements. “Our experience has been that when we find a gambling house and then go get a warrant for a raid, the place is empty when we return.” The captain who led the raid explained, “It’s silly to even talk about it. I haven’t any funny looking men who could get into those places to get the informa-

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tion necessary to swear out warrants. All of my men are known to the gamblers.” Regardless, he vowed to continue the attack. “Gambling won’t prevail in my district. We’ll clean out the places as they begin operating.”49 And, indeed, those caught up in the warrantless raids were sufficiently harassed and inconvenienced by the arrests to complain to their congressman. In 1948, with the roundups intensifying, Dawson invited Crime Commission investigators to his office to discuss the situation in his district. According to the report filed by the investigators, “Dawson produced a batch of arrest slips, approximately five inches high and bound in rubber bands, pertaining to persons arrested for gambling.” The congressman obtained the records “from someone in the Racket Court,” and the people arrested were “laborers” and “clerks.” Dawson conceded that gambling operations existed in his district and explained that he had no qualms about taking money from policy operations for political purposes. He insisted that he never took gambling money for personal gain, rather he only used gambling money to run campaigns and to meet the needs of his impoverished constituents. As for the gambling parlors spread across the district, Dawson claimed that they were run as decently as possible, with managers quick to inform the police of the presence of robbers, rapists, and killers whose activities might disrupt the peaceful operation of neighborhood gambling. Dawson recounted to the investigators that he recently rejected a lucrative offer from a white gangster trying to break into South Side policy. He insisted to the hoodlum that he would “make it his business to keep the white syndicate out.” The congressman described extortion by police, saying that two years prior he secured the transfer of six police officers who were shaking down policy operators. But the transfers did not relieve the situation. “Now all police officers in the district are shaking them down,” he complained. Dawson praised former mayor Kelly but insisted, “Kennelly is of a different type.” He vowed to take his collection of arrest slips to Mayor Kennelly to plead the case of South Side residents ensnared by the wave of gambling arrests (fig. 3). But he expected little from Kennelly other than declarations that the law must be fully enforced.50 In the eyes of Dawson, Kennelly was abetting the takeover of South Side policy gambling by corrupt police and the white syndicate. Politically, Dawson’s inability to influence police assignments under the new mayor had stripped him of the tools needed to shape the situation. His powerlessness to intervene on behalf of the “laborers” and “clerks” caught up in gambling raids and dragnets undercut his ability to provide retail services to his constituents. Dawson’s position was complicated because it straddled the law. Nonetheless, he himself had requested the audience with the Crime Com-

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F I G . 3  Chicago gamblers appearing in Racket Court in 1948. Hank Walker/The LIFE Images Collection, courtesy of Getty Images.

mission (hardly likely to be a source of a political fix), indicating that he did not see himself as part of organized crime. Rather, he saw himself and his district as being victimized by organized crime. As a Chicago Crime Commission memo recounted of Dawson’s meeting with the commission, “As long as policy playing is in operation in Chicago he will do all within his power to see that it is controlled and operated by the negro.”51 The congressman recognized the vital link between black gambling and autonomous black politics. The energetic crackdown on the gambling business by Kennelly’s police undercut the viability of Dawson’s political machine. Furthermore, the barrage of arrests hobbled black policy operations and created an opportunity for white gangsters to move in. Kennelly’s in-

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sistence on enforcing the gambling laws in effect subordinated autonomous South Side black politics to the citywide Democratic machine.52 As Dawson tried and failed to preserve black gambling through political channels, the Jones organization rallied black operators to hold the line against white incursions. Shortly after his kidnapping, Edward Jones fled to Mexico, leaving his lieutenant Theodore Roe in control of the lucrative Maine-­Idaho-­Ohio policy wheel. Having been the key muscle figure in the Jones group, Roe was fully prepared to stand up to the threats and violence coming from the ambitious former associates of Capone. On the racially mixed West Side, black policy operator Big Jim Martin also refused to buckle under the pressure of mobster intimidation. Martin was a popular figure in the Twenty-­Eighth Ward and was deeply enmeshed in the political operation of white alderman George Kells. The alderman was known for his racially progressive views and had amassed considerable credibility among his black constituents. As for Martin, according to the Chicago Defender, he was an effective political operator who had worked closely with political fixer Pat Nash and thrived under the mayoral administration of Ed Kelly. Like many other policy men, Martin was a prominent Elk, and for many years he was the national grand treasurer of the order.53 Big Jim’s participation in West Side politics was mainly as a contributor, yet he also had a personal connection with the voters in the neighborhood. He was known for his generosity, giving in abundance to local churches and youth groups.54 The Martin and Kells operation crumbled in November 1950, when a jeep pulled up alongside Big Jim Martin’s car at Central Avenue and Washington Boulevard and opened fire. Martin survived the attack despite being hit in the arm, shoulder, and neck. The following month Kells withdrew himself from the upcoming aldermanic elections.55 When Martin left the hospital, he fled the city altogether, leaving the policy game on the West Side firmly in the hands of the remnants of the old Capone mob, headed by Tony Accardo and Jake Guzik.56 The Kennelly administration and its efforts to curb the policy game had thrown both black gambling and black politics into disarray. The gambling and politics nexus in black neighborhoods had steadily grown over the course of more than three decades, remaining intact even as black voters shifted their allegiance from Republican to Democrat. But a vigorous push by Mayor Kennelly to curb gambling revealed that black political connections to citywide power were fragile. As the access of black political insiders

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proved tenuous, a white gangster element with more durable links to corrupt police staked its claim on the black gambling economy. The aggressive expansion of the Capone mob accelerated just as the Kefauver Committee arrived in town. Thus, a scene of race, gambling, and violence provided the backdrop for the high-­profile US Senate investigation into organized crime. The Kefauver Committee, which traveled from city to city in 1950 and 1951, pulled the Chicago policy game disputes into a broader national debate on proper urban governance and on the status of gambling in American life. The glare of the national spotlight only served to intensify the pressure on black gambling.

2

“​Are You Going to Let a ​Negro Name the Next ​Mayor of Chicago?” Investigations and Elections

The Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver, held hearings in fourteen cities during 1950 and 1951. The proceedings captivated the attention of tens of millions of Americans, who listened on the radio or watched on television. In this era of limited programming, the hearings were among the most watched events of the early 1950s, rivaling the World Series.1 In many respects, the Kefauver hearings represented a transitional moment in urban political history. Old-­fashioned machine-­style political practices and the relations between politics and the criminal economy that prevailed for almost a century were brought under scrutiny by television and put under pressure by federal authority. Police officials, meanwhile, were called to account for their enforcement practices, or lack thereof, with relation to gambling, as police workers were pressed to reveal their finances. The high-­profile hearings set the agenda for the politics of crime and policing over the subsequent years. A reform element on the Chicago City Council picked up on the work of the US Senate special committee and pursued a three-­year investigation into police corruption. Yet Chicago police officers staunchly defended themselves and insisted on their right to privacy, standards of probable cause, and protection against unlawful search and seizure. The Senate hearings were simultaneous with an extensive grand jury investigation into police corruption in New York, and the public disgrace fostered a siege mentality among police workers. The prolonged investigations of the early 1950s became a formative moment for

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modern police identity and solidarity, at a point in time when law enforcement was entering a substantial crisis of legitimacy.2 Mayor Martin Kennelly did little to pursue gambling corruption in the Chicago Police Department, but in the aftermath of the Kefauver hearings, he redoubled his efforts to curb policy gambling on the South Side. He dispatched his police department to conduct warrantless raids on gambling spots, while arresting, harassing, and alienating tens of thousands of people. The very police who insisted on their own protections against unlawful search and seizure ran roughshod over the civil rights of South Side residents. Meanwhile, the mayor and the police largely ignored the demand for action against white riot mobs bent on maintaining segregation at the Trumbull Park housing project. The mayor’s allies in the press dismissed such concerns as false issues raised by black demagogues, whose true political project amounted to fronting for criminal gambling. Overall, the glare of public attention heaped upon gambling by the Kefauver hearings did little to stimulate meaningful policy change or productive action. If anything, the scrutiny intensified the contradictions at the heart of the city’s gambling dynamics. * * * As the Kefauver Committee moved from city to city, the hearings prompted debate on the status quo of corrupted urban governance and policing. The proceedings recognized American gambling as both a vast economy and, in the eyes of the committee members, the basis of a nefarious web of criminality. Inadvertently, the Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce raised the question of whether gambling was a crime to be policed or commerce to be regulated (fig. 4). The widespread exposure of the Senate’s effort to assert a national criminal conspiracy amounted to the creation of a public consciousness about organized crime and stood as the first time many Americans ever heard the term Mafia. The closest historical examination of the Kefauver Committee, offered by William Howard Moore, argues that the committee fell far short of demonstrating the existence of any national conspiracy. Rather, the committee articulated a perspective and placed the weight and prestige of the Senate behind a particular point of view.3 The perspective asserted the existence of a national organization of crime. The conspiracy centered in gambling and relied on gambling profits to finance a host of other illicit and antisocial activities from political corruption to narcotics, prostitution, and violence. And no individual had done more by midcentury to disseminate this outlook than Virgil W. Peterson,

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F I G . 4  The Kefauver Committee hearing attracted widespread viewership, with some movie theaters broadcasting the proceedings live. Michael Rougier/The LIFE Picture Collection, courtesy of Getty Images.

the operating director of the Chicago Crime Commission. Peterson saw gambling and organized crime as one and the same. He insisted on a historical and necessary relationship between the two.4 Peterson’s crusade against organized crime yielded the formation of citizen crime commissions in cities all over the country. Most were modeled

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after the Chicago Crime Commission and digested whole Peterson’s accumulated charges against the mob and his picture of an intricate national web of criminal gambling. In 1949 Peterson addressed the American Municipal Association. He thoroughly impressed the crowd made up of mayors and public officials as he offered details of a vast, complex, and interconnected underworld. The association, in turn, requested that the federal government study the problem of crime in interstate commerce. Enterprising journalists took hold of Peterson’s message regarding a web of cooperating crime syndicates and, with exaggeration and literary flair, frightened readers with tales of a tight-­knit, secret, and powerful Italian Mafia.5 A high-­profile investigation stood as the perfect vehicle for young and ambitious senators, anxious to bypass the seniority system of the Senate.6 Freshman US Senator Estes Kefauver (D-­TN) took the developing interest in a national crime syndicate and made it his own. In January 1950, he submitted a resolution calling for an investigation into organized crime, centered on gambling and the use of the wire services. As the resolution moved along, some in the Senate sought to scuttle the project, while others such as Joseph McCarthy (R-­WI) sought to poach the issue for their own ambitions.7 Kefauver succeeded in fending off McCarthy and others, and by the spring his resolution emerged largely intact, giving birth to the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, with Kefauver at the head. Wherever the committee held hearings, letters poured in from concerned citizens with problems to report, from cranks with axes to grind, and from criminals and political operators hoping to point the investigators in the direction of their rivals. People reported everything from rowdy bars, to street-­corner loitering, to double-­dealing neighbors, to exorbitant electricity rates. And frequently people concluded their appeals with the explanation that local authorities failed to act. One Chicago resident complained, “I am appealing to you and feel that you are the right person to approach. My husband is a frequenter at a gambling place at 1358 N. Clark. He loses plenty and has been neglecting our children so much that I fear the breaking up of our family. I feel that if this place is closed my husband will stop this bad habit.” The writer continued, “I beg you to do something. I beg you if only to save my marriage.” She concluded, “I have been appealing to the Police Commissioner, the Mayor’s office as well as the D.A. office, and nothing has been done.”8 The complaint may well have been a genuine plea on behalf of a family, or it may have been sent by gamblers in competition with the operation at 1358 N. Clark. Regardless, the committee classed it as

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a “lead” and pursued the information as either a matter of moral purpose or as simply an informant’s tip to a gambling location, or perhaps both. The committee had a team of investigators to follow up on leads. Yet they relied heavily on crime journalists and figures such as Virgil Peterson who had beat the drum on organized crime for so long. Peterson handed the Kefauver group and its investigators abundant background files and information. A memo titled “Policy Racket” explained that the main operator of policy on the South Side was a man named Theodore Roe. The memo also explained, “As a result of the political tie-­in with the policy racket, Congressman William Dawson of the First Congressional District and Ward Committeeman has more patronage than any political figure in the city of Chicago.” Along with standard political patronage, Dawson also had “approximately 7,000 jobs to be filled in connection with the policy racket.”9 Peterson personally implored the Kefauver Committee to go after Dawson, describing the congressman as “standing at the head of all policy operations in Chicago.”10 Perhaps hesitant to level allegations regarding a fellow member of Congress, ultimately the senators never mentioned Dawson directly by name. They focused on the state of gambling in the city as they questioned gamblers both black and white about political connections, and as they examined the mayor and the police commissioner regarding the integrity of the police department. The proceedings offered a window into a host of salient political and social issues, from police pay and officer morale, to the blatant disregard of search warrants, the ongoing racial conflict within the gambling business, and a deep racial anxiety on the part of public officials regarding demographic change in the city. The committee convened at the United States Court House in Chicago in 1950. Testimony began with Mayor Kennelly and his police commissioner, John C. Prendergast (fig. 5). In his statement to the senators, the mayor conceded, “We do have our share of crime in the City of Chicago, including gambling.” But he lauded his own efforts to suppress the problem. “The reduction in organized gambling today has been stated to be as high as 75 percent.” He explained, “My orders to the commissioner of police are to see that there is no gambling in Chicago. He works on that every day. He gets complaints from citizens, from crime commissions, from his men in the field, and it is his obligation to close up the gambling operations.”11 Chief counsel to the committee, Rudolph Halley, pressed the issue of police corruption, and the confused exchange rested on basic assumptions about the proper class position of working police, while it highlighted the

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F I G . 5  Chicago Mayor Martin H. Kennelly and Police Commissioner John C. Prendergast in 1948. Hank Walker/The LIFE Images Collection, courtesy of Getty Images.

tension between privacy and accountability for public officials. “Certain members of the Chicago police force have grown wealthy in office,” Halley stated. “I wonder if you checked that, and whether anything has been done with reference to investigating the particular men who are supposed to have acquired, the manifestations at least, of wealth.” Mayor Kennelly responded to Halley’s question with another question. “How would we go about questioning police officers as to their wealth? Just ask him the question?” Halley volleyed back, “Just bluntly put it to him: ‘How do you on a policeman’s salary now have, say, a ranch in the Southwest, an expensive automobile, a fine house and so forth. How much money do you have in the

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bank?’ Has anything like that been done and do you have the authority to do anything like that?” The mayor confessed that he was unsure if he had such authority. He settled on the position that officers who cannot account for their wealth should not be in the department.12 Kefauver carried the rich cop issue further, asking if Commissioner Prendergast tracked the wealth of his captains. “I don’t know whether these captains have $5 or $5,000,000. There is no way I can find out. . . . I would love to know,” Prendergast responded.13 Committee Investigator George Robinson then sought the police commissioner’s take on the Chicago courts. In response, after characterizing the courts as “a little lenient,” Prendergast summed up the Chicago Police Department’s approach to gambling enforcement. “I was on the street myself for many years—some of the raids I made on gambling houses, houses of prostitution, I know that I didn’t have a warrant. When you haven’t got a warrant, when you get your evidence illegally, the courts say in many cases that you have no case. . . . I say, make the arrest. You are at least inconveniencing them.”14 The mayor asserted that the biggest problem with the police department was that they were “understaffed” and “underpaid,” and this general condition he attributed to decisions made in the state legislature. He expressed fear that the municipal government did not have the manpower to confront the city’s challenges, many of which, in the mind of Kennelly, were rooted in racial change. “We have big racial problems here, where we have threatened conflicts between the races. In one instance, we had 500 policemen who had to be taken from the stations. That is the kind of situation that taxes our police force overnight, such as a threatened riot on the South Side.”15 Police Commissioner Prendergast echoed the concerns of the mayor relating to the black population and neighborhood change. “We have I would say over 500,000 Negroes in Chicago, and that is what we are fearful of more than anything else. I would say the district from Twenty-­second Street to Sixty-­first Street, say Sixty-­third Street, and from Windsor Avenue to Cottage Grove Avenue, is practically 100 percent Negro. If the Negro takes up arms and tries to move the white out of there, then we will have trouble.”16 Before wrapping up his testimony for the day, Mayor Kennelly questioned the commission with a genuine curiosity as to what exactly they were trying to accomplish. “Are you trying to eliminate gambling as such?” “I am glad you asked that question,” Chairman Kefauver responded. “We are not naïve enough to believe that any group or any body can stop

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F I G . 6  Mayor Martin H. Kennelly (left), Senator Estes Kefauver (center), and State’s Attorney John S. Boyle (right) on October 5, 1950. AP Photo/Edward Kitch.

gambling. What we hope to do is to throw blocks in the way of the interstate ramifications and the operation of it across state lines so that it might be reduced to a local problem where you could cope with the matter better.”17 In October, reputed South Side policy boss Theodore Roe testified before the committee. He was asked the nature of his business activities. He answered quite simply, “Operating a policy wheel.” He was surprisingly forthright about his own work, detailing how a major Chicago wheel operated. Nonetheless, he was circumspect and vague when asked about any others in the policy game. Questioned about bribes to policemen, he repeatedly claimed ignorance. The panel was particularly interested in black Police Captain Kinzie Blueitt. “Do you now Captain Blueitt?” Robinson asked. “I know him when I see him,” Roe responded. “How long have you known him?” “Well, I have been seeing him ever since he was a sergeant—and that must be 6, 7 years, along in there I guess. I have seen him. I know it is Blueitt when I see him.” “Have you ever been arrested by him?”

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“No, he has never arrested me.” “Have you been arrested yourself?” “Oh yes.” “How many times?” “I can’t recall.”18 When asked how many people the rival policy wheels employ, he responded, “I don’t know what they employ. I was never in none of them. When they are working I am working.” In his testimony, Roe was open and honest about his involvement in gambling yet vague with regard to details. He was careful not to implicate others. The panel asked about the kidnapping of Edward Jones and questioned Roe as to who he thought might be responsible. Roe would not speculate, but he confirmed that his partnership with the Jones brothers persisted even though they had long since fled to Mexico. The panel was curious as to why Roe maintained the connection to the absent Jones group: “But you could operate the wheel without Jones now, could you not?” “But we are partners. I never had no reason to dissolve a partnership.” “But when he left the country, he was no longer able to contribute anything to the partnership, was he?” “Well, he wasn’t here; no; he wasn’t here.” “And you still remained loyal to him and kept him as a partner?” “That is right. . . . Yes, I feel that belongs to him. . . . [H]e was the founder of the wheel in the beginning, and I would feel that he should maintain his interest as long as he lived and as long as it operated.” “You think of the wheel as a business in itself, is that right?” “That is right.” “This is the Jones Brothers’ wheel you are running now?” “Well of course, we have formed a partnership and I am one of the ­partners.”19 When Edward Jones, summoned from Mexico by subpoena, testified shortly after, he was also open about his involvement in the policy business. He willingly described his path from railroad worker to policy wheel operator, yet he was hesitant to discuss any affairs other than his own. The committee was interested in any political connection Jones might have and any payoffs to politicians he may have made. “Had you given any political contributions to any political organization while you were in Chicago?” “Maybe if I had a precinct captain or someone in there looking for a donation or something at election time, possibly I would give him something to help him out.”

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“Would you make a practice of that every election?” “Well, I wouldn’t say I would make a practice of it, but I guess if he came around and I was in the neighborhood and it was something you could do to help him out you would do it.”20 These black policy men talked of their gambling businesses with reference to many features of legitimacy. Theodore Roe treated his business dealings with Edward Jones as a formal partnership. He acknowledged that Jones maintained an equity stake in the operation long after having left the immediate scene. Jones reflected on his rise to prominence in the gambling world as an up-­by-­the-­bootstraps story of determined business success. In contrast, white policy operators and gamblers invariably refused to speak to the committee about their activities, indicating a clear sense that these figures saw themselves as more squarely situated in the world of crime. The hearings, as they garnered ever-­larger radio and television audiences, in fact introduced many Americans to the Fifth Amendment and its implications for the first time, as a parade of white gambling figures sought refuge in its protection. White policy operator Peter Tremont, active on the South Side, refused to acknowledge his gambling business. Threatening him with contempt, Kefauver warned, “You have no immunity about answering the question.” But Tremont maintained his silence on the matter. “Anything I say here, anyone can get the testimony I give and can use it against me and may. I am not sure; I am not positive whether they would or not. But it may be used.”21 Another white policy operator, Pat Manno, asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege to the point of comedy. After Manno identified himself as being in the tailoring business, the committee pressed him: “Are you in any other business?” “I have to refuse to answer that question, sir.” “Are you in the policy business?” “I have to refuse to answer that question on the ground it would incriminate me.” “Do you operate a wheel?” “I refuse to answer that question.” “The Chairman orders you to answer these questions. The Chairman advises that you have no right to refuse to answer a question here because it might be a violation of State law. It is only where there is a Federal law that is going to incriminate you that you have a right to claim your privilege. So questions asked by Mr. Robinson, whether you are in the policy game or what other business you have, you have no right to refuse to answer. I order you to answer them.”

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“Senator, I have no immunity before the Senate investigating committee here, but my immunity extends to the law of Illinois.” “The question was, what other business are you in? And I order you to answer that question.” “I am sorry, I have to refuse to answer on the ground that it may tend to incriminate me.” “Of what offense might it incriminate you?” “I can’t be a witness against myself.” “Have you consulted a lawyer?” “Well, for advice, sir.” “Do you want to have a lawyer here?” “When?” “I mean now.” “No. I don’t know whether the man is in his office.” And on went the questions, one after another. Are you in the policy business? Were you ever in the policy business? Were you in the policy business ten years ago? Are you in the numbers racket? All met with the same refusal to answer until a furious Estes Kefauver declared, “That is all. You remain under subpoena. You will remain under subpoena subject to further call and we will let you know when we want you again.”22 Immediately after offering their testimony, black policy gamblers Edward Jones and Theodore Roe were handed warrants by the state’s attorney, and they were arrested and indicted. An Associated Negro Press article attributed to “A Negro Congressman,” most likely William Dawson, explained, “While both Negros spoke freely before the Kefauver group, white policy operators refused to talk. So far they have not been arrested nor accused of any crime.”23 There was much speculation as to why Jones and Roe were so forthcoming with the Kefauver Committee. As they explained it, they “wanted to halt the muscling in on the racket by white hoods.” The case against Jones and Roe collapsed when Criminal Court Judge Wilbert Crowley refused to allow the Kefauver testimony of the policy men to be admitted as evidence.24 Although Jones and Roe beat the case, they were rapidly losing ground in the gambling game. A process of white takeover that began with the kidnapping of Jones in 1947 and accelerated with the shooting of Big Jim Martin in 1950 was now further magnified by the Kefauver Committee and the pressure it placed on Jones, Roe, and their policy operation. As the Associated Negro Press reported in 1951, many black policy figures were sending a percentage of their earnings to the crime syndicate. The

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Jones brothers were replaced on the South Side by George Harrison, and Big Jim Martin was replaced on the West Side by Bob Mays and Bob Simmons. Ultimately, many Chicago observers felt that the Kefauver Committee had unwittingly assisted the syndicate in accomplishing the takeover of black policy.25 The final blow to black autonomy in the policy game arrived in 1952. As a Philadelphia Tribune article attributed to “A Negro Congressman” explained, “Negro control of the lucrative policy game in South Side Chicago came to an end Monday when Theodore Roe, 54, was mowed down by gangland guns and left to die in the gutter.” Of the white gangsters, who had moved in on the game through threats, violence, and intimidation, the article lamented, “Roe was the last to stand up against them, and now he is dead.”26 While the Kefauver hearings sped the demise of the black-­run policy game, the proceedings burnished the credentials of Mayor Kennelly as a crime fighter and scourge of the city’s gamblers. Shortly after the Kefauver Committee left town, Police Commissioner Prendergast retired, and Kennelly announced Deputy Commissioner Timothy J. O’Connor as his replacement. O’Connor told the assembled press that he had no plans for change in the police department, and that the department was the best in the world, in need of only higher pay and more men.27 Media outlets reported that a shake-­up of captains and top officials was imminent, but little change materialized.28 Over the next year, as the mayor campaigned for reelection in 1951, he placed his record on crime and policing before the public. During a radio address on WGN, Kennelly declared, “We are attacking on all fronts, including gambling. We have built new life into the police force. The life-­ blood of big syndicated crime has been its enormous revenue from gambling and vice. Our attack has been aimed at drying up this source of power.” He pronounced the policy game to be greatly diminished, and he noted that when the Kefauver Committee left Chicago, “The Chairman said that there has been a definite improvement in law enforcement during my administration.”29 In the midst of his campaign, Kennelly spoke proudly of his record on crime in a speech given at an event held by the Chicago Crime Commission. Kennelly pointed to the heightened public interest in police efforts to curb the policy game. He characterized the game as a legal and social problem that had been left unchecked for too many years. He stated with great satisfaction that under his leadership the police had waged unceasing war

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against policy, in line with his commitment to uniformity in enforcement of the law. Kennelly declared, “Policy is no longer conducted openly. It has been driven to cover. It has been harried off the streets and into the alleys and it is on a ‘sneak’ basis there.”30 Although Kennelly emerged from the Kefauver hearings unscathed and rode to reelection touting his credentials as an honest-­to-­goodness crime fighter, the Chicago Police Department was the subject of persistent scrutiny. The inquiries into police officer income that began with the Kefauver hearings continued over the next several years, carried out by the city council Emergency Crime Committee. Often referred to as “the Big Nine,” the committee was formed in 1952 after the gangland murder of Republican Committeeman Charlie Gross. The new investigative body immediately took up the same leads on corrupt police that the Kefauver group had pursued. While the city council itself was dominated by Democratic “regulars,” the Emergency Crime Committee was driven by reformers. Foremost among the reformers was Robert Merriam, anxious to expose the nexus between police, politics, and gambling. Representing the Fifth Ward, Merriam was nominally a Democrat. The son of a University of Chicago professor who also served as an alderman, the younger Merriam was elected in 1947 to the city council at twenty-­nine years old, shortly after serving as an infantry captain in World War II.31 The ambitious Merriam and his allies in the city council formed the so-­called economy bloc. They challenged the Democratic machine and the traditions of city patronage at every turn. The five members of the Big Nine associated with the economy bloc attempted to use the hearings to root out corruption.32 To their dismay, the hearings became a demonstration of police solidarity and frustration over low pay. Mayor Kennelly proved unwilling to alienate his police force, and he sided with the rank and file in the face of the committee’s inquiries. The countless police officers who attended the hearings, along with the many machine Democratic regular aldermen who constituted the majority of the city council, evinced a casual attitude toward gambling. The first witness to testify in front of the Big Nine was Police Commissioner O’Connor. After stating his salary to be $13,000, he was asked if he had any other sources of income. “No sir.” “Have you ever had any other sources of income?” “No sir.” “Would you be willing to make available to this committee your income tax returns?”

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“Personally I have no objection, but this question involves the entire department. It has legal aspects. I think I should have an opinion from the corporation counsel on whether the question is proper.”33 Commissioner O’Connor’s appearance before the Emergency Crime Committee was followed by a “parade” of police top brass, all of whom refused to furnish their tax returns.34 While they would not provide their tax documents, these top officials insisted that “gamblers have been getting lumps from relentless police raiders,” and that “most policy wheels have stopped turning.”35 For his part, Mayor Kennelly expressed that he did not “think it is best for the morale of the department that police should be required to bring in their returns.”36 In short order, the city’s corporation counsel offered the mayor and the police commissioner a detailed explanation of why police officers could neither be compelled to give testimony under oath, nor forced to produce their tax returns for inspection. “The right of personal security and privacy is zealously protected by the fourth of the ten amendments constituting the Bill of Rights,” the corporation counsel explained. Citing case law at both the federal and state level, the corporation counsel negated the notion that police officers forfeited their rights upon joining the department. Supreme Court precedent was clear, that such rights could not be violated under the guise of a legislative inquiry. The Emergency Crime Committee did not have the authority to compel police to disclose their tax returns.37 While the mayor and the commissioner adopted the position advised by the corporation counsel, Merriam of the Big Nine persisted. He demanded that the mayor order the members of the police department to respond to financial questionnaires, and in the summer of 1952 he submitted a proposal to that effect to the full city council. Merriam’s proposal was voted down 40 to 7. Shortly after this defeat, the chief counsel to the Big Nine, Charles A. Bane, resigned in disgust. As he exited the scene, Bane told WGN-­T V that “he believed 10 percent of Chicago’s 8,000 city policemen are taking money to wink at gambling, vice and other illegal activities.”38 The police and their supporters meanwhile were happy to see Bane go. They were furious with Bane since it was revealed that he attempted to entrap policemen by employing an African American man to bribe officers “to see if they would allow him to operate a policy station.”39 The summary report that Bane issued on his way out the door, charging widespread corruption, was dismissed by the majority of the city council as “a rehash of newspaper stories and material form the Chicago Crime Commission Files.”40 The subsequent chief counsel to the Big Nine appealed to

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the IRS for access to the tax returns of Chicago police officers, but John B. Dunlap, the commissioner of Internal Revenue denied the request.41 The chief investigator for the Emergency Crime Committee, Aaron Kohn, also resigned over the refusal of the full council to back the demand for disclosure of police incomes, and he also issued a report on his way out. He characterized gambling corruption as endemic and recommended that Police Commissioner O’Connor be removed and replaced with a five-­man commission to conduct a national search for a top-­caliber law enforcement official to lead the department. Kohn also recommended that the city itself take over many gambling functions, calling for “legalization of horse race betting under city license with betting stations manned by city employees” and a “municipal lottery to replace policy.”42 In early 1953 the Big Nine investigation centered its focus on chief of the uniformed police Redmond Gibbons, who was alleged to have accepted graft while captain of the Hudson Avenue District. The Big Nine sought to use the investigation into Gibbons’s finances as a demonstration of their ability to compel information. Citing his right to privacy, Gibbons refused to cooperate with the financial disclosure demands at every turn.43 Police officers packed the chamber to support Gibbons. The audience thrilled with laughter when Alderman Mathias “Paddy” Bauler interrupted the proceedings to make a statement. Bauler’s name had come up frequently in the investigation into corruption in the Hudson Avenue District on Chicago’s North Side. The saloonkeeper-­turned-­politician, known for his entertaining speeches, demanded to speak in his own name. “In that report, I guess most of youse read it, suppose I do know some of the fellas in the report. Sure I know them, I know lots of people. I been around that neighborhood more than fifty years.” And summing up his thinking on gambling, he explained, “Seventy-­five years ago my father came here to North Avenue. My father and mother raised 13 kids in that saloon. There was poker there, sure, pinochle, pool. What harm is there in that? Sure there was some taken off the kitty to pay for free sandwiches . . . what harm is there in poker?” Bauler’s tales of poker games in the old saloon brought raucous laughter from the white working-­class police in the gallery, many of whom no doubt spent much of their time locking up black gamblers. The crowd cheered when Bauler concluded by declaring that the investigation was a big waste of time and money, and insisted that the funds would be better used to clean the streets.44 When the Big Nine sued Captain Gibbons to compel his testimony, the suit failed in superior court. The judge determined that the entire pro-

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ceedings violated the state constitution.45 With the efforts of the Big Nine blocked by the court, a grand jury was impaneled to investigate the matter. But the grand jury concluded that “the leads are too old, are uncorroborated and are almost entirely hearsay.”46 The situation provided an important opening for concerted political and legal action by the associations representing policemen of various ranks. The lengthy investigation enhanced solidarity among police workers as thousands of officers stood firm against the committee. The lawyer for the Patrolmen’s Association, claiming to represent six thousand policemen, advised members not to comply with any requests for personal information.47 As the head of the Police Sergeants’ Association expressed, “The Committee started out to investigate crime and politics and wound up blaming the police department for everything except children playing marbles for keeps on school playgrounds.”48 Through the entirety of the Kennelly administration, the Joint Council of Police Department Organizations steadily and successfully protested and resisted the efforts of the Emergency Crime Committee to gather financial information from policemen of all ranks.49 Even the tiny number of officers who cooperated with the Big Nine expressed police solidarity. As a cooperating witness explained of his fellow officers on the take, “They were underpaid, they had families to support, the same as I did, and they either had to have an extra job, which is contrary to police regulation,” or “the other alternative was they had to take bribes.”50 The Big Nine was revived in 1954, when the Illinois Supreme Court reversed the superior court ruling that had shut down the inquiry. The revived committee was firmly in the control of Robert Merriam, and they went directly for a widespread inquiry into police income. Once again the Big Nine ran into coordinated resistance from the police associations. The committee sent out financial questionnaires to a thousand officers. The forms consisted of three hundred questions and contained a provision whereby officers signed over power of attorney to the chief counsel of the committee so that he could access the officer’s tax information from the IRS.51 The lawyers for the police associations representing captains, lieutenants, sergeants, and patrolmen all advised their members not to respond. When the December 6 deadline came and passed, not a single officer had responded. For his part, Commissioner O’Connor agreed to fill out the form but stated that he would need more time given the length of the questionnaire.52 The Big Nine pushed O’Connor to issue a direct order that the officers comply, but O’Conner resisted, explaining that “the administra-

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tion would face major problems if such an order was issued and policemen refused to obey.”53 The police associations exercised their influence in the city council at large to pass a bill that restrained the Big Nine from mailing financial questionnaires to officers without “proper evidence” to demonstrate probable cause.54 The new rule pared the scope of the inquiry down to only two hundred officers. However, the police associations vigorously defended the remaining two hundred, ultimately frustrating the Big Nine’s effort to gather any information. Merriam, having made bold headlines through his work leading the Big Nine, left the Democratic Party and secured the Republican nomination for mayor, only to go down to defeat. The 1955 election turned the city’s attention elsewhere and sapped any momentum the committee might have had left. In October 1955, the Emergency Crime Committee voted to suspend its investigations. The Chicago Tribune summarized the Big Nine at its demise, saying that despite three years of front-­page headlines, “it has sought, with uniform lack of success, to obtain accurate data on the incomes of policemen.”55 As many aldermen opposed to the committee claimed, the investigation did little beyond “dirtying up Chicago.”56 Corruption in the Chicago Police Department continued forward largely unabated through the 1950s. The malfeasance peaked in 1959 with the Summerdale burglary scandal, where a group of officers were caught collaborating with a burglary ring. The scandal led to the ouster of Timothy J. O’Connor as commissioner. His replacement, O. W. Wilson, was a much-­ resented outsider, the former dean of the School of Criminology at the University of California, Berkeley. Wilson by no means eradicated corruption during his tenure in the 1960s, but he reorganized the department dramatically, shedding many bad actors. He also succeeded in placing the police department at a remove from machine politics.57 Martin Kennelly was essentially a bystander to the proceedings of the Big Nine. While Mayor Kennelly tiptoed around the police so as not to upset them, the drawn-­out investigations damaged morale and left officers seething at their low pay and poor reputation. Meanwhile, Kennelly’s unwillingness to vigorously pursue gambling corruption in the police department stood in sharp contrast to his relentless efforts to suppress gambling on the South Side. Policemen appeared in front of the Big Nine and insisted on respect for privacy and standards of probable cause at the very moment the department was rounding up black gamblers by the thousands and conducting endless raids without warrants. The mayor’s ceaseless police campaign against South Side gambling also contrasted sharply with his relative

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indifference to a set of white-­led race riots surrounding the integration of the Trumbull Park Homes. Kennelly and his then–­police commissioner John Prendergast had expressed their fears to the Kefauver Committee about rioting by the growing black population. Yet it proved to be rioting by angry whites that bedeviled Kennelly’s time in office. In 1953 the Chicago Housing Authority inadvertently rented an apartment to the African American family of Betty and Donald Howard, thus unknowingly integrating the Trumbull Park Homes, a housing project in the white community of South Deering. As residents of the neighborhood became aware of the presence of a black family, many assembled into nightly mobs to harass and intimidate the Howards, throwing bricks, bottles, and torches. When the Housing Authority moved in several other black families to take the singular burden off of the Howards, the violence and intimidation escalated. The day on which the new families moved in required a detail of twelve hundred officers.58 Mayor Kennelly had a poor record on housing integration. In 1949, when South Side Republican Alderman Archibald Carey introduced legislation to ban discrimination in publicly subsidized housing built with private funds, “Kennelly vigorously attacked the measure and insured its defeat,” reported the Chicago Defender.59 The mayor’s soft response to the violence in Trumbull Park was unsurprising. Despite constant pleas from black civic leaders for the city to take serious action against the violent elements in the community, police rarely made arrests during the several years that the disturbances lasted. In fact, the police often fraternized with the rioters, clearly sympathizing with the political project of the crowds.60 The failure of the mayor to act forcefully against the sustained and clearly organized campaign to scare black families out of the area left civil rights leaders and the interracial left in Chicago furious. As the leaders of both the AFL and CIO unions representing black and white workers at nearby meatpacking plants demanded to know, “Mr. Mayor, could a thirteen month-­long race riot take place in Chicago if the law were being enforced?” The labor leaders demanded that the mayor enforce the law or resign.61 Eventually the Howard family moved out, exhausted from being subjected to violence and intimidation. Donald Howard held the mayor directly responsible, saying, “Officials of the city, beginning with Mayor Kennelly, have consistently refused or failed to maintain law and order.” Howard described the protection as “characterized by indifferent police officers and belligerent police officers who seemed more intent upon protecting white

“ARE YOU GOING TO LET A NEGRO NAME T HE NEXT MAYOR OF CHICAGO?”   49

families from contact with us than protecting my family from the white mobsters and hoodlums that attacked my home.”62 Overall, while Kennelly used the police department forcefully to round up black gamblers, he opted instead for a gentle touch with the white rioters of South Deering. The mayor’s tepid response to the prolonged intimidation left black voters in the city frustrated and angry as the 1955 citywide elections approached. The 1955 Democratic primary for mayor of the city of Chicago has long been an item of fascination for scholars and journalists focused on urban politics. Martin H. Kennelly, an incumbent Democratic mayor with many successes, was rejected by the central committee of his own party and subsequently defeated in the primary. The episode has stood as a telling example of the power and effectiveness of the Democratic machine in the city, in that it demonstrated the ability of the machine to punish any attempt at reformism by an independent-­minded mayor. The political moment, and the maneuvering involved, also catapulted Richard J. Daley to power, and thus has been imbued with deep significance as a hallmark of machine-­style practice. However, beyond the inside moves involved in the rejection of Kennelly, the 1955 primary also merits attention because of the public rhetoric and race baiting that was so central to the election. By the end of his second term, Mayor Kennelly had alienated most of the ward bosses and influential committeemen in the Democratic organization. While Kennelly badly wanted a third term, forces in the party organization were aligned against him. When Kennelly appeared before the Democratic slate-­making committee, he was essentially frozen out. As veteran journalist Mike Royko recounts in his popular telling of the Daley years: “Nobody said anything. Several seconds passed. Kennelly shifted around in his chair and finally had to ask, ‘Do you have any questions?’ The heads shook. Some looked away. Then the committee chairman said, ‘Thank you, Mr. Mayor.’ That was it. Three minutes and fifty-­six seconds after he walked in, full of confidence, Kennelly was going down the hotel corridor, his face quite pale.”63 Historical accounts of the dumping of Martin Kennelly by the Democratic Committee spread the responsibility across many members, with Jacob Arvey, Al Horan, William Dawson, and, above all others, Richard J. Daley as influential actors.64 Yet when Kennelly next presented himself to the public, determined to run in the Democratic primary without the backing of the central committee, he blamed his overthrow squarely on Dawson. Kennelly ran his campaign on the theme that Chicago was under the domination of a black man. Furthermore, according to Kennelly and his allies,

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black opposition to the mayor was to be understood entirely through the lens of black criminal gambling. On Sunday evening, January 30, Mayor Kennelly gave a live address on WGN-­T V. He portrayed the coming campaign as a contest between himself and the growing pernicious power of William L. Dawson. Kennelly began, “This evening I would like to talk to you about one of the most sinister aspects of boss rule.” Speaking of an imminent return to patronage and protection schemes, he warned, “I say to you now that if our police and other agencies of law enforcement are again plunged into politics, Chicago will see a return to the condition where gambling, vice and policy were rampant in this town.” He recounted the story of his rejection. “Let’s go back for a moment to that smoke-­filled room at the Morrison Hotel headquarters where I appeared by invitation of the famous nominating committee.” He characterized Dawson as being the driving force against him. “The ‘word’ was out: ‘Dawson won’t stand for Kennelly.’ The chairman of the committee, Joseph I. Gill, said nothing. . . . Obviously, Dawson was in control. Control is very important to a man in the Congressman’s position. For years, he had it. Power in full measure. I can understand why he passed the word that he ‘couldn’t stand for Kennelly.’ I haven’t been interested in building his power. . . . The Congressman is a political boss. I am not a boss. I refuse to be subservient to bossism.”65 As the primary campaign between Kennelly and Daley intensified, Kennelly’s allies in the press went after Dawson. The Chicago Daily Tribune, a paper squarely behind the mayor, began reporting the accusations of a prisoner named Claude Murphy, who claimed to have incriminating information on Dawson and the major policy gambling figures in Chicago. “Every policy operator in the city is out to defeat Kennelly, because he won’t let them run as they used to,” Murphy claimed. “Anti-­Kennelly literature is being distributed right now by policy walkers.”66 The paper followed with an editorial condemning Dawson as having no political agenda beyond gambling and admonishing black voters for failing to recognize a true friend in Martin Kennelly. “The reason why Dawson won’t stand for Kennelly can be stated in one word—policy,” declared the Tribune. “Mayor Kennelly deserves the most friendly consideration by the Negro voters of Chicago. No other mayor has ever demonstrated—by actions, not words—his determination to give Negro citizens equal treatment in housing, in public employment, and in every other field. This means nothing to the Dawson precinct captains.” For them, “Kennelly is against policy gambling. Kennelly must go.”67 The Chicago Sun-­Times also endorsed Kennelly. The paper placed gam-

“ARE YOU GOING TO LET A NEGRO NAME T HE NEXT MAYOR OF CHICAGO?”   51

bling at the root of his ouster with an editorial titled “Gambling Stakes and Bossism in the Mayoral Fight.” The Sun-­Times asked, “Could it be that some of the Democratic committeemen are dreaming fondly of a return to the ‘good old days’ of wide open gambling in their wards?” The editorial encouraged voters to pull the lever for the mayor. “The gambling interests don’t like Kennelly. . . . We hope Democratic voters will remember that on primary day.”68 The next week, the Sun-­Times followed with another editorial titled “Policy, Narcotics and Mayoral Politics.” The editorial proclaimed Dawson a force for evil in the Democratic Party. The paper characterized him as the overlord of a district rife with narcotics and policy gambling, and explained that his opposition to Mayor Kennelly grew in direct proportion to Kennelly’s tightening of gambling enforcement. To deflect attention from gambling and crime, Dawson “has exploited racial tension and unrest in Chicago to make it appear that Mayor Kennelly is at fault. . . . [U]nfortunately he has been able to hoodwink many of his constituents on this score.” The paper argued that black Chicagoans would be better served following leaders who “do not raise false issues” for political gain.69 Kennelly’s supporters in the press rehashed Dawson’s seven-­year-­old interview with investigators from the Chicago Crime Commission. Virgil Peterson reminded the Chicago Sun-­Times that Dawson had openly complained about the gambling arrests being made in his district back in 1948. The paper blared the headline “Dawson Admitted Getting Funds from Gaming Spots.”70 The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-­Times girded Kennelly’s implication that the town was under the thumb of a powerful black boss. The Tribune alleged that Dawson had never in fact graduated from law school and that his favorite hobby was “listening to jive records . . . the wilder the better.”71 The Tribune followed a week later with a piece titled “Dawson, a Man of No Address in Washington,” stating, “Dawson is one of the most mysterious figures in the national capital. Few persons know how he lives or where and no one in his office will tell.”72 The Sun-­Times, in an article titled “Meet Rep. Dawson—South Side Powerhouse,” introduced the congressman by writing, “‘The Man’ is what they call him, with awe on Chicago’s troubled South Side. Everybody in his political kingdom, from policy racket tout to business millionaire, has reason to know his name.” The paper noted that Dawson claimed with pride to control one of the biggest voting blocs in the nation. Of Dawson’s wards, the Sun-­Times explained, “The population of the area is predominantly Negro. It includes some of America’s filthiest most shameful slums. He rules over festering crime, centers of violence,

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prostitution, gambling and graft.” And as for Dawson’s political motivation, “His favorite boast, in conversation and on campaign platforms, is that he does everything he can for ‘my people,’ meaning the Negro race.”73 The Chicago Tribune offered its readers an explanation of how it was that the city’s black voters had come to be so loyally Democratic. The explanation centered on the policy game. “The late Mayor Cermak after his election in 1931 reportedly used the game as a political club to turn South Side wards Democratic. Until then, they had been Republican.” According to the Tribune, “Cermak’s police hit hard at the racket month after month, then suddenly found interests elsewhere. Thru the city went the word that South Side leaders, in return for the right to let policy ‘go,’ had consented to bring their wards to the Democratic camp. Today those wards are dominated by Rep. William L. Dawson.”74 All of this breathless coverage of the congressman blanketed the city despite the fact that Dawson was not even on the ballot as Kennelly’s opponent. The media treated Dawson as the true center of power, while Daley was cast as a naive dupe.75 New York African American politician and journalist Earl Brown summed up the situation astutely from afar. “It is the first time a big city primary election for Mayor has depended almost entirely upon a Negro politician’s ability to weather public attacks leveled against him and his ability to deliver the vote in his wards,” Brown observed. “All Chicago newspapers are with Kennelly. They are blasting Dawson daily on their front and editorial pages. They are trying to link him with the policy racket, a happy pastime in which voters in Dawson’s district . . . sometimes indulge.” Yet Brown pointed to the broader and deeper basis for black opposition to the mayor. “The colored voters enthusiastically hate Kennelly. Not only has he failed to prevent attacks upon Negroes in Chicago’s infamous Trumbull Park housing project, but he has also opposed a local law that would prohibit discrimination in housing.”76 On the rare occasion that Chicago newspapers allowed black voices to break through, it was plain to see that Dawson’s constituents resented the constant smears. The Chicago Daily News probed voters on the South Side to see if the campaign by Kennelly and his surrogates was having the intended impact. A housewife told the Daily News, “Kennelly talks as if our residents play policy and gamble. I think all the decent people here resent that slur. I don’t think Dawson did all those things, do you?” A truck driver told the paper, “I hear Kennelly’s headquarters has started the lie going that if Daley is elected, he’ll pack the City Hall with Negroes. This is a lie and designed to stir up racial hatred.” A bookkeeper explained, “Kennelly and his

“ARE YOU GOING TO LET A NEGRO NAME T HE NEXT MAYOR OF CHICAGO?”   53

racial prejudice have got to go.” A postal worker offered, “Mayor Kennelly’s attack on Dawson is unfair because it is based on unproved charges of things that happened years ago. This is a racial issue, not a political issue.” An attorney living in the Third Ward put it quite simply, “I did not like Dawson until the newspapers began to attack him. Then I stopped and analyzed the situation and found they are playing on racial hatreds.” However, with or without the charges against Dawson and the politics of gambling, Kennelly’s record on the issues of race and housing did more than enough to alienate the city’s black voters. As a Twenty-­Fourth Ward cabdriver explained, “I can’t forgive Kennelly for not making the police enforce the law out at Trumbull Park.”77 Resentment against the Kennelly campaign’s baiting of Dawson surfaced in other papers as well. In a letter to the Chicago Sun-­Times, a reader complained, “In your laying it on thick for Mayor Kennelly, you speak of policy rackets and narcotics flourishing in Rep. Bill Dawson’s district as nowhere else in the city.” After asserting that gambling rackets on the South Side were actually under the control of North Side hoodlums, the reader explained, “This is the first time in five years that I can recall Kennelly has been concerned with Dawson’s district.”78 Another Sun-­Times reader insisted that the Trumbull Park conflict was at the center of the city’s racial politics. “I have been closely following the anti-­Dawson campaign on the part of the Sun-­Times, and I must say that I don’t think you understand or have any concept of Negro thinking along political lines. The Trumbull Park incident, which has so disgracefully shamed us, not only in Chicago but all over the world, is reason enough to dump Kennelly as far as Negro voters are concerned. You speak of the great gains under the Kennelly administration, but we here on the South Side are unable to see these gains.”79 A letter to the Chicago Daily News offered the same analysis, pointing to Kennelly’s handling of the “Trumbull Park mess” as the crucial issue. “He has completely ignored the colored population. Count the times when the mayor has visited Negro business groups, hospitals, public meetings, and you will find why Dawson is ‘agin’ him.” And of the gambling issue, the letter writer states, “All this policy bugaboo has been here all along—you know it, I know it, and so does Mayor Kennelly. But all of a sudden it’s a front-­page issue.”80 The Chicago Defender reported, “Kennelly’s attacks and those of the daily newspapers against Dawson have lifted the Negro Congressman to a level of importance in a big city election such as no Negro political figure has ever before experienced. . . . [T]he daily newspapers are professing to fear that the strength of the rapidly growing Negro population may be a determining factor in the election of the mayor at Chicago.”81

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Meanwhile, the allegations made by state prisoner Claude Murphy regarding gambling payoffs to a “congressman” began to disintegrate. After Murphy testified before the Big Nine, the chief counsel of the Emergency Crime Committee described the documents submitted by Murphy as “phony and spurious,” and concluded, “In all substantial respects Murphy’s story is unbelievable. . . . Murphy’s story is false.”82 For his part, Dawson took the allegations calmly. “I don’t mind being a whipping boy,” he told a crowd of a thousand party workers at a luncheon at the Morrison Hotel. “They can’t say anything about Daley so they pick on the weakest one—me! I will not answer back. When the newspapers get thru with slinging mud and smears, the people of my district will say what they think of Dawson.”83 A few days before the election, again at the Morrison Hotel, the candidate himself, Richard Daley, pushed back against the characterization of Dawson. “Why should they castigate leaders in the life stream of politics as bosses? I don’t say Bill Dawson is a boss. I say Bill Dawson is a leader of men and women.” Of the opposition, Daley offered, “I know and so do you, that they have control of communications—of radio and of television. By God, I am proud to have you men and women carrying my message from door to door.”84 Daley was triumphant in the Democratic primary, and the black vote was crucial to his victory. An editorial in the Chicago Defender summed up the racial poison left by the nasty campaign. “Mr. Kennelly knew, through his cowardly handing of the Trumbull Park race riots and other deeds of omission and commission, he had lost the support of Negro voters. He sought to take up this slack by asking white voters, in effect, ‘Are you going to let a Negro name the next Mayor of Chicago?’”85 Yet, beyond the black community and the black press, the ever-­present issue of gambling overshadowed the genuine dissatisfaction of the black electorate with the Kennelly administration. Thus Daley conveniently rode a wave of black support without ever embracing the policy positions of principal concern to black voters, particularly in the area of housing. The black vote was understood by the political machinery of the city and by much of the press to be easily directed and manipulated. Even the popular journalist Mike Royko engaged in dismissive racial stereotyping, writing, “Dawson and others cracked the whip and the vote poured out. The blacks went in, pulled the lever, came out, and got their chickens.”86 The Trumbull Park violence produced what historian Adam Green characterizes as “an unprecedented mobilization of local blacks.”87 The foremost demand of that mobilization was a call for police protection. Since

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the very beginning of the Kennelly administration, black civic leaders had been pressing the police department to take serious action in response to racial violence related to housing and neighborhood change. Yet year after year, the most energetic exertion of police presence in black life was the dogged pursuit of black gamblers. Police commissioners Prendergast and then O’Connor proved reluctant to arrest white rioters over the course of the many years of sustained violence, all the while spending police resources to round up black gamblers by the thousands. Race took center stage in the 1955 Democratic primary. However, gambling proved to be the lens through which the media and many city officials interpreted black political participation. Thus, as black voting staged its most substantial demonstration of effectiveness, the very issues of importance to black voters were largely ignored by the broader power structure. The rewards for supporting Daley in 1955 were few. As historian Jeffrey Helgeson writes, “Black Chicagoans received little of real benefit from the Daley Democratic machine.”88 Soon after the election, Daley moved quickly to subordinate Dawson and to neutralize him as a power center in the party. Daley intervened in a dispute between Dawson and Claude Holman, who was trying to assert independence from Dawson in the Fourth Ward. After Daley froze the ward’s patronage, Dawson was unable to exert any influence in the Fourth, and Holman became answerable only to Daley. Leon Despres, an independent alderman and a perennial thorn in the machine’s side, explained, “In short order every other black committeeman was put in direct line to Daley. Dawson was reduced to committeeman of only his 2nd Ward. There was no public disgrace, just a surgical removal of multiward power from Dawson to Daley.” The public impression persisted that Dawson dominated black politics in the city. In reality, his role was greatly reduced: while he was allowed to cut the figure of a powerbroker at party events, in actuality he wielded diminished power in the organization.89 Dawson’s record going forward was lamentable. He and his allies did little to challenge Daley, segregation, or disruptive slum clearance policies. The dynamic of a powerful Mayor Daley, an acquiescent Dawson, and a disregarded black electorate represented what many in black Chicago came to call “plantation politics.”90 Gambling continued on the South Side, and the police under Daley proved not all that different from the police under Kennelly, as Timothy O’Connor maintained his post as police commissioner for another four years. Arrests piled up by the thousands. These arrests were conducted without warrants, and they were disproportionately focused on black Chicagoans. Those in black Chicago who made a living from gambling con-

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tinued to be a harried and harassed group. Despite more than a decade of controversy and conflict over gambling, little had changed. As various constituencies in the city pushed and pulled on the gambling economy during the 1940s and 1950s, the illegal status of popular betting practices allowed this unstable element of urban life to become a key site of the expression of racial power and authority. While black Chicagoans had momentarily relied on an unmolested policy game to pursue autonomy in politics and business, this project was short-­lived. White-­led organized crime groups used violence and intimidation against black gamblers, who were ineligible for police protection due to their standing as illegal actors. Mayor Martin Kennelly insisted that his anti-­gambling efforts amounted to a war on organized crime, but when filtered through the attitudes and inclinations of the city police force, the effort manifested itself as a harassment campaign against black Chicago. Police, meanwhile, harvested graft from the gambling economy broadly, while simultaneously relying on gambling arrests to criminalize thousands upon thousands of black city residents. The police stood shoulder to shoulder in their refusal to cooperate with the Big Nine investigation, insistent on their right to be free from invasive search without probable cause. At the very same time, the police relentlessly pursued unlawful and warrantless arrests of policy players and runners on the South Side. Black Chicagoans grew increasingly disdainful of the police, who took minimal action against white rioters attempting to maintain segregation. Overall, the politics of gambling during the 1940s and ’50s left the Chicago Police Department with a thoroughly damaged reputation, low morale, and lacking the legitimacy and trust necessary to effectively address crime in the city. Gambling stained all that it touched, from the reputation and the motives of the black Chicago voter, to the integrity and honesty of the city police force. The problems that flowed from the prevailing arrangements of Chicago gambling far surpassed the problems inherent in the acts of betting and bet-­ taking themselves. Nonetheless, few policy makers or civic leaders pursued meaningful change in the legal status of gambling. After more than a decade of scandal, media scrutiny, and official investigation, the popular practice of illegal betting remained an unresolved contradiction at the heart of Chicago governance. Backroom efforts to forge amenable arrangements, as well as public initiatives to confront gambling head-­on, all failed to contend with the genuine dilemmas posed by widespread illegal gambling. While the policy game remained entangled in politics and corruption going forward,

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by 1955 the era of gambling as a source of black political mobilization and capital formation had clearly passed, leaving behind a tarnished and easily dismissed black politics to advocate for the needs of an under-­resourced and poorly policed South Side community. The city government, whether under Kennelly or under Daley, was little interested in responding to the pressing concerns of black residents, while both the government and its police lacked the legitimacy to keep black demands for justice at bay. The 1955 Chicago Democratic primary represented the culmination of a style of urban politics reliant on the mediation of gambling and vice enforcement as the currency of political access and sociopolitical harmony. This exhausted and contradictory formula left black political and social life in the city caught between machine and reform with little benefit flowing from either. As the black population became increasingly salient as a voting bloc, not only in Chicago but in cities across the North, the configurations of urban gambling with relation to race, police authority, and political power moved into a period of flux. This process of transformation would be deeply shaped by the same demand for just policing and equal treatment that was dismissed and overshadowed in Chicago in 1955.

3

This Community Is Being ​Criminalized

In early January 1960, Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. opened the new year by tying the conduct of everyday gambling in New York to larger forces of racial discrimination. Speaking to a crowd of several thousand at the Abyssinian Baptist Church on West 138th Street, Powell asserted that corrupt officers in the New York City Police Department were working in conjunction with East Harlem white gangsters to drive black numbers bankers out of business, thus serving to consolidate control of the gambling economy in the hands of the mob. Small-­time black operators were constantly harassed, while big-­time white bankers went unmolested. Powell declared that every week he would publicly announce the name and address of a numbers banker willfully ignored by the police, thus challenging the police to take on the white numbers operators. Police Commissioner Stephen P. Kennedy immediately proclaimed that an inquiry would be opened into Powell’s charges, stating, “The law is color-­blind. If Mr. Powell has evidence of such discrimination I would like to hear about it.”1 As Powell and his top aides received death threats, he intensified the pressure on city and state government to take action. Once again speaking from the pulpit at Abyssinian Baptist Church, Powell told the congregation, “I have this day sent a wire to the Governor of New York State, asking him to institute a special investigation of numbers in this city through state law enforcement agencies, through a special commission, through the State Attorney General, or all three.” He discouraged his parishioners from engaging in gambling but noted that the true shame was to be found in sending so much money outside of the community. “Here we find a community lower in income than any other in the city, and yet we spend $50,000,000 a year to support Italian and Jewish policy bankers”2 (fig. 7). Police Commissioner Kennedy responded with a rebuke of Powell, ar-

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F I G . 7  Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (D-­NY) addresses the Democratic Platform Committee in Atlantic City on August 21, 1964. AP Photo.

guing that race had no place in the discussion of gambling enforcement. Speaking at police headquarters, he argued that it was unnecessary to appeal to anti-­Semitic or anti-­Italian sentiment to highlight the evils of policy gambling. The commissioner also noted that it was ridiculous for Powell to speak of Harlem gambling money going to support another community. In the words of the commissioner, “The only community the racketeer money supports is the criminal community.”3 But Powell continued to press the issue, publicly announcing the names and addresses of white gambling bankers who operated in Harlem. In order to avoid subpoena or libel suit

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for his statements, Powell read the names and addresses on the floor of the United States Congress, secure in the fact that a member of Congress cannot be sued for statements made from the House floor. Among the names he read aloud was that of Esther James. He claimed she was a money collector for grafting police. In March 1960, Powell repeated his charge against James while appearing on a television talk show, without the mantle of protection from libel suit. James quickly pursued legal action against him. The lawsuit against Powell, demanding $1 million, was all consuming for much of the rest of his life. He fought the matter tooth and nail, and the case eventually dragged in “80 judges, 10 courts, 4 juries, 15 lawyers, and Congress.” A state supreme court jury decided against Powell in 1963, ordering him to pay $211,500 dollars. By all appearances, James was indeed a collector for the police, yet jurors in the case punished Powell for his refusal to appear at the trial.4 Powell insisted he would not pay James, and as a result he was charged with contempt by multiple courts, and warrants were issued for his arrest. The warrants kept him out of New York State for prolonged periods, and this absence from his district ultimately became the central element in his political undoing. Beyond the sordid details and torturous history of James v. Powell, it is significant to note that the gambling underworld of New York presented an entanglement from which Representative Adam Clayton Powell never escaped. As was the case with William L. Dawson in Chicago, the outsized presence of gambling in black urban life left a stain that greatly undermined Powell’s political effectiveness, at a time of momentous importance for his constituents. For many years during the 1940s and ’50s, Powell and Dawson were the only two African American members of Congress. While their districts were quite similar, the two men genuinely despised one another. Powell constantly derided Dawson as an Uncle Tom, loyal to party over race. Dawson, meanwhile, deplored the flamboyant and freelancing Powell. Nonetheless, the two men arrived independently at similar conclusions regarding gambling. Dawson made clear in 1948 that “as long as policy playing is in operation in Chicago he will do all within his power to see that it is controlled and operated by the Negro.” Powell concluded in 1960 that “until the day when numbers is wiped out in Harlem—I hate to say this from the pulpit—I am going to fight for the Negro having the same chance as an Italian.”5 Powell was not the first in New York to fuse economic nationalism with a critique of the policing of the numbers game. When white gangster

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Dutch Schultz muscled in on the Harlem numbers in the early 1930s, numbers woman Stephanie St. Clair refused to buckle. She led a public crusade against both Schultz and the corrupt police who were squeezing her operation. She shamed police corruption in paid newspaper advertisements and in sworn testimony. She rallied Harlem to resist Schultz, encouraging bettors to patronize only black numbers workers, clarifying the element of black economic nationalism inherent in the conflict.6 Powell took these long-­standing tensions over the numbers to a national stage. He made his assertions regarding biased enforcement of the gambling laws amidst an intense effort by the New York Police Department (NYPD) to suppress gambling citywide. His claims were a matter of public contestation over how gambling should be conducted, and his controversial charges in 1960 came after more than a decade of turmoil and dispute over gambling in all its forms in New York City. At the center of these disputes were New York’s black communities and the NYPD. Questions of how gambling was to be governed, policed, and played were matters of great consequence for both, and elemental to the relationship between the two. From 1946 to 1966, the NYPD waged a war on gambling, with gambling arrests steadily holding as the second largest arrest category behind arrests for disorderly conduct. This sustained campaign of roundups and arrests was simultaneous to the development of a vast system of extorted bribes, with the former reinforcing the latter. The corruption, the frequent police entry into homes and businesses, the warrantless searches and seizures, and the constant arrests of “known gamblers” were basic aspects of Harlem life. And while “known gamblers” did not include everyone, any resident of the neighborhood with a window to the street could observe the dynamic at play. Gambling enforcement was at the very heart of the exercise of municipal authority in midcentury New York, and the governance of gambling was itself an expression of racial power. * * * When Samuel Symonette was dragged into New York’s Gamblers Court in 1947 to answer the charge of possession of policy slips and felonious assault, he asserted that he was the one who was assaulted. According to Symonette, a Harlem candy store owner, four plainclothes policemen entered his store to search for policy slips. When Symonette demanded to see a warrant, the officers set upon him and beat him severely.7 A neighbor, who observed the attack through the store window, called the police. The arriving

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patrolmen arrested Symonette and listed the plainclothesmen as victims of assault. Symonette was a “known gambler” with a previous conviction, and the police offered no other justification beyond a “complaint” of gambling, in order to effect a full search of his store with no warrant. Harlem-­based city councilman Benjamin J. Davis Jr. immediately took up the case. A Communist and a vocal critic of police brutality, Davis called the incident “a flagrant disregard for civil rights.” He argued, “The man’s guilt or innocence is beside the point. He was the victim of a needless assault.”8 The Communist newspaper the Daily Worker described the incident in vivid detail. “Three detectives locked a Negro into his candy store Saturday morning, and beat him bloody and unconscious with pistols and pop bottles and with their feet.” The paper recounted that the assault sparked such outrage among neighbors that the police called out the riot squad to disperse the angry crowd. The reporter who visited Symonette at home described a man barely able to whisper, with a face swollen badly out of shape.9 Councilman Davis submitted a resolution calling for a city council investigation into police brutality. He stood on the steps of city hall with Symonette’s wife to denounce Police Commissioner Arthur W. Wallander. Davis wrote an editorial calling the commissioner’s handling of the case “a foul, revolting whitewash.” The commissioner, meanwhile, claimed that the police used no more force than necessary in their search for policy slips.10 Mayor William O’Dwyer, himself a former police officer, denied that there was a systemic problem, claiming that while certain exceptional cases created bad publicity, things were otherwise running smoothly. The mayor’s allies on the council easily defeated Davis’s resolution for a probe into police brutality.11 Several days of testimony unfolded in felony court to determine if the four officers involved in the incident should be charged. Judge Ambrose J. Haddock, a former police lieutenant, exonerated the officers, declaring Samuel Symonette to be a “cop fighter.” He dismissed “insinuations” that “policy suspects arrested in Harlem receive harsher treatment than in other parts of the city,” declaring that the police department “needs no advocate before this court.”12 The judge’s five-­page decision claimed that Symonette was undoubtedly a numbers game collector and emphasized that the Daily Worker and Communist subversives were attempting to undermine the credibility of law enforcement in Harlem.13 The officers were cleared. Symonette pleaded guilty to possession of policy slips and disorderly conduct. He was fined $100 and given a sentence of six months in jail.14

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* * * The mobilization led by Ben Davis surrounding the Symonette case fused together the long-­standing issues of police brutality and the dirty policing of the Harlem numbers game. The radical Davis was defeated for reelection in 1949, yet his moderate successor, Earl Brown, maintained a steady focus on both the police and their gambling enforcement practices. Brown was a popular journalist and editor, writing about politics, culture, and sports for the Herald Tribune, Life magazine, and the New York Amsterdam News (fig. 8). In the years leading up to his entry into politics, he offered regular commentary on Harlem life in the Amsterdam News. His lack of ties to the Democratic machine and his anti-­communist liberalism made him a suitable candidate around which Democrats and Republicans coalesced as both parties put him forward as the candidate to knock out Davis. After a nasty and tense election that featured a melee between police and Davis supporters on Lenox Avenue, Brown emerged victorious.15 In conceding the election, Davis assured Brown of his support, provided that the new councilman “carry on the fight against police brutality.”16 And indeed he did. Brown pursued a number of causes during his twelve years in the city council, among them pressuring the city’s daily newspapers to cease referring to the race of suspects in crime reporting, working to improve sanitation services in Harlem, and most notably co-­authoring the historic Sharkey-­Brown-­Isaacs bill, which outlawed discrimination in private housing in New York City. Throughout his tenure, he made the case for greater police accountability. Interestingly, he paired the issues of brutality and corruption at a moment when reform leaders in the police profession were beginning to pull them apart.17 And within his push for oversight of the police, Brown asserted the centrality of gambling. He called for a legalization of gambling as a matter of reform. Brown understood that the prevalent gambling corruption in Harlem was at the core of distrust and disdain toward the police. Writing in the spring before his election, he commented, “If the cops do not soon mend their ways and stop devoting so much time to protecting the racketeers and the rowdies, Harlem is going to blow up in their faces.”18 As he conceded the popularity of betting, clearly a gambler himself, he argued that nothing “can justify the cop’s policy of actually encouraging vice by taking a ‘cut’ from every racketeer in the community.”19 In the city council, Brown hammered away at gambling bribes, declaring police corruption to be an endemic social disease on par with racial discrimination. “Corruption is as much a part of the cops as their shields.”20 He

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F I G . 8  Earl Brown in Harlem in 1958. Walter Sanders/The LIFE Picture Collection, courtesy of Getty Images.

characterized brutality as an element of the larger problem of corruption. In 1950 the police shooting of twenty-­four-­year-­old African American army veteran John Derrick mobilized Harlem political leaders across all political divides. In the analysis of Brown, the incident and the uproar were built on years of dissatisfaction with callous and inefficient policing by a department known for “literally running the numbers racket.”21 The work of Earl Brown in the city council resonated well beyond the borders of his district in Harlem. The phenomenon of gambling corruption among police was a problem across the city. At the moment Brown took his seat, a citywide gambling scandal broke open that engulfed the police department and the William O’Dwyer mayoralty. In December 1949 journalist Ed Reid, writing for the Brooklyn Eagle, published a series of articles describing widespread collaboration between the police and gamblers in Kings County. Following the Brooklyn Eagle revelations, Kings County District Attorney Miles McDonald launched a grand jury inquiry into the police-­gambling tie-­up.22 As the investigation set out, an editorial in the New York Herald Tribune predicted, “Whatever the truth in Brooklyn, it is reasonably sure to yield ramifications that extend throughout the entire city, and perhaps beyond.”23 Anticipating that the grand jury inquiry would gain traction, Democratic

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Mayor O’Dwyer scurried to stay one step ahead of the scandal. First elected in 1946, O’Dwyer represented something of a revival of the Tammany Hall machine in New York politics. The Irish-­born O’Dwyer began work as a police officer in Brooklyn in 1917, eventually becoming a magistrate and then Brooklyn district attorney. After service in World War II as a brigadier general, he returned to run for mayor with the enthusiastic backing of the Tammany Hall machine. The upstanding O’Dwyer offered the possibility of a resurrection for Democratic regulars who had been separated from power during the Mayor Fiorello La Guardia years.24 While O’Dwyer was something of a modernizer, his close ties to police department culture left him inattentive to the ongoing corruption in the department that prevailed during his administration. With the Brooklyn district attorney poised to lay bare police malfeasance for all to see, O’Dwyer pointed to gambling as the crux of the dilemma for the NYPD and sought a reconsideration of the legal status of betting. The mayor sent a message to the leaders of the state legislature in Albany requesting that they act to legalize and regulate certain forms of gambling. “One of the most difficult problems confronting law enforcement agencies is the suppression of organized gambling on public sports events,” O’Dwyer’s message began. He called on the legislature to amend the state constitution and enact a system of “regulation and control” of sports betting to be overseen by the State Liquor Authority, thus curtailing corruption while directing new resources to the state. Republican Governor Thomas Dewey would have none of it. Originally from the Midwest, Dewey came to New York to attend Columbia Law School. He rose to prominence after being appointed by Governor Her­bert Lehman as a special prosecutor to investigate municipal corruption. Dewey racked up convictions as he doggedly pursued corruption and racketeering in the city. After a stint as Manhattan district attorney, Dewey was elected governor of New York in 1942.25 The two men, O’Dwyer and Dewey, together represented a late iteration of the conflict between machine and reform that had defined urban politics for nearly a century, and their differences were of culture and class, as well as politics. Their divergent views on gambling fit with basic divisions between Catholic and Protestant clergy on the issue. While the Catholic O’Dwyer wanted a practical solution to the inevitable presence of betting, the Protestant Dewey resisted any moral degradation of governance. The cultural and religious divide between the two men further reinforced political divides between urban and rural, upstate and downstate, Albany and New York City. Dewey responded to O’Dwyer’s request for legal betting with a message

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of his own six days later, dooming any possibility for a controlled legalization. “I regard this as such a shocking, immoral and indecent proposal that I consider it my duty to lay my views before you,” began the governor. He stated that it was unethical for the government to encourage people to embrace gambling as a source of income. In Dewey’s analysis, the imprimatur of state legitimacy would open the door to legalization of other forms of gambling such as lotteries, dice games, and slot machines. The result would be a complete breakdown of law enforcement and a general condition of “poverty, crime and corruption . . . and ultimately a lower living standard and misery for all the people.”26 With the door to legal gambling closed by the governor, the proceedings of the Brooklyn grand jury dominated the headlines for months to come. In June 1950 Captain John Flynn, commander of the Sixty-­Eighth Precinct, was called to answer questions regarding a gambling operation in his district. Several weeks later, Captain Flynn shot himself through the head with his service revolver inside of the Sixty-­Eighth Precinct station house. As word spread that police officers planned to attend Flynn’s funeral en masse as a “silent protest,” Mayor O’Dwyer and Police Commissioner William P. O’Brien announced that they would also be on hand. Asked why he was taking the unusual step of attending a police funeral for an officer who had not died in the line of duty, O’Dwyer answered, “He was a good cop,” and lamented that his three children “have to bear the disgrace when there is no disgrace to bear.”27 Ultimately, in an impressive display of protest and solidarity, more than six thousand police officers attended Captain Flynn’s funeral. It is telling that what the New York Times reported as “the largest police funeral ever held in the city” was not in fact an outpouring of grief for an officer felled in the line of duty—rather it was a bitter and frustrated protest gathering for an officer who committed suicide under the glare of a gambling investigation.28 The grand jury acknowledged the problem of low police pay and issued a letter to the mayor encouraging him to raise police salaries. As things stood, with many police making only $29 a week in take-­home pay, the temptation of graft was too strong for some to resist.29 But the grand jury’s nuanced understanding of the situation was of little consolation to seething police workers, who were in full agreement with the mayor’s characterization of the proceedings as a “witch hunt.”30 Unfazed by the mayor’s public criticism, District Attorney Miles McDonald pushed forward. By August, pressure from the scandal had left Mayor O’Dwyer in an untenable position. Given his close ties to the police

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department and given that his own investigators had previously examined gambling corruption and turned up nothing, the burden of the scandal was O’Dwyer’s to carry. Conveniently, President Harry Truman offered the mayor an appointment as the US ambassador to Mexico, allowing O’Dwyer to exit from the New York scene with a modicum of dignity. Shortly after O’Dwyer’s departure, the Brooklyn district attorney launched a series of raids closing wire rooms and betting parlors, and arresting the gambling impresario Harry Gross in September 1950. A major gambling figure, Gross developed his network of horse race and sports betting parlors in the city during the 1940s and spread payoff money to all levels of the police department. The information that Gross provided led to the indictment of twenty-­one officers.31 The fallout from the scandal further soured the public perception of the NYPD as it heightened police officer defensiveness and militancy. Within two weeks of the arrest of Gross, Police Commissioner O’Brien resigned, along with his two top deputies.32 The task of naming a new police commissioner fell to the acting mayor, Vincent Impellitteri. Breaking with tradition, Impellitteri passed over several experienced senior officials within the department and instead sought leadership from outside. He named federal prosecutor Thomas F. Murphy to the post, angering and alarming the rank and file. The Brooklyn grand jury demanded as much, stating, “No policeman—no matter how honest or well intentioned—could possibly do what is now required to be done. The mess is so bad that the task of cleansing it will require a broader civic perspective and a greater degree of professional objectivity and freedom than any police official could bring to the office of commissioner.”33 Immediately, Commissioner Murphy ordered that police officers of all ranks sign immunity waivers and appear in front of the grand jury when called.34 While some shuffled into the courtroom and testified under the threat of contempt from Judge Samuel Leibowitz, others—notably Lieutenant J. X. Burns of the West Thirtieth Street Detective Squad—chose to retire rather than sign the waiver of immunity. According to the city’s administrative code, police retirements were “automatic and self-­operating,” and therefore effective immediately. Thus the lieutenant retired with his pension intact, leaving himself no longer subject to the authority of Commissioner Murphy and his orders to cooperate. An outraged DA McDonald and a perplexed grand jury requested that the city council amend the code to read that police retirements take thirty days to go into effect.35 When the council took up the issue with the support of Impellitteri, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) vigorously opposed the rule change. The his-

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toric role of the PBA as an advocate for police pensions was thus genuinely fused with its emerging role in defending cops against charges of gambling corruption. In February 1951, immediately after the thirty-­day rule for retirement passed the council but prior to the mayor signing the bill into law, 251 police officers retired in a single day.36 After the bill was signed, an additional 463 more officers retired in the three weeks before the law took effect, making front-­page news as they rushed for the door.37 By May 1951, the police department found its ranks depleted a full 10 percent, with a shortage of two thousand men and many vacancies in high-­ranking positions.38 The grand jury handed down indictments for twenty-­one policemen in the spring of 1951. On the first day of the trial in June, as the twenty-­one officers waited to enter the courtroom, recently retired plainclothesmen Charles Panarella, attending the trial with his son, climbed from the sixth-­ floor window of the courthouse and jumped to his death.39 Several weeks after the Panarella suicide, Murphy vacated the commissioner’s chair upon being appointed to a federal judgeship. As he parted, he inched toward a rational position on gambling but stopped well short. He told an audience on his final day, “Gambling can never be eliminated as long as there are two persons able to bet against each other. But while gambling is illegal, the Police Department will labor whole-­heartedly to combat it.”40 Murphy was succeeded by then–­fire commissioner George P. Monaghan. As the Brooklyn grand jury disgrace unfolded, the city police flirted with unionization. The radical Transport Workers Union undertook an organizing drive among patrolmen, startling the commissioner and mayor. The PBA adopted a more militant posture so as to stay one step ahead of being supplanted by another organization, and to keep pace with the disgruntled sentiment among the rank and file. Monaghan issued a departmental order forbidding any member of the force from affiliating with a labor union.41 According to the Supreme Court ruling McLeod v. City of Jackson (1947), a police officer pursuing unionization could be lawfully dismissed for insubordination.42 Thus, Monaghan’s order closed the issue for the time being. The commissioner was equally clear in his stance on gambling. He stated his goal at the outset to drive the policy game, bookmakers, and other gamblers from the city. “I want these people to get out of New York and stay out,” he told the assembled press.43 In effect, Monaghan reorganized the department to make gambling suppression the responsibility of the entire police force from top to bottom.44 This all-­out assault fit tightly with the

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urban governance of the moment, as the Kefauver Committee toured the country putting the spotlight on gambling as a criminal menace. The Kefauver Committee arrived in New York to hold hearings just as the Brooklyn grand jury was handing down its indictments. The convergence of these investigations created a remarkable moment of public fixation on the politics of gambling. As the Senate committee prepared for its hearings, they were flooded with letters from New Yorkers suggesting candidates for scrutiny. A Harlem resident suggested, “While you are here investigating crime and its effects upon government, why not look into Adam Clayton Powell’s relations with one Johnnie Walker, well known Harlem ‘numbers king.’ . . . But maybe Congressmen are immune from your probe.”45 Head of the United African Nationalist Movement, Harlem activist James R. Lawson, also reached out to the senators. Lawson sent the committee a packet of articles and documents claiming that Italian gangsters were draining money from Harlem. He followed up with a letter demanding to know why he was not contacted. “It is Black communities that suffer the greatest as a result of the rackets,” he insisted.46 In 1951 Lawson was little known outside of Harlem, yet three decades later he would make citywide headlines in his defense of black autonomy in the numbers business. The committee ignored Lawson, but investigators from the Kefauver group sought background information on Harlem gambling from City Councilman Earl Brown. The investigators suggested Brown as a witness, noting, “The story he tells is that every policeman from the flatfoot on the beat to the inspector is involved in the numbers racket, that they actually instruct the participants in the business where they may operate and receive pay-­offs graded according to the status of the policemen.” However, the Kefauver Committee never called Brown as a witness, nor did it pursue any interest in Powell. Harlem and black gambling received only minor attention in the New York hearings. As the memo regarding Brown states, “None of the big name hoodlums are apparently involved in the numbers racket.”47 The New York hearings focused largely on high-­profile organized crime figures, notably Albert Anastasia and Frank Costello, and any links between these figures and politics. For good measure, William O’Dwyer was called back from Mexico to appear before the committee and explain both his association with certain underworld figures and his halfhearted attempt to uncover gambling corruption in the NYPD. The former mayor reiterated his position that gambling could never truly be suppressed by the police, and thus should be legalized and regulated.

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* * * Although the Kefauver Committee hearings in New York ignored the extortion of black gamblers, Harlem Councilman Earl Brown seized the moment. He capitalized on the heightened public attention to gambling corruption in order to press Harlem’s claims. In late 1952, he submitted a resolution calling for the city council to conduct a full investigation of police misconduct, declaring that “the crux of the problem is gambling—illegal gambling.” By way of solutions, he called for a system of legalization.48 Brown’s resolution demanded an examination of the “gambling habits and practices of the city of New York, and graft and corruption in the police department growing out of unlawful gambling.”49 The resolution was defeated, yet the councilman from Harlem did not relent. In 1953 Brown pushed two bills through the city council, one calling for a referendum on a legal lottery, the other calling for a referendum on off-­ track betting.50 In Brown’s conception, money from legal gambling could flow to the state treasury with the express purpose of funding hospitals. The legislation described the results of ongoing efforts to suppress gambling as “worse than the evils sought to be prevented.”51 Brown’s successful council bills on gambling were met with indifference in the state capital as the social conservatives holding sway in Albany continued to stand in the way of any change to the state gambling laws. Brown’s resolution to investigate the police, however, was quickly revived in 1953. Brutality by New York police captured national attention early in the year when news reports circulated that Commissioner George P. Monaghan struck a secret deal with the federal Justice Department to allow the NYPD to “clean its own dirty laundry.” Historian Marilynn Johnson, in her thorough account of the history of police violence in New York, asserts that Commissioner Monaghan initially sought the deal in an attempt to repair the damaged morale in the NYPD that resulted from the Brooklyn grand jury scandal.52 According to the arrangement, complaints against New York police officers were to be handled with internal investigations, forestalling FBI investigations into brutality complaints as possible civil rights violations.53 Commissioner Monaghan denied that any such deal existed, yet evidence mounted to the contrary.54 Representative Adam Clayton Powell called Monaghan a liar and told a House subcommittee investigating the matter that the New York police were in the business of taking gambling bribes. He insisted that the commissioner should be fired immediately.

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“Every day he is in office is a disgrace to my town and to the country,” Powell declared.55 Powell was not alone, as an array of civil rights groups, along with Republican Congressman Jacob Javits, called for the police commissioner to resign. With momentum building, in March 1953 Earl Brown once again submitted his resolution to establish a city council committee to investigate police misconduct. Walter White of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) appeared in the council to speak in favor of the resolution while John Carton, head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA), showed up to denounce the measure. Carton told the council that police “are the real minority group and the real abused group.” The hearings descended into a shouting match between Brown and Carton of the PBA, as Carton claimed that the proceedings were playing into the hands of subversives bent on undermining the police.56 After two more months of wrangling, a diluted version of Brown’s measure passed the council.57 Hoping to outmaneuver Brown, the department set up a civilian complaint review board. This demand dated back to the 1935 Harlem riot. However, the board established in 1953 was constituted of police officials charged with looking into civilian complaints. The board itself did not have any civilians on it. Brown called the new board “the same old system with a new coat of whitewash.”58 The effort to establish a true civilian complaint review board was far from concluded, as it was to become a deeply divisive issue over the subsequent decade and a half, poisoning police-­community relations and driving police stridency. Throughout the controversy of 1953, the PBA was in lockstep with Police Commissioner Monaghan. While the gambling scandals led the PBA to square off with the commissioner, the issue of brutality brought the association to the commissioner’s defense. Carton persisted with wild charges that Communists were attempting to stir the black population into a “full scale attack” on the police.59 Mayor Vincent Impellitteri stuck by his police commissioner, insisting that Monaghan was honest and forthright. He called the demands for Monaghan’s dismissal “un-­American.”60 In the fall of 1953, Impellitteri paid a price with Harlem voters, as he was trounced in the Democratic primary by Manhattan Borough President Robert F. Wagner Jr. The son of a renowned New Deal–­era senator, Wagner traveled a smooth path through New York Democratic politics. His family name together with his elite education allowed him to straddle the machine and reform tendencies in New York politics, as he balanced and hedged the competing claims and priorities of the city’s many adversarial constituencies. The new

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mayor quickly shed himself of Monaghan, appointing Federal Prosecutor Francis W. H. Adams as the new police commissioner. Mayor Wagner promised that the commissioner would have free rein to run the department without any political interference. Adams insisted that he would not have accepted the job otherwise.61 The promise of a department liberated from political interference was a fundamental tenet of the police reform movement of the era, which emphasized professionalism, insulation from politics, quasi-­military hierarchy, technological sophistication, and high standards of integrity.62 Relations between Brown and the department improved quickly as the new commissioner “expressed a strong desire for full cooperation with the legislative investigative body.”63 Brown and the new mayor also forged a political alliance, as both saw eye to eye on the issue of gambling in the city. During Wagner’s tenure, Brown’s voice as a critic of police faded, and his political career hit a wall in 1958 when he challenged Adam Clayton Powell in the Democratic primary for Harlem’s congressional seat. Yet for the rest of the decade, Brown carried the banner of gambling legalization as a reform of potentially great consequence for African American New Yorkers. The state government in Albany consistently thwarted the efforts of Earl Brown and Robert Wagner Jr. to legalize off-­track betting and lotteries. However, a slight crack in the political opposition to legal gambling among upstate legislators opened up with a public controversy over the game of bingo. Originally an outgrowth of the Italian game lotto, bingo became popular in the United States during the 1920s when movie houses used it as a method to raffle prizes.64 A bingo card featured a five-­by-­five grid of squares with the letters B-­I-­N-­G -­O labeling the columns across the top, and with the squares assigned numbers randomly between 1 and 75. As a master of ceremonies called out lettered-­numbers pulled from a drum, players covered the corresponding squares on their card, hoping to cover five squares in a straight line or diagonal and thus win a prize. A bingo card carried odds to win of 1 in 235. Large games in New York often attracted more than a thousand players, the majority of them working-­class women of diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds. The admission fee was typically $3.50 for the chance to play thirty-­ five games of bingo for cash prizes of up to $100 a game. As of 1954, there were an estimated two hundred bingo games operating around the city.65 Bingo was clearly against New York State law. However, the NYPD maintained an unofficial policy of allowing bingo games run for charitable purposes in the city. In particular, the overstretched New York Arch-

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diocese, with its network of schools and hospitals to support, generated money through the game.66 Synagogues, veterans’ groups, and the Knights of Columbus also ran popular games during the 1950s. In some instances, gambling figures oversaw operations. Known gambler William P. Buckner, relying on an alias and connections to the Hood Memorial Baptist Church and Congregation Emes Wozedek, ran a large and steady bingo game at the Audubon Ballroom in Upper Manhattan all through the decade.67 In September 1954, when Chief Inspector Louis Goldberg, a veteran scourge of gambling, began raiding games at churches and synagogues in Brooklyn, his actions generated outrage from clergymen and bingo loyalists. Goldberg was quickly ordered by his superiors to relent. When he continued his anti-­bingo drive, he was demoted to captain for his insubordination. Offended and embarrassed, Goldberg tendered his resignation, making front-­page news and creating a public debacle for Commissioner Adams and Mayor Wagner. The police commissioner insisted that Goldberg was demoted for insubordination rather than for his enforcement against bingo. Mayor Wagner also awkwardly tried to explain the punishment of an officer for adherence to the letter of the law. Yet the single clear notion that emerged from Wagner was his insistence that the bingo law should be changed.68 Just days after Inspector Goldberg’s resignation, Earl Brown staged a successful fight to include local option bingo in the State Democratic Party platform for the upcoming elections.69 Brown followed up with an editorial on bingo, stating that “the biggest evil resulting from gambling is corruption of public officials, especially policemen, some of whom corrupt easily.” Brown also emphasized that the widespread tolerance of bingo highlighted the subjectivity of criminalized gambling. “It’s no more of a sin for a housewife to play a nickel on a number in a candy store than for her to play one on a bingo game in a church,” he wrote.70 Brown, Wagner, and other New York Democrats hoped to follow the path laid out by New Jersey, which had legalized bingo in 1953. The statewide elections in 1954 offered the opportunity to resolve the city’s awkward nullification of state law. With Republican incumbent and anti-­gambling stalwart Thomas Dewey not running, Democrat W. Averell Harriman carried the gubernatorial race. Harriman and his allies in the legislature acted immediately to legalize bingo. The popularity of bingo among middle-­class women and the close association of the game with religious institutions proved difficult to stand against. Republicans in Albany relented. They stood firm against immediate legalization, but they moved to support an amendment to the state constitution to allow bingo.71 In 1955 the legislature began the multiyear process

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of amending the state constitution to allow localities to pursue the game. Despite energetic opposition from a coalition of Protestant churches, the constitutional amendment was approved by public referendum in 1957. The measure gave cities and towns the ability to chart their own course regarding bingo. City residents overwhelmingly voted in support of the state amendment, and Mayor Wagner and Councilman Brown acted quickly to pass a local bingo law to be subjected to citywide referendum.72 In 1958 New York City voted by a 2 to 1 margin to approve bingo games operated by religious and charitable organizations.73 This represented the first legalization of any form of gambling in New York since pari-­mutuel betting was legalized at racetracks in 1939. The mayor attempted to capitalize on the opening as he renewed his effort to push through legal off-­track betting. He literally told anyone who would listen about the possibilities of a legal off-­track program. As he explained to a television audience in 1959, this untapped source of revenue could forestall the imposition of new taxes. Under the current system, he asserted, gambling money “is used not to support government, but to corrupt law enforcement agencies.” He urged Albany to move past the issue of morality and confront illegal gambling as a practical matter.74 But off-­track betting, with its image of bookies and cigar-­chomping bettors, did not find the same fate as bingo, with its image of church ladies and charity. Throughout Wagner’s three terms as mayor, he failed to force the state legislature’s hand on the issue. Although Robert Wagner Jr. pursued change in the legal status of gambling more aggressively than any previous mayor, he did little to slow gambling enforcement in the city. Police Commissioner Francis W. H. Adams set the department after gamblers with vigor. He maintained that while the laws were on the books, they would be enforced (the bingo exception notwithstanding). However, he did express the possibility that the gambling laws should be subjected to rethinking. As Adams communicated to the mayor in 1954, gambling enforcement was “increasingly complex and difficult with each passing year. . . . [I]t is our view that the problem has now reached such a magnitude that serious study of the question in all of its ramifications is urgently needed.”75 His successor, Stephen P. Kennedy, never conceded that much, and he pursued a war on gambling with unprecedented fervor. Kennedy was a veteran of the NYPD, but he was nonetheless resented by many police officers for his by-­the-­book approach. During his time as commissioner from 1955 to 1961, gambling suppression greatly intensified, and the acrimony between the rank and file and the commissioner’s office reached new levels of bitterness. Kennedy paid little atten-

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F I G . 9  New York City Police Commissioner Stephen P. Kennedy faces reporters at NYPD headquarters on February 22, 1961. AP Photo/Matty Zimmerman.

tion to the mayor’s embrace of legal gambling, and he poured energy and resources into enforcing existing laws while punishing officers who seemed to take a lax approach to such enforcement. Kennedy began with mass transfers of veteran police, stating he was dissatisfied with their efforts to curb gambling.76 In his first policy speech, Kennedy explained that the corruption stemming from gambling undermined the entire system of justice. He announced a program to “harass the ‘parasites’ with repeated arrests.”77 He told his high command, “You know who the gamblers are. Get rid of them; lock them up. . . . Give them no peace. Put them out of business or they will put you out of business. . . . Every member of the force is charged with this duty.”78 And while the entire department was tasked with gambling enforcement, he also set up several special squads

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and gave them explicit orders to “jail all ‘known gamblers’ and to keep a constant surveillance over gambling suspects.”79 The “Known Gamblers” file of the New York Police Department was originally established in 1946. The file was meant to provide commanding officers and those assigned to gambling enforcement with “a thorough knowledge of all persons whose names appear in this file, together with a knowledge of their methods of operation, associates, places frequented, criminal records and police histories.” Commanding officers were instructed to submit reports on known gamblers, including those with no criminal record. After the arrest of a gambler, form D.D. 52 F (a Known Gambler Card) would be filled out and maintained in the file.80 In 1955 Commissioner Francis W. H. Adams issued a general order expanding the use of the Known Gambler’s File to the patrol division, making the file a department-­wide concern.81 By the time Stephen P. Kennedy ordered all “known gamblers” arrested on sight, the file contained thousands of names.82 Early in 1957, relying on a broad use of vagrancy statutes, Kennedy announced a drive against “undesirables.” Gamblers were, of course, classed among them. As the New York Times reported, “The strategy of the police is to continue harassing the undesirables until they find the environment here too uncomfortable for their operations.”83 Such tactics epitomized law enforcement during the era, as police sought to impose a social order relying on what scholar Risa Goluboff has characterized as a “roving license to arrest” provided by the “breadth and ambiguity” of vagrancy laws.84 Under Commissioner Kennedy, typical gambling raids went beyond arresting persons found with gambling paraphernalia or inside of gambling locations, and came to include persons on the sidewalk near gambling locations who were arrested in large numbers and charged with vagrancy.85 Thus the war on gambling was not only reflected in the dramatic growth of gambling arrests, but also in the growth of vagrancy arrests. Kennedy’s drive against gambling was a massive effort, and the arrest activity was astounding. For 1956, the 42,848 gambling arrests posted by the NYPD constituted the single largest arrest category for the year. It was the highest single-­year total for the decade. For that year, the NYPD arrested 2,053 women for gambling, nearly matching the 2,180 women arrested for prostitution. In 1957, the 39,790 gambling arrests were a close second to disorderly conduct and vagrancy arrests, which proceeded to grow dramatically as a result of the Kennedy “harassment of undesirables” campaign, topping out just shy of 50,000 in 1959.86 At times Kennedy’s war on gambling receded slightly, as resources were

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directed toward other priorities, particularly juvenile crime. Public anxiety over juvenile crime had grown steadily since the end of World War II, when FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover began to sound the alarm. Estes Kefauver picked up on the theme, conducting a Senate investigation on the deleterious effects of violent comic books on the minds of the nation’s youth. The Broadway debut of West Side Story in 1957 represented a New York iteration of the problem, and indeed real-­life episodes of violence among teens over neighborhood boundaries and access to parks and pools captured public attention.87 Kennedy had no patience for disorderly teens, yet as a police administrator, he viewed gambling corruption as an existential threat. The gambling crackdown reclaimed center stage after a Manhattan grand jury declared in 1959 that officers in East and West Harlem were taking a slack approach to the numbers game.88 In the fall of ’59, an infuriated Kennedy again issued a blanket order to all members of the force “to arrest known gamblers on sight.” The uniformed men were instructed to charge the gamblers with vagrancy, if they could not be caught in the act of gambling. In the twenty-­four hours after the order was given, the city rounded up 312 gamblers, and thousands more over the subsequent weeks.89 As his long campaign of street harassment yielded minimal results in curbing the actual amount of gambling, Kennedy fumed. He railed against soft judges who were lenient against gamblers in deference to public opinion. He demanded jail sentences be made mandatory for gambling convictions. He declared that bettors should be punished along with bet takers. He pleaded for two thousand additional officers to stamp out the problem, and he lamented the public apathy and “general moral confusion” surrounding the gambling issue.90 In January 1960, in the midst of this hysterical exertion by the police, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. took to the pulpit and to the floor of Congress to condemn the police campaign. He warned the commissioner of “massive indignation” in Harlem and denounced the gambling arrest wave in New York City as discriminatory.91 Powell’s assertions, at a glance, seemed like a matter of local politics and governance. Yet the New York situation was far from unique. In fact, Powell’s charges of biased gambling enforcement pinpointed an exercise of racial authority that prevailed across the urbanized North. While the NYPD did not publish arrest statistics by race, many other big-­city departments did. Scrutiny of arrest data during the 1950s reveals a pattern of racially targeted enforcement ranging from striking to absurd.

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F I G . 1 0  Comparison of gambling arrests by race in major American cities in 1958.

In Chicago for 1958, the police arrested 8,514 black gamblers, compared to 1,281 white gamblers. In that same year in Detroit, police arrested 1,793 black gamblers and only 161 white gamblers. The Cincinnati police arrested 792 black gamblers and 59 white gamblers, and the Cleveland police arrested 2,278 black gamblers and a mere 193 white gamblers. None of the arrest categories that were larger than gambling in these cities—namely, disorderly conduct, vagrancy, intoxication, or some combination thereof—show anything close to the same degree of racial disparity, with whites often outpacing blacks in these categories. For arrest categories such as prostitution and narcotics law violations, which clearly did target black residents, the rates of disparity were not as high, and the total of arrests were dwarfed by the total of gambling arrests. In Cleveland, for example, 2,278 black gambling arrests compared with 110 black narcotics arrests, and 201 black prostitution arrests. Which is to say that during the 1950s, in the urban North, gambling enforcement was the principal site of race-­based policing. Prominent national civil rights groups were ill at ease with Adam Clayton Powell’s crusade for justice in gambling. Despite the region-­wide nature of the phenomenon, and notwithstanding Powell’s status as a national figure, the issue of biased application of the gambling laws gained no traction as a broader issue of importance to civil rights. The congressman’s efforts contradicted the sort of respectable representations of African American life that were fundamental to many civil rights claims of the

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era. As political scientist and Powell biographer Charles V. Hamilton explains, the national NAACP wanted no part of a struggle for “equal rights in ­gambling.”92 The local results of Powell’s accusations, meanwhile, were difficult to perceive at the time. The Manhattan district attorney’s office secretly opened an investigation into gambling corruption in Upper Manhattan, but the work was not made public until several years later. On the street, the police responded to Powell’s accusations by sweeping the Harlem corners of gamblers, with two hundred plainclothes officers dispatched to raid numbers spots. Powell called it a “phony round-­up” and dismissed it as yet another example of biased enforcement in “an attempt to embarrass the Negro community, while continuing to let the higher-­ups go free.” Deputy Police Commissioner Walter Arm responded, “We are not playing Mr. Powell’s game. We have not and will not issue crime statistics by race or creed. We are not interested in his color, only his crime.”93 Although he got no satisfaction from the police, Powell did succeed in spurring New York journalists to take a closer look at the city’s numbers business. In the wake of Powell’s claims, The New York Post (then a respected liberal newspaper) began an in-­depth investigation of the policy rackets, and the result was a series of ten substantial articles on the topic. The congressman had the articles submitted into the Congressional Record.94 The series by pioneering African American journalist Ted Poston showed that police corruption in New York remained as much a problem as ever. Little had changed since 1949, when the Brooklyn district attorney initiated his headline-­grabbing investigation. The Post also revealed a vast numbers gambling structure in the city that employed thousands of people, and a pattern of black numbers operators being subordinated by the collaboration between white organized crime figures and the police. The series centered on the so-­called pad, a police-­approved list of locations allowed to sell illegal numbers. At such locations, a person could rest assured that they could place a bet without any chance of police action. “A spot might be a grocery store or a tailor shop, a luncheonette or a poolroom. It might be a bank of elevators in a Wall Street office building. It might be an elevator or a newsstand in the Garment Center. . . . It might even be a specified hallway in a Harlem tenement.” Each location had to be approved by the police, and each location had to be paid for in cash. The Post’s reporting revealed that a spot on the pad was subjected to a complex pricing system, depending on the profitability of the gambling location and on the level of protection sought.95

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The Post initiated their investigation to follow up on Representative Powell’s charge that the police were unfairly targeting black numbers operators. Yet the team from the Post quickly learned that “Harlem furnished only a fraction of the astounding sums bet daily,” and thus the scope of the inquiry was widened to take in the entire city. White working-­class neighborhoods and areas of extensive working-­class employment such as the waterfront and the garment district featured heavy play across racial lines.96 Regardless of who was at the top, the numbers rackets spawned a massive employment structure that allowed thousands of New Yorkers to earn a living. The runner was the basic street-­level worker, responsible for collecting the numbers bets in places such as apartment houses, tenements, offices, factories, or street corners. Working out in the open, the runner “is most often the man arrested.”97 Above the runner was the controller. Akin to the branch manager of the bank, a controller might work with as many as a hundred runners. The pickup man was charged with transporting the paperwork and receipts, known as “the works,” from the controllers to the backers of the operation, referred to as the bank. The banks employed adders to “operate the computing machines and other modern office equipment.”98 Ancillary roles in the business included those of tenant and stand-­in. A tenant was simply an apartment dweller who allowed a controller to use his or her apartment to tally the day’s receipts for a payment of $10 a day. According to the Post, hundreds of such apartments were found throughout the city. While tenants were often working people, the stand-­ins were often quite the opposite. The larger arrangements with the police required that each operation absorb a certain number of arrests each month so that the police could meet quotas. Thus stand-­ins were paid to be arrested. “Each wino or junkie, or anyone else who accepts the role, must be paid $50 a ‘bust’ when he takes a ‘stand in’ arrest for a policy employee.”99 The banker sat at the top of the organization. “This is the president, the chairmen of the board.”100 The Post identified a pattern of black bankers being reduced to controllers because they could not afford to keep up with the increased costs of the pad. As controllers, the former black bankers worked for the East Harlem mob.101 Some black and Hispanic numbers workers who were under the thumb of white gangsters exercised a degree of autonomy by selling a game called “single action.” Developed around 1940, single action allowed the player to bet on individual digits of the daily three-­digit number. According to the Post, single action was found almost exclusively in black and Puerto Rican areas and was typically banked by runners using their own pool of money.102

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A “recently retired Negro banker” explained to the Post that the takeover by the East Harlem group led by Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno began in the late 1940s. The conquest was not violent in the manner of earlier attempts to muscle in by Dutch Schultz and other bootleggers. Rather, “the East Harlem boys just got together with the cops, raised the price for protection, and then got the right to say who could get on the pad and who couldn’t. There were at least 30-­odd Negro banks doing business when the mob moved in. I doubt that there are a half-­dozen left now—if you don’t count the boys trying to make a living with single action.”103 Salerno was born and raised in East Harlem and had been working in crime rackets in Manhattan since his early days as a youth boxer. He moved up the ranks in the East Harlem faction of the Genovese crime family. By 1960 few Italians remained in the predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood of East Harlem. However, Salerno continued to operate out of the Palma Boys Social Club on East 115th Street, as bankers and operators black, white, and Puerto Rican paid him a cut of their earnings for his coordination of the pad.104 Despite paying fees to the mob and paying increased rates for the pad, some “independent” banks were successful. The Post pointed to roughly half a dozen independent black and Puerto Rican banks in operation. Notably, a joint venture run by Henry Lawrence and “Spanish Raymond” Marquez was cleared for ten spots.105 While the remaining black and Hispanic bankers had to make their accommodations with the pad and with the East Harlem mob, the lower-­ echelon workers in the numbers business remained highly vulnerable out on the street. In reference to the thousands of runners and lookouts arrested for policy in Harlem during 1959, a black lawyer explained to the Post, “This means that this community is being criminalized. Once a person is arrested for numbers, it is impossible to receive private employment any more.”106 For many New Yorkers, the series of articles in the Post simply confirmed the obvious fact that the numbers game was all around them. For Stephen P. Kennedy and the city’s police leaders, it indicated that the strenuous efforts to curb gambling were having little effect, and this ineffectiveness was best explained by collaboration between gamblers and corrupt police. As a redoubling of his efforts to root out crooked cops, Kennedy promoted veteran investigator John Francis Walsh to chief of detectives. Walsh was previously the head of a “special squad to investigate reports of police dishonesty,” and the rank and file despised Walsh as “the biggest shoo fly of them all.”107 Police frustration at the promotion of Walsh was part of a larger set of dis-

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putes between Commissioner Kennedy and the men who patrolled the streets. Ironically, the feud between Representative Powell and Kennedy was relatively timid compared to the feud between Kennedy and the increasingly militant Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. In 1958 patrolmen John J. Cassese ousted John Carton as leader of the PBA. The far more combative Cassese captured the frustration of the men, arguing that Carton had not stood up and fought for police workers. By his own telling, the burning issue that enabled Cassese to topple Carton as head of the association was the anger and frustration over the endless mass transfers implemented by Commissioners Adams and Kennedy in their efforts to break up the gambling payoff system. Cassese raged in ’58: “There are transfers all over the city. This is bad for morale. The men are up in arms about it.”108 Thus, while gambling corruption remained endemic, Commissioner Kennedy had little to show for his torrent of gambling transfers other than an alienated force and a belligerent opponent in Cassese. In the summer of 1960, the hostility between Kennedy and the mass of working police came to a head. Kennedy infuriated the patrol force as he pursued a crackdown on the practice of “moonlighting.” Given that the New York City patrolmen earned $6,706 a year at the time, many officers took second jobs. While this practice had long been against official policy, most commissioners winked at moonlighting rather than punish those involved.109 By the estimate of Cassese, between 60 and 70 percent of policemen worked second jobs.110 As Kennedy took action against officers engaged in moonlighting, the PBA took a series of unofficial job actions in October 1960. Hoping “to bring the situation to the attention of the Mayor,” policemen throughout the city engaged in a work slowdown. Disgruntled police placed anonymous calls to newspapers to warn of a halt to traffic enforcement. On October 25 at around 2 a.m., “an unidentifiable voice on a police waveband said simply: ‘No Summonses tonight.’” The PBA denied any involvement in the slowdown, but rather pointed to generally low morale on the force. The protesting police relied on language in the Manual of Procedure that gave officers the right to “warn and admonish” in instances of minor or borderline infractions.111 In many ways, the slowdown spoke to some of the same issues that were at play in the controversy over numbers corruption. Underpaid police seeking supplemental sources of income were defending their prerogatives and exercising their discretion to look the other way at minor offenses. Kennedy was outraged. He labeled the ticket slowdown as a “strike” and an act of “treason” against the people. Speaking to reporters, he quoted

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Calvin Coolidge, who crushed a Boston police strike while serving as Massachusetts governor in 1919: “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime.” For Kennedy, the incident demonstrated the danger of a slide toward police unionization.112 As the feud escalated between Kennedy and the PBA, Kennedy had PBA head Cassese demoted to traffic duty. In retaliation, working police carried on the feud by reversing their tactics. Rather than slowdown the issuance of summonses, they papered the city with a barrage of traffic tickets, thus truly dragging the public into the dispute.113 A heightened professionalism was at the heart of Kennedy’s program for police reform. But the lowly paid NYPD workers guarded their discretion fiercely. A policeman speaking anonymously to the New York Times lamented, “In the old days the cop on the beat kept the peace by handing out curbstone justice. The only time he took anything to court was when he couldn’t handle it with his nightstick.” In contrast, “today the commissioner says it’s not the job of a policeman to adjudicate anything.”114 Ultimately, Kennedy’s dispute with the PBA was at the center of his undoing. Kennedy pressed the mayor for an annual $600 pay raise for police across the board, essentially to offset the hardship caused by his own enforcement of the moonlighting rule. Wagner was not interested in establishing a precedent he would have to meet in negotiations with other municipal workers, and he was content to wink at the moonlighting ban. The mayor refused the police commissioner’s demand. Kennedy immediately resigned at a midnight press conference.115 As Kennedy’s replacement, Wagner chose Chief Inspector Michael J. Murphy. The appointment of Murphy was met with jubilation from the rank and file. However, the new commissioner quickly announced that he would doggedly pursue corruption in all corners of the department. In April he summoned 175 top-­ranking officers to remind them that the gambling laws must be strictly enforced.116 Murphy also established a Gambling Enforcement and Inspection Review Board to work with district attorneys and grand juries. Under Murphy, the department made a determined push to pursue illegal gambling both in the street and in the counting rooms. Yet the war on gambling cooled in New York in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling in Mapp v. Ohio (1961). The high court’s decision clarified that state criminal courts could not admit evidence obtained through warrantless search and seizure. Thus New York police were greatly curtailed in their ability to kick in doors and conduct gambling raids. Also, perhaps in a nod to civil rights and an emerging recognition of due process, Murphy slightly modi-

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F I G . 1 1  Comparative view of gambling and narcotics arrests in New York City, 1940–1968.

fied the department’s program of monitoring “known gamblers.” Late in 1961, the commissioner issued a General Order dividing the Known Gamblers File into two parts. File No. 2 would contain cards of gamblers considered no longer active. In essence, Murphy and the department conceded that a felony gambling arrest did not necessarily require a lifetime of police surveillance.117 While gambling arrests in New York decreased significantly in the aftermath of the Mapp decision, and while Murphy trimmed the Known Gamblers File, gambling nonetheless retained its status as the second largest arrest category in the city as late as 1966, when it was finally overtaken by narcotics arrests. Much of Michael J. Murphy’s time and energy as police commissioner was occupied by trying to position the department with respect to the policing of large demonstrations in an atmosphere of increasing demands for civil rights. Murphy initially approached the situation with hopes of setting the NYPD at the vanguard of a well-­balanced approach, and as a contrasting example to southern police departments. Yet this changed in 1964, when a wave of protests surrounding the World’s Fair featured insults heaped upon police and after an ongoing rent strike in Harlem prompted steady pickets at precincts against police who were acting as eviction agents. Murphy moved into a defensive crouch more typical of the NYPD’s history and of the prevailing rank-­and-­file sentiment. Speaking to a friendly audience in April, Murphy complained, “The police are being attacked unfairly and

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bearing the brunt of a campaign of mass libel . . . and this mass attack is being launched to discourage impartial police action, to damage the police reputation and to dilute the effectiveness of the Police Department.”118 Fair or not, the attacks on police carried considerable credibility among many in Harlem. The police handling of evictions during the rent strike further enhanced the bitterness. After Murphy denounced rent-­strike leader Jesse Gray by name, Gray pushed back, declaring that Murphy should be fired for the “corruption and the atmosphere of violence.” He complained that when a “Negro calls for help he cannot find a patrolman. But a landlord seeking to evict a protesting tenant has a platoon of policemen at his command.”119 The head of the New York NAACP, the Rev. Richard Allen Hildebrand, came to Gray’s defense. Hildebrand explained, “Negroes in Harlem have very little confidence in the police,” as they believe that the police are “accepting graft” and are “blind to the narcotics trafficking, illegal gambling, and prostitution going on in the community.”120 The persistence of corruption coupled with several cases of police violence brought tensions between police and New York’s poorest communities into sharp focus in 1964. The killing of eighteen-­year-­old Francisco Rodriguez by an off-­duty policeman in East Harlem in February 1964 renewed calls for civilian oversight of the police. Two years before his death, Rodriguez was named “Boy of the Year” by the local Boy Scout chapter, and his killing brought the Puerto Rican population of East Harlem deeply into the ongoing struggle to hold police accountable. Murphy mishandled the response to the incident, referring to the portrayal of Rodriguez in the press as a case of “crocodile tears.”121 With the July killing of fifteen-­year-­old African American James Powell by Lieutenant Thomas Gilligan, the tensions between the Harlem community and the police erupted into a substantial disturbance remembered as the “Harlem Riot.”122 While the killing of Powell was certainly the immediate cause of the riot, the role of long-­standing grievances relating to corruption should not be underestimated. Whether serving illegal evictions on behalf of slumlords or working in coordination with white mobsters to control the numbers business, the police were perceived to be enforcing a political economy of exploitation by outsiders. The Amsterdam News offered a reflection on the riot in an editorial titled “Harlem’s Plea.” The paper anticipated “a whitewash” from the police review board and demanded that a new review board composed of civilians be established. On the matter of deeper causes for the unrest, the paper explained, “We repeat, the image of our Police Department in Harlem is bad and Harlem did not create this image. On the contrary each new edition of

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newspapers shipped into Harlem carries new and additional stories connecting high police to corruption and crime.”123 Following up a week later with an editorial titled “Why the Harlem Riots?” the Amsterdam News pointed out that Harlem youth associate the police with “exploitation” and “corruption,” noting that “for too long they have seen on countless street corners, patrolmen friendly with known gamblers, hoodlums and their ilk.”124 CBS News sent an African American reporter to 117th Street to seek the underlying causes of Harlem’s anger. Nearly all of the Harlem residents who were interviewed referenced the gambling situation, viewing it from different angles, all with a clear sense of discontent. One man complained of gambling corruption by the police. Another man complained of young people unable to find employment because they were tagged with numbers arrests. Several other residents of the block complained of the wide-­open gambling in the streets as a form of lawlessness evincing police indifference to the well-­being of the community.125 City College professor and famed social psychologist Kenneth Clark dispatched a group of field researchers to Harlem in late 1964. The researchers were to conduct interviews in the neighborhood to gather “some basic information on the attitudes of these marginal individuals toward the recent riots, and to determine as far as possible, the actual potential for violence among these groups of individuals.”126 Out on the sidewalk, the team recorded Harlem residents as they answered questions about schools, sanitation, hospitals, housing, the Welfare Department, and the police. The atmosphere of dissatisfaction was glaring, and the topic of police tended to prompt the most impassioned responses. The issue of brutality and rough treatment was by all means the most prominent complaint, yet the matter of corruption ran a strong second, with respondent after respondent recounting the gambling corruption openly on display in the neighborhood. As one man explained, “We have the most corrupt police department in the world.” By way of examples, he recalled, “I was arrested for policy twice. Both times—let me say this—my first arrest I was guilty. My second arrest I was just snatched off the street for the same thing. . . . The first case I paid my way out of it. You can pay your way out of anything in New York City. . . . This is a lousy police department. . . . I can stand on the corner all day long and show you cops getting paid off.”127 A woman insisted that what was needed was a civilian review board to deal with the corruption. “I’ve seen some horrible things. I’ve seen policemen take bribes . . . from my window. I see them every day running around the number men.”128 Another resident echoed, “The police don’t seem to

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be in Harlem to protect the citizens. The police seem to always be here to chase the little number writer but they can never touch the big banker.”129 A man who was asked what caused the riot pointed to Adam Clayton Powell’s charges about the policy game. “Its ‘I’m runnin’ the Guinea out of Harlem,’” he said of the riots. And in describing the unequal nature of gambling enforcement, he explained, “When they go downtown, do you know what they get? $500 fine; 5 days to 10 days. When you go downtown do you know what you get? If you got a number slip in your pocket? Eight months! Nine Months! A year!”130 Another man questioned for his thoughts on the police responded, “If they see something good, they’ll take over. They’ll take over and they—I can stand right here now and pull out a piece of paper and start writing your address or name and he would be here figuring I’m writing numbers. But you need one, you don’t find him.”131 A man who compared the NYPD to Nazi stormtroopers called them “the most corrupt element in our society. . . . [T]hey came here to get some training in graft and corruption.”132 And another man referred to the department as “the largest criminal organization in the world.”133 A man who worked as a numbers runner called the police “dogs” and described being shaken down for bribes. “I got busted for policy, you know. . . . I wind up giving him twenty dollars, man. And he came right back out there—came right back—for Christmas, man, we gave them so much money it was pitiful.” And in describing the manner in which police plant numbers slips on suspects, he concluded, “They ain’t nothing. I hate every one of them, so help me. I wish a bomb just drop on every precinct, just blow them all up.”134 In the weeks leading up to the riot, gambling corruption among police once again seized the narrative of public life. In late June 1964, a joint investigation between the Manhattan district attorney and the police department resulted in yet another grand jury to examine police graft in the numbers game. The district attorney predicted that the inquiry could take up to two years and involve up to five hundred police. The New York Times reported that the investigation leading to the grand jury had been ongoing since 1960, which is to say it began shortly after Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. made his accusations of bias and corruption.135 July 18 was the day of the funeral for James Powell, the teenager killed by police, and that night marked the first real violence in the Harlem Riot. The day had featured a temperature of ninety-­two degrees, typifying the emergent pattern of rioting during so-­called long, hot summers. Yet perhaps more typical than a population frustrated by the heat were the front-­page headlines that morn-

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ing, about the expanding grand jury investigation into numbers corruption among police.136 People in Harlem did not riot in 1964 in response to gambling corruption. The riot occurred because a police officer deployed lethal violence in dealing with a juvenile. However, because of decades of gambling corruption, the police lacked the legitimacy to prevent the violent outburst that followed in the killing’s wake. In the aftermath of the violence in Harlem, calls for a new review board comprised of civilians to replace the review board made up entirely of police grew louder. Police Commissioner Michael Murphy declared his staunch opposition. When the police-­only review board, in operation since 1953, cleared Officer Thomas Gilligan of any wrongdoing in the shooting of James Powell, the pressure on Murphy intensified.137 Earl Brown and a handful of other civic leaders with credibility on civil rights defended Murphy and his record on race relations, encouraged in particular by the appointment of African American Captain Lloyd Sealy to a precinct command in Harlem.138 However, these voices were overwhelmed by demands for Murphy’s resignation. The commissioner’s posture on civilian review came to define his public image on issues of race, just as the issue of civilian review came to define the politics of policing in New York. In the spring of 1965, with a civilian review bill moving through the city council, Murphy resigned.139 As his replacement, Wagner appointed US Attorney Vincent L. Broderick. PBA leader John Cassese attributed the plan for civilian review to a Communist plot to destroy the police department.140 Yet Murphy’s opposition to civilian review was rooted in the creed of police professionalism. First among the tenets of this creed was that policing must be free from political interference. This adamant stance against political interference was a response to machine influence over hiring and promotion dating back to the mid-­nineteenth century. But with big-­city machine politics fading into the past, and with police work covered by civil service examinations, the ethos of police professionalism was ill suited to the moment. Police stonewalling against oversight further deepened the crisis of relations between communities of color and the police in New York City. During the 1950s and ’60s, the police department and its leadership struggled to shed their reputation for gambling corruption. Yet the reforms demanded by top brass amounted to a redoubling of efforts to suppress betting, with little in the form of new thinking. This redoubling manifested itself at the lowest levels of the gambling structure and at the bottom rungs of the hierarchy of political power in the city, resulting in mass arrests of black gam-

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blers on the street. The city regime of gambling enforcement ultimately provided an arena for expression of the power dynamics of racial authority and economic exploitation in New York City. Meanwhile, after more than two decades of constant pressure on the city’s criminal gamblers, the NYPD had little to show for their efforts. The principal results of New York’s war on gambling were a frustrated black community fed up with being targeted for extortion and constant arrest, and a police department with a reputation for corruption, lacking the credibility and legitimacy necessary to maintain order, low morale within the department, and embittered labor relations between police workers and police administrators. Meanwhile the vigorous enforcement campaign of the early 1950s, which was part of a national effort to confront gambling, fell out of step with the constitutional parameters of policing being applied by the courts in the mid-­1960s. As the Supreme Court elaborated new protections for the accused, such safeguards even came to serve the police officers ensnared in Manhattan’s grand jury investigation into numbers corruption. On July 15, 1964, just days before the Harlem Riot, Lieutenant James T. Stevens, commander of the plainclothes division in Harlem, was dismissed from the force for his refusal to testify. In August he was sentenced to thirty days in jail for contempt of court.141 After serving his thirty days, Stevens was called in front of the grand jury once again to answer the same set of questions regarding payoffs. Stevens remained silent, this time claiming that he was protected by a recent ruling of the US Supreme Court. The exasperated judge demanded that Stevens’s lawyer summarize the argument in a memorandum and said, “This law is changing so fast that it’s difficult not only for this court but for my colleagues to keep up with it.”142 Stevens was sent back to jail a second and then a third time. Yet he appealed his contempt convictions, and in February 1966 the US Supreme Court ruled in his favor, clarifying that he had a right to invoke his privilege against self-­incrimination.143 The case of Stevens v. Marks was a small part of a broader transformation of the rights of the accused. Although police, prosecutors, and judges in New York were slow to adapt, the law was indeed changing quickly. And partly as a result of this revolution in due process that was unfolding at the federal level, the war on gambling at the local level reached its limit. Commissioner Murphy himself moved to the position that public demand for gambling must be addressed in order to achieve any real solution. While he stands as yet another police reformer from the era who stopped well short of embracing legalization, he publicly acknowledged that gam-

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bling could not be eradicated through endless arrests.144 Some in the department tasked with gambling enforcement had come to see the ongoing cat-­and-­mouse game with criminal gamblers as futile from the moment the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Mapp v. Ohio (1961).145 For several consecutive generations, poorly conceived gambling laws were a principal site of conflict between black neighborhoods and the NYPD. These laws themselves were not inherently brutal or discriminatory. Yet the gulf between the letter of the law and the realities of common practice offered an open channel through which prejudice, corruption, and brutality could flow. In the words of Earl Brown, writing in 1961, “Under the present system of police-­gambler domination in illegal rackets, there’s no chance for the colored brother or sister to get an even break.”146 As was the case in Chicago, black political leaders in New York during the 1950s sought to keep gambling money inside of the black community and struggled to relieve the pressure on people caught up in the police suppression of gambling. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. lamented that money bet on the numbers in Harlem flowed to white gangsters outside of the neighborhood, while Councilman Brown spent the better part of a decade pushing for the legalization of gambling, on the one hand, and for proper oversight of the police, on the other. In 1966 the Amsterdam News, the city’s premier black newspaper, declared the “unenforceable gambling laws” to be “the cause of trouble” between the police and the segment of the community “which riots on occasion.”147 As disorder and riots in urban areas became a source of national anxiety, aggressive pursuit of gambling in the streets appeared less and less worthwhile. The police during the 1950s and early 1960s were in many ways deeply divided on the matter of gambling. High-­ranking police officials committed themselves to the war on gambling, and for many upwardly mobile police officers, energetic enforcement of the gambling laws became an arena to demonstrate honesty and integrity. Yet simultaneously, many among the rank and file carried on the tradition of taking gambling bribes as a supplement to low pay. When confronted with directives to produce arrests, these officers exercised their authority upon communities and neighborhoods that were the least politically powerful and the most socially distant from the police themselves. Mayor William O’Dwyer, under a cloud of scandal, and Mayor Robert Wagner Jr., as a matter of reform, publicly advocated changing the legal status of gambling so that gambling revenue might be directed to the purposes of government. The status quo of unrealistic law and dishonest en-

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forcement proved difficult to dislodge during the 1950s. However, by the mid-­1960s, with the city’s most prominent black political leader denouncing the biased nature of gambling enforcement, with the poor reputation of the police standing as an impediment to order, and with police authority to pursue raids and arrests subjected to a process of redefinition by the courts, city gambling was poised for rearrangement.

4

​ alf of the Rest of Their H ​Lives in Jail

When Dollree Mapp died in October 2014, it was not until a month later that her death was reported by the national media. In her early nineties, she had been living quietly and somewhat anonymously in Georgia, far from the swirl of controversy that surrounded her life. In reporting her death, the New York Times recounted the episode of May 1957, during which police forced entry into her home without a warrant. The police claimed to be in search of a bombing suspect. While they did not find the person in question, they did discover sexually explicit materials. Mapp was sentenced to prison on obscenity charges. She challenged the conviction, and the Supreme Court ruling in Mapp v. Ohio (1961) declared that “all state courts must suppress evidence gathered through police misconduct.”1 As the Mapp obituary in the Los Angeles Times explained, “Mapp v. Ohio became the first in a string of historic decisions in the 1960s that redefined the rights of the accused.” The paper cited a characterization of Mapp as “the Rosa Parks of the Fourth Amendment.”2 Unmentioned in the obituaries of Dollree Mapp was her role in the numbers game. While details of a “bombing suspect” and the discovery of “obscene materials” offer the impression that Mapp’s encounter was peculiar, or even sensational, the arrest of Mapp was in fact a routine matter that amounted to run-­of-­the-­mill gambling enforcement in Cleveland. Mapp was a “known gambler,” her home was a drop-­off point in the Cleveland numbers game, and the officers who arrested her were explicitly tasked with the suppression of gambling. The state pursued the obscenity charge against Mapp only after a gambling case against her failed and after she refused to testify against other Cleveland gambling figures. The warrantless search of Mapp’s home was perfectly characteristic of Cleveland gambling enforcement during the period, and Mapp was one of the more than two thousand

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black residents of Cleveland arrested on gambling charges, during a year in which the police in that city made less than two hundred gambling arrests of white persons. The arrest campaign by the Cleveland Police Department exemplified the kind of biased enforcement that Adam Clayton Powell Jr. denounced on the floor of the House of Representatives. In fact, in the year of Mapp’s arrest, Cleveland police arrested more black women on gambling charges than they did white men. While Mapp’s tenacity in court was indeed unusual, the circumstances of her arrest were all too typical, as she was one of so many black Clevelanders caught up in a crackdown on gambling during the mid-­1950s. In Cleveland and beyond, the nation reckoned with gambling in all of its forms during the 1950s. This fitful process was rife with contradiction and abuse. Again and again, conflicts arising from efforts to suppress or control gambling arrived in the US Supreme Court. While a wide variety of legal and technical issues were at play in these cases, the basic questions that repeatedly emerged related to the extent of police authority and the proper legal status of gambling as either a crime or a business activity. As these questions were settled, the high court placed new limits on police authority, as the scope and meaning of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments were expanded and the legal status of gambling was sent into flux. The Kefauver hearings of 1950–51 initiated a process by which gambling suppression in America intensified and then ultimately collapsed. The glare of attention brought by the hearings energized and magnified local enforcement efforts that relied on abuse of authority and violations of civil rights. As Chicago Police Commissioner John Prendergast told the Kefauver Committee of his approach to gambling suppression, “When you haven’t got a warrant, when you get your evidence illegally, the courts say in many cases that you have no case. . . . I say, make the arrest. You are at least inconveniencing them.”3 And as New York Police Commissioner Stephen Kennedy demanded repeatedly of his department, “Jail all ‘known gamblers’ and keep a constant surveillance over gambling suspects.”4 The warrantless raid and the arrest without probable cause were the basic elements of big-­ city gambling enforcement during the 1950s. The revolution in due process touched off by Mapp v. Ohio deprived police of these tools and forced a rethinking of the policing of gambling at the local level. The regime of bolstered rights also sank the federal gambling taxation and suppression program centered on compelled registration. In 1951, in the aftermath of the Kefauver hearings, Congress launched the ill-­ conceived Federal Wagering Occupational Stamp Tax program. The tax

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scheme charted a course of contradiction and cross-­purpose in the federal approach to gambling. The policy inherently raised the question of whether gambling should properly be considered a crime to suppress or a business to tax. The stamp program essentially asserted that it was both simultaneously. Furthermore, this largely forgotten yet richly controversial program strained the limits of the government’s power to compel information. Challenges to the law on Fifth Amendment grounds resulted in six different Supreme Court cases during the brief life span of the tax, eventually bringing the demise of the program. The sustained legal and political controversies relating to the Fifth Amendment and gambling enforcement intertwined with the struggles over the meaning of the Fourth Amendment exemplified in the case of Dollree Mapp. The slipshod and abusive practices of both federal and local efforts to curb gambling forced the Supreme Court to choose between upholding the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as genuine and consequential protections for citizens, or to concede that the amendments are subordinate to the authority of police and the priorities of government. In sum, a body of civil rights cohered during the 1960s, deeply connected to the abuses of the ongoing campaign to suppress gambling, both black and white. These newly elaborated rights made the gambling laws all the more difficult to enforce, and ultimately left all levels of government in search of alternative approaches. * * * While Estes Kefauver and his fellow committee members hoped to expose the dirty dealings of gamblers, racketeers, and corrupt politicians, they also inadvertently exposed the American public to the Fifth Amendment. Prior to the hearings, many Americans were unaware of the existence of a protection against self-­incrimination.5 Americans watching the Kefauver proceedings on television heard the phrase over and over, “I choose not to answer on grounds that it might incriminate me.” On the most immediate and practical level, the Kefauver hearings relied on federal authority to compel testimony relating to countless violations of state gambling laws.6 While one person after another asserted the privilege in front of the committee, the particular interrogation of a black Baltimore numbers operator named Willie Adams forced the question of whether testimony in front of the committee could be used for prosecution in state criminal court. Ultimately, Adams v. Maryland (1954) clarified the status of compelled testimony at congressional hearings. The committee took testimony from Adams behind closed doors. Back-

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ground information compiled by committee investigators characterized Adams, known as “Little Willie,” as the biggest numbers operator in Baltimore and the surrounding counties. The investigators pointed to his extensive real estate holdings, his equity interests in legitimate businesses, and the influence of his wife, Victorine Adams, in local Democratic Party politics. The committee speculated that Adams must have been offering a portion of his take to Philadelphia white organized crime syndicates in order to operate on such a scale. Through his lawyer, Adams communicated that he was out of the numbers business, but the investigators did not believe this assertion. They proclaimed him the “King of Negro numbers in Baltimore” and insisted that he appear for questioning.7 Adams’s testimony before the committee was at times forthcoming and at others an exercise in circumspection. He spoke freely about an incident in 1938 within which a group of white men in a car with Pennsylvania license plates demanded a percentage of his take. When Adams did not respond accordingly, a tavern that he owned was bombed in the early morning hours.8 Yet on the topic of his many businesses, Adams was vague and evasive. On the matter of naming people who may have worked with him, Adams asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege.9 As far as his interstate connections through layoff practices, Adams simply explained, “I played some numbers myself.”10 While Adams claimed that he was no longer in the business, he conceded that he had been involved until early 1950, and this admission proved to be of real consequence. In 1951 Baltimore police arrested Adams shortly after his appearance before the committee. He was charged with gambling conspiracy on the basis of his testimony, in an incident mirroring the experience of policy men Theodore Roe and Edward Jones of Chicago.11 An editorial in the Afro-­ American pleaded with the judge not to put Adams behind bars. The paper pointed to his role as a legitimate businessman with much-­needed skills.12 The pleas on Little Willie’s behalf were to no avail, as the judge sentenced Adams and a co-­defendant to seven years. Adams petitioned the Supreme Court for a review of his conviction.13 He was represented in the high court by esteemed black lawyers George E. C. Hayes—who was the lead attorney in the case Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), which desegregated Washington, DC, schools—and James A. Cobb, who served as municipal court judge in the District of Columbia from 1925 to 1935, at that time the only federally appointed black judge in the nation.14 The Supreme Court accepted the case to examine the question of “whether testimony given before a Congressional committee may be used against the person who gave it in any criminal trial, except in prosecution for perjury.”15

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Under federal law, compelled testimony given during a congressional inquiry could not be used against the attestant in any criminal proceeding in any court.16 Maryland argued that Adams had cooperated with the congressional inquiry, answering some of the questions voluntarily. According to state prosecutors, the federal statute did not protect Adams because his answers were voluntary rather than “compelled.” The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, rejected this line of reasoning and overturned the conviction of Willie Adams. The majority opinion, written by Hugo Black, scoffed at the notion that Adams had testified voluntarily, proclaiming, “He was not a volunteer. He was summoned. Had he not appeared, he could have been fined and sent to jail.” As far as the scope of the federal statute and its ability to confer immunity in this case, Black wrote, “A witness does not need any statute to protect him from the use of self-­incriminating testimony he is compelled to give over his objection. The Fifth Amendment takes care of that without a statute.”17 A more complicated set of Fifth Amendment questions emerged in the wake of the singular public policy item to follow from the Kefauver hearings. Though the hearings were an engrossing spectacle, the actual public policy legacy of the committee was limited. The lone prominent legislative result of the Kefauver hearings was the passage of the Federal Wagering Occupational Stamp Tax. While this tax program is little remembered, it was a crucial step in the transition of gambling from crime to taxable business. Congress embarked on a poorly conceived measure to police gambling and to tax gambling simultaneously through the same law. Passage of the Wagering Occupational Stamp Tax in 1951 was a moment of commitment to ambivalence and contradiction in national gambling policy. The measure moved gambling along the road toward partial legalization while it concurrently intensified police efforts against gambling, thus creating a contradictory dynamic that was difficult to sustain. The Wall Street Journal referred to the program as “one of the strangest taxes in U.S. history.” The wagering tax called for those making a living through taking bets to purchase an occupational stamp registering them as professional gamblers. The stamp, at a cost of fifty dollars, was to be displayed in the gambler’s place of business. Going forward, gamblers were also required to pay 10 percent of their earnings to the federal government.18 The law mimicked the structure and the logic of the Marihuana Tax Act (1937) and the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act (1914). However, whereas the marijuana and narcotics taxes were oriented primarily toward suppression, the gambling measure carried real revenue expectations. The supporters of the initiative on the House Ways and Means Committee and the Sen-

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ate Finance Committee expected the tax to draw in $400 million of new ­revenue. The tax was part of the hard-­fought 1951 Revenue Act, and the gambling item proved to be among the more controversial elements of the broader tax package. Many in Congress, including Kefauver himself, strenuously resisted the gambling levy, classing it as a federal license to conduct gambling. Kefauver asserted that the pursuit of tax revenue could not be accommodated with genuine enforcement of the gambling laws. Representative Katharine St. George of New York described the tax as absurd and hypocritical. She told her colleagues in the House, “I will vote against it. . . . This is an utter farce and absolutely ridiculous. To say that you are going to license a gambler, but that his business is illegal certainly, to me, is not a very logical or equitable form of taxation.”19 Representative Edgar A. Jonas of Chicago inveighed against it on the House floor. He called the tax “specious” and “fictitious,” deeming it a license to gamble and declaring, “In our state if the federal employees come in there to indirectly give countenance to permitting gambling, I hope the sheriff of my city will take them by the scruff of the neck and show them the way out of the city.” Jonas concluded by challenging the bill’s supporters to explain how they planned to enforce the new tax.20 Despite such objections from states with heavy gambling, the measure passed the House. In the Senate, Kefauver spoke passionately against the bill. The senator claimed that the tax plan undermined the momentum created by his committee. He characterized the proposal as immoral and predicted that it would fail to generate revenue while it would also discourage local law enforcement agencies from enforcing the gambling laws. If passed into law, he explained, “It would put the cloak of respectability on the activities of the bookies, the policy number operators, and their accompanying criminal activities.” He emphasized the impossibility of enforcement, noting that in Chicago an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 runners or more operated the policy wheels. In the city of Philadelphia alone, an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 persons worked in the numbers racket. “How many revenue agents would it take to go out and find out who those persons are and make them pay a $50 tax in order to operate?” Kefauver asked. The senator pointed out that the commissioner of Internal Revenue had made it clear that the Treasury Department was not prepared to enforce the tax. The end result would be ridicule for authority and disrespect for the rule of law.21 But supporters of the bill pushed back persuasively, led by Democratic US Senator Edwin C. Johnson of Colorado. Johnson argued that the primary purpose of the bill was to raise revenue, not to encroach on the field

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of law enforcement. “We are dealing here with a tax bill not the criminal code.” And in that regard, he posited that the estimate of $400 million in new revenue might even prove low. Rather than class the new tax as an authorization of gambling, Johnson characterized the prevailing status quo as an “immunity” against taxation enjoyed by gamblers. “Commercialized gambling is in the unique position of being a multi-­billion-­dollar nation-­ wide business which has remained comparatively free from taxation. . . . [T]he continuance of this immunity is inconsistent with the present need for increased revenue.” He commended the Kefauver group for its fine work in exposing the collaboration between mobsters and public officials. Yet he chided Kefauver for offering no solutions beyond a redoubling of enforcement efforts. “Gambling may never be law enforced to death, but there is some basis for belief, it could be taxed to death.”22 The projections of vast revenue were simply too tempting for the majority of Congress to pass up, and the gambling tax remained in the final bill. With the passage of the 1951 Revenue Act, the Wagering Occupational Stamp Tax became law. The arrival of the new tax produced uncertainty and confusion on all sides. “Neither Congress nor the Internal Revenue Bureau has the least idea at the moment how the tax will work out,” offered the Baltimore Sun, citing estimates for the annual yield ranging from nothing all the way up to $2 billion.23 The editorial board of the Chicago Defender expressed optimism at the possibility of a cleanup of the rackets, acknowledging that some “Negro numbers kings have used their winnings to launch legitimate business. On the whole, however, the numbers racket has developed into a gangster-­controlled enterprise that has no place in our society.” Meanwhile, according to the Defender, “The police in many cities who took regular payoffs will join the gamblers in bemoaning the action of Congress. The rest of us can look forward to less corruption and immorality in our communities.”24 Harlem-­based City Councilman Earl Brown was far less optimistic. Writing in the Amsterdam News, Brown pointed out, “There’s too much money in the gambling rackets for a mere act of Congress to keep it out of the pockets of the gamblers and their guardian angels, the cops.”25 While high-­profile gangsters were the target of both the Kefauver hearings and the tax stamp policy that followed, the thousands of people making a living from gambling expressed apprehension and fear. Numbers men in particular voiced alarm, as the stamp tax made front-­page news in black newspapers all across the country. “This is going to set us up like ducks in a shooting gallery,” a numbers backer told the New Journal and Guide.26 The Amsterdam News described a numbers game ground to a halt, joking, “Writers, runners and bankers intimated they may have to go back to punch-

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ing a clock or sign aboard an outbound merchant ship.”27 According to reporting in the Chicago Defender, numbers gamblers in Cleveland shut their operations, leaving an estimated 1,500 unemployed. “Largely people unfitted for other work. Relief officials say they are worried.” While in Detroit, “all major houses” vowed to close, as people on the street expressed “bewilderment and disbelief.”28 Writing in the Afro-­American, Louis Lautier described the scene in Washington, DC: “The big numbers bankers have shut their books. They’re afraid that the new federal tax, which became effective November 1st, will put the finger on their writers and pickup men. After going into huddles most of them decided to lay low and see what happens to those who take a chance and continue to operate.”29 A major Washington, DC, numbers operator predicted a “wave of petty crime” coming from the thousands of people sidelined by the gambling industry being shut down.30 In Atlanta, where not a single stamp had been purchased, a vice detective expressed his worry about “a more serious outcropping of crime that probably will develop” among the “4,000 to 5,000 persons—mostly Negroes who depend upon corn whiskey and lottery for a living.”31 Overall, few bought into the new system. By the compliance deadline of December 1, in New York, “only eight of the city’s estimated 30,000 gamblers bought a stamp.”32 Nationwide, a total of 2,500 persons bought stamps by the deadline. Within days, the IRS provided local police forces with the names and addresses of these newly registered gamblers.33 While many experienced operators took a wait-­and-­see approach, some lower-­level actors presumed the new stamp to be a form of licensing. The first two Chicagoans arrested by local police for purchasing a federal stamp had the impression that the new law had legalized the numbers. The man and the woman arrested, both African American, pleaded with the police that they thought they were operating lawfully under their new licenses. As stamp-­holding gamblers were dragged into court for violating state gambling laws, criminal court judges began to clarify that the stamp provided no immunity from local laws. As a Richmond judge told a numbers man only a few months after the tax went into effect, “Under the law you are a certified gambler, but in this state we recognize no certified gamblers.”34 With the tax taking shape as a mechanism for jailing gamblers, the possibility of voluntary compliance evaporated. As the Commissioner of Internal Revenue John Dunlap told Congress just shy of five months into the program, “If I were in the gambling business, I would be reluctant to walk into the internal revenue collector’s office and pay $50 for the privilege of

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having my name turned over to the chief of police.” And in that vein, Dunlap asked Congress to appropriate $20 million for the enforcement of the new law, arguing that failure to pursue full compliance would breed contempt for the law.35 With the tax on pace to bring in a paltry $9 million in its first full year, the original predictions of a $400 million haul were quickly forgotten. Suppression became the order of the day, with raids, arrests, and jailing by both federal and local authorities rapidly becoming the hallmarks of the program.36 Faced with heavy and consequential enforcement, big-­city gamblers, both black and white, began to explore test cases to challenge the constitutionality of the new law. While the Supreme Court declined to take an early test case from Washington, DC, numbers man Hayes “Brownie” Combs, the tribunal was forced to confront the law directly as Federal District Court and Appeals Court judges began reaching conflicting conclusions on the validity of the statute.37 In 1952 US District Court Judge George A. Welsh declared the tax to be an illegal violation of the constitutional protection against self-­incrimination. Ruling in the case of Philadelphia gambler Joseph Kahriger, the judge rejected the law on Fifth Amendment grounds in that it required gamblers to give incriminating evidence on themselves and their employees, and on Tenth Amendment grounds, in that it infringed upon the police powers of the states. He argued, “The act departed from the field of taxable legislation and went into the field of morals and invaded the sanctuary of state control.” He explained to the press that the faster the case got to the Supreme Court the better.38 Less than two months after Judge Welsh rejected the law, US District Court Judge Louis E. Goodman in San Francisco upheld the tax.39 With the IRS appealing the Philadelphia decision, and with the San Francisco case offering a contradictory ruling on the validity of the law, the case of Philadelphia gambler Joseph Kahriger ended up at the Supreme Court in 1953. Judge Welsh’s rejection of the law in the spring of 1952 prompted many gamblers to put their operations back together. Federal officials complained that gamblers had shed their fear of the tax and had resumed taking wagers. New York City Chief Magistrate John M. Murtagh agreed, “Gamblers no longer are afraid of the law and have decided to go it illegally.”40 Senator Kefauver lamented that numbers and policy in particular seemed to be booming once again.41 An IRS official estimated that while 75 to 90 percent of gambling activity ceased after the passage of the tax, most of it reopened by the summer of 1952.42 Although American gambling was in revival on the street, the Supreme

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Court ruled against Kahriger and upheld the tax stamp policy in a 6 to 3 decision. In United States v. Kahriger (1953), Justice Stanley Reed dismissed both the Tenth Amendment and Fifth Amendment challenges to the law. The basis of the Tenth Amendment challenge was that the new law was in fact a policing program disguised as a tax program. The stamp policy functioned to suppress gambling rather than to raise revenue, and thus was an infringement on the policing power of the state. In response Reed argued, “A federal excise tax does not cease to be valid merely because it discourages or deters the activities taxed. Nor is the tax invalid because the revenue obtained is negligible. . . . It is axiomatic that the power of Congress to tax is extensive and sometimes falls with crushing effect on businesses deemed unessential or inimical to the public welfare.” On the matter of self-­ incrimination, Reed asserted, “That privilege has relation only to past acts, not to future acts that may or may not be committed.”43 As the registration requirement of the stamp program related to one’s intention to pursue an occupation as a gambler, rather than to account for past acts, Reed and the majority of the court saw the Fifth Amendment protection as irrelevant to the case. Justice Robert Jackson concurred out of a desire to protect a robust taxing power, yet he expressed significant reservations. He noted that the policy “is difficult to regard as a good faith measure.” Rather, “it seems to be a plan to tax out of existence the professional gambler whom it has found impossible to prosecute out of existence. Few pursuits are entitled to less consideration at our hands than professional gambling, but the plain unwelcome fact is that it continues to survive because a large and influential part of our population patronizes it.”44 Justices Felix Frankfurter, William Douglas, and Hugo Black all dissented. Black called the law “a squeezing device contrived to put a man in federal prison if he refuses to confess himself into state prison as a violator of state gambling laws. The coercion of confessions is a common but justly criticized practice in many countries that do not have to live up to a Bill of Rights. But we have a Bill of Rights that condemns coerced confessions, however refined or legalistic may be the technique of extortion.”45 With the matter of the constitutionality of the law decided, enforcement resumed in earnest. On a single day in New York, one hundred gamblers were arrested as US Treasury agents fanned out to the policy stations across the city. They arrived with guns drawn, alarming Harlem residents, who called the local police to report a wave of banditry. Clearly the agents were wary of local corruption, as the NYPD had received no warning of the raids.46

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While arrests by both federal agents and local police piled up, some judges remained skeptical of the law and sought to undercut it through light sentencing.47 Washington, DC, municipal court Judge Thomas Scalley made it a policy of his court only to impose stamp tax violations concurrently with other sentences.48 After several months of diluting the law in this manner, Scalley eventually rejected the law altogether, ruling the stamp policy invalid in the capital, as he dismissed a case against local gambler Frank Lewis. Given that the gambling statutes in the District of Columbia emanated from Congress, rather than a state, Scalley argued that the Kahriger ruling did not apply in the capital city. He claimed that he could find no precedent for Congress attempting to tax an activity that Congress itself had declared illegal. “Let it never be forgotten that the Fifth Amendment of our Constitution was not adopted to protect the innocent, for the innocent need no such protection.”49 The case of Lewis v. United States (1955) inevitably found its way to the Supreme Court. Again, the majority upheld the tax, on the grounds that the registration requirements of the program did not coerce a confession of past crimes; rather they required that the gambler announce his future intentions to take wagers, as “a matter of choice.” Justice Sherman Minton stated, “There is nothing compulsory about it. . . . [T]hey may have to give up gambling, but there is no constitutional right to gamble.”50 Hugo Black, joined by Douglas, vigorously dissented. Black argued, “If this would not violate the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self-­ incrimination, it is hard to think of anything that would.” He conceded that “of course” there was indeed “no constitutional right to gamble.” Yet he asserted, “If we remain faithful to the letter and the spirit of the Bill of Rights, gamblers, like others, have a right to invoke its safeguards. It should not be forgotten that breaches opened to get lawless gamblers remain to jeopardize the liberty of the law abiding.”51 The decisions on the wagering stamp prompted scholars to take stock of the standing of the Fifth Amendment. Writing in the Duke Bar Journal, Duncan McKee characterized the stamp cases as evidence of the high court’s low regard for the protection against self-­incrimination.52 According to McKee, the “dual sovereignty” reasoning employed to uphold the tax “imposes a pernicious limitation on the Fifth Amendment.”53 M. Gene Chenowith, writing in the Northwestern University Law Review, expressed similar disappointment, proclaiming, “Undoubtedly the courts of the nation are seen in their poorest posture in these cases because they have felt no compulsion to extend the protections of the state and federal Bills of Rights to such socially unacceptable persons as gamblers.”54

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The law stood for another twelve years after the Lewis ruling. However, the resumption of gambling activities that initiated when the Supreme Court first agreed to examine the law continued to gain momentum. American gamblers, local police, and federal agents all accommodated themselves to a pattern of woefully incomplete enforcement. The stamp program was further limited in its abilities to suppress wagering when the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Calamaro (1957) that a “pick-­up man” in the numbers game, who does not have a “proprietary interest” in the operation, is not subject to the stamp tax.55 Thus, it became a relatively simple matter for anyone arrested with gambling materials to proclaim himself a pickup man in order to avoid penalty for failure to pay the federal tax. The tax haul, typically less than $10 million a year, was quite a distance from the projected figure of a $400 million annual take. Tax commissioners tended to view the program as a burden and an unfunded mandate. As the IRS chief of enforcement told Congress in 1960, “We are neither for gambling, nor against it.”56 Nonetheless, the agency pursued consequential, albeit limited, arrests and prosecutions, summing up to more than seven thousand prosecutions in the twelve years after the Lewis decision. For those who were prosecuted, they could at least hope to encounter one of the many federal district court judges who were highly skeptical of the law and who often imposed fines without jail sentences. This dynamic of leniency fed the growing anti-­judicial politics of the early 1960s. The gambling program in fact became a flashpoint for demands by Congress for imposition of mandatory minimum sentences and the curtailment of judicial discretion.57 From 1955 to 1968, the program muddled along, toggling between nationwide sweeps and lulls in enforcement—­ resulting in jail for some, $5 fines for others. The revenue haul proved less than the cost of enforcement. The Federal Wagering Occupational Stamp Tax eventually met its demise in 1968 with the case of Marchetti v. United States. The circumstances of the case did not raise any distinct questions or issues that had been previously absent in the Kahriger and Lewis cases of the mid-­1950s. Rather, by 1968 the court embraced new doctrines of criminal procedure, invigorating the Fifth Amendment to the point that the gambling stamp law could no longer stand. The “due process revolution” of the 1950s and 1960s, which breathed life into the Fifth Amendment, was initiated by a meaningful reconsideration of the Fourth Amendment. Among the early and important cases in driving this examination of the Fourth Amendment was yet another Wagering Occupational Stamp Tax case. Decided in 1954, the circum-

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stances of the case dated to the arrest of gambler Patrick Irvine, just two months after the stamp law took effect. California bookmaker Patrick Irvine was among the first to purchase a wagering stamp. After local police learned of Irvine’s registration as a gambler, they sought further evidence against him. In December 1951, they secretly entered his home without a warrant, installed a microphone, bored a hole in the roof, and ran wires to a garage nearby, where they could listen. They soon after reentered the home and moved the microphone to the bedroom. Irvine was later arrested and sentenced to eighteen months in prison. His gambling stamp was submitted as evidence against him.58 Irvine challenged his conviction on both Fourth and Fifth Amendment grounds. The Supreme Court rejected the claim that Irvine’s stamp and his stamp application were not admissible as evidence of his bookmaking, noting that Kahriger had already settled the constitutionality of the stamp law. However, Justice Robert Jackson, writing for the majority, quickly turned to the warrantless search. “That officers of the law would break and enter a home, secrete such a device, even in a bedroom, and listen to the conversation of occupants for over a month would be almost incredible if it were not admitted,” wrote the judge. “Few police measures have come to our attention that more flagrantly and deliberately violated the fundamental principles declared by the Fourth Amendment.”59 Yet despite the clearly unlawful nature of the search, the court upheld Irvine’s conviction. The controversial decision became something of a turning point in the history of the Fourth Amendment. The historical development of the Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful search and seizure up to that time was a long and halting process. The amendment gained meaningful yet limited application with the 1914 case of Weeks v. United States. The matter involved gambler Fremont Weeks, an express messenger arrested at a Missouri train station by US marshals on the charge of using the mails to further a lottery scheme. After he was arrested, the marshals entered his home and seized materials that were later used at his trial. The Supreme Court determined that the search violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The majority opinion of Justice William R. Day stated, “If letters and private documents can thus be seized and held and used as evidence against a citizen,” then the Fourth Amendment “is of no value” and “might as well be stricken from the Constitution.”60 The circumstances of Weeks v. United States originated with policing by the federal government. The elaboration of the rule that unlawfully ob-

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tained evidence must be excluded at trial only applied as a protection in federal court. There was much controversy over the subsequent decades regarding whether the rule of exclusion should be applied in state criminal proceedings. Some states adopted the rule of Weeks, while most did not.61 The Supreme Court directly confronted the question of whether to apply the rule to the states in Wolf v. Colorado (1949). The case arose out of a warrantless search conducted by Denver police at the office of physician Julius Wolf. Evidence obtained during the search led to the conviction of Wolf in state court for conspiracy to commit abortion. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Dr. Wolf, ruling that evidence obtained by warrantless search could in fact be admitted in state court.62 Felix Frankfurter’s majority opinion in the case acknowledged, “The security of one’s privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police—which is at the core of the Fourth Amendment—is basic to a free society.” But on the matter of “how such arbitrary conduct should be checked, what remedies against it should be afforded,” Frankfurter pointed to “varying solutions,” such as disciplinary action against officers or prosecution for trespass. He noted, “As of today, 31 states reject the Weeks doctrine, 16 states are in agreement with it.” He argued that a remote power such as the federal government should be constrained by the Weeks doctrine, whereas local authorities, inherently more susceptible to local opinion, can be held responsible at the community level. Overall he rejected the notion that the first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights are “incorporated” against the states by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.63 Justice Frank Murphy passionately dissented in the Wolf case. He scoffed at the notion that other remedies for police invasion were available. “There is but one alternative to the rule of exclusion. That is no sanction at all.” In preparation of his dissent, Murphy corresponded with the chiefs of police of the nation’s thirty-­eight largest cities, inquiring as to their practices of search and seizure. He cited a disregard for the principles of the Fourth Amendment in states where the Weeks rule did not apply. He pointed to the situation in Cleveland as particularly egregious. Police recruits in Cleveland were instructed, “The Ohio Supreme Court has indicated very definitely and clearly that Ohio belongs to the ‘admissionist’ group of states when evidence obtained by an illegal search is presented to the court.” This was characteristic of what Murphy saw as the “shabby business” of “lawlessness by officers of the law.”64 The Wolf decision in 1949 seemed to halt the development of the Fourth Amendment.65 However, the case of California bookmaker Patrick Irvine,

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decided in 1954, restarted the growth process. The ruling in Irvine did not establish any new precedent, yet it fractured any consensus surrounding the meaning and scope of the Wolf decision. Five justices wrote separate opinions, with concurrences in disagreement with concurrences, and dissents in disagreement with dissents. The case made clear that the proper application of the exclusionary rule was far from settled, and it marked the beginning of sustained dialogue among the justices on the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. As legal scholar Tracey Maclin explains, “Irvine would be the beginning, not the end,” for consideration of the exclusionary rule.66 The court upheld the conviction of Irvine despite the malfeasance of the police. Yet in siding with the majority, Justice Tom Clark announced his intention to see the Wolf precedent overturned in the future, writing, “It is with great reluctance that I follow Wolf. Perhaps strict adherence to the tenor of that decision may produce needed converts for its extinction.”67 Furthermore, the majority opinion written by Jackson held out the possibility that perhaps the Justice Department would take action against the police who had violated Irvine’s rights. When the Justice Department took no action at all, this highlighted the need for a more suitable remedy for police violations. Jackson’s opinion also reasoned that before the Supreme Court upsets state convictions, state courts should be given the opportunity to “further consider their evidentiary rules” and to “adopt or reject” exclusion of unlawfully obtained evidence.68 The state of California took that opportunity the very next year with the decision of People v. Cahan (1955). In a case strikingly similar to that of Patrick Irvine, Los Angeles detectives snuck into the home of gambler Charles Cahan and placed listening devices without his knowledge. Cahan was convicted in criminal court on the basis of this illegal surveillance. In 1955 the California Supreme Court reversed his conviction, and thus applied the exclusionary rule uniformly across the second largest state in the union. As Roger Traynor, the judge who wrote the decision, later explained, “It was one thing to condone an occasional constable’s blunder,” yet “it was quite another to condone a steady course of illegal police procedures.”69 This decision by the California Supreme Court proved vital to overturning Wolf v. Colorado. The immediate reaction to the Cahan decision was heated, and it contributed significantly to the narrative that the courts were placing the public safety in peril. The Los Angeles Chief of Police William Parker fumed that the decision was “the Magna Carta of the Criminal.”70 He called the California Supreme Court’s actions “catastrophic,” claiming that a “criminal army”

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in Los Angeles had taken the Cahan ruling as a license to commit crime, while police were left helpless and demoralized, all of this serving the aims of the Kremlin and the Communist Party.71 Gambling scold Virgil Peterson of the Chicago Crime Commission saw the Cahan decision as a dangerous development. Illinois had long been an “exclusion” state, and Peterson was a staunch critic of the suppression of evidence.72 For Peterson, judicial imposition of exclusion was a major impediment to the fight against gambling. Writing in the Northwestern Law Review in 1957, he expressed dismay that narrowly decided cases such as Cahan had established exclusionary rules to “punish” and “severely castigate law enforcement officers.” Surveying the situation in Illinois, he lamented the state supreme court ruling in People v. Dent (1939), which vacated the conviction of policy gambler Lois Dent on the basis that police had entered her home to secure evidence under false pretenses. According to Peterson, given such decisions as Cahan in California and Dent in Illinois, “No wonder law enforcement officers are confused and demoralized.”73 Chicago racket courts adhered to the exclusionary rule and thus dismissed case after case during the 1950s. However, police continued to conduct raids and make arrests. As rackets court Judge Fred Slater explained in 1958, his court received twenty-­five to thirty gambling cases a day, and “99.4 percent of those cases arise from raids made without search warrants. There is nothing a court can do in such cases except throw them out.” The Chicago police continued with their warrantless raids nonetheless, simply employing arrest as a tool of harassment. Furthermore, Chicago police made convenient use of traffic stops to effect gambling searches. The Illinois State Supreme Court upheld the validity of searches made incident to an arrest for a municipal ordinance violation, namely, an improperly parked car, in the policy gambling case People v. Edge (1950).74 Thus, as the situation in Illinois demonstrated, even in states with long-­established exclusionary rules, the police made gambling arrests as a deterrent in and of themselves, regardless of the likely outcome in court. Otherwise, they found suitable workarounds, such as conducting searches incident to traffic violation arrests. As for the situation in California, the effects of the Cahan decision were greatly undercut by the public denunciations typified by the language of Chief Parker. Under the state’s system of elected judges, many were reluctant to apply the Cahan standard in an atmosphere of public reprisal, and thus the police were left largely unrestrained.75 Rampant unlawful arrests and a wildly uneven landscape of state criminal procedure were finally and clearly confronted with the landmark ruling

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in the case of Mapp v. Ohio (1961). While the road to Mapp was indeed traveled through the hard-­fought legal history of the Fourth Amendment, it was also traveled through the taverns, street corners, numbers drops, and precinct houses of America’s cities. The Mapp case emerged out of a particular set of historical circumstances, most notably a sustained pattern of police misconduct in gambling enforcement in urban areas. Cleveland gambling during the period featured both policy and numbers, the latter often referred to in that city as “clearinghouse.” In May 1950 Jean M. Capers, the first black woman elected to the Cleveland City Council, introduced a bill to relax the city ordinance against possession of policy slips. She claimed “only Negroes” were arrested for policy gambling, while gambling among whites went ignored by police. Meanwhile she declared that the constant police searches in the chase for policy materials were an unlawful violation of the rights of black Clevelanders. A representative of the Phillis Wheatley Society brought in to testify on behalf of Capers’s bill told the council of the “poor girls who are not able to find work because of criminal records . . . and when our women are picked up, the arrests place a stigma against all Negro women.” Yet the chief of the Cleveland Police Department would have none of it. He told the council, “These fine women I hear some people talk about, tell them to quit working for policy people and they won’t have a criminal record.”76 In the aftermath of the Kefauver Committee and in the early years of the Wagering Occupational Stamp Tax, gambling in the city reached a low. As Chief of Police Frank Story explained in summing up department activity for 1952, “by arrest and harassment,” numbers and policy play “has been reduced to about 1/100th of what it was.”77 However, as was the case in so many other cities, gambling operations began to reconstitute themselves in 1953. As gambling reemerged, coercion and intimidation in competition over territory and pricing shaped the Cleveland scene. With threats of violence hanging over the city’s disorganized policy and clearinghouse games, the police opted for a “get tough” strategy. In June 1954 Police Chief Story issued the order that “all known and suspected operators were to be arrested on sight.”78 The police began an extensive roundup of Cleveland gamblers, with the public explanation from police headquarters: “We’ll make them spend half of the rest of their lives in jail, or all their money on lawyers.”79 Gambling arrests surged, from a lull of 725 in 1952, to more than 2,000 for the year in 1955.80 The crackdown of the mid- and late 1950s was intensely focused on gambling in the black community. Of the 2,260 gambling arrests made in the city during 1956, 2,116 of the persons arrested were black, constituting

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just shy of 94 percent of the total in a city that was nearly three-­quarters white.81 Among the Cleveland gamblers ensnared during the roundups was a young woman named Dollree Mapp. In May 1954 she was arrested by Officers Carl Delau and Michael Haney, and she was charged with possession of policy slips.82 She was one of the 208 black women arrested that year for gambling, compared with only 174 white men. Mapp was twenty-­four years old at the time. Born in Austin, Texas, to a Cherokee father who worked as a cattleman and an African American mother who worked as a schoolteacher, Mapp came to Cleveland at age ten. She had a daughter by well-­known boxer Jimmy Bivens at age fifteen. Mapp was known to be bright, popular, strong-­willed, and fiercely independent.83 As an adult she earned a living at the margins of the Cleveland gambling scene, which was intertwined with local boxing and nightlife. Mapp was arrested again by the same police officer, Sergeant Carl Delau of the Bureau of Special Investigations, in May 1957. The Special Investigations Bureau was created in 1947 with the purview of suppressing gambling, prostitution, organized crime, and Communist subversion.84 From his experience in this unit, Delau had thorough knowledge of the city’s gambling operators and locations.85 Dollree Mapp’s home at 14705 Milverton Road was one such location. As Delau’s daily duty report for May 23, 1957, explained, “On information received from a confidential source, went to 14705 Milverton Ave., the residence of Dollree Mapp, who is known to this office and has previous arrest for clearinghouse violations.”86 The headline in the Cleveland Plain Dealer the next day summed up the incident, “Policy House Closed After 3-­Hour Siege.” The paper explained that Delau was acting on a tip that a man who had information about a recent bombing might be at the house.87 The dynamiting in question resulted in no injuries, yet it damaged the front porch of a young numbers operator Donald “the Kid” King, who later went on to significant fame as a boxing promoter. Presumably, it was a warning perpetrated by rival gamblers with the intention of intimidating King. The bombing was allegedly the work of white gangster Shondor Birns. After entering Mapp’s home and handcuffing her to a bedpost, the police conducted a full search and discovered gambling paraphernalia and several books deemed to be obscene. A judge dismissed the gambling charge, but in a subsequent case on the obscenity charge, Judge Donald Lybarger sentenced Mapp to a term of one to seven years.88 Her sentence was stayed pending appeal (fig. 12). Her conviction was affirmed in the Eighth Dis-

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F I G . 1 2  Dollree Mapp mugshot after her 1957 arrest in Cleveland. AP Photo.

trict and was then appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court, which took up the matter of the constitutionality of the obscenity law. The Ohio court ruled 5 to 2 that the law was unconstitutional, yet the state constitution of Ohio required that for a law to be invalidated all but one of the judges must concur. Thus Mapp’s conviction was confirmed. The United States Supreme Court granted Mapp’s appeal on First Amendment grounds, with the intention of considering the constitutionality of the Ohio obscenity law. However, even the exercise of the obscenity law against Mapp can be understood as gambling enforcement. The law itself was moribund and rarely put to use. In the instances when the law was enforced, it resulted in misdemeanor charges. Mapp’s felony conviction, and her sentence of one to seven years, was an anomaly and prompted her lawyers to make an assertion of cruel and unusual punishment. The rarefied treatment that Mapp received with regard to the obscenity law stemmed from her involvement in Cleveland gambling and her refusal to testify against others.89 The heavy-­handed use of the obscenity charge was an attempt to coerce Mapp into revealing information on top Cleveland gamblers. In her refusal to cooperate, she was charged with a felony and given a harsh sentence. Thus, what appeared on the surface to be draconian enforcement of Ohio’s obscenity law was in fact zealous enforcement against Cleveland gambling. And as was truly characteristic of the project

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of gambling suppression in the 1950s, a black person, Dollree Mapp, was arrested and jailed in what was ostensibly the larger pursuit of white organized crime, in the person of Shondor Birns.90 Oral arguments took place on March 29, 1961, and they proved to be a forum for the consideration of a fascinating range of constitutional issues. Questions of the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment competed for the attention of the justices. Yet the core protections offered by these amendments were ultimately bound together as elements of privacy, in the form of the right to be let alone. The state of Ohio meanwhile asserted its right as a sovereign to set its own rules of criminal procedure in accordance with the latitude provided by the Wolf v. Colorado decision. Dollree Mapp was featured in the day’s exchange as a mother, a woman roughed up by a group of male police, a person of indeterminate occupation, and as someone with poor taste in books. Sergeant Carl Delau, meanwhile, appeared as a police officer who clearly did not have a warrant. At the opening of the day’s arguments, attorney A. L. Kearns, representing Dollree Mapp, characterized his client as a homeowner, a mother, and “a decent respectable American Citizen.” When the police arrived at her door, she refused to allow them entry without a search warrant. Within minutes several zone cars arrived, and the police surrounded the house. An officer showed Mapp a piece of paper, proclaiming it to be a warrant. Mapp demanded to see the paper, but the officer refused. “She grabbed it out of his hand to look at it and then a scuffle started, and she put this piece of paper into her bosom. And very readily the police officer put his hands into her bosom and removed the paper, and thereafter . . . handcuffed her while the police officers started to search the house.” Of the search warrant, Kearns explained, “There is absolutely no evidence of any magistrate that had been asked for a search warrant. There was no record of a search warrant. . . . We asked during the trial of the case that the search warrant be produced and it was not.” Justice Potter Stewart inquired as to what the piece of paper actually was, and Kearns responded, “We don’t know what it was. She was not given an opportunity to read it.” Justice Felix Frankfurter, author of the Wolf v. Colorado ruling, pressed Kearns to identify “the questions that are open before this court.” Frankfurter insisted that only the constitutionality of the obscenity statute was relevant, whereas questions of search and seizure were not in play. Frankfurter demanded to know, “Are you asking us to overrule the Wolf case in this Court?” Justice Harlan, meanwhile, joined Frankfurter in challenging Kearns,

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stating that a reversal of Mapp’s conviction on search-­and-­seizure grounds “means you’re asking us to overrule Wolf v. Colorado.” Kearns protested to the contrary. Perhaps not understanding his own position, he attempted to bring the court’s attention to the state-­level case of Lindway v. Ohio (1936), which had established that unlawfully obtained evidence was admissible in that state. He expressed that he was only interested in seeing Lindway ruled unconstitutional. Kearns allotted the remainder of his time to Bernard Berkman, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. Berkman and the ACLU were far more direct in pushing the constitutional implications of the case. “We are asking this Court to reconsider Wolf vs. Colorado and to find that evidence which is unlawfully and illegally obtained should not be permitted into a state proceeding, and that its production is a violation of the Federal Constitution, the Fourth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment.” Gertrude Bauer Mahon argued the position of the state of Ohio. She asserted that the unlawful nature of the search did not “affect the competency of the evidence tending to establish the commission of a crime.” If the evidence demonstrates a crime, then the absence of a search warrant provides no defense. “It is a collateral matter,” to be remedied by “a civil suit for trespass.” “Is the search warrant in existence?” Earl Warren asked. “Insofar as the record is concerned, it doesn’t show any,” she conceded. “Is there any record of it?” “There’s no record that there was a search warrant.”91 The court’s decision was handed down in June 1961, and the 5 to 4 ruling allowed Justice Tom Clark to achieve his goal of seeing Wolf v. Colorado reversed. Writing for the majority, Clark described the police as “running roughshod” over Dollree Mapp and having acted in a “high-­handed manner” in their “defiance of the law.” Clark pointed out that in the years since the Wolf decision in 1949, a growing number of states had adopted the exclusionary rule, pointing in particular to “the experience of California” with the Cahan case. As for those states, such as Ohio, which had preserved the admissibility of unlawful evidence, Clark wrote, “the state, by admitting evidence unlawfully seized, serves to encourage disobedience to the Federal Constitution which it is bound to uphold.” Going forward, “federal-­state cooperation in the solution of crime under constitutional standards will be promoted, if only by recognition of their now mutual obligation to respect the same fundamental criteria in their approaches.” Asserting that the right to privacy must be held secure against rude invasions, he concluded, “We

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can no longer permit it to be revocable at the whim of any police officer who, in the name of law enforcement itself, chooses to suspend its enjoyment.”92 Hugo Black concurred in reversing Mapp’s conviction, yet he insisted that the Fourth Amendment did not suffice to exclude the evidence, but rather an inherent interrelation between the Fourth and Fifth Amendments precluded unlawfully seized evidence as tantamount to a coerced confession.93 William O. Douglas, who had dissented in the 1949 Wolf case and had reiterated his dissatisfaction with Wolf time and again, also offered a concurrence. Justice John Marshall Harlan II, joined by Frankfurter and Charles E. Whittaker, wrote a dissent, arguing that five members of the court had “reached out” to overturn Wolf. Marshall cast the ruling as an infringement on state sovereignty. By imposing the exclusionary rule across the land, the decision forced upon the states “an adamant rule which may embarrass them in coping with their own peculiar problems in criminal law e­ nforcement.”94 The implications of the case were vast and clearly went far beyond the Cleveland gambling scene. Yet, at the very place where the matter originated, the Cleveland police were left with the vexing challenge of suppressing gambling without the tool of the warrantless raid. In June 1961 the Ohio State legislature passed a strict new law making a second offense for possession of numbers slips a felony. Sergeant Carl Delau vowed that he would use the new law to go after the big bosses of Cleveland gambling. “We hope this new law will make it easier to put every one of them out of business or in the penitentiary,” he told the Call & Post. But the “local gambling gentry” complained loudly that “little gamblers, particularly negroes, are the targets.”95 The efforts to revive gambling enforcement in Cleveland in the wake of Mapp quickly produced new controversies over due process. A few months after the decision was handed down, Delau arrested numbers man William Beck. Claiming that he had information that Beck would be transporting numbers material in a certain area at a certain time, Delau stopped Beck’s car at 115th and Beulah and placed Beck under arrest. At the police station, officers made a full search of Beck and discovered policy slips in his sock. Beck was a “known gambler” and given that he had previous gambling convictions, he was charged with a felony under Ohio’s new law. The arrest seemed unremarkable. However, Beck’s lawyer, an African American Cleveland defense attorney named James R. Willis, pursued the matter as an issue of due process. In reflecting on the police in Cleveland during the 1950s and early 1960s, Willis recalls, “They were operating then

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as if they could arrest anyone. They were cowboys. They were cowboys and Keystone Cops at the same time. They would arrest people on whatever minimal basis they had, and the judges would go along with it. Whatever the police said, the judges would gospelize every word.”96 In his defense of Beck, Willis made use of the new legal environment created by Mapp, in order to have the evidence (policy slips) suppressed. The motion to suppress was rejected, on the basis that the search was made incident to a lawful arrest, and Beck was thus convicted. As the case moved forward on appeal and eventually moved to the Supreme Court, it came to center on whether or not there had truly been probable cause for arrest in the first place. According to Willis, “Delau arrested William Beck because he knew him. He knew who he was. He knew he was a gambler. He had nothing else.” Beck was a midlevel operator at a midsized outfit. His legal defense was paid for by the higher-­ups in that outfit. As the process lengthened and the defense of Beck became more expensive, Willis appealed to a larger group of Cleveland gamblers to finance the legal fight. “I demonstrated to them that there was an important legal principle at stake, and that we could do something to restrain these officers from arresting people at will.”97 Oral arguments in the Supreme Court case of Beck v. Ohio took place in October 1964. Standing in front of the nine justices, James R. Willis referred to Officer Delau’s information source as a “phantom informer.” He explained that the conviction of Beck would establish a dangerous precedent. Citizens would be left “highly vulnerable” if the police could establish probable cause merely “by resort to a fictitious informant.” Representing the state of Ohio, William T. McKnight sought to impress upon the justices the particular challenges of enforcing the laws against numbers gambling. He described the layered process by which bets are made, winning numbers are determined, and paperwork and money moved from place to place. He emphasized the challenge for the police in trying “to keep up with the numbers game,” given that “the whole operation is fluid.” Under such difficult circumstances of enforcement, officers such as Delau had little that they could rely on other than their “judgment” and “experience.” Ohio’s presentation on the challenges of numbers suppression fell short. Writing for the majority, Potter Stewart declared that the arrest of Beck could not “be squared with the demands of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.” In distilling the crucial principle of the decision, Stewart explained that to concede that probable cause could be established by a mere

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arrest record together with an anonymous tip “would be to hold that anyone with a previous criminal record could be arrested at will.”98 Taken together, Mapp v. Ohio (1961) and Beck v. Ohio (1964) deprived urban police of the most commonly used tools of gambling suppression. According to Mapp, no longer could police engage in warrantless raids of gambling spots. And with Beck, police could not simply arrest “known gamblers” on sight. Meanwhile, the two cases made Carl Delau the rare, if not entirely unique, American police officer to have had two separate arrests result in a reversal at the US Supreme Court. Yet such was the egregious nature of Cleveland gambling enforcement, shot through with endless violations of basic civil rights.99 Beyond gambling suppression, and beyond the city of Cleveland, the Mapp ruling had enormous consequences. The decision unleashed a due process revolution, as a string of subsequent cases invigorated the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. The rulings collectively brought state criminal procedure in line with federal constitutional standards under the doctrine that the protections afforded by the Bill of Rights were indeed “incorporated” against the states. Best known among these cases are Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), Escobedo v. Illinois (1964), Malloy v. Hogan (1964), and Miranda v. Arizona (1966). The Gideon case determined that states must provide indigent defendants with legal counsel. Escobedo held that suspects must not be denied legal counsel in the interrogation room. Malloy v. Hogan, yet another gambling case, incorporated the Fifth Amendment in state criminal proceedings. Miranda v. Arizona clarified that upon arrest a person must be informed of their right to legal counsel and their right to remain silent. These landmark decisions in criminal procedure were accompanied by rulings that curtailed the abilities of police to arrest persons based on their status. Known gamblers, along with people suspected of being drug addicts and people assessed to be vagrants, were increasingly protected from arbitrary arrest, as police officers saw their discretion diminished.100 The emergence of the rights of the accused prompted extensive political controversy and elicited harsh reactions from a range of law enforcement officials and political figures. An editorial in New York Newsday lamented that the rulings “perplexed the police and—in a good many instances—­ delighted the criminals.” The chief of police in Cincinnati complained that the ability of police to arrest is so circumscribed as to “render the policemen virtually powerless.”101 Speaking at Northwestern University, Charles S. Desmond, chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals, explained that the Mapp decision did “not protect the average citizen,” rather it safe-

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guarded “the professional criminal, especially the narcotics dealer and the gambler.”102 NYPD Deputy Commissioner Leonard Reisman stated, “The Mapp case was a shock to us. We had to reorganize our thinking, frankly. Before this nobody bothered to take out search warrants.” Meanwhile, veteran detectives sent to the police academy to retrain on search-­and-­seizure rules were nonplussed by the changes, telling their instructors, “they’re handcuffing us,” and “the pendulum has swung too far.”103 Chicago Police Commissioner O. W. Wilson charged the courts with “restricting police rights of arrest, seizure of evidence of crime, and the rights of police to question suspects. I think complaints on these counts are nationwide among police officers.”104 The new rules had an immediate impact on gambling enforcement around the country. As the New York Times reported in 1962, “Policy gambling cases in the Magistrates Courts here dropped more than 35 per cent last year as a result of United States Supreme Court decision limiting evidence.”105 Cleveland and Detroit also saw dramatic drop-­offs in gambling arrests in the wake of Mapp. While enforcement eventually resumed in New York and Cleveland, it remained minimal in Detroit from the Mapp decision onward. Even in cities that managed to resume a robust pursuit of gamblers, by the end of the decade, important police leaders began to publicly assert that, given the limited tools at hand, the police should be absolved of gambling enforcement duties. One element of the nation’s gambling enforcement regime that could not stand in the newly emerged legal environment was the Federal Wagering Occupational Stamp Tax. A strengthened interpretation of the Fifth Amendment developed during the mid-­1960s in line with the expansion of the rights of the accused. Most notably, the court moved to incorporate the Fifth Amendment privilege against the states in the case of Malloy v. Hogan (1964). William Malloy was arrested in 1959, during a gambling raid in Hartford, Connecticut. He was assessed a $500 fine and served ninety days in jail. As a convicted gambler, he was called before a grand jury investigating crime and corruption in Hartford County in 1961.106 According to the Hartford Courant, “Soft-­spoken William Malloy wouldn’t give anything more than his name and address when questioned under oath about his role in organized gambling.” As a result he was jailed for contempt, and his challenge of the contempt conviction prompted a Supreme Court case watched closely by “judges, lawyers and policemen from coast to coast.”107 In a 5 to 4 ruling, “fortified by our recent decision in Mapp v. Ohio,” Justice Brennan wrote for the majority, “the Fourteenth Amendment secures against state

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invasion the same privileges that the Fifth Amendment guarantees against Federal infringement.”108 Also crucial to bolstering the Fifth Amendment and eroding the constitutional standing of the Wagering Occupational Stamp Tax was Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board (1965). The ruling in Albertson concluded that compulsory registration of Communist Party members amounted to forced self-­incrimination. In addition, Murphy v. Waterfront Commission (1964) held that one jurisdiction (in this case, a state) could not compel testimony that could then be used in another jurisdiction (a federal prosecution). Given these developments, the editors of the Yale Law Journal concluded in reference to the gambling stamp, “the tax as written must fall under a self-­incrimination claim.”109 The Wagering Occupational Stamp Tax finally collapsed in 1968 as a result of challenges to the convictions of gamblers James Marchetti and Anthony Grosso. Oral arguments in the companion cases Marchetti v. United States and Grosso v. United States were held in January 1967, and the cases were then reargued in October of that year. The back-­and-­forth in the court highlighted the status of American gambling as teetering between business and crime. Representing the government, Francis X. Beytagh Jr. pursued several lines of reasoning to persuade the court not to strike down the tax. Most prominently he asserted that “gambling is one of the largest business enterprises in this country,” and as such it should be taxed. Yet Hugo Black, whose disdain for the gambling stamp was long-­standing, pushed Beytagh to admit that the program was really an enforcement measure in disguise. Beytagh conceded, “The thing hasn’t worked out to produce much in a way of revenue, we don’t argue that it does.” But he insisted that revenue was the original intent of the statute, pointing to the floor debates in Congress when the law was passed in 1951.110 During the October arguments, Justice Abe Fortas grilled Beytagh, asking if Congress could force burglars to buy an occupational stamp as an equivalent tax scheme requiring “a person to disclose that he is engaged in an unlawful occupation.” But Beytagh contended that gambling was different as “we seek to develop gambling as a business,” and given that it operates “more like a business” than burglary. Earl Warren, putting the words in Beytagh’s mouth, interjected, “Gambling is a business which can or cannot be regulated by government. It can be permitted. It can be prohibited. Therefor it would come within the taxing power.”111 But Warren was alone in taking up the government’s argument. The exchanges at the court were dominated by voices critical of the law, in

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particular Hugo Black, who went as far as forcing lawyer Beytagh to recite the Fifth Amendment.112 Defending his position, Beytagh argued, “The Fifth Amendment is consistently accommodated with other powers that exist in the constitution. It does not exist in the abstract, it exists in the same constitution that has the power to tax.” “Doesn’t it say that no person shall be compelled to be a witness against himself? How can you accommodate that away?” demanded a furious Black. “Well, I don’t think you accommodate it away, Your Honor,” responded Beytagh. “And can the court repeal the Fifth Amendment?” asked Black. “No, I don’t think that would repeal the Fifth Amendment at all.” “It just makes it unenforceable!” insisted Black. After his rough treatment from Justice Black, Beytagh offered the proposition that some sort of use restriction or exclusionary rule could be established in relation to the tax information collected. The tax program could proceed, and perhaps even begin to succeed, while the problem of self-­incrimination would be solved.113 But the justices were skeptical. They were far more receptive to the arguments offered by Charles Alan Wright, an esteemed law professor, representing gambler Anthony Grosso. As Wright told the court, “You don’t balance away the privilege against self-­ incrimination.”114 The majority opinions in both Marchetti v. United States (1968) and Grosso v. United States (1968) were written by John Marshall Harlan II. In his initial attempt to fashion a majority, prior to the case being reargued, Harlan entertained the notion of “balancing” the Fifth Amendment against the government’s right to tax. However, Black pushed back adamantly, insisting, “There are hundreds of different ways to assess and collect taxes. There is only one way to protect a person from incriminating himself at all times and under all circumstances, and that is to simply do it.”115 Harlan retreated and offered an opinion that amounted to a stout defense of the Fifth Amendment. In the ruling for Marchetti v. United States, Harlan clarified that the threat of incrimination for possession of a stamp was real and consequential, citing the case of Irvine v. California as an example. Recalling the 1955 Lewis decision dictum that “there is no constitutional right to gamble,” Harlan proclaimed, writing in 1968, “we find this reasoning no longer persuasive. . . . The constitutional privilege was intended to shield the guilty and imprudent as well as the innocent and foresighted.” Relying on the precedent set by Marchetti and Grosso, the court quickly

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struck down the Marihuana Tax Act in Leary v. United States (1969). These cases brought to a close the strategy of intertwining suppression and revenue generation. Going forward, drugs would be removed from the arena of taxation and situated squarely as an object of criminal punishment, while gambling would be largely removed from policing and situated in the realm of taxation.116 The Marchetti and Grosso decisions came at the tail end of the Warren Court’s expansion of the rights of the accused. Also decided in the late years of the Warren Court was Katz v. United States (1967), stemming from the prosecution of gambler Charles Katz. Federal agents had attached a microphone to the top of a telephone booth that Katz frequently used to transmit betting information. The Supreme Court ruled that this kind of electronic surveillance required a warrant despite the fact that no physical intrusion of a private space had taken place. The case established that wiretapping required a warrant, and it offered the principle that “the Fourth Amendment protects people not places.”117 The case can be taken as something of a high-­ water mark in the empowerment of the Fourth Amendment initiated when Dollree Mapp refused to allow the police into her home. In June 1968 the court ruled in the case of Terry v. Ohio, giving constitutional sanction to the police practice of stop and frisk. Louis Stokes, lawyer for John W. Terry, petitioned that stop-­and-­frisk practices could not be accommodated with the search-­and-­seizure rule set by Mapp v. Ohio and the probable-­cause standards set by Beck v. Ohio.118 Yet the court was unwilling to extend the principles of Mapp and Beck any further, signaling the beginning of a slow process of restoring police discretion in arrest, largely facilitated by drug enforcement carve-­outs to procedural rules.119 Throughout this intense process of constitutional development, the imprint of gambling enforcement was remarkable. The suppression of gambling from the late nineteenth century though the early 1970s was a massive project. The effort was indeed uneven, as various jurisdictions at various times chose to look the other way at gambling, for reasons ranging from corruption to indifference. But this unevenness only highlighted the arbitrary nature of the policing regime. Practices of gambling suppression again and again defied constitutional guarantees through a steady stream of warrantless raids and searches, unlawful arrests, nonexistent probable cause, coerced testimony, compelled registration, and electronic eavesdropping. In case after case, the circumstances of gambling enforcement provided the Supreme Court with occasion to give real meaning to the protections of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

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The history of gambling enforcement in the twentieth century would seem to indicate the perils inherent in a regime of policing centered on a misalignment between the law and the public will. The particular nature of gambling enforcement as an effort to coercively suppress a widely popular activity, coupled with the fact that criminal gambling does not typically involve a victim or a complainant, left American police with a difficult if not impossible task. Under such conditions, the result proved to be rampant abuse of civil liberties. Meanwhile, as betting increasingly came within social norms, the violations committed by police in pursuit of gamblers appeared all the more egregious. As legal scholar Anna Lvovsky has argued, courts have tended to grant Fourth Amendment protections “in accordance with behavioral norms, as the courts have weighed the public utility of the search against the claim of privacy.”120 The gamblers, black and white, who contested their convictions to the highest court were interested primarily in keeping themselves out of jail. But their endeavors in court had much broader implications for the system of rights in America. The justices of the court did not view these cases collectively as gambling cases, rather they saw the connective tissue between them as centering on the extent of the coercive authority of police and agencies of law enforcement. Yet, necessarily, given the focus of midcentury policing, the pressing questions surrounding the extent of police authority emerged from cases connected to gambling. The black gamblers and the many black lawyers involved in Fourth and Fifth Amendment cases did not pursue issues of discriminatory treatment on the basis of race. Rather they pursued issues of due process in criminal procedure. However, their legal victories served to recalibrate the dynamics of racial power as urban police departments found their authority confronted with new restraints. Overall, the cases that grew out of the excesses and abuses of gambling enforcement shook the project of urban policing to its core. In the most immediate sense, the process of legal change surrounding the Fourth and Fifth Amendments left many among the police convinced that police departments should be relieved of the task of gambling enforcement one way or another. The collapse of the harass-­and-­arrest approach to the problem of gambling was further hastened by the contradictory nature of the Federal Wagering Occupational Stamp Tax. The law set the government off in pursuit of cross-­purposes. It simultaneously proclaimed the objectives of eradicating gambling and maximizing revenue, two goals that clearly canceled each other out. This troubled formula failed in the street and in the Supreme Court. Ultimately, with both federal and local authorities ready to abandon

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the campaign of blanket suppression, taxation emerged as the eminent priority in gambling policy. Chief Justice Earl Warren was the sole justice to dissent in the Marchetti and Grosso cases striking down the Wagering Occupational Stamp Tax. He expressed bewilderment that the court would nullify the effort of Congress to raise revenue from illegal gambling. In reference to the original act, he stated that it carried “the wholesome objective of devising workable procedures to assure that gamblers will pay the same taxes on their profits as other citizens are compelled to pay.”121 It is worth noting that during oral arguments, the government readily abandoned the enforcement elements of the gambling stamp program, inviting the court to carve out a kind of immunity against prosecution for taxpaying gamblers, so that the government might finally realize the full revenue potential. This pivot in the government’s position is evidence of the much broader unraveling of the national approach to gambling suppression. With little evidence that three decades of mass arrests had curbed gambling activity, and with the police deprived of the warrantless search and the arrest upon reputation, by the mid-­1960s the war on gambling was difficult to justify as a practice of governance. In this context, policy makers at the state and federal level shifted their focus to taxation, and the search for some viable scheme of legal and regulated gambling. Thus began experimentation with the modern public lottery.

5

We Intend to Run It

“It is difficult to understand how the sovereign State of New Hampshire and you, as its governor, approved the act relating to the conduct of sweepstake races and the sale of tickets thereon, which is known as a lottery,” fumed New York Congressman Emanuel Celler in an angry letter to New Hampshire Governor John King in May 1963. A few weeks earlier, King signed a lottery bill into law, creating the first legal lottery in the country since 1894. Celler, worried that a lottery for his own state of New York would be soon in coming, denounced the “chicanery, corruption and skullduggery” attendant to the “perplexing” and “thoroughly discredited” project of state gambling. Dismissing the notion that states were desperate for revenue, he stated, “Either the people can afford to pay the needed money or they cannot. If they can, it is both equitable and practical to take it from them by taxation. If they cannot, what is the public benefit to be derived from coaxing it out of them by holding out delusive hopes?” Celler expressed fear that other states might follow the poor example set by New Hampshire. The congressman warned the governor that the new lottery was sure to fail as it was encircled by federal laws and laws in neighboring states that would preclude its success. “Under federal statutes not only will New Hampshire be prohibited from using the mails to further lottery, no printed lottery matter can be shipped into any other state from New Hampshire. Newspapers cannot, under penalty, print any information concerning sweepstakes if those newspapers cross state lines. All interstate facilities for purposes of the lottery will be denied the State of New Hampshire.” To disabuse the governor of the notion that the federal government might wink at such laws, he vowed, “As Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, it shall be my studied purpose to prod the Department of Justice into execution of these laws, most of which are criminal in nature, in-

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volving severe sanctions. . . . Pray tell me, Mr. Governor, how can the New Hampshire Lottery be conducted legally under such restraint?”1 The congressman was off the mark. The many laws that he assumed would doom the first modern lottery were instead repealed, superseded, and generally undone in the subsequent years of remarkable legal and political transformation relating to the status of gambling. And despite the Brooklyn congressman’s fury and determination, his home state of New York quickly followed the example of New Hampshire, becoming the second lottery state in the nation. The closely watched development of the lottery in New York ultimately shaped governance nationwide, as the tumultuous process of lottery adoption forced the repositioning of a broad array of institutions and recast the dynamics of citizenship. The black neighborhoods of the urban North that bore the brunt of the previous thirty years of enforcement struggled for position in the emerging lottery framework. While the overwhelming racial disparities in gambling arrests in cities across the country during the 1950s and early 1960s were evidence of biased enforcement, they were also evidence of the fact that large numbers of black northerners made their living in the gambling economy. Just as severe repression had important consequences for black communities, so would the conditions for transition to legalization. While lotteries were initially couched as an anti-­crime measure during the 1960s, by the early 1980s they transformed into an aggressive and expansionist taxation program. All along, this process of transformation was emphatically contested. For black New Yorkers, black Chicagoans, and for poor urban communities throughout the Northeast, conflict over gambling during the late 1960s through the 1970s centered on the question of whether their communities would be allowed access to taxed gambling (in the form of jobs and profits) or if they were to be taxed through their gambling practices (in the form of centralized state lotteries). The reconfiguration of urban gambling through lottery adoption was fitful and uneven. The process expressed priorities of race and resource distribution, both in terms of what it embraced and what it rejected. Early lotteries failed to capture the interest of numbers and policy bettors. As New Jersey Lottery Director Ralph Batch lamented in 1973, “The game we offer is not the game they want to play.”2 This failure set off a scramble by lottery agencies to find the right product offerings to capture the urban market. As lotteries moved to co-­opt the numbers gambling customer base, black numbers workers, increasingly freed from mob influence and dominance by corrupt police, insisted that the neighborhoods that gave rise to the num-

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bers game should have a share in the jobs and profits in any new arrangement. Yet, ultimately, the priority of gambling legalization as a potential jobs program benefiting urban areas was overwhelmed by the emergent anti-­tax politics taking hold of suburban districts and their representatives in state legislatures. As the urban poor were cast as welfare cheats, criminals, and a drain upon state resources, lotteries provided a vehicle for extracting money from inner-­city areas considered to be undertaxed. * * * Gambling in all forms was hugely popular in the mid-­1960s. The decade and a half of vigorous efforts to enforce the law in the aftermath of the Kefauver Committee had little impact on the public appetite for betting. In 1964 the Los Angeles Times claimed that the gambling economy had doubled in size during the previous decade.3 While Americans of all races and class backgrounds indulged in betting, gambling activity among the urban poor sustained the interest of policy makers and elected officials. The focus on urban gambling as a problem in need of a solution grew in part from the perception that communities of color in America’s cities were drawing upon taxpayer-­funded services and benefits, only to gamble the money away. As Chicago Police Commissioner O. W. Wilson complained in 1964, “A good part of the money that lines the pockets of South Side Policy operators comes from welfare funds.”4 The sense of dilemma regarding urban gambling was also deeply rooted in the fact that so much police effort and energy was being poured into curbing gambling at the street level. While frequent gambling arrests were an important vehicle for the expression of coercive authority over burgeoning black and Latino populations in northern cities for several decades, the value of this approach clearly waned by the mid-­1960s. Rather than bolstering order, the heavy-­handed and corrupt practices of gambling suppression were a spark to upheaval. The unrest and civil disturbances of the period only highlighted this fact. The viability of the harass-­and-­arrest strategy had also clearly been undercut by the wave of due process decisions from the Supreme Court beginning with Mapp v. Ohio (1961). Urban elites came to regard gambling corruption among police as a greater threat to order than the transgressions of betting and bet taking.5 These changing circumstances pushed police leaders toward withdrawing slowly but surely from what had been one of the largest enforcement efforts of the previous generation. New York City Police Commissioner Michael J. Murphy summarized the gambling situation in the city in 1964. Speaking to a state legislative committee exploring the legalization of off-­track betting, he explained, “The

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problem of illegal gambling has plagued law enforcement for over a century, not only in this city but throughout the nation.” He lamented, “It has been the subject of more discussions, more debates, more hearings, more grand jury investigations, more newspaper comment, more criticism, than any other police problem. Its poisonous tree has borne the fruit of more scandals than the famed apple tree in the Garden of Eden.”6 Murphy did not openly advocate legalization. However, he made clear that the policeman’s job of suppressing gambling was increasingly untenable in the current legal environment. “The decision in Mapp vs. Ohio had far-­reaching effects on the work of police officers in the enforcement of gambling laws making this task much more difficult,” he explained.7 In their exploration of the possibilities for legal gambling, he pointed the legislators away from horse racing and toward the numbers game. He explained that bookmaking and betting on horse races was in decline. “Policy is now the greater problem,” he declared.8 In 1965, with the money flowing through the policy game in mind, a lottery bill was offered in both houses of the New York State legislature. Supporters of the measure projected $250 million annually for education. Although the bill passed the New York Senate by a vote of 35 to 18, the opposition was passionate. Senator Samuel Greenberg of Brooklyn characterized the bill as a confession that “we cannot provide for our needs by legitimate methods.” Yet supporters of the bill dismissed any moralizing and argued that the state had reached “the limit of existing forms of taxation.”9 The lottery received even stronger support in the New York Assembly, where it passed by a vote of 116 to 18, with the opposition made up of two Democrats and sixteen Republicans. The bill itself was a constitutional amendment, and thus it had to be passed by two separately elected legislatures, and then subsequently approved by the voters in a public referendum. Going forward, the lottery amendment would have to be ratified once again by the legislature the following year, and then it would appear on the November ballot in 1966 for a public vote.10 The Daily News, the city’s most popular newspaper, urged legislators and voters to support the project.11 As the new conventional wisdom on the gambling problem took shape, the editorial board of the New York Times pushed the lottery as an anti-­crime measure. “The larger the area of legalized gambling, the less the area that will remain for illicit gambling.”12 Vincent L. Broderick, who succeeded Michael J. Murphy as police commissioner, confirmed to the press that the department was “facing very difficult

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problems” in gambling enforcement in the wake of the recent landmark Supreme Court decisions.13 When the state senate took up the bill for a second round of passage in February, the measure once again sparked heated resistance. Senator Greenberg of Brooklyn argued, “To tell the kids of our state that their teachers’ salaries and their books are being paid for with $3 that mama spent on a lottery ticket is the wrong way to bring up children.” Senate Majority Leader Republican Earl Brydges vowed not to enforce party discipline on the matter, declaring the lottery a “non-­partisan issue” and encouraging his members to vote their conscience.14 He himself voted against the bill, proclaiming it to be “an issue of governmental morals.” In the words of Brydges, “This is a sad day, in my judgment, in the history of the State of New York.” Yet despite such lamentations, the bill passed by a vote of 39 to 22. The bill cleared the assembly the very next day by a vote of 123 to 37, with the opposition coming from upstate Republicans opposed on moral grounds.15 The only remaining hurdle was the voter referendum. The period from February until the elections in November allowed plenty of time for mobilization for and against the proposal. A group called the Committee of 100,000 Citizens Against the Lottery Amendment attempted to educate the public about the social and economic damage that the lottery held in store.16 The fifteen-­member State Board of Regents, the highest educational body in the state, also joined in the opposition, issuing a unanimous statement that “the obligation of the state to provide adequate funds for education is so fundamental that it should not be discharged, even in part, by the encouragement of public participation in a state lottery.”17 While the opposition gathered itself, a campaigning Governor Nelson Rockefeller conceded that if the bill was approved by the voters, he would ultimately respect their will and not attempt to veto any of the subsequent bills required for the implementation of the new lottery. “If the people vote in favor of it, then the people have now spoken. I will do my best to carry it out. I am personally not enthusiastic because I think it is the most retrogressive taxation you can get.”18 When the people of New York went into the voting booths in early November 1966, they approved the lottery measure by a 3 to 2 margin. This transformative moment for the legal status of gambling was watched closely nationwide, as the establishment of the lottery in New York was front-­page news across the country. Many voices expressed deep skepticism about state involvement in the gambling business. The editorial board at the Washington Post chided, “Welfare agencies might issue lottery tickets to persons

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on welfare. It would save the waste of time that will be involved in having relief clients change aid allowances into lottery tickets.”19 The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal was also unimpressed, writing that the school­ children of the state of New York “are certainly getting a priceless education in the philosophical poverty and cupidity of their elders.”20 Before the first ticket was sold, the legislature undercut the professed goal of supporting education. Members of the legislature, in anticipation of lottery revenue, reallocated education funds to other parts of the budget. Thus lottery gambling would in no way augment state aid to education. More gambling in a given year would not mean more money for education—rather it would mean more of the education budget could be allocated elsewhere.21 The lottery structure that emerged from the legislature was set to include twelve annual drawings. Tickets were to be sold at banks, hotels, and Western Union locations. Ticket prices were fixed between $1 and $2. The estimate by the legislature projected an annual profit of $180 million.22 Operations were to be conducted by a newly created State Lottery Commission under the State Department of Taxation and Finance, with a remarkable 15 percent of revenue slated for operations. The date for the first drawing was set for July 1, 1967, with a top prize of $100,000 to go on sale on June 15.23 As the first drawing approached, the configuration of the lottery continued to change rapidly. Western Union notified the state that given the low fee of 5 percent of gross ticket sales, the company would not sell the new lottery at its two hundred locations, despite having lobbied strenuously to be included in the bill.24 The Franklin National Bank, with sixty-­six branches in New York State, also withdrew on the basis that “selling lottery tickets undermined the symbolic status of a bank.”25 Many hotels remained willing to participate, although the extent to which they would be able to profit from the lottery arrangement was an open question. The manager of the Delmonico Hotel “acknowledged that the lottery might not appeal ‘to the type of patron’ found at the exclusive hotel.” A spokesman for the Waldorf Astoria explained, “We’re doing this as a public service, to benefit education.”26 Other New Yorkers saw the impending lottery as anything but a public service. The Rev. Dr. Charles Howard Graf of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan initiated a boycott of banks that participated in selling the lottery.27 The City Welfare Department announced in late May that should any of the 656,000 welfare clients win a sizable prize, they would have to use it toward repaying what they had received in welfare payments.28

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The broadcast news media was collectively uncertain as to how to approach this new entity. The United States criminal code threatened fines and even imprisonment for whoever “knowingly permits the broadcasting of, any advertisement of, or information concerning any lottery.” Such language was taken by some to mean that even news reporting on lottery results and winners could constitute a criminal act. National networks such as NBC and ABC were deeply cautious, adopting “a virtual blackout on news about the state lottery.” The law relating to newspapers was less restrictive, barring any mailing of publications that contained advertising for lotteries, thus leaving newspapers free to report on events.29 The state rushed the issuance and moved up the opening of ticket sales to June 1. Only four thousand of nine thousand legally eligible locations chose to sell tickets.30 The first day of lottery sales featured something of a frenzied atmosphere. Lines were long at the Waldorf Astoria, the New York Hilton, and the Americana, where patrons lined up thirty-­deep in the lobby. Mayor John Lindsay purchased a ticket, but Governor Nelson Rockefeller did not. The only hitch in the day came from Washington, where a bill to ban lottery sales in banks came out of committee.31 The bill passed the full House in mid-­July by a vote of 271 to 111. Bronx Representative Paul A. Fino called the law a product of “hillbilly morality.” The bill’s sponsor, Representative Wright Patman of Texas, noted that the intention of the legislation was not to kill New York’s new lottery, rather “the only concern of Congress was that banks which should promote thrift, should not be used to promote gambling.”32 Meanwhile, back in New York, lottery revenue proved to be a disappointment. The first month of operation brought in only $7 million, far short of the predicted $30 million a month.33 A reporter for the Wall Street Journal posed the question, “Can a rich respectable state like New York play the betting game as well as a local numbers operator? The answer seems to be, at least right now, not by a long shot.”34 A week later, the New York Times published an editorial titled “The Lottery Fiasco,” calling the whole affair “a bitter disappointment.” The paper spread the blame widely to cover the governor, legislators of both parties, and the mayor. The Times called on policy makers to come up with a better way to finance education, “even if it means imposing taxes in an election year. This is the price for letting wishful thinking lure them into the great lottery fiasco.”35 Governor Rockefeller, who had opposed the lottery in the first place, was now in the position of having to bring about the lottery’s success for budgetary reasons. Rockefeller sought advice from his neighbor, toy manufacturer Edwin S. Lowe, who achieved great wealth selling home bingo

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games. Lowe argued that the advertising campaign focused on the lottery’s role in aiding education was misguided. “The average working man or woman is not concerned with buying a lottery ticket for the purpose of helping education. Their primary concern is their hope to hit it rich and quick,” he explained.36 The ad agency employed by the lottery was unshackled to ply its trade. As a spokesman for the agency (Fuller & Ross & Smith) explained to the New York Times, “The way to sell lottery tickets is by appealing to people’s greed.” On the chance that the appeal to greed might come up short, the state in coordination with the city hired “20 young women in yellow mini-­ skirts with blue piping and blue net stockings” to travel the city handing out promotional literature for pay of $2.50 an hour.37 As the lottery scrambled to interest New Yorkers, the US Senate took up the bill to outlaw sales in banks. During the tense debate, supporters of the measure argued that patrons of banks attempting “to cash their Social Security or welfare checks should not be subjected to a ‘come on’ to buy lottery tickets at the same teller’s window.” Senator Frank J. Lausche (D-­OH) warned broadly against disintegration of the nation’s moral fabric. Senator Jacob Javits (R-­NY) pushed back in defense of his state, arguing that senators should not be regulating the banking system on their interpretation of morality.38 Nonetheless, the measure passed by a vote of 56 to 17.39 President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill on December 15, 1967.40 With banks no longer an option, the New York State legislature took up the issue of legally authorizing new ticket outlets. Some lawmakers in Albany wondered if the lottery experiment should be abandoned altogether. State Senate Majority Leader Earl Brydges, who had been skeptical all along, argued, “I think now, when it is a relatively insignificant part of our total revenue, maybe this is the time to decide whether you want to get rid of it.”41 Yet, rather than do away with the lottery, the state legislature increased the frequency of drawings to once a week and expanded the discretionary authority of the tax commissioner to authorize outlets. Even with the additional outlets in supermarkets and drugstores, the final tally for the New York State Lottery’s first full year of operation was a clear disappointment. The gross sales amounted to $62.4 million, a figure approximately $300 million shy of predictions.42 Both the state and the city were left short. In search of ways to encourage play, the city pressed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to rule on what could and could not be broadcast regarding lotteries. In 1968 the FCC handed down a decision that allowed news regarding draw-

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ings to be broadcast, but clearly barred any lottery advertising over the airwaves.43 As the bad news and obstacles mounted, the New York State Lottery continued to flounder. During the final month of the decade, the state game posted its lowest yield since its inception. January 1970 proved even worse.44 It was difficult to call the New York State Lottery anything other than a bust. The revenues had fallen short, and problems of educational funding persisted. Illegal gambling remained entirely unaffected by the new game, and police corruption continued unabated. Gamblers in New York were simply not all that interested in the new lottery game. Even a get-­rich-­quick advertising scheme did not solve the problem. Lottery proponents in New York State misread the situation. They acted on the assumption that all illegal numbers gambling activity would be converted into legal state lottery gambling upon the arrival of the newly authorized game. However, the two games were not interchangeable. The new raffle-­style lottery was significantly different from the choose-­your-­own-­ number gambling practices most enjoyed by New York City residents. Any hope for success by the lottery would clearly require a more direct confrontation with the illegal numbers game. In 1967 the New York Amsterdam News spoke to a number of black New Yorkers to gather opinions on the reasons for the lottery’s weak performance. One respondent complained, “Tickets are sold in dreary places— where the average person does not feel at ease, like banks, hotels, government offices. You have to get dressed up to go into them.” A barbershop owner pointed out that the drawings were too infrequent. “Who wants to wait three or four weeks to get some action?” A candy-­store owner noted, “Lottery tickets cost too much. . . . When you play the numbers you can bet a quarter or even a dime or a nickel.” A beauty shop operator offered the simple advice that “maybe New York State should study the numbers.”45 Illegal numbers play in the black and Puerto Rican communities of New York was as heavy as ever in 1970. The popular illegal numbers game represented a particular form, and this form had a long-­established and loyal customer base. The key features of the clandestine game were the low cost of play, the daily action, and the ability to choose one’s own numbers. These features stood in contrast to the state game with its high cost of play, weekly drawings, and sequentially numbered tickets. Of particular importance was the key difference of picking one’s own number as opposed to receiving a sequential ticket. The ability to choose a favorite number allowed gamblers

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to make use of their children’s birthdays, their favorite ballplayer’s batting average, and, above all else, the subject matter of their dreams. The sequential tickets of the New York State Lottery offered no such possibilities. As the state realized its miscalculation, it began a decade-­long effort to rewrite the lottery law to allow for an exact replication of the illegal game to attract the urban numbers player. Yet efforts by the state to enter the numbers market were met with substantial opposition from black and Latino politicians and activists. With police suppression already receding, and with new openings to legalization, the communities that had been most heavily targeted by the war against gambling now sought to conduct gambling on their own terms. The 1970s featured intense wrangling over the numbers, with black elected officials pushing to bring numbers gambling under community control, while resisting the state lottery. Black activists fought to keep gambling revenue circulating locally, to legitimize the excluded and criminalized numbers workers, and to preserve the employment base provided by the illegal numbers game. The goal for lottery proponents, on the other hand, was to raise revenue for the state through regressive taxation.46 No figure fought for community control of the numbers with more vigor than Harlem activist James R. Lawson. A long-­standing presence in Harlem and a follower of Marcus Garvey, Lawson made a name for himself during the 1930s as the business manager for the Harlem Labor Union and as a prominent advocate for black employment in New York’s breweries during the 1940s and ’50s. In 1950 he wrote to the Kefauver Committee, demanding that they investigate the exploitation of Harlem by the Italian Mafia through their control of the numbers game. Combative, uncompromising, and known for employing strong-­arm tactics, Lawson headed several black nationalist organizations during his career.47 During the mid-­1960s, Lawson founded the Harlem Council for Economic Development with the declared goal of seeing blacks “gain control of business.”48 For Lawson, no business was more important than the numbers. Shortly after the 1964 Harlem Riot, Lawson told a crowd of a thousand gathered on 125th Street that black people must control “all the business in the black community.”49 He declared that the end of August “was the absolute deadline for the mafia to get the hell out of the numbers and narcotics rackets in Harlem.”50 His threat was bold and how he intended to make it a reality was unclear. Yet it appears that the atmosphere of increasing violence in Harlem was making it more difficult for white gangsters to assert control. Initially, black elected officials did not see the lottery as a threat to the numbers economy. In fact, shortly after the lottery legislation passed, thirty-­ six-­year-­old Harlem Assemblyman Charles Rangel attempted to capitalize

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on the impulse toward liberalization by proposing a legal, community-­ controlled numbers game. Rangel argued that a legal numbers game could undercut police corruption, provide employment, and “make the profits work for the good of the community” in hospitals, nursing homes, and educational remediation centers.51 The initiative spread beyond New York, as a black legislator representing Philadelphia in the Pennsylvania General Assembly proposed a bill to legalize the numbers within the city limits.52 Both Rangel’s bill and the Philadelphia bill failed, but there was significant optimism and hope that the black communities in New York and elsewhere would be able to bring legitimacy to their favored gambling pastime. Optimism quickly gave way to defensiveness in 1971 as the New York City government attempted to gain control over the numbers game through the newly created Off-­Track Betting Corporation (OTB). Mayors since William O’Dwyer had pressed the state to allow for off-­track betting, and in 1963 city residents voted their approval by a margin of 3 to 1 in a citywide referendum. But the state government consistently refused to act. In 1970 Mayor John Lindsay reached an accord with Governor Rockefeller that allowed for the passage of the Off-­Track Pari-­Mutuel Betting Law. Before the OTB public benefit corporation even took in its first horse-­racing bet, the ambitious head of OTB, Howard Samuels, attended a meeting at the Harlem YMCA to discuss the possibility of OTB getting into the numbers game. Community residents pushed back and defended the numbers as a local institution. At the head of the opposition was Livingston L. Wingate, the executive director of the Urban League, who insisted that the numbers should be controlled by the community rather than by the government.53 Samuels asserted that black neighborhoods were being victimized by organized crime through the numbers game. Wingate responded that it should be up to black residents, not outsiders, to purge organized crime from their neighborhoods. Wingate’s assertion characterized the political climate of the time, as African Americans and Latinos increasingly demanded control over their own communities. The city’s liberal elite saw the numbers as a losing proposition for the city’s poor, yet Harlem residents highly familiar with the game understood its importance as a source of employment. A month after the meeting in Harlem, two black legislators representing Brooklyn introduced a constitutional amendment in Albany to “legalize the numbers under community control.” The proposal involved local numbers boards to operate the parlors and provide revenue for local needs such as additional policing and drug treatment.54 The discussion of neighborhood control of numbers gambling took place in the context of a broader push for

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community control over key areas of life in the urban North, such as education, police protection, drug treatment, health services, parks, and government construction.55 Assertions that the numbers was a vital employment source in New York’s predominantly black sections were bolstered in 1971 by social science research. A study funded by the US Justice Department examining organized crime in the Bedford-­Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn determined that the numbers game was the single largest employer in the Bed-­ Stuy area.56 The many disputants in the gambling debates met face-­to-­face during the proceedings of the New York State Legislative Committee on Victimless Crimes. At the hearings James Lawson feuded with Howard Samuels, dismissing Samuels’s proposal for an OTB-­run numbers game and dismissing Samuels as someone who doesn’t “know a damn thing about gambling.” Lawson told the committee that Harlem would never patronize white-­run government offices to buy numbers. He declared, “We intend to run it. Come hell or high water.”57 Charles Rangel, now serving as a congressman (having unseated Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in 1970), also testified in favor of a community-­controlled game. The clear resistance from black leaders to an OTB-­operated numbers game undercut the efforts of Samuels and his pursuit of the matter on the liberal impulse that black New Yorkers were being victimized by organized crime. In the early 1970s, legalization of the numbers in any form was blocked by a triangular dynamic. The state legislature featured gambling expansionists (both liberal and conservative) pressing for government control, representatives of black and Hispanic communities demanding local control, and rural social conservatives opposed to all forms of gambling expansion. The result was a deadlock. The lottery could not secure new legislation to begin selling a replica of the numbers game, while black and Latino neighborhoods could not achieve legalization of the local game. While legislative change was stalled, developments in the area of policing allowed black numbers operators to free themselves from the police and the mob. The prevalence of police corruption was again brought to the surface in April 1970 when police officers David Durk and Frank Serpico shared information about the still ubiquitous “pad” with New York Times reporter David Burnham. As a result of Burnham’s reporting, Mayor Lindsay convened the Knapp Commission to investigate police corruption. The public scandal led to the ouster of Police Commissioner Howard Leary. Formerly top cop in Philadelphia, Leary was brought in by Mayor

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Lindsay in 1966 as an outsider and a reformer to replace Vincent Broderick. In campaigning for mayor as a liberal Republican in 1965, Lindsay pledged that he would appoint a civilian majority to the complaint review board in New York. When Lindsay took steps to fulfill his campaign promise, Broderick objected publicly and Lindsay moved to replace Broderick with Leary. During his tenure as commissioner in Philadelphia, Leary worked cooperatively with the city’s civilian review board (established in 1958).58 The controversial civilian review issue in New York came to a head in late 1966 after the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) mounted a successful signature drive to have the existence of the board subjected to a public referendum. After a bitter and divisive campaign surrounding the matter, New York voters nullified the review board. The defeat left Lindsay humiliated, Leary neutralized, and the PBA awakened to its political clout.59 During his remaining years as commissioner, Leary was unwilling to tangle with the PBA. Furthermore, as an outsider with few allies in the department, Leary was reluctant to confront the established practices of the rank and file.60 Chief among these established practices was of course the taking of gambling graft. With the revelations of the Knapp Commission investigation into police corruption on the front page of the city’s newspapers, Leary resigned.61 Mayor Lindsay’s choice to replace Leary in 1970 was Patrick V. Murphy (no relationship to Michael J. Murphy). Murphy began his career as a New York police officer and went on to head departments in Syracuse, Washington, DC, and most recently Detroit. Immediately after taking over in New York, Murphy gathered commanding officers to declare that they would be held accountable for corruption in the ranks. He followed with swift suspensions and dismissals.62 Although the new commissioner was a veteran officer, he was viewed with great skepticism by the patrolmen, with some quick to compare him to the much-­disliked Stephen P. Kennedy, who held the job from 1955 to 1961.63 While still a rising officer in New York, Murphy wrote his master’s thesis at City College on “Police Employee Organizations.” He found them to be unhelpful at best and malevolent at worst. Writing in 1960, he complained of their silence in the face of obvious corruption.64 As of 1970, Murphy would spend a great deal of time and energy dealing with one such police organization in the form of the New York Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. Murphy tangled with the PBA as he simultaneously attempted to navigate the claims of the Knapp Commission, the sinking morale of the department, and the shifting legal terrain of gambling. The Knapp Commission Report revealed a stunning level of police in-

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F I G . 1 3  Patrick V. Murphy in 1968. Bettmann/Bettmann Collection, courtesy of Getty Images.

volvement with the numbers game. The commission confirmed the heaviest corruption to be in the city’s poorest sections. Overall, New York police “shake down gambling operations throughout the city on a regular, highly systematic basis.” Money from the pad was divided up and distributed according to rank, in an arrangement bearing the marks of a coerced collective-­bargaining agreement between the city’s police and its gamblers. The pad even included a system of severance pay for officers. A new numbers gambler attempting to set up shop would begin by reaching out to other gamblers in the area to ensure “that he’s not encroaching on their territory. Next he will get in touch with the police, either directly or through other gamblers working in the same neighborhood. Or he may simply start taking bets and wait for the police to come to him.” Beyond the organized pad, the commission also described a number of shakedown tactics. Police looking for cash might plant policy slips on a person with a previous record for gambling and then demand payment for release. In some cases they might follow through with an actual arrest and

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then arrange a payment for changing their testimony at trial or for executing paperwork in an improper manner so as to lead to a dismissal in court. Police might also confiscate all of a gambler’s paperwork, knowing that the gambler stood to lose significant money, and then demand payment for its return. When the police needed to make an actual gambling arrest, due to pressure to demonstrate enforcement, they often planted numbers slips on known gamblers who were operating outside of the pad system, thus simultaneously reinforcing the strength of the pad, while also giving the appearance of vigorous enforcement. The pad stretched far in the department, and, particularly for those in plainclothes, “the pad was a way of life.”65 The PBA fought the Knapp Commission every step of the way. At the outset, the PBA went to court to have the commission disbanded, claiming that it would result in “harassment” of policemen.66 In late 1970 officers in the Nineteenth Precinct, upset that the Knapp Commission was publicizing some of its findings, refused to go out on patrol for four hours. An angry police officer compared the proceedings to “McCarthyism in its worst form.”67 Organized police pressured the city council to end the subpoena power of the commission, yet the mayor succeeded in keeping the investigation alive, much to the fury of police workers.68 As the investigation proceeded, PBA head Ed Kiernan complained of a lack of due process for accused police. “I don’t condone crooked cops, but a crooked cop is entitled to protection under the law.”69 The PBA called the final report of the Knapp Commission “garbage” and a “fairy tale.”70 Just at the moment the Knapp hearings were at the center of public attention, the prevailing contract for patrolmen was set to expire. The negotiations for a new contract were thus deeply colored by the proceedings of the commission. Ironically, the extensive allegations served the purposes of the PBA, as the economic nature of the malfeasance stood as a clear argument for higher pay, while the accusatory nature of the proceedings bolstered solidarity and militancy among the members. Beyond demanding the termination of the Knapp Commission, the police demanded a base pay of $16,000, up from $9,871, along with a closed shop for the PBA.71 As negotiations deteriorated, a wildcat strike driven by a militant insurgency within the PBA broke out in 1971. The unofficial job action lasted for six days, encompassing 85 percent of the patrol force.72 After the parties came back to the table, negotiations dragged on for fourteen months. They collapsed once again after the PBA accused Police Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy of undermining the process by issuing a departmental master plan that included new procedures for the quick dismissal of officers. The PBA began to contemplate another walkout, but Murphy, now with

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considerable public credibility accrued to his name, vowed to immediately suspend any striking officers.73 The department also considered a policy of subjecting officers suspected of corruption to lie-­detector tests, a practice already in place in Chicago and Los Angeles. All of the police unions in New York responded with vehemence. The president of the Lieutenants Benevolent Association stated, “The inherent dangers to a human being’s rights in a situation like this are inexhaustible. The department is continually stressing the protection of a citizen’s rights and then does a complete about-­face when it comes to one of its own.”74 When the PBA finally settled its contract with the city in 1972, the agreement included substantial wage increases, the city granted the PBA a closed shop, and the contract stipulated that officers would not be subjected to lie-­detector tests.75 Just a few short months after the contract was settled, in October 1972, the PBA began conducting a training course at the police academy warning officers of the many benefits they stood to lose if caught accepting graft. “Senior police commanders said it was the first time in their memories that the P.B.A. had acknowledged the corruption problem.”76 In some respects, this can be taken as a moment of recognition among New York police that there was a good deal more to be gained from collective bargaining than there was from preserving the tradition of the numbers pad. The final report of the Knapp Commission ultimately came out in favor of legalized gambling with a statement of dramatic clarity. “The criminal laws against gambling should be repealed. The police should in any event be relieved from any responsibility for the enforcement of gambling laws or regulations.”77 Gambling laws were not repealed, yet Police Commissioner Murphy took his own action. He declared a moratorium on low-­level gambling arrests, thus depriving crooked cops of their principal tool for shaking down runners. As commissioner in Detroit, he had quietly curtailed gambling arrests, bringing them down to a total of 234 in 1969, his last full year there. By contrast, in 1950, the year the Kefauver Committee began its work, the Detroit police made 2,764 gambling arrests.78 Early in 1972 in New York, Murphy made his policy official, declaring, “Every effort shall be made to place gambling law enforcement in proper perspective. . . . [I]t would require an inordinate amount of manpower to enforce completely all gambling laws.” He directed the department to deemphasize “the unenforceable and publicly unpopular gambling laws.” Murphy explained that departmental energies and resources previously spent on gambling suppression would henceforth be directed to narcotics enforcement.79 Patrick V. Murphy thus declared peace in the New York Police Department’s war on gambling. His moratorium on low-­level gam-

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bling arrests was coupled with pursuit of corruption within the ranks, and the policies he initiated began the process of destroying the pad system that had been a feature of New York policing for so many decades. The policy of non-­enforcement strengthened the autonomy of black and Latino numbers workers over the course of the 1970s. The Knapp Commission, in its final report issued in 1973, pointed to this trend already under way.80 As Harlem numbers veteran Raymond Marquez observed in the mid-­ 1970s on his first day out of jail after serving a long sentence, “The numbers action was so outrageously wide open that it appeared to be sanctioned.”81 As the legal status of numbers gambling in New York appeared poised to change, Harlem activist James Lawson shifted focus. He began a push to secure amnesty for previous numbers-­related crimes, so that the thousands of numbers workers with criminal records would not be excluded under any new legal framework. In early 1972 he announced the formation of a new organization: the New York Committee for Amnesty and Community Control of Policy (ACCOP). Lawson recognized that the biggest obstacle to community control going forward would come from emerging lotteries. While gridlock in the legislature prevented the New York State Lottery from implementing a numbers game, the situation in New Jersey was a different matter. Lawson warned his brethren in Newark that the newly instituted New Jersey Lottery would soon attempt to undercut their numbers operations.82 The New Jersey Lottery was approved by a voter referendum in 1969 and began sales in late 1970. The enabling legislation was particularly flexible, giving the new lottery the authority to respond to market conditions. Although New Jersey could not initially design a method of allowing bettors to choose their own numbers, they met with some success selling cheap tickets and offering daily play. With the flexible law of New Jersey as a model, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Michigan began lottery sales in 1972, followed by Maryland in 1973. While these states began with more reasonable revenue projections and thus did not flop on the scale of the New York Lottery, all of the new lotteries failed to tap the revenue stream flowing in the illegal numbers game. As New Jersey Lottery Director Ralph Batch testified to a commission in 1973, “Black people in New Jersey, in the inner city, are accustomed to numbers. It is part of a way of life. . . . The game we offer is not the game they want to play.” According to Batch, the New Jersey Lottery would have to closely replicate the numbers to capture the inner-­city market. He noted that such a move was in the making.83 In New York, Washington, DC, and Illinois, black political leaders and

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liberal groups that embraced the ethos of community control began to detail their own proposals for legal numbers. As state control was set against local control, the priority of tax revenue was set against the priority of preserving jobs. Several groups including New York’s Black Legislative Caucus and even OTB, stung by its initial rebuke from black leaders, put forward proposals with an emphasis on jobs and high prize levels in order keep money circulating in the communities where bets originated. In Washington, DC, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights published Legalized Numbers in Washington in 1973. The project was driven by the fact that “although black people constitute only 12 percent of the nation’s population, over 70 percent of the persons arrested on gambling charges, nationwide, are black.”84 The Washington Lawyers’ Committee heard testimony from area residents who expressed many of the ideas and proprietary sentiments being embraced by Harlem political leaders. As one DC resident explained, “Black people are prosecuted unnecessarily for a part of our life-­style. I am opposed to lotteries like those in New York and New Jersey because they are not dispensing the money back in the community. . . . I am in favor of black people controlling the numbers, from the runner to the banker.”85 Ultimately, the proposal from the Washington Lawyers’ Committee sought to preserve the employment of the roughly two thousand numbers runners working in the city, while simultaneously minimizing any further spread of gambling. However, the initiative predated the 1973 Home Rule Act, and the inexperienced political class that began to govern the District of Columbia in 1974 and 1975 remained subordinated to Congress and was in no position to break new ground in legalizing the numbers. In Illinois the push to legalize daily gambling under local control was driven by Lewis Caldwell, representing the Twenty-­Fourth District in the State House of Representatives. In his master’s thesis, written more than three decades earlier, Caldwell declared the need for sensible regulation of a legal policy game. He recognized the complex set of problems generated by the illegal game during his days as a social worker going in and out of homes on the South Side in the 1930s. After sixteen years as a social worker and probation officer for the Cook County Family Court, Caldwell went to work in the private sector as a sales manager for Baldwin Ice Cream. He maintained a course of energetic civic engagement, serving as president of the Negro Chamber of Commerce (later renamed the Cosmopolitan Chamber of Commerce) and writing weekly commentary for the Chicago Defender during the late 1950s.86 After several years at the head of the Woodlawn Community Services agency, in

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1966 Caldwell mounted a successful run for the state assembly seat to represent the Twenty-­Ninth District on the South Side.87 Following a round of redistricting, in 1972 Caldwell ran successfully for the Twenty-­Fourth District assembly seat. Although he began his career in electoral politics as a regular Democrat, by the early 1970s Caldwell was increasingly independent and worked closely with other African American independent Democrats, who were prepared to buck the machine on issues such as housing and police misconduct. When the Illinois State Lottery came up for approval in 1973, Caldwell voted in favor of its establishment. He embraced the logic that liberalization of the state’s gambling laws could open the door to a legal policy game. Shortly after the lottery vote, Caldwell sponsored legislation to fund a study of the feasibility of a community-­controlled policy game. Caldwell’s co-­sponsor on the bill was Harold Washington, who represented the neighboring Twenty-­Sixth District on the South Side. State Representative Washington was a veteran of Chicago machine politics, yet he charted an independent course. As William L. Dawson faded in importance, Harold Washington emerged as the most important figure in Chicago black politics. He later went on to become a state senator, a congressman, and ultimately the city’s first black mayor. With a depth of political experience, Washington understood the perils and possibilities of numbers gambling. According to one of his biographers, Washington’s brother was a policy operator, involved in paying off corrupt police.88 Washington’s father was a precinct captain under Committeeman Mike Sneed, who was notoriously enmeshed in the gambling trade.89 Thus, Washington had a firm grasp of the fact that the policy game both facilitated and undermined black politics. Washington and Caldwell worked together to bring the policy game aboveboard and render it a legitimate source of employment in 1973. They also collaborated that year on a bill to create a commission to investigate the related problem of police corruption in order to address the “lack of trust and confidence in our police.”90 While their police oversight bill was defeated, they succeeded in passing the bill to fund the study of a legal and locally controlled policy game. The next year, Caldwell opened the hearings of the Policy Numbers Game Study Committee by stating, “As a professional social worker for sixteen years, dating from 1933, I learned that policy was a major factor in the economic and social life of Black communities in the city. . . . [T]he time has come that policy should be legalized.”91 After holding hearings around the state, Caldwell and Washington issued their report to the legislature in 1975

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and submitted a bill to legalize policy gambling under local control. However, action at the state level was put on hold as states awaited the findings of the Commission on the Review of the National Policy Toward Gambling. The federal government had effectively been frozen in place in terms of gambling policy since the collapse of the Wagering Occupational Stamp Tax. The Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 created the commission to develop recommendations for the states to follow as they formulated their own gambling policies. Between April 3, 1974, and September 23, 1976, the commission conducted thirty-­seven days of hearings, taking testimony from 265 witnesses, including law enforcement officials, lottery directors, illegal gamblers, and clergy.92 In November 1974, representatives from each of the nation’s thirteen existing lotteries came to Washington, DC, to testify. The lottery representatives were particularly concerned with the federal restrictions on the use of the mails and the broadcast airwaves for communications regarding lotteries. In September of that year, the US Attorney General declared that he intended to act against offending states within ninety days, unless Congress took action. The lottery men spoke with a singular voice as they demanded use of the mails, radio, and television. They claimed that a lottery “is a government-­ sponsored business rather than another bureaucracy, and as such should have the same marketing opportunities as any other business.” To accomplish the goal of redirecting the money presently being channeled into organized crime, the lottery men pushed for the repeal of “stultifying” and “archaic” laws. Anything less would redound to the benefit of criminal actors. In sum, they demanded that “all present federal statutes that impinge in any way upon the freedom of state-­created lotteries to operate as autonomous business enterprises be abrogated.”93 Already in 1974, the walls between public function and private enterprise were collapsing, and all of the nation’s lottery directors were virtually unanimous in their declarations of the need to expand and grow. Congress acted in time to save the lotteries from prosecution by the attorney general, and in 1975 President Gerald Ford signed a law allowing state-­run lotteries to use the federal mails, the radio, and television to disseminate information and to advertise. The commission’s final report, Gambling in America, declared that enforcement of the nation’s current gambling laws was truly and totally “impossible.”94 The rest of the report read like a wish list written up by the nation’s state lottery directors. States’ rights were privileged over federal regulation of interstate commerce as the commission determined that “the

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federal government, in the exercise of its regulatory and tax powers, should not unnecessarily impair state efforts to compete with illegal gambling operations.”95 The commission defined the emergence of lotteries as “state entrepreneurship” that should be accepted and encouraged as “an anticrime measure of assistance to law enforcement.”96 State lottery directors also testified against any effort to legalize any forms of gambling at the local level. Lottery representatives insisted that only the states could be trusted to operate gambling free of corruption. They portrayed local numbers outfits and their advocates who were pleading for legalization as irretrievably in the grips of organized crime. Local officials, meanwhile, testified to the contrary, asserting that gambling in their cities was no part of any broader criminal conspiracy. Philadelphia provided a case in point. The president judge of the Philadelphia Municipal Court Joseph R. Glancey testified as to his doubts that city gambling was controlled by organized crime. He advocated that gambling be operated at the local level, through licensing and taxation.97 F. Emmet Fitzpatrick, district attorney of Philadelphia, went even further, telling the commission, “The office of district attorney has found no connection between gambling and organized crime. In fact the exact opposite has been found: individuals appear to be operating independently or with a few people from the neighborhood.”98 Joseph O’ Neill, commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department, suggested a two-­year moratorium on gambling arrests, very much in line with what Patrick Murphy had done in New York.99 The president of the Philadelphia City Council George Schwarz emphasized the employment possibilities of legal numbers, testifying in favor of “across the board legalization of gambling” and proposing that “those engaged in selling numbers could be hired by the Commonwealth.”100 Similarly, president of the Detroit City Council Carl Levin called for a blanket legalization, pointing to the jobs and crime reduction it could mean for his city.101 But state officials from Michigan insisted to the commission that “gambling be controlled at the state level for reasons of efficiency.”102 State and city also squared off over gambling in Chicago. Harold Washington and Lewis Caldwell, representing the interests of their Chicago constituents, testified to the federal commission about the possibilities for a locally controlled policy game. They explained that “the black community needs money,” and a policy game “licensed and regulated as a privately owned game for profit” could serve to provide jobs and revenue to the community and bring the thousands of Chicago residents working in policy over to the right side of the law. They even gave the committee a copy of their legislation, so as to show what a plan for local control of legal policy-­

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numbers could look like.103 But the Illinois Lottery Director Ralph Batch (formerly the director in New Jersey) was crystal-­clear in his hostility to any such plan. He expressed his vehement opposition to “any type of fragmentation of lotteries below the level of state operation” or “the legalization of any privately operated lottery.”104 The commission sided squarely with the lottery directors, who were on guard against legalization of the numbers under local control. The commission’s final report cited the great potential for state expansion into the field of numbers, with encouraging experiments already under way in New Jersey and Massachusetts.105 With the blessing of the federal commission, states acted quickly, and advocates of community-­controlled gambling were left with few options. Michigan, Maryland, and Pennsylvania all launched lottery-­controlled daily numbers games in 1976 and 1977. The flexible lottery laws of these states allowed for the implementation of a numbers game without new legislation, and thus opportunities for pushback were limited. Nonetheless, many black political leaders in those states worked within existing constraints to secure the benefits of taxed gambling for their constituents and to shield them from the state’s attempt to use the popularity of gambling in urban communities as a vehicle for regressive taxation. These efforts met with mixed success. In Pennsylvania, lottery money has historically funded programs for senior citizens. While most state lotteries function to defray the cost of a mandated commitment such as public education, Pennsylvania’s lottery stands out as providing services that might not otherwise exist without lottery money. Black legislators in the state, notably vocal advocate on behalf of seniors K. Leroy Irvis, worked to expand lottery-­funded programs beyond the original goal of “property tax relief ” for seniors, to include rent rebates, free public transit, and other services to reach poor senior citizens who did not fit the category of property owners.106 Black legislators in Michigan, on the other hand, could do little beyond complain of the over-­concentration of lottery terminals in the Detroit area.107 The Michigan Lottery exemplified the contrasting priorities of maximizing tax revenue set against the goal of keeping people employed. The lottery in Michigan boomed with its new numbers game during the depths of the recession in 1982. As the director of the lottery William Nugent explained, many among the state’s unemployed had come to the legal game after being laid off and losing contact with their illegal numbers runners, who often took bets in factories, auto plants, and other workplaces. With no analysis of the practice of a state program relying on bets from the un-

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employed for its growth, the lottery director boasted to Gaming Business Magazine, “We have 124 staff members authorized, and we’re running at 115, nine less than when we started in 1972—but the revenue has quadrupled. I think the facts—115 people running a half-­billion-­dollar operation—speak for themselves.”108 In Maryland, the most prominent black numbers banker in the history of Baltimore in fact collaborated with the lottery. William “Little Willie” Adams—who took the state of Maryland to the Supreme Court in Adams v. Maryland (1954), insisting that his testimony to the Kefauver Committee could not be used against him—worked directly with the Maryland Lottery upon its arrival. He was hired by the lottery as a consultant in 1973. Although he was a “race man” through and through, Adams was also a shrewd businessman and an inside political player. With substantial influence in politics, and with prominent business ventures such as Park’s Sausages, Super Pride Supermarkets, and a development company that built a number of federally subsidized housing projects, he had long since crossed the threshold to legitimacy. When the Maryland Lottery began its numbers game in 1976, his network of bars and liquor stores were among the earliest locations to receive lottery terminals for the new game. As the gambling framework in the North was reordered in the 1970s, Adams was one of the few black political figures who was positioned to access the profits of taxed gambling, and thus he pursued an inside strategy. Adams, perhaps the most politically and economically successful black numbers banker in the history of the country, died a rich man in 2011 at ninety-­seven years old, claiming to have never spent a night in jail.109 However, Adams was not the only influential figure in Maryland black politics. A group associated with Congressman Parren Mitchell, and more oriented toward social activism, pushed for higher payouts from the lottery on behalf of the betting public. A black state legislator, who referred to the new lottery as “a shackle around the necks of the poor,” introduced a bill in 1979 to raise the prize in the state numbers game to $700 on a $1 dollar bet. The state’s lottery director testified that such a payout would essentially destroy the revenue purpose of the lottery, and the bill was defeated. Yet the political pressure led the Maryland lottery to increase its payout on the numbers game from $500 to $550 on a $1 bet.110 In Ohio, the implementation of government-­run numbers was impeded by the stumbles of the scandal-­ridden state lottery. Thus black Ohioans were afforded a brief opportunity to resist state takeover of the game. The lottery’s weakness was highlighted with a front-­page headline in the Cleveland Plain Dealer declaring, “Blacks Bet the Numbers, Shun Ohio Lottery.”111

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Lottery officials made it clear that a new daily numbers game could turn the Ohio Lottery from a failure to a success. As the lottery began to maneuver, black representatives on the Cleveland City Council introduced legislation to legalize numbers operations within the city limits, hoping to “offset” the lottery’s “intrusion into the street game.” Meanwhile a columnist for the state’s most prominent black newspaper, the Cleveland-­based Call & Post, initiated an effort to put the issue of a locally controlled legal numbers game on the statewide ballot for a referendum.112 These efforts fell short, and the state finally launched its daily numbers game in late 1979. The new game appeared just as a bill to abolish the entire state lottery began to move in the state senate.113 The returns from the daily numbers game allowed the Ohio Lottery to avert abolition. The states that were first to implement lottery-­controlled numbers games did so under flexible lottery laws, which allowed for significant game innovation. By contrast, the Illinois Lottery and the New York State Lottery had to seek new legislation to enable the sale of a new numbers game. In Illinois, standing in the way were Lewis Caldwell, Harold Washington, Charles Chew, and the supporters of a community-­controlled policy game. In 1977, after two years of struggling in the rules committee, Caldwell finally marshaled his policy game bill up for a vote in the Illinois House of Representatives. Upon presenting the bill, Caldwell stated, “The black community needs the jobs. I solicit your ‘aye’ vote on this proposal.” An opponent of the plan asserted, “We are going to have people taking their welfare checks and spending it on gambling.” But Caldwell pushed back, arguing that no more welfare money would be spent on a legal policy game than is currently spent in the illegal game. After more than an hour of debate, Caldwell and his supporters, both black and white, carried the day as the bill passed on a vote of 96 to 62.114 It was a genuine accomplishment for a man who had been a student of the policy game since his days as social worker on the South Side of Chicago in the 1930s. Unfortunately for Caldwell, the bill met immediate complications in the Senate Executive Committee, where it was amended to bring the new game under the operational control of the state lottery. Senators Chew and Washington (now in the state senate) succeeded in having the amendment tabled, and the bill saw the light of day as a genuine proposal for community control. “It is Charlie Chew asking you for a vote,” pleaded the popular senator. “I need your help. I need jobs for my people.” But at the end of the debate, supporters of lottery control and social conservatives skeptical of gambling expansion combined to defeat the bill by a margin of five votes.115 Caldwell retired the next year. In his absence, lottery supporters in the

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legislature acted quickly to enable the lottery to begin selling a choose-­ your-­own-­number game to directly target the policy market. The new game went on sale in 1979. Illinois Governor James Thompson indicated that the daily game might be the last chance for the lottery to “prove itself,” stating, “If it doesn’t work, maybe we’ll gradually phase the lottery out.”116 But work it did, and with the success of the new numbers game, the Illinois Lottery entered a period of significant growth.117 Selling the numbers brought demonstrable success to the Illinois Lottery. The agency posted impressive profits during the recession of the early 1980s. Lottery Director Michael J. Jones pointed directly to the new numbers terminals. In 1980, the first year of play, Illinois sold $42 million in daily numbers. In 1981, the figure nearly quadrupled to $164 million, and in 1982, despite an intense recession, the Illinois Lottery sold nearly $250 million in daily numbers.118 For black New Yorkers involved in the gambling business, the issue became urgent in April 1977, when the director of the New York State Lottery sent a proposal to Governor Hugh Carey outlining a state-­run numbers game.119 The April 16 front-­page headline of the Amsterdam News read: “Whites Planning to Take Over Harlem Numbers.” James Lawson told the paper that a state takeover of the game would put thousands of people out of work. Lawson and the numbers men sent a telegram to Carey that said, “Mr. Governor, if you have this taken away from us, we will all have to apply for welfare which you say you don’t have a budget for. We do not intend for anyone to take numbers away from us because we invented it.”120 In May, Lawson went on the radio to offer a proposal to Carey. The black and Hispanic numbers bankers offered to pay $20 million to buy out the state’s four hundred OTB locations, and they proposed to buy franchises for four thousand state-­licensed numbers spots at $10,000 each.121 The political climate in which Lawson floated his proposal was vastly different from that in which black leaders had successfully blocked OTB from entering the business back in 1971. White ethnics in the city had grown ever more resentful and bitter toward black and Latino demands. The city was also in the midst of a population decline, shifting the balance of power within the state. Most importantly, the city came frighteningly close to declaring bankruptcy in 1975. According to historian Joshua Freeman, the bankruptcy scare shifted the political atmosphere drastically as a “national distaste for the city, its residents, and their way of life” had set in.122 In 1977 Governor Carey ignored the proposal by Lawson and the numbers lobby. But Lawson appealed to the state legislature to block Carey’s

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bill, and the legislature agreed to delay any action pending further study of the impact of the state numbers game on inner-­city employment. While such a study never materialized, the political and social climate became increasingly hostile toward the demands of black New Yorkers. The tragic and violent blackout of the summer of 1977 was followed shortly after by the election of Manhattan’s Ed Koch as mayor. Koch had famously shifted with the political tides, and in 1977 his campaign for mayor succeeded by focusing on his support for capital punishment and his vows to hold “poverty pimps” and “welfare cheats” accountable.123 The new law-­and-­order politics also brought a rollback of the moratorium on low-­level gambling arrests. Policy makers in New York and elsewhere adopted the position that an over-­indulgent and tolerant attitude toward lawbreaking was leading to societal breakdown, as was shown so vividly during the blackout riots. As black and Latino numbers bankers and workers were finding themselves yet again beset by police, Governor Carey revived the issue of a state numbers game, presenting legislation in April 1980 to create a lottery-­run daily numbers game. As the bill was debated, the issues of welfare, law and order, and the erosion of morality in the city took center stage. In the end, the need to tap the city gambling market in order to raise revenue for the state outweighed the significant risks of mass unemployment and violence in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. During the debate, Democratic Assemblyman George Miller spoke passionately on behalf of his Harlem constituents. “There are in my community, as well as in some other minority communities, a lot of people employed in this business, and I suspect that if this bill should pass, many of those people will be out of employment. . . . We have enough unemployment in my community as it is.”124 Harlem Democrat Herman Farrell expressed fear of a crime wave led by dislocated numbers workers.125 Louis Nine, representing a predominantly Latino community in the Bronx, characterized numbers workers as people trying to take care of their families. Brooklyn Assemblyman Thomas Boyland asserted that a state-­run numbers game could push unemployment in his neighborhood up to 60 percent. The Bed-­Stuy Democrat put the figure of numbers workers in his district at ten thousand. In a heated exchange, Assemblyman Clark Wemple pressed Miller and Boyland, demanding to know if these numbers workers were also taking advantage of the tax system. “How about the people who run the numbers. Do they pay income taxes? . . . Are they covered by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration?” he asked sarcastically, before proceeding to his final and all-­ important question. “Are they on welfare too?”

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F I G . 1 4  Numbers workers protesting against the New York State Lottery’s entry into the numbers business. New York Daily News/ New York Daily News Collection, courtesy of Getty Images.

Boyland conceded that he could not be sure. He pleaded further that the state should not be “scrounging for money from the very poor,” but a fatal blow had been struck with the implication that numbers workers were gaming the welfare system.126 Although gambling was now within the realm of social acceptance, numbers workers were branded as both criminals and welfare recipients, and at a moment of increasing antipathy to both, their claims upon the state were easily dismissed.127 Ultimately, the need to raise revenues outweighed any pleas on behalf of city residents marked as welfare cheats, tax evaders, and criminals. The coalition of those representing New York’s black and Latino neighborhoods and those who were morally opposed to the expansion of state gambling failed to block the passage of the bill, and the state numbers game became a reality with an 84 to 56 vote. Governor Carey signed Tax Law 1612 three days later. The front page of the Amsterdam News on April 5 read: “State Takes Over Numbers, Police Expected to Crack Down on Bankers.”128 Later that month, James Lawson and the ACCOP organized one of the most unique protest marches in the city’s history (fig. 14). Numbers operators and workers declared a citywide numbers strike for April 29. All betting shops were closed for business. The organization chartered buses to

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shuttle workers from Brooklyn and the Bronx to the Manhattan office of Governor Carey. The crowd of more than a thousand people carried signs that made their concerns clear. One sign read, “give me money to eat, give me a better home, or give me my numbers job and leave us alone.”129 The protests were in vain as the state government was not about to concede its newly achieved monopoly on the legal market. On September 2, 1980, the New York State numbers game went on sale in New York City. On that day there were only two locations in all of Harlem where the fourteen-­ year-­old state lottery was sold, but points of sale spread rapidly. Within four years, the New York State Lottery quadrupled its sales and thus could finally claim success. The failure of black leaders in New York and Illinois to secure legitimacy for thousands of numbers workers made clear that no such thing would ever happen anywhere in the United States. After New York, the only remaining major numbers market without a government-­controlled numbers game was Washington, DC. After voters in the District approved a lottery in a narrow referendum in 1980 featuring heavy pro-­lottery advertising funded by gambling technology firms, a skeptical Congress refused to allocate any resources for startup costs.130 The many black leaders who had opposed a lottery thus came to support the lottery as a matter of “Home Rule.” The DC lottery was eventually set up under the watchful eye of Congress, relying on lottery directors from New York and New Jersey as consultants, and thus there was little chance of any experimentation with alternative approaches. The pattern was set; the numbers game invented and popularized by the black community in Harlem during the 1920s was henceforth to be the domain of government lotteries, and government lottery play was to quickly become an aspect of daily life for the urban poor and working class. The introduction of a state-­run numbers game did not cause the traditional illegal game to disappear in New York. Rather it set off a series of problematic trends in the illegal market. Black and Latino independent numbers operators who thrived after the Knapp Commission found it difficult to survive in the face of state competition.131 Furthermore, their illegal status left them open to attack by aggressive and violent organized crime groups, which “typically dealt with their competitors through murder and arson.”132 Among those who died in the wave of numbers fires during 1983 and 1984 were a seventy-­four-­year-­old woman killed in the Bronx, as well as a nineteen-­year-­old woman and a four-­year-­old child killed in Manhattan.133 The internal problems of the illegal market were also exacerbated by a

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shift in the enforcement practices of the NYPD. Initiatives by the Koch administration served to shepherd the gambling public away from the illegal numbers and toward the state lottery. In 1984 Mayor Koch pushed a bill through the city council referred to as the padlock law. The law was designed to use the principles of the real estate market in order to make it impossible to conduct illegal gambling operations. The new law enabled the police to padlock a location after a series of gambling arrests were made at the site. As an NYPD official explained, “We found that many of the people who are renting these illegal storefronts are evicting people rather than stand to lose a year’s rent.”134 Attempts by black political leaders to oppose the new law were undercut by the death of James R. Lawson in 1985.135 Before the summer of 1985 was over, it became clear that any unity forged by numbers operators was in the process of eroding. According to the Amsterdam News, “The illegal numbers industry in Harlem—plagued by robberies and frequent raids by authorities—has not been able to reverse some of its steep losses since the death of James R. Lawson.”136 There is no comprehensive account of how the state game and the increased enforcement of the 1980s affected black numbers gambling activity in New York. However, the Pennsylvania Crime Commission conducted a detailed study of illegal numbers in Philadelphia during this period. The study revealed a pattern of decline in black autonomy and an increase in violent coercion within illegal numbers, all of which we can extrapolate was matched in New York. The report described the city’s “numerous well-­ established numbers operations run by blacks,” unable to compete with the state and impotent in the face of violent incursions by white organized crime. Most troublingly, the report explained that in the midst of their decline, “an increasing number of black gambling operators have turned to drug trafficking to increase their profits.”137 Cleveland criminal defense attorney James R. Willis, who worked with many of that city’s top black gambling figures during the 1950s and ’60s, confirms the same pattern in Cleveland. “After they couldn’t make money in gambling, they went into drugs.”138 As black-­run numbers operations struggled, the new legal games and their parent lotteries flourished. Between 1975 and 1983, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, New York, and Washington, DC, all established daily numbers games within their lotteries.139 Every step of the way, the urban poor and working class were the target customers for these new products. The rapid growth of legal numbers games transformed these failing lotteries into successful enterprises and en-

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F I G . 1 5  A drawing of the Pennsylvania State Lottery Daily Number in 1980. AP Photo/Gene Puskar.

abled the spread of lottery sales terminals throughout the Northeast, the Mid-­Atlantic, and the upper Midwest. Meanwhile, as state lottery networks saturated the old urban numbers markets, the imperative of revenue growth eventually necessitated introducing rural Americans to the numbers habit. Given that the illegal game had existed almost exclusively in urban areas, the rural populations slated for targeting had to first be schooled on how to play. Lotteries around the country distributed brochures and ran television ads to explain the game, because, as a lottery executive stated in 1985, “with the expansion of our system into more rural areas, where they’ve never been exposed to the numbers before, education is needed.”140 People who had likely never heard of the numbers game and had no possible way to place an illegal bet in 1975 were being “educated” on how to play by 1985. In effect, as a matter of public policy, the urban poor were denied the opportunity to keep their employment in producing the numbers game, while the rural poor were simultaneously given an opportunity, indeed they were educated and encouraged, to begin consuming the game. Lottery executives were stimulating new demand for gambling and teaching Americans how to play the very game that was once characterized as a criminal vice.

Conclusion Lottery as an American Way of Life

In the midst of the public debate over the fate of the numbers game in 1974, National Urban League Director Vernon E. Jordan wrote a simple and straightforward editorial titled “Legalize the Numbers.” He explained, “A numbers operation could be successfully run by a public benefits corporation employing many of the present numbers runners and plowing profits back into the community.”1 This vision for urban gambling, with the priorities of employment and community benefits, was left aside. In its stead emerged a framework of legal gambling focused on streamlined operation, lucrative technology contracting, enhanced state revenue, and aggressive expansion. A decade later, US Senator David Durenburger of Minnesota expressed alarm at lottery practices as he opened a Senate subcommittee hearing on the growth of lotteries in America. He pointed to the targeting of particular groups and widespread dishonest advertising. Durenberger explained, “I am concerned that our elected officials have somehow lost control over the industry. That we are not talking about a public charity anymore, but about a private venture for the profit of a few large national corporations.”2 During the ten years from Jordan’s plea for legal numbers to Durenberger’s warning of a lottery industry out of control, state lotteries solidified their position in the northeastern quadrant of the country. These lotteries claimed demonstrable success as moneymakers, and lottery adoption became difficult to resist in other regions. The northeastern lotteries emerged in the 1970s in reaction to the prevalence of illegal urban numbers gambling. During the 1980s and 1990s, new lotteries spread to areas of the country with no preexisting numbers gambling economy. American lotteries charted an impressive path, first marching west, then eventually penetrating the socially conservative South. In 1960 no legal lotteries existed any-

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where in the United States. By the year 2000, the nation featured forty-­ three lotteries, and lottery play was a normative aspect of national culture. These public agencies engaged in aggressive advertising and ceaseless innovation with new games as the lottery trend spread across the land. The most successful innovation in game form was the expansion of multimillion-­ dollar “jackpot gambling,” a form that never existed on an illegal basis. State lotteries capitalized on the spread of numbers game terminals, and subsequently layered the jackpot games across the terminal networks, ultimately transforming American gambling habits. The central innovation of jackpot gambling was the recognition that customers would tolerate ever-­worsening odds in exchange for ever-­increasing prize pools. For example, the implementation of more difficult odds for the game Lotto set off a series of massive jackpots beginning in 1983 with an $18.1 million award in Pennsylvania. This was soon topped four times in 1984, first by Massachusetts in March with a prize of $18.2 million, followed by New York in May with $22.1 million, Ohio in July with $24.6 million, and Illinois with an amazing $40 million award in September. Directors quickly recognized that when jackpots reached double-­digit millions, whole new groups of bettors—people who otherwise ignored the lottery—entered the market, drawn in by the massive prize.3 As odds worsened, weeks went by without a winner. Prizes rolled over and accumulated to never-­before-­seen levels. Yet at this early point, even lottery executives had difficulty conceiving of how high jackpots could go. A number of industry leaders expressed hesitancy about pushing jackpots too far. Pennsylvania lottery director Blair Gettig told the magazine Gaming and Wagering Business in 1986, “There has been a reluctance here to build jackpots too large. A couple of years ago, I don’t think we would have felt comfortable with $6–­$8 million jackpots. I think today we do. I don’t know if we’d feel comfortable with $40 million jackpots.”4 In the wake of a $41 million jackpot in New York, the director of the California Lottery Mark Michalko feared “excessively large jackpots” and wondered “whether it’s appropriate for an individual to win $100 million or something of that magnitude.”5 The director of the Delaware Lottery Albert Pavlic also feared that the public would frown on jackpots that grew beyond a certain point. He worried aloud, “My only concern is the public might think jackpots of $50 to $100 million were obscene for one person to win.”6 In 1984 the director of the Maryland Lottery summarized the state of affairs. “I think that all of us in the lottery industry looked with great trepidation at the State of Illinois,” he recounted. “We all said it would just be

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terrible for one person to win $40 million. We hoped that maybe 10 people would share $40 million, and we all thought that the sun and the moon and the skies would fall and it would be a terrible thing for the lottery industry.” Yet the reaction was the opposite. “There is a person in Illinois who is very, very happy winning $40 million, and it seems like there are millions of other people in Illinois who are happy for him,” the Maryland Lottery director explained. “So yes, it is a lottery, but it is also a social experience.”7 Reservations by lottery bosses regarding “obscene” jackpots quickly disappeared. The product innovation of simply making the games more difficult to win and thus rolling over jackpots was complemented by the formation of multi-­state consortia to create larger pools of bettors. The multi-­state experiment had its origins in an alliance between Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire formed in 1985. The impetus for the coalition was rooted in the small populations of the particular states. With few people, these states were unable to generate large jackpots and often saw their betting dollars going to the Massachusetts Lottery and its large prizes. Thus these states banded together to create Tri-­State Megabucks, covering a sufficient population to generate competitive jackpots.8 Other small states did the same. In 1987 Kansas, Iowa, Rhode Island, Oregon, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia joined together to form Lotto America, which was renamed Powerball in 1992.9 Many other states large and small enlisted, and eventually pushed jackpot sums to new heights. Powerball soon faced competition from Mega Millions, another multi-­state lottery begun in 1996 by Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Virginia. Eventually many states opted to join both consortia and sell both games. The old Harlem numbers game that persisted for so many decades drew its strength from its basic consistency. The numbers featured easily understandable odds and a reasonable chance for the consistent player to win at least once every several years. The new jackpot form amounted to a rejection of consistency, an obfuscation of the odds, and the acceptance of never winning in exchange for the minuscule possibility of becoming hyper-­rich. The spread of lottery terminals, originally driven by the popularity of the numbers game, provided the network necessary to establish the jackpot games. Quickly, games like Lotto, Powerball, and Mega Millions climbed past the numbers game in popularity. This shift from one form of gambling to another coincided neatly with larger trends within the political economy. In particular, this transformation in popular gambling habits tracked closely with the dramatic increase in inequality and the intense concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands that began in the late 1970s.10

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While the lottery practices of the 1980s stood as a reflection of this trend, these same lottery practices also contributed to the growth of a public culture that recognized the validity of extreme wealth and outrageous fortunes. In many ways, lottery play became the principal mechanism by which average citizens connected themselves to vast sums of money. Betting a dollar with the state for the chance of winning a huge jackpot became a means by which the poor and the working classes registered their consent to the fact that tens of millions of dollars would ultimately flow into the hands of only one person. A cultural shift took place within which local gambling forms often patterned to spread resources around were supplanted by jackpot forms patterned to concentrate resources in the hands of a few. Undoubtedly, the widespread play of the old numbers game offering odds of 1 in 1,000 to win the equivalent of two weeks’ pay had a different social meaning than the widespread play of a gambling game offering odds of 1 in 200 million to win an obscene fortune. This trend toward endless growth and expansion was driven in large part by the priorities and profit motives of the private industry of lottery service and technology providers contracted by the states. As state lottery directors and other lottery officials increasingly used their government positions as springboards to gain employment in the corporate gaming industry, the line between the public and private aspects of lottery gambling became virtually imperceptible.11 The private contractors meanwhile engaged in cutthroat competition with one another when bidding for contracts. The company that emerged from the vicious scrum with the most contracts in hand and ultimately became the dominant global player in lottery technology was the Gtech Corporation. Started in 1981 by Guy Snowden, a former systems engineer at IBM, and Victor Markowicz, a mathematician who emigrated from Israel, the Gtech Corporation quickly secured major lottery contracts from New York to California, laying waste to their rivals. Gtech evinced an excellent understanding of how lottery gambling complemented economic changes under way in American life. Writing in the industry journal Public Gaming International, Gtech Vice President Victor Markowicz analyzed the economy and the company’s role within it for 1988 and the future. He pointed to the dearth of upward mobility, the decline of family-­owned businesses, and the rise of a monopolistic corporate culture. “This trend, generally speaking, will contribute to the growth of the lottery industry for many years to come. . . . Everybody needs a dream. The lottery is a vehicle for the realiza-

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tion of that dream.” Markowicz made it clear that the shrinking opportunities available for American citizens to advance economically presented Gtech with an excellent chance to profit.12 The company went on an impressive run, winning contracts to operate lotteries in state after state. During the 1980s, Gtech relied on the lobbying firm Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, cofounded by former Richard Nixon advisor Roger Stone.13 During the late 1990s, as Gtech gobbled up lottery contracts, they depended on the lobbying firm Davis Manafort Inc., cofounded by political operative Paul Manafort, who went on to fame as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign chairman in 2016 and was later convicted in 2018 of an array of felonies.14 As Gtech racked up victories, the company also left a trail of bribery, kickbacks, and blackmail scandals in the United States and abroad. In California, State Senator Alan Robbins pleaded guilty in federal court to having accepted bribes from a Gtech lobbyist in exchange for voting against a bill that the company disfavored.15 Gtech executives were charged with fraud in both Kentucky and New Jersey, while a blackmail scheme in Texas created a scandal that dogged Governor George W. Bush and his appointed chair of the State Lottery Commission, Harriet Miers, after Bush became president.16 The company was successfully sued in England for attempting to bribe its main competitor to stand down.17 In Brazil the company was enmeshed in an elaborate kickback and blackmail fiasco, which prompted a national Commission of Parliamentary Inquiry. The investigation found gross irregularities in Gtech’s business practices and determined that the company should not be allowed to maintain its monopoly contract with the Brazilian Federal Lottery. Brazilian journalist José Silveira characterized the entire ordeal as “the most scandalous sequence of irregularities in the public governance of the country.”18 While the loss of the Brazilian federal contract was a blow to Gtech, the company bounced back quickly. In 2006 Gtech sold itself to an Italian lottery company, Lottomatica, at $35 a share, a 15 percent premium over the stock’s trading price, for a total of $4.65 billion in cash. The move by Gtech unfolded shortly after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) opened an investigation into Gtech’s activities in Brazil.19 Gtech conveniently threw itself into the arms of the smaller company, and its stock was taken off of the New York Stock Exchange and thus beyond the regulatory reach of the SEC. In acquiring Gtech, Lottomatica took over “a company nearly twice its size by revenue,” in an early example of a maneuver now typically referred to as a corporate inversion.20 Most notably, the deal made Gtech quintessentially multinational, a company that was no longer truly

158  CONCLUSION

based anywhere but was interconnected to lottery activity almost everywhere. Even the global economic collapse of 2008 did not stifle Gtech’s optimism. During Lottomatica’s annual investor conference call for 2008, the Lottomatica chairman and CEO expressed optimism for 2009 despite the already evident global financial crisis. He explained to the investors that it was “easy” to “insulate” the company “when the economy stalls.” As he stated very simply, “Historically, difficult economies have fostered a gaming expansion.”21 In 2014 GTECH Holdings paid $4.7 billion to purchase Nevada-­based International Game Technology, the world’s largest producer of slot machines. Although the bulk of the workforce for both companies was located in the United States, the newly merged entity established headquarters in the United Kingdom. The merger was a kind of dual corporate inversion, yielding massive tax avoidance benefits for both Gtech and IGT.22 The Gtech union with IGT allowed the company to share in the profits of casino gambling that multiplied apace since the late 1980s upon the advent of Native American casinos. IGT experienced explosive growth during the early 1990s, supplying slot machines to tribal casinos.23 While the reservation gambling boom was a separate process from lottery expansion, the spread of lotteries helped provide both the cultural and legal foundation for the emergence of Native American gaming. Widespread lottery play normalized legal gambling in the decades before the arrival of tribal casinos, while government operation of lotteries provided the Supreme Court with an important element of the rationale to open the door to Indian gaming. Native American groups often conducted bingo games on reservations during the 1970s and 1980s. As these games grew in popularity and began to offer larger prizes, some states threatened legal action. In California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians (1987), the Supreme Court recognized the right of tribes to conduct gambling as a matter of sovereignty. Justice Byron White wrote for the majority, “California does not prohibit all forms of gambling. California itself operates a state lottery, and daily encourages its citizens to participate in this state-­run gambling.” In concluding that California “regulates rather than prohibits gambling,” the court determined that the extension of such regulation onto the Cabazon and Morongo reservations “would impermissibly infringe on tribal government.”24 Shortly after the court’s decision, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988. The act required states to negotiate compacts with tribes seeking to operate casinos.25 Indian gaming grew rapidly, bringing in $5.5 billion in

LOT T ERY AS AN AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE   159

gross receipts in 1995. That figure swelled to more than $32 billion in revenue by 2017.26 The casino as a feature of American culture continued to grow after the Supreme Court determined that casinos can advertise across state lines into non-­casino states. In Greater New Orleans Broadcasting Ass’n v. United States (1999), the court weighed in on the applicability of US code 18, section 1304, banning the broadcast of “any advertisement concerning any lottery” or similar scheme. The law had been at issue in the early days of lottery formation during the 1970s, and the Ford administration extended an exemption to state lotteries so that they could advertise their products. In Greater New Orleans, the majority opinion, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, reflected on the steady growth of legal gambling, noting, “In the judgment of both the Congress and many state legislatures, the social costs that support the suppression of gambling are offset, and sometimes outweighed, by countervailing policy considerations, primarily in the form of economic benefits.” As for the federal ban on advertising, Stevens wrote, “Operation of 1304 and its attendant regulatory regime is so pierced by exemptions and inconsistencies that the government cannot hope to exonerate it.”27 In effect, with regard to gambling, the cat is out of the bag, and to suppress truthful information about its availability violates the First Amendment. In 1992, with concern over the spread of legal gambling, Congress acted to prevent any expansion of sports betting. That year Congress passed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). The law did not regulate gambling directly; rather it banned states from authorizing, licensing, operating, sponsoring, or promoting sports gambling. Jurisdictions such as Nevada, with already established legal sports gambling, were exempted. In 2011 the state of New Jersey, with an eye toward revitalizing Atlantic City casinos, held a referendum on sports betting. The favorable result prompted the New Jersey legislature to authorize sports betting at casinos and racetracks. Professional and amateur sports leagues sued to enforce PASPA and to prevent New Jersey from going forward. In Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association (2018), the Supreme Court explained, “Congress can regulate sports gambling directly, but if it elects not to do so, each State is free to act on its own.”28 At present, states are free to authorize sports gambling. Many are poised to do just that. As the next wave of gambling expansion takes shape, Gtech is once again positioned to reap massive profits. The merged Gtech-­IGT immediately provided technology for the handful of states that acted quickly on sports betting.29 The company’s early success in sports betting relied on

160  CONCLUSION

the IGT foothold inside of casinos. With state governments developing new plans to connect sports betting to state budgets, Gtech-­IGT plans to provide lottery agencies with the technology to operate sports betting through their terminal networks. As a company executive explained in 2018, “IGT is uniquely positioned as a leader in both lottery and sports betting technologies to deliver innovative solutions for players and for lotteries themselves in this exciting new market.”30 As it embarks on this new expansion, the merged company has taken the name IGT, while shedding the name Gtech, perhaps hoping to erase the company’s history of bribery, kickbacks, and strong-­arm lobbying, while maintaining Gtech’s dominant position in the gaming sector. Gtech-­Lottomatica-­IGT—with its hand in lotteries, slot machines, and sports betting, and with its operations in England, China, Nigeria, Mexico, Poland, and beyond—is literally thousands of miles away, and more than half a century removed from the hearings of the Kefauver Committee and its assertion of a vast, corrupt, and organized conspiracy of gambling. In 1953 American sociologist Daniel Bell posited that American criminal gambling would likely transition into some form of legitimate business enterprise.31 Indeed, it has. The legitimate and legal contemporary gambling business, however, proved to be the vast, corrupt, and organized conspiracy that the Kefauver Committee long ago imagined. The warnings of gambling scolds during the 1950s were genuine impediments to any realistic confrontation with the dilemmas of governance presented by the criminal gambling economy at midcentury. Figures such as New York Governor Thomas Dewey and head of the Chicago Crime Commission Virgil Peterson stood in the way of practical policy solutions at the time. Nonetheless, many of the charges they leveled about the exploitative and predatory possibilities of legal gambling have proven out, as exploitation and predation are arguably the hallmark features of the aggressive expansion of the modern lottery economy. As American gambling was rearranged from the 1950s through the 1980s, every step of the way was conflictive and controversial. Various constituencies staked competing claims and asserted divergent priorities. The current status quo of lottery gambling represents the settlement of these conflicts, with certain claims and priorities having been embraced as others were rejected or pushed aside. While gambling in contemporary America is ubiquitous in ways never anticipated, gambling at present is minimally connected to either black politics or to police activity.

LOT T ERY AS AN AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE   161

Lottery expansion partly extricated police agencies from the burdensome curse of gambling enforcement. Nonetheless, many of the characteristic features of urban gambling suppression carried over quite neatly into the next great project of American policing, as the war on gambling was replaced by the war on drugs. Meanwhile, many of the failures of the gambling enforcement regime provided valuable lessons for the aggressive pursuit of the drug war. Most notably, drug enforcement involved an important curtailment of judicial discretion through the imposition of mandatory minimum sentencing rules at both the state and federal levels. Ultimately, just as American policing found its limits in the pursuit of criminal gamblers, policing has once again pushed its boundaries outward in suppression of drug crime. Meanwhile the muscle memory of urban policing, accumulated through countless raids and mass arrests of black gamblers, has exercised itself in the pursuit of drug suspects. While police were disentangled from the dilemma of gambling by the late 1970s, the poisoned and distrustful sociopolitical relations between black communities and urban police fostered by the heavy-­handed, discriminatory, and corrupt nature of gambling enforcement were carried forward. Although the tortured history of the policing of gambling is largely forgotten, that history left a deep imprint on urban police and their a­ ctivities. Meanwhile, at the very moment in the 1970s that police leaders sought to free themselves from gambling, black political leaders saw gambling slip through their fingers. Interestingly, just as police were withdrawing themselves from the field, the New York Police Department, the nation’s largest, expressed an outlook on the future of the numbers game that aligned with the priorities of black political and civic leaders. In 1971, with the department under the direction of Patrick V. Murphy and in the midst of a moratorium on low-­level gambling arrests, Deputy Commissioner Donald Cawley communicated the department’s official position on the numbers game. Speaking to a New York State Commission on Gambling, Cawley, who went on to succeed Murphy as head of the NYPD, explained that legal numbers could be a simple and straightforward matter. The legal game should direct profits back into the neighborhoods, and it should be staffed and managed by local people. He emphasized that the numbers was an important source of employment in black communities, and he pointed out that the criminal histories of those involved in the game tended to be confined to gambling violations. “Legalization would offer them respectability, freedom from arrest, and freedom from control by organized crime. Legalization would also

162  CONCLUSION

enable the Police Department to apply resources presently committed to gambling enforcement to the major problem of street crime.”32 This momentary understanding from the NYPD, expressed just prior to lottery entry into the numbers game, echoed the sentiments articulated by prominent black voices since the 1940s. Congressman William L. Dawson pledged in 1948 “to do all within his power” to see that policy gambling “is controlled and operated by the Negro.” Adam Clayton Powell Jr. vowed in 1960 to “fight for the Negro” to control Harlem gambling. And activist James R. Lawson declared in 1971 that if the numbers game were to be legal, “we intend to run it.” Such was not to be the case. Gambling in black communities would be controlled by state governments in collaboration with multinational corporations. Ultimately, appeals for community control of gambling in the name of economic self-­determination and full employment failed to gain traction in the midst of a backlash politics that characterized the urban poor as a collection of welfare cheats, burdensome to the taxpayer. As numbers gambling transitioned from the arena of crime to the arena of taxation, race remained central to the governance of urban gambling. While the policing of gambling was a nexus for the exercise of coercive authority over the black presence in northern cities during the 1950s and ’60s, after the 1970s revenue generation through public lotteries would be an offset to the cost of providing public services such as education to poorer communities where betting was heaviest. The number of persons who derived their income from illegal numbers gambling during the 1960s and 1970s can never truly be known. Yet the fact that police sources as well as representatives of the illegal industry in New York asserted figures that hovered around twenty thousand lends credence to the claim that the figure was substantial. Any counterfactual argument that the legalization of these many thousands of workers would have drastically altered the dynamics of either employment or crime in the black sections of the urban Northeast cannot be supported. However, it also cannot be denied that prominent black leaders proposed a set of alternative priorities for legal numbers gambling, and those alternative priorities were entirely reasonable. The three-­decades-­long effort by black leaders in New York and Chicago to bring numbers and policy gambling under local control essentially failed. The proprietary claims of black urban communities with regards to the numbers and policy games and the ample evidence that thousands of people earned their living from these games proved insufficient in the gambling debates of the 1970s. Support for a community-­based, legal num-

LOT T ERY AS AN AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE   163

bers game was broad within black politics, as the project had the support of black nationalists such as James Lawson and mainstream politicians such as Charles Rangel and Harold Washington, while there was minimal opposition from black religious leaders. Nonetheless, the project failed to gain traction. Black gambling was in some respects undermined by its own popularity. The numbers game spread significantly among the white working class beginning in the 1940s. Black communities had a sound historical claim to having originated the numbers. Black neighborhoods also absorbed the majority of the arrest activity related to the game. But the popularity of numbers betting enabled policy makers to treat the numbers as a broadly urban working-­class phenomenon, rather than concede to notions of a black conceptual trademark on the game. Thus, numbers gambling as cultural production and as an economic activity was to be yet another site of co-­optation. Black priorities were also subverted by the taint of organized crime. Despite the fact that black numbers outfits had made significant strides in freeing themselves from the domination of organized crime, the charge that the numbers business was hopelessly contaminated by the mob proved highly useful to lottery expansionists targeting the game for takeover. For the entire sixty years that numbers and policy hummed in black neighborhoods, the tentacles of organized crime, both real and imagined, proved difficult to escape. Early black operators in the 1930s and ’40s struggled to protect themselves from violent incursions by white organized crime groups. During the 1950s, thousands of black numbers and policy workers were arrested and jailed on the assumption that an attack on gambling at the street level was an attack on the supposed national conspiracy of crime. Black numbers operators during the 1970s, despite confirmation from both the Knapp Commission and the NYPD itself that they were autonomous actors free of organized crime, could not shake the public notion that they were in the service of the mob. Meanwhile, the perception of numbers and policy workers as criminals who cheat the tax system and game the welfare system undermined their chances of crossing the threshold to legitimacy. Appeals for racial justice, demands for economic self-­determination, and claims of local prerogative in gambling practices all fell short in an atmosphere of racial backlash, economic retrenchment, and heightened calls for stricter enforcement of the law. While gambling was once the lifeblood of emergent black politics and business in the North, in the aftermath of the consolidation of public lotteries, the resultant framework left black communities with no substantial

164  CONCLUSION

connection to gambling beyond the role of lottery consumers. After several decades of conflict and debate, the question was settled. The urban poor were subjected to gambling as taxation, with little access to the profits and jobs from taxed gambling. As consumers of lottery products, the urban poor saw their gambling habits redirected toward impulsivity and greed as scratch tickets and jackpot games replaced the numbers game. Gambling in the jackpot form conditioned the poor and working classes to embrace the prevailing inequalities and concentrative patterns of distribution of the late twentieth and early twenty-­first centuries. Lottery expansion did not simply change gambling from illegal to legal or turn less gambling into more. Rather it produced a new social dynamic of gambling. Lottery expansion turned criminals into customers, substituted humans with machines, swapped low corruption for high corruption, and exchanged occasional winning for endless losing.

Acknowledgments

This book was written with the guidance and assistance of many people, and with the help of many institutions. In its early phases, Sara Phillips, Mae Ngai, Amy Chazkel, and Alan Dye all had a hand in encouraging and shaping my work. John Coatsworth offered insight and support of inestimable value. The early research was supported by the History Department at Columbia University. The CUNY Research Foundation played a crucial role in allowing my research to continue, and without the support of that institution and the many fine people who work there, this book would not exist. Archivists and librarians across the country have helped me locate vital documents and materials at the heart of the project. The many people working at the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Chicago History Museum, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Chicago, the Harold Washington Library, the Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas at Austin, the Bancroft Library at University of California, Berkeley, the Lloyd Sealy Library at John Jay College, and many other research institutions helped advance this project with patience and generosity. David G. Schwartz at the Center for Gaming Research at UNLV offered important guidance through the landscape of modern corporate gambling. My colleagues in the History Department at the City College of New York have been endlessly supportive throughout this long endeavor. I owe a debt to two great teachers of history, Ryland Clarke and Eric Foner, for initiating me into the study of the past. I am greatly appreciative for the patience of so many of my students who have humored me as I have tried to tie nearly every aspect of American life back to the topic of gambling. Danielle Jacobs was kind enough to guide me past my technological ignorance in ways that benefited the project dramatically.

166  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Tim Mennel and the editors and anonymous readers at the University of Chicago Press have improved this project immensely, and I greatly appreciate their hard work. Susannah Engstrom helped me with patience and kindness through many complicated steps toward publication, and Tyler McGaughey brought the book to the public. Erin DeWitt did the careful and diligent work of purging my many mistakes of writing. I am certain many people that I never interacted with personally put in hard work on this book, and to them I am thankful. No two people have contributed more to the emergence of this book than Betsy Blackmar and Tim Gilfoyle. Betsy often seemed to be thinking about how to improve this project even when I was not. Tim went to great lengths to help me untangle infinite mangled and overcomplicated sentences, rendering them intelligible. Cat, Nello, and Delfina, you made times of hard work seem like fun. To my mother and late father, thank you for spending so much time with the kids while I worked on this book. To all my friends and family, thank you for listening as I talked endlessly about gambling. Encountering kind people has proved to be a great advantage in life.

Notes

Introduction

1. Colin Powell with Joseph E. Perisco, My American Journey (New York: Ballantine Books, 1995), 29–30. 2. Claude McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968), 101, 109. 3. On housing, see Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Beryl Satter, Family Properties: How the Struggle Over Race and Real Estate Transformed Chicago and Urban America (New York: Picador, 2010); Edward G. Goetz, The One-­Way Street of Integration: Fair Housing and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in American Cities (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018); and Roberta Gold, When Tenants Claimed the City: The Struggle for Citizenship in New York City Housing (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014). On education, see Jerald E. Podair, The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill–­Brownsville Crisis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002); and Elizabeth Todd Breland, A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018). On public space, see Colin Fisher, Urban Green: Nature, Recreation, and the Working Class in Industrial Chicago (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015); and Benjamin Shepard and Gregory Smithsimon, The Beach Beneath the Streets: Contesting New York City’s Public Spaces (Albany: SUNY Press, 2011). 4. Daniel Bell, “Crime as an American Way of Life,” Antioch Review 13, no. 2 (Summer 1953): 133. 5. Samuel J. Battle, “Should Policy Be Legalized?” Ebony 6, no. 2 (December 1950). 6. Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Legalized Numbers in Washington: Implications with Respect to Law Enforcement, Civil Rights, and Control by the Community (Washington, DC, 1973), d-­24, d-­25, d-­15. 7. Eric Pace, “Harlemite Urges Legal Policy Bets,” New York Times, September 16, 1971, 19. 8. On Prohibition, see Lisa McGirr, The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State (New York: Norton, 2016); and Michael A. Lerner, Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). On urban politics and policing, see Edward J. Escobar, Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity: Mexican Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); and Shannon King, Whose Harlem Is This

168  NOT ES TO PAGES 9–15

Anyway?: Community Politics and Grassroots Activism during the New Negro Era (New York: New York University Press, 2015). On the drug trade, see Philippe Bourgeois, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Eric C. Schneider, Smack: Heroin and the American City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); and Terry M. Williams, The Cocaine Kids: The Inside Story of a Teenage Drug Ring (New York: Da Capo Press, 1990). 9. Christopher Lowen Agee, The Streets of San Francisco: Policing and the Creation of a Cosmopolitan Liberal Politics, 1950–1972 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014); Risa Goluboff, Vagrant Nation: Police Power, Constitutional Change, and the Making of the 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 10. On police reform, see Christopher Lowen Agee, “Crisis and Redemption: The History of American Police Reform since World War II,” Journal of Urban History, April 28, 2017; and David Alan Sklansky, Democracy and the Police (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). 11. On criminalization of the poor, see Loïc Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); and Alex S. Vitale, City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics (New York: New York University Press, 2009). On mass incarceration, see Christian Parenti, Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (New York: Verso, 2008); David Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); and Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2012). 12. Alex Haley and Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, 1965); St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of a Northern City, vol. 2 (New York: Harper and Row, 1962); Shane White, Stephen Garton, Stephen Robertson, and Graham White, Playing the Numbers: Gambling in Harlem between the Wars (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Davarian Baldwin, Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, The Great Migration, and Black Urban Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); Mark Haller, “Policy Gambling, Entertainment, and the Emergence of Black Politics: Chicago from 1900 to 1940,” Journal of Social History 24, no. 4 (Summer 1991); LaShawn Harris, Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016); Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach, Along the Streets of Bronzeville: Black Chicago’s Literary Landscape (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013). Chapter One

1. Diane M. Pinderhughes, Race and Ethnicity in Chicago Politics: A Reexamination of Pluralist Theory (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 95. 2. Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach, Along the Streets of Bronzeville: Black Chicago’s Literary Landscape (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 50. 3. St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of a Northern City, vol. 2 (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 470, 474. 4. Drake and Cayton, 475. 5. Drake and Cayton, 472–73. 6. Schlabach, Along the Streets of Bronzeville, 59. 7. Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, 487. 8. N. D. B. Connolly offers an excellent account of this phenomenon as he describes the manner in which black landlords and property owners collaborated with white property owners

NOT ES TO PAGES 16–23   169

on the basis of class interest, to bolster a system of segregation and exploitation in Florida. See N. D. B. Connolly, A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 9. 9. Mark Haller, “Policy Gambling, Entertainment, and the Emergence of Black Politics: Chicago from 1900 to 1940,” Journal of Social History 24, no. 4 (Summer 1991): 719. 10. Harold F. Gosnell, Negro Politicians: The Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 126. 11. Gosnell, 128–30. 12. Richard C. Lindberg, To Serve and Collect: Chicago Politics and Police Corruption from the Lager Beer Riot to the Summerdale Scandal (New York: Praeger, 1991), 227. 13. “Raid Releases Anger Cermak,” Los Angeles Times, September 26, 1931, 3; “Cermak’s Raiders Break Policy Games in Negro Districts,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 12, 1931, 5. 14. Pinderhughes, Race and Ethnicity in Chicago Politics, 63. 15. Lewis A. H. Caldwell, “The Policy Game in Chicago” (MA thesis, Northwestern University, Division of Social Work, 1937), 1. 16. Caldwell, 47. 17. Caldwell, 68–69. 18. Caldwell, 71. 19. Caldwell, 88. 20. Caldwell, 91. 21. Caldwell, 95. 22. William Howard Moore, The Kefauver Committee and the Politics of Crime, 1950–1952 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1974), 35. 23. “Conference of Negro Ministers and Other Negro Civic Leaders with Regard to Policy Racket,” Memorandum of the Chicago Crime Commission, January 14, 1942, Virgil W. Peterson Papers, box 54, folder 6, Chicago History Museum. 24. “Arraign 26 in Chicago on Policy Indictments,” Chicago Defender, February 7, 1942, 1. 25. “Chicago to Drop Relief Clients Who Play Numbers,” Afro-­American, January 31, 1942. 26. Orville Dwyer, “Policy Racket Pays Millions in Protection,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 14, 1946, 1. 27. “Tavernier Cleared by Illinois Supreme Court,” Chicago Defender, November 27, 1943. Tavernier was represented by lawyers Patrick B. Prescott and Benjamin G. Clanton. 28. “Capone Gang Plans Snatch of Chicago Policy Game,” Chicago Defender, June 6, 1942, 6. Interestingly, the article explained that the plans of the old Capone mob involved replacing the policy game with the numbers. “They contend that there is too much business to set up in policy to be troubled with.” 29. “Chicago Policy Witness Awaits Court’s Verdict,” New Journal and Guide, July 18, 1942. 30. Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor, American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley and His Battle for the Nation (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000), 95. 31. Christopher Manning, William L. Dawson and the Limits of Black Electoral Leadership (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009), 4. 32. Manning, 4. 33. James Q. Wilson, “Two Negro Politicians: An Interpretation,” in Negro Politics in America, ed. Harry A. Bailey Jr. (Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill Books, 1967), 152. 34. Roger Biles, “Edward J. Kelly: New Deal Machine Builder,” in The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition, 4th ed., ed. Paul M. Green and Melvin G. Hollis (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013), 116.

170  NOT ES TO PAGES 23–33

35. Robert J. Blakely with Marcus Shepard, Earl B. Dickerson: A Voice for Freedom and Equality (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 87. 36. Kenneth C. Field, “‘The Man’ Rewards His Friends, Punishes Enemies,” Chicago Defender, September 26, 1962, 9. 37. “Capt. Healy and DePriest to Be Arrested Today,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 19, 1917, 13. 38. Associated Negro Press, “Policy Kings Own Many of Chi’s Biggest Legitimate Businesses,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 16, 1940, 4. 39. “Rich Policy King Jailed,” Philadelphia Tribune, February 6, 1941, 1. 40. Biles, “Edward J. Kelly,” 124. 41. William Grimshaw, Bitter Fruit: Black Politics and the Chicago Machine, 1931–1991 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 82. 42. George Tagge, “Gambling, Vice in City Must Go, Says Kennelly,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 8, 1947, 7. 43. Editorial, “Jake Arvey and His Mr. Kennelly,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 18, 1947, 12. 44. Editorial, “The Clean and the Dirty,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 22, 1947, 10. 45. “Gambling and Vice Cleanup Pledged by Kennelly,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 18, 1947, 1. 46. “Kennelly Opens War on Bookies,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 9, 1948, 1. 47. “Letter for Immediate Release: Office of the Commissioner of Police, December 23, 1948, Martin Kennelly Papers, box 14, folder 352, University of Illinois at Chicago. 48. Cohen and Taylor, American Pharaoh, 96. 49. “Law Agencies Merrily Go on ‘Giving the Bookie a Pass,’” Chicago Daily News, February 24, 1948. 50. Chicago Crime Commission, “C.C.C 65-­50c, memo February 24, 1948,” cited in Memorandum on Organized Crime, Virgil W. Peterson Papers, box 7, folder 4, Chicago History Museum. 51. Chicago Crime Commission. 52. Manning, William L. Dawson, 126. 53. Kenneth Field, “Cheated Gangland Assassins Three Times, Big Jim Martin to Be Buried Tomorrow,” Chicago Daily Defender, September 4, 1962, 2. 54. “Death of Jim Martin Recalls Racket Days,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 15, 1962, 4. 55. “How Syndicate Grabbed Policy: Took Over through Violence,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 17, 1955, 2. 56. “Jim Martin Decides to Quit City,” Chicago Defender, December 2, 1950, 1. Chapter Two

1. Thomas Doherty, “Frank Costello’s Hands: Film, Television, and the Kefauver Crime Hearings,” Film History 10, no. 3 (1998): 359–74. 2. Christopher Lowen Agee, “Crisis and Redemption: The History of American Police Reform since World War II,” Journal of Urban History, April 28, 2017, 2. Agee writes, “American law enforcement experienced its most significant twentieth-­century crisis of legitimacy during the 1950s and 1960s.” 3. William Howard Moore, The Kefauver Committee and the Politics of Crime, 1950–1952 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1974), 75. 4. Moore, 35.

NOT ES TO PAGES 34–43   171

5. Moore, 48. 6. Moore, 74. 7. Moore, 49. 8. Letter to George S. Robinson, October 5, 1950, Kefauver Committee Papers (hereafter KP), Records Group 46, Geographic Files, Illinois, box 128, US National Archives. 9. Chicago Crime Commission Memorandum, “Policy Racket,” August 2, 1946, KP, Records Group 46, series 8, box 48. 10. Letter from Virgil Peterson to George S. Robinson, “Re: Policy Racket, Chicago,” October 18, 1950, KP, Records Group 46, Geographic Files, Illinois, box 129. 11. Hearings before the Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce: Part 5, Illinois, United States Senate, Eighty-­First Congress, Second Session, and Eighty-­ Second Congress, First Session, Chicago (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1951), 112–14. 12. Hearings: Part 5, Illinois, 114–15. 13. Hearings: Part 5, Illinois, 138–39. 14. Hearings: Part 5, Illinois, 143. 15. Hearings: Part 5, Illinois, 125. 16. Hearings: Part 5, Illinois, 141. 17. Hearings: Part 5, Illinois, 135. 18. Hearings: Part 5, Illinois, 1153–54. 19. Hearings: Part 5, Illinois, 1159. 20. Hearings: Part 5, Illinois, 1168. 21. Hearings: Part 5, Illinois, 752. 22. Hearings: Part 5, Illinois, 753–755. 23. Associated Negro Press, “Indictments Ready for Chicago Policy Game Chieftains,” Philadelphia Tribune, January 30, 1951, 9. Early in 1950, Claude Barnett, head of the Associated Negro Press, invited William Dawson to open a direct channel of communication between the congressman’s office and the reporting agency so that “we can keep a stream of useful and constructive material going out.” Dawson made abundant use of this channel to inform black America of the violence and intimidation employed by white gangsters to squeeze black numbers operations. See letter from Claude A. Barnett to William L. Dawson, March 25, 1950, Claude A. Barnett Papers, 1918–1967, box 346, folder 6, Chicago History Museum. 24. Associated Negro Press, “Policy King Jones, Aides Freed by Court,” Philadelphia Tribune, February 12, 1952, 9. 25. “White Mob Gets Racket Control,” New York Amsterdam News, March 10, 1951, 6. 26. “Gang, Guns Mow Down Policy King Who Fought Rivals,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 9, 1952, 3. 27. “Tim O’Connor Heads Police,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 15, 1950, 1. 28. UPI, “Chicago Buzzes with Talk of Major Police Shake Up,” Christian Science Monitor, November 14, 1950, 6. 29. Press Release, “Radio Address of Martin H. Kennelly, Station WGN: March 20, 1951,” Greater Chicago Committee for the Reelection of Mayor Martin Kennelly. Martin Kennelly Papers (hereafter MKP), box 19, folder 420, University of Illinois at Chicago. 30. Mayor Martin Kennelly, statement to the Chicago Crime Commission, 1951, MKP, box 1, folder 3. 31. George Tagge, “GOP Slate Makers Name Merriam,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 23, 1954, 1.

172  NOT ES TO PAGES 43–48

32. Clayton Kirkpatrick, “Split Perils Crime Inquiry: Rebel Probers Insist on Cops’ Income,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 28, 1952, 1. 33. Clayton Kirkpatrick, “O’Connor Stalls Tax Probe,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 27, 1952, 1. 34. Clayton Kirkpatrick, “Summon Parade of Police Brass,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 27, 1952, 2. 35. Clayton Kirkpatrick, “Cops Doing Fine Job, Crime Quiz Is Told by Cops,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 5, 1952, 3. 36. Kirkpatrick, “Split Perils Crime Inquiry,” 1. 37. Letter from City of Chicago Department of Law Corporation Counsel John J. Mortimer to Police Commissioner Timothy J. O’Connor, June 2, 1952, MKP, box 1, folder 8. 38. Clayton Kirkpatrick, “Bane Resigns from Crime Probe; Assails Council, Mayor,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 18, 1952, 1. 39. Clayton Kirkpatrick, “Collect Income Data on 1,000 City Cops,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 15, 1952, 1. 40. “Kohn Resigns; Vows Specific Crime Report,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 19, 1952, A-­12. 41. “City Is Denied U.S. Tax List of Law Breakers,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 8, 1952, 11. 42. “Crime Report Details Told,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 14, 1953, 1. While he did not get his wish for a national search for a new police commissioner in 1953, six years later, in the wake of an egregious corruption scandal, this basic process was employed to bring police reformer Orlando Winfield Wilson to head the Chicago Police Department. 43. Clayton Kirkpatrick, “Captain Defies Income Quiz,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 31, 1953, 1. 44. Edward Schreiber, “Crime Probers Vote Court Test; Bauler’s Story in Full!,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 31, 1953, 1. 45. “Court Kills Crime Probe,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 30, 1953, 1. 46. “Report for the Extended Term of the March A.D. 1954 Grand Jury,” 2, MKP, box 56a, folder 1149. 47. “Cops to Defy Council Group on Questions about Income,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 25, 1952, 1. 48. “Faith in Police Heads Is Voted by Sergeants,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 16, 1953, 3. 49. “Protest by the Joint Council of Chicago Police Department Organizations,” October 29, 1954, MKP, box 1, folder 8. 50. “Merriam Vows to Bare Police Bribery Today,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 19, 1954, 3. 51. John J. Glavin, “Bare Income Data Demands on Police,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 27, 1954. 52. “Hunt for Way to Ferret Out Cops’ Income,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 7, 1954, 21. 53. “Make 950 Policemen Reveal Incomes, O’Connor Told by Big Nine,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 10, 1954, 6. 54. “Vote Curb on Crime Quiz,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 1, 1955, 1. 55. “Cop Income Quiz Dropped!” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 5, 1955, 1. 56. “Crime Probers Meet; Report Quiz Is Doomed,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 6, 1953, 1. 57. “Police Reformer O. W. Wilson Dies,” Chicago Tribune, October 19, 1972, 1. 58. Arnold R. Hirsch, “Massive Resistance in the Urban North: Trumbull Park, Chicago, 1953–1966,” Journal of American History 82, no. 2 (September 1995): 529. 59. “Mayor Dooms Carey Bill,” Chicago Defender, March 12, 1949, 1.

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60. Roger Biles, “Race and Housing in Chicago,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 94, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 37. 61. “Urge Mayor to Halt Riot or Resign,” Chicago Defender, September 18, 1954, 1; also see “Rap Chicago Officials in Handling of Riots,” Cleveland Call & Post, March 20, 1954, 1. 62. “Can’t Take It Any Longer: The Donald Howards Quit Trumbull Park,” Chicago Defender, May 15, 1954, 4. 63. Mike Royko, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago (Chicago: Plume Books, 1988), 88. 64. Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor, American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley and His Battle for the Nation (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000), 114–15. 65. The Greater Chicago Committee for the Re-­election of Mayor Martin Kennelly, “Address of Mayor Kennelly WGN-­T V, Sunday, January 30, 1955,” MKP, box 46a, folder 471. 66. “Congressman Got Fortune Witness Says,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 21, 1955. 67. Editorial, “Mayor Kennelly and Rep. Dawson,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 2, 1955, 16. 68. Editorial, “Gambling Stakes and Bossism in the Mayoral Fight,” Chicago Sun-­Times, January 26, 1955. 69. “Policy, Narcotics and Mayoral Politics,” Chicago Daily Sun-­Times, February 2, 1955. 70. “Dawson Admitted Getting Funds from Gaming Spots, Crime Unit Report Charges,” Chicago Sun-­Times, February 3, 1955, 2. 71. Percy Wood, “Congressman Dawson: Chicago Democrat with a Clout,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, February 6, 1955. 72. Walter Trohan, “Dawson, a Man of No Address in Washington,” Chicago Tribune, February 12, 1955. 73. “Meet Rep. Dawson—South Side Powerhouse,” Chicago Sun-­Times, February 9, 1955. 74. “Policy! Racket Bleeding the City Over the Years,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, January 16, 1955, 1. 75. William Grimshaw, Bitter Fruit: Black Politics and the Chicago Machine, 1931–1991 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 103. 76. Earl Brown, “Chicago Politics,” New York Amsterdam News, January 22, 1955, 18. 77. “Voice of the Voter: Mayor Finds Going Tough in Negro Wards,” Chicago Daily News, February 18, 1955, 4. 78. “Opinion of the People: Gambling and Narcotics,” Chicago Sun-­Times, February 11, 1955. 79. “Opinion of the People: Anti-­Dawson Campaign,” Chicago Sun-­Times, February 13, 1955. 80. Henry Johnson, “Letters to the Editor: Sees Dawson Attack as Campaign Tactic,” Chicago Daily News, February 5, 1955. 81. “Dawson Not a Candidate, but Key Man in Election,” Chicago Defender, February 12, 1955, 1. 82. “Policy Payoff Story Hit by Probe Counsel,” Chicago Tribune, February 10, 1955. 83. “Dawson Praises Daley and Defends Machine,” Chicago Tribune, February 11, 1955. 84. “Daley Hailed by Rep. Dawson as ‘Mayor Now,’” Chicago Tribune, February 20, 1955. 85. Editorial, “Our Opinions: Dawson and the Demagogues,” Chicago Defender, March 26, 1955, 9. 86. Royko, Boss, 91. 87. Adam Green, Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago, 1940–1955 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 186. 88. Jeffrey Helgeson, Crucibles of Black Empowerment: Chicago’s Neighborhood Politics from the New Deal to Harold Washington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 249.

174  NOT ES TO PAGES 55–67

89. Leon M. Despres, Challenging the Daley Machine (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2005), 88. 90. Helgeson, Crucibles of Black Empowerment, 249. Chapter Three

1. “Inquiry Is Made into Charges of Bias in Policy Bank Arrests,” New York Times, January 5, 1960. 2. Emanuel Perlmutter, “Powell Demands Numbers Inquiry,” New York Times, January 11, 1960. 3. Emanuel Perlmutter, “Kennedy Assails Powell ‘Appeal,’” New York Times, January 12, 1960. 4. Robert Tomasson, “Powell Case, in 6 Years, Has Involved 80 Judges, 10 Courts, 4 Juries, 15 Lawyers, and Congress,” New York Times, January 15, 1967, 69. 5. Charles V. Hamilton, Adam Clayton Powell Jr.: The Political Biography of an American Dilemma (New York: Macmillan, 1991), 431. 6. LaShawn Harris, Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 78. 7. “Summonses for Assault Issued for 4 Policemen,” New York Herald Tribune, November 15, 1947, 24. 8. “5th Case Charges Police Brutality,” New York Times, October 20, 1947, 5. 9. John Hudson Jones, “Slugged Senseless by 3 Cops, Then Jailed,” Daily Worker, October 20, 1947, 4. 10. Michael Singer, “Davis Says Wallander Incites Cop Violence,” Daily Worker, October 22, 1947, 16; Benjamin J. Davis, “Police Brutality against Negroes Mounts, but Commissioner Wallander Won’t Budge,” Daily Worker, October 26, 1947, 4. 11. “O’Dwyer Denies Police Brutality Is Widespread,” New York Herald Tribune, October 21, 1947, 29. 12. “4 Policemen Cleared of Assault Charges,” New York Times, December 31, 1947, 17. 13. “Symonette Loses Brutal Cop Case,” New York Amsterdam News, January 3, 1948, 3. 14. “Police Accuser Fined $100,” New York Times, February 12, 1948, 3. 15. “Police Brutality Charged by NAACP in Harlem Disturbance,” Chicago Defender, November 12, 1949, 1. 16. Joseph Carter, “Earl Brown Elected Over Davis, Convicted Red, for Council Seat,” New York Herald Tribune, November 9, 1949, 1. 17. Marilynn S. Johnson, Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), 207. 18. Earl Brown, “Timely Topics,” New York Amsterdam News, April 23, 1949, 11. 19. Earl Brown, “Timely Topics,” New York Amsterdam News, December 11, 1948, 11. 20. Earl Brown, “Political ABCs,” New York Amsterdam News, December 1, 1951, 16. 21. Earl Brown, “Police Problem Vexing,” New York Amsterdam News, December 30, 1950, 6. 22. Leonard Ingalls, “Brooklyn to Get Special Fund in Betting Inquiry,” New York Herald Tribune, February 9, 1950, 3. 23. Editorial, “Dynamite in Brooklyn,” New York Herald Tribune, February 11, 1950, 10. 24. “Former Mayor O’Dwyer Dead,” New York Times, November 25, 1964, 1. 25. “Thomas E. Dewey Is Dead at 68,” New York Times, March 17, 1971, 1. 26. “Legalized Gambling in New York?,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 269, (May 1950): 35–38.

NOT ES TO PAGES 67–7 1   175

27. Newton H. Fulbright, “Mayor Is Going to Funeral of Police Suicide,” New York Herald Tribune, July 19, 1950, 23. 28. “6,000 Police March at Flynn Funeral,” New York Times, July 22, 1950, 1. 29. “Report of the Special Investigation by the District Attorney of Kings County and the December 1949 Grand Jury, December 1949 to April 1954,” New York, 67–68. 30. “O’Dwyer Denounces ‘Witch Hunts’ in Brooklyn Gambling Investigation,” New York Times, July 23, 1950, 1. 31. Robert D. McFadden, “The Lonely Death of a Man Who Made a Scandal,” New York Times, April 5, 1986. 32. Walter Arm, “O’Brien Out, T. F. Murphy Heads Police,” New York Herald Tribune, September 26, 1950, 1. 33. “Murphy Takes Over as Head of New York City’s Police,” The Sun, September 27, 1950, 5. 34. Meyer Berger, “Murphy Orders 21 Before Kings Jury in Betting Inquiry,” New York Times, September 28, 1950, 1. 35. Leo Egan, “Lieutenant Quits When He Is Called in Gaming Inquiry,” New York Times, October 6, 1950, 1. 36. “251 Police Retirements Approved as 30-­Day Bill Nears Enactment,” New York Times, February 20, 1951, 18. 37. “463 Policemen Out in Rush to Retire,” New York Times, May 7, 1951, 1. 38. Walter Arm, “The Finest Are Too Few: Police Short More than 2,000 Men,” New York Herald Tribune, May 13, 1951, A7. 39. Charles Grutzner, “Policeman Suicide at Gambling Trial,” New York Times, June 5, 1951, 1. 40. “Murphy Proposes Higher Police Pay,” New York Times, June 22, 1951, 14. 41. Stanley Levey, “Monaghan Forbids City’s Policemen to Join Any Union,” New York Times, August 8, 1951, 1. 42. Mollie H. Bowers, Labor Relations in the Public Safety Services (Chicago: International Personnel Management Association, 1974), 32. 43. “Promotion Given to Monaghan Aide,” New York Times, July 13, 1951, 9. 44. Alexander Feinberg, “Rothengast Succeeds Flath as Chief Police Inspector; Monaghan Overhauls Force,” New York Times, October 20, 1951, 1. 45. Kefauver Committee Papers (hereafter KP), Records Group 40, Investigative Files, New York, box 143, US National Archives. 46. Letter from James R. Lawson to Senator Tobey, March 18, 1951, KP, box 140. 47. Memo from T. L. Karsten to Rudolph Halley, January 8, 1951, KP, box 143. 48. “Earl Brown Asks Cop Crime Probe,” New York Amsterdam News, May 24, 1952, 7. 49. Council Resolution 652, May 20, 1952, Earl Brown Papers, 1903–1980, Sc MG 254, box 1, folder 5, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. 50. “Earl Brown, Councilman, Wins, Loses,” New York Amsterdam News, January 24, 1953, 2. 51. New York City Council Resolution 696, December 2, 1952, Earl Brown Papers, box 1, folder 5, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. 52. Johnson, Street Justice, 223. 53. Charles Grutzner, “Monaghan Denies Police-­F.B.I. Deal to Hide Brutality,” New York Times, February 18, 1953, 1.

176  NOT ES TO PAGES 7 1–7 7

54. “Quiz Pushed on Police ‘Brutality,’” Christian Science Monitor, February 20, 1953, 1; “Accusations Fly in New York Police Case,” Philadelphia Tribune, February 24, 1953. 55. Charles Grutzner, “Monaghan Ouster Sought Over ‘Deal’ in Brutality Cases,” New York Times, February 20, 1953, 1. 56. Dominic Peluso, “Police Probe Action Delayed by Council after World War,” New York Daily News, March 4, 1950. 57. “City Council Votes Brutality Inquiry,” New York Times, May 13, 1953, 33. 58. “Police Begin Classes in Human Relations,” New York Amsterdam News, May 30, 1953, 2. 59. “Brutality Charge Called ‘Red Plot,’” New York Times, March 16, 1953, 8. 60. “Mayor Commends Monaghan Regime,” New York Times, March 21, 1953, 18. 61. Damon Stetson, “New Head of Police to Have Free Rein,” New York Times, December 26, 1953, 1. 62. David Alan Sklansky, Democracy and the Police (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 35. 63. “Opens Probe on NY Police Brutality,” New York Amsterdam News, February 13, 1954, 1. 64. William N. Thompson, Gambling in America: An Encyclopedia of History, Issues, and Society, 2nd ed. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-­CLIO, 2015), 20. 65. Emanuel Perlmutter, “Future of Bingo Up to the Voters,” New York Times, October 27, 1957, 1. 66. Edith Evans Asbury, “Bingo’s Growing Popularity Makes Politicians Cautious,” New York Times, October 11, 1954, 1. 67. An Investigation of Bingo Operations in New York State: A Report by the New York State Commission of Investigation, New York, December 1961. 68. Walter Arm, “Goldberg, Broken, Quits Police in Bingo Dispute,” New York Herald Tribune, September 10, 1954, 1. 69. Tom O. Hara, “Referendum on Bingo Debated by Democrats,” New York Herald Tribune, September 17, 1954, 9. 70. Earl Brown, “Bingo and the Cops,” New York Amsterdam News, September 18, 1954, 14. 71. Warren Weaver Jr., “Bill to Allow Bingo Offered,” New York Times, January 6, 1955, 1. 72. Charles G. Bennett, “Mayor Signs Bill Legalizing Bingo,” New York Times, August 8, 1958, 21. 73. Paul Crowell, “Bingo Wins in City by Margin of 2 to 1,” New York Times, November 5, 1958, 1. 74. Robert F. Wagner, Text of Speech, WPIX-­T V, April 13, 1959, Robert F. Wagner Jr. Papers, box 60080W, folder 17, LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, LaGuardia Community College, Long Island City, NY. 75. New York Police Department, Annual Report, 1954, 22. 76. “189 Veteran Police Shifted,” New York Times, October 30, 1955, 1. 77. Murray Schumach, “Kennedy Warns Aides Not to Balk His Police Policy,” New York Times, August 9, 1955, 1. 78. “Lock Up Gamblers, High Police Ordered,” New York Times, October 17, 1956, 72. 79. “New Squad Set Up to Fight Gambling,” New York Times, November 3, 1956, 25. 80. General Orders No. 52, New York Police Department, December 2, 1946, Holdings of New York Public Library. 81. General Orders No. 4, New York Police Department, February 4, 1955, Holdings of New York Public Library. 82. From 1948 through 1953, the NYPD published a statistical entry in its annual report

NOT ES TO PAGES 7 7–84   177

titled “Known Gamblers Files Received by Bureau of Criminal Identification.” The total number of files over this period is 7,140. After 1953, the data is not offered. See New York Police Department, Annual Reports, 1948–1953. 83. “Police Open Drive on Undesirables,” New York Times, June 15, 1957, 1. 84. Risa Goluboff, Vagrant Nation: Police Power, Constitutional Change, and the Making of the 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 2. 85. “Gambling Raids Net 68,” New York Times, April 27, 1958, 19; “89 Held in Harlem after Policy Raids,” New York Times, May 3, 1958, 6. 86. New York Police Department, Annual Reports, 1956–1960. 87. James Lardner and Thomas Reppetto, NYPD: A City and Its Police (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), 251. 88. Jack Roth, “Police Found Lax in Harlem Gaming,” New York Times, March 12, 1959, 1. 89. “Gambler’s Arrest Ordered on Sight,” New York Times, November 12, 1959, 23. 90. On soft judges and punishment for betting, see Peter Flint, “55 Police Shifted in Gambling Drive,” New York Times, April 26, 1960, 1. On jail sentences, see Emanuel Perlmutter, “Police Shake Up Gambling Squad,” New York Times, December 6, 1959, 1. On 2,000 additional officers, see “Kennedy Is Heard by Gambling Jury,” New York Times, November 22, 1958, 13. On moral confusion, see Newton H. Fulbright, “Police Head Blames Public for Laxity on Betting Laws,” New York Herald Tribune, April 29, 1960, 13. 91. Milton Lewis, “Powell Gets Rebuke by Kennedy,” New York Herald Tribune, February 5, 1960, 20. 92. Hamilton, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., 431. 93. Emanuel Perlmutter, “Powell Charges Touch Off Raids,” New York Times, January 6, 1960. 94. Hamilton, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., 431. 95. Ted Poston et al., “Policy: How the Banks Work,” New York Post, March 9, 1960. 96. Poston et al. 97. Poston et al. 98. Poston et al. 99. Poston et al. 100. Poston et al.” 101. Ted Poston et al., “Policy and Payoffs,” New York Post, March 1, 1960. 102. Ted Poston et al., “Inside the Policy Racket: Millions in Payoffs to Cops,” New York Post, February 29, 1960. 103. Ted Poston et al., “Inside the Policy Racket,” New York Post, March 6, 1960. 104. Ted Poston et al., “Policy: The Harlem Story,” New York Post, March 7, 1960. 105. Ted Poston et al., “Inside the Policy Racket,” New York Post, March 4, 1960. 106. Poston et al., “Policy: The Harlem Story.” 107. “Taciturn Detective,” New York Times, January 21, 1961. 108. Francis Sugrue, “New P.B.A. Chief Vows Fight for Police Rights,” New York Herald Tribune, June 11, 1958, A15. 109. Edward V. McCarthy, “‘Moonlighting’ Cops in N.Y. Draw Boss’ Fire,” Chicago Daily Defender, January 4, 1961. 110. Paul Crowell, “60 to 70% of City’s Policemen Reported Holding Extra Jobs,” New York Times, October 17, 1960. 111. “Policemen Stage a Ticket Holiday,” New York Times, October 25, 1960. 112. Joseph C. Ingraham, “Police Head Says Ticket Slowdown Is a Strike Move,” New York Times, October 26, 1960.

178  NOT ES TO PAGES 84–89

113. “Parking Tickets Rise 132% Here,” New York Times, October 30, 1960. This program of action on the part of the PBA backfired and ended up delighting Kennedy. After the ticket blitz was one month old, Commissioner Kennedy noted that traffic deaths were down 43% from the same four-­week period during 1959. See “Car Deaths Drop as Tickets Soar,” New York Times, November 24, 1960. 114. Wayne Phillips, “Policemen vs. the Commissioner: Tension at Peak in New Clashes,” New York Times, December 5, 1960. 115. George Barrett, “Murphy Is Named,” New York Times, February 23, 1961. 116. “Murphy Summons 175 Aides to Talk on Gambling,” New York Times, April 15, 1961. 117. New York Police Department General Orders, No. 57, November 4, 1961. 118. Michael J. Murphy, Civil Rights and the Police: A Compilation of Speeches by Police Commissioner Michael J. Murphy, New York Police Department, 1964, 12. 119. “Negroes Seek Ouster of Top Policeman in New York,” Chicago Defender, March 19, 1964, 4. 120. “Rev. Hildebrand Hits Murphy on Gray Rap,” New York Amsterdam News, March 28, 1964, 6. 121. Robert Trumbull, “Murphy Defends Killing of Youth,” New York Times, February 21, 1964. 122. For a thorough account of the riot and its roots in tensions between the community and the police, see Johnson, Street Justice, 234. 123. Editorial, “Harlem’s Plea: An Amsterdam News Editorial,” New York Amsterdam News, July 25, 1964, 1. 124. Editorial, “Another Look at Why the Harlem Riots,” New York Amsterdam News, August 1, 1964, 3. 125. CBS News, Special Report, 117th Street, New York, July 29, 1964, Robert F. Wagner Jr. Papers, Video ID, 06.005, LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, LaGuardia Community College, Long Island City, NY. 126. Letter from Kenneth Clark to David Hunter, September 15, 1964, Kenneth Clark Papers (hereafter KCP), box 131, folder 5, Library of Congress. 127. Harlem Interview Transcripts, 1964, pp. 23–24, KCP, box 130, folder 4. 128. Harlem Interview Transcripts, 1964, p. 60, KCP, box 130, folder 3. 129. Harlem Interview Transcripts, 1964, p. 79, KCP, box 130, folder 2. 130. Harlem Interview Transcripts, 1964, p. 82, KCP, box 129, folder 4. 131. Harlem Interview Transcripts, 1964, pp. 75–76, KCP, box 129, folder 1. 132. Harlem Interview Transcripts, 1964, p. 126, KCP, box 128, folder 2. 133. Harlem Interview Transcripts, 1964, p. 70, KCP, box 128, folder 4. 134. Harlem Interview Transcripts, 1964, pp. 22–23, KCP, box 128, folder 4. 135. Jack Roth, “Gamblers Aiding in Police Inquiry,” New York Times, June 29, 1964, 1; Jack Roth, “Gambling Inquiry Is Told Captains Shared in Graft,” New York Times, July 1, 1964, 1. 136. Alfred E. Clark, “High Police Officer Is among 12 Called in Inquiry on Graft,” New York Times, July 18, 1964, 1. 137. Theodore Jones, “Negroes Attack Gilligan Ruling,” New York Times, November 8, 1964, 47. 138. Earl Brown, “Police Head Praised,” New York Times, August 20, 1964, 28. 139. Joseph C. Ingraham, “Police Stunned by Murphy Action,” New York Times, May 19, 1965, 36. 140. “Proposed Board to Review Complaints Against N.Y. Police Stirs Controversy,” Hartford Courant, June 18, 1964, 16.

NOT ES TO PAGES 9 0–97   179

141. “Ousted Policeman, Silent Before Grand Jury, Begins Jail Term,” New York Times, August 6, 1964, 27. 142. Charles Grutzner, “Law on Waivers Termed Invalid,” New York Times, September 29, 1964, 38. 143. “Ex-­Policeman Wins Contempt Appeal,” New York Times, March 1, 1966, 42. 144. “Attitude of Public Called Crux of Battle,” New York Times, June 26, 1964. 145. Ronald Reis, a high-­ranking police detective involved in gambling enforcement, writes about efforts to suppress gambling during Murphy’s tenure. He points to the Mapp v. Ohio decision as being particularly crippling to gambling enforcement. See Ronald Reis, “Gambling Enforcement in the New York Police Department” (MPA thesis, City College of New York, 1966). 146. Earl Brown, “They’re Off and Running,” New York Amsterdam News, April 16, 1961, 13. 147. Editorial, “Police Corruption,” New York Amsterdam News, December 10, 1966, 16. Chapter Four

1. William Yardley, “Dollree Mapp, Who Defied Police Search in Landmark Case Is Dead,” Los Angeles Times, December 9, 2014. 2. Elaine Woo, “Dollree Mapp Dies at 91, Arrest Led to Landmark Search Warrant Ruling,” Los Angeles Times, December 13, 2014. 3. Hearings before the Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce: Part 5, Illinois, United States Senate, Eighty-­First Congress, Second Session, and Eighty-­ Second Congress, First Session, Chicago (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1951), 143. 4. “New Squad Set Up to Fight Gambling,” New York Times, November 3, 1956, 25. 5. Fred E. Inbau, “Should We Abolish the Constitutional Privilege Against Self-­ Incrimination?,” Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 45, no. 2 (July–­August 1954): 180–84. 6. “Self Incrimination Privilege and Kefauver Committee Evidence,” Stanford Law Review 4, no. 4 (July 1952): 594–98. 7. “William L. Adams,” Investigative File Memorandum, Kefauver Committee Papers (hereafter KP), Records Group 46, box 62 (A–­Ado), US National Archives. 8. United States Senate, Report of Proceedings, Hearing held before subcommittee of the Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, Executive Session, Testimony of Mr. William Adams, July 2, 1951, Washington DC, p. 1018, KP, Records Group 46, box 171. 9. United States Senate, 1029. 10. United States Senate, 1029. 11. “Adams Found Guilty after Gaming Trial,” Baltimore Sun, December 22, 1951, 22. 12. Editorial, “Why Adams and Rouse Should Not Go to Jail,” Afro-­American, December 6, 1952, 14. 13. “‘Little Willie’ Fights Sentence,” Chicago Defender, August 29, 1953, 4. 14. “So ‘Little Willie’ Won’t Pay $2,000, Won’t Serve Seven Years,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 13, 1954; Raymond Pace Alexander, “The Negro Lawyer and His Responsibility in the Urban Crisis,” Boule Journal 32, no. 4 (Summer 1969). 15. “Supreme Court Agrees to Review Conviction of ‘Willie’ Adams,” Chicago Defender, November 7, 1953, 5. 16. 18 U.S.C. 3486. 17. Hugo Black, Majority Opinion, Adams v. Maryland, 347 U.S. 179 (1954).

180  NOT ES TO PAGES 97–103

18. Merle Gulick, “Will the Law Breakers Comply? They Say No, Treasury Thinks Yes,” Wall Street Journal, November 3, 1951, 1. 19. Congressional Record, 82nd Congress, House, 6967, June 22, 1951. 20. Congressional Record, 82nd Congress, House, 6971–72, June 22, 1951. 21. Congressional Record, 82nd Congress, Senate, 12230–33, September 27, 1951. 22. Congressional Record, 82nd Congress, Senate, 12238–39, September 27, 1951. 23. “Gambling Tax Yield Unclear,” Baltimore Sun, October 30, 1951, 36. 24. “Racketeers and the Tax,” Chicago Defender, November 10, 1951, 10. 25. Earl Brown, “New ‘Revolution,’” New York Amsterdam News, December 8, 1951, 14. 26. “Head Tax on Numbers’ Writers Upsets Bankers,” New Journal and Guide, October 20, 1951, 1. 27. “New Tax Frightens Bankers,” New York Amsterdam News, November 3, 1951, M1. 28. “How Numbers Kings Plan to Beat the New U.S. Tax,” Chicago Defender, November 10, 1951, 1. 29. Louis Lautier, “Capital Spotlight,” Afro-­American, November 10, 1951, 4. 30. “Numbers Cooled by New Tax,” Afro-­American, November 10, 1951, 1. 31. “Rise in Petty Crime May Replace the Numbers,” New Journal and Guide, November 17, 1951, 24. 32. “Deadline Passes on Gaming Stamp,” New York Times, December 1, 1951, 18. 33. “Gambling Tax Records Will Go to Police,” Hartford Courant, December 4, 1951, 3. 34. “Federal Stamp Is No Protection,” Afro-­American, February 9, 1952, 14. 35. Louis Lautier, “$20 Million Asked to Find Bootleg Gamblers,” New Journal and Guide, February 23, 1952, 27. 36. “Gambling Tax Revenues Less than Expected,” Baltimore Sun, March 9, 1952, 3. 37. “Suit Will Test Tax on Numbers,” Cleveland Call & Post, November 10, 1951, 5A; “$50 Tax Stamp on Gambling Ruled Illegal,” Daily Boston Globe, May 7, 1952, 17. 38. “Gambling Tax Ruled Unlawful: ‘Numbers’ Coming Back?” New Journal and Guide, May 10, 1952, D1. 39. “Gambling Stamp Upheld,” New York Times, June 26, 1952, 14. 40. “Illegal Gambling Revives; Tax Stamp Sales Slump,” Christian Science Monitor, August 2, 1952, 7. 41. “Digits Not Dead—Estes,” Afro-­American, August 30, 1952, 1. 42. “Numbers Racket Stages Comeback Despite Gambling Tax,” New Journal and Guide, August 30, 1952, 5. 43. Stanley Reed, Majority Opinion, Kahriger v. United States, 345 U.S. 22 (1953). 44. Robert Jackson, Concurrence, Kahriger v. United States, 345 U.S. 22 (1953). 45. Hugo Black, Dissent, Kahriger v. United States, 345 U.S. 22 (1953). 46. “Treasury Men Make Harlem Raids,” Chicago Defender, August 15, 1953, 5. 47. “Judge Calls US Gambling Tax Ridiculous; Frees Man,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 23, 1954, 2. 48. “Concurrent Sentences Ease Gaming Stamp Tax Penalties,” Washington Post, May 8, 1953, 27. 49. Morrey Dunie, “Gambling Tax Stamp Rule Illegal Here,” Washington Post, July 25, 1953, 1. 50. Sherman Minton, Majority Opinion, Lewis v. United States, 348 U.S. 419 (1955). 51. Hugo Black, Dissent, Lewis v. United States, 348 U.S. 419 (1955). 52. Duncan O. McKee, “The Fifth Amendment and the Federal Gambling Tax,” Duke Bar Journal 5 (1955–56): 86.

NOT ES TO PAGES 103–108   181

53. McKee, 97. 54. M. Gene Chenowith, “A Judicial Balance Sheet for the Federal Gambling Tax,” Northwestern University Law Review 53 (1958–59): 475. 55. United States v. Calamaro, 354 U.S. 351 (1957). 56. Robert Metz, “Taxes and Gambling,” New York Times, November 14, 1960, 47. 57. William Moore, “Gamblers Accused of $5 Billion Tax Evasion,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 24, 1961, B4. 58. “A ‘Judicial Outrage,’” Manchester Guardian, February 12, 1954, 1. 59. Robert Jackson, Majority Opinion, Irvine v. California, 347 U.S. 128 (1954). 60. “‘May Not Seize Papers’: Supreme Court Makes Ruling That May Affect Dynamiters Case,” New York Times, February 25, 1914, 1. 61. See People v. Defore, 242 N.Y. 13 (N.Y. 1926). 62. As scholar Tracey Maclin explains, the Wolf ruling went further than simply limiting the application of Weeks to federal cases; rather the Wolf ruling began to separate the exclusionary rule from its constitutional basis in the Fourth Amendment, recasting it as a mere “rule of evidence.” See Tracey Maclin, The Supreme Court and the Fourth Amendment’s Exclusionary Rule (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 43. 63. Felix Frankfurter, Majority Opinion, Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 (1949). 64. Frank Murphy, Dissent, Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 (1949). 65. Gerard V. Bradley, “Present at the Creation—A Critical Guide to Weeks v. United States and Its Progeny,” Saint Louis University Law Journal 30, no. 4 (October 1986): 1099. 66. Maclin, The Supreme Court, 57. 67. Tom Clark, Concurrence, Irvine v. California, 347 U.S. 128 (1954). 68. Robert Jackson, Majority Opinion, Irvine v. California, 347 U.S. 128 (1954). 69. Roger J. Traynor, “Mapp v. Ohio at Large in the Fifty States,” Duke Law Journal, no. 3 (1962): 322. 70. Tom Cameron, “Informer Decision,” Los Angeles Times, July 19, 1957, B5. 71. “Parker Assails Cahan Decision: Runaway Crime in L.A. Caused by Ruling . . . ,” Los Angeles Times, January 13, 1956, 2. 72. In 1944 the Crime Commission had conducted a study of Chicago’s Racket Court detailing that of the 723 defendants brought into the court in July, 697 of them had their motions to suppress evidence sustained. On this basis, Peterson arrived at the conclusion that “the Racket Court is serving no useful purpose in the suppression of gambling.” He might have instead arrived at the conclusion that of the 723 persons arrested for gambling by Chicago Police for that month, 697 of them appear to have been subjected to illegal search. See Chicago Crime Commission, “Press Release, September 6, 1944,” Virgil W. Peterson Papers, box 32, folder 2, Chicago History Museum. 73. Virgil W. Peterson, “Law and Police Practice: Restrictions in the Law of Search and Seizure,” Northwestern University Law Review 52, no. 1 (March–­April 1957): 49–51. 74. American Civil Liberties Union, Illinois Division, “Supplementary Memo on Illinois Arrest Law,” January 3, 1963, ACLU, Illinois Division Papers, box 513, University of Chicago. The wide latitude given to the police relating to searches incident to traffic offenses was modified somewhat in 1960 by the policy gambling case People v. Watkins. 75. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas recounted a conversation with Califor‑ nia Attorney General Stanley Mosk, in which Mosk explained the dynamic in California relating to the Cahan decision. See letter from William O. Douglas to Tom Clark, January 25, 1962, Thomas C. Clark Papers, box B36, Correspondence with Douglas, University of Texas, Austin.

182  NOT ES TO PAGES 109–117

76. “Clergymen, Citizens Rally to Defeat Gambling Bloc,” Cleveland Call & Post, May 27, 1950, A4. 77. Cleveland Police Department, Annual Report, 1952, 2. 78. “Get Tough Is New Order for Numbers Game,” Cleveland Call & Post, June 5, 1954, 1A. 79. Marty Richardson, “Bullets Fly in Numbers War,” Cleveland Call & Post, June 5, 1954, 1A. 80. Cleveland Police Department, Annual Reports, 1952–1955. 81. Cleveland Police Department, Annual Report, 1956. 82. Judge Sean C. Gallagher, Ohio Court of Appeals, Eighth District, “Mapp v. Ohio Revisited,” City Club of Cleveland, April 9, 2012, 2. 83. Gallagher, 2. 84. Cleveland Police Department, Annual Report, 1953, 13. 85. Gallagher, “Mapp v. Ohio Revisited,” 4. 86. Daily Duty Report, Sergeant Carl Delau to Lieutenant Martin Cooney, May 23, 1957, Cleveland Memory Project, Digital Collection. 87. “Policy House Closed after 3-­Hour Siege,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 24, 1957. 88. Gallagher, “Mapp v. Ohio Revisited,” 8. 89. Bob Williams, “Must Have a Warrant Court Tells Police,” Cleveland Call & Post, June 24, 1961, 1A. 90. This interpretation of the events leading to Mapp’s obscenity conviction is supported by Cleveland defense attorney James R. Willis. James R. Willis, interview with author, February 19, 2016. 91. Oral Arguments, March 29, 1961, Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). 92. Tom Clark, Majority Opinion, Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). 93. Legal Scholar Tracey Maclin sees Hugo Black’s insistence on coupling the Fourth and Fifth Amendments together as creating vulnerabilities for the exclusionary rule in the long term. 94. John Marshal Harlan II, Dissent, Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). 95. Bob Williams, “Big Fish Target of Digits Law,” Cleveland Call & Post, June 10, 1961, 1A. 96. James R. Willis, interview with author, February 19, 2016. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Willis developed his defense practice through referrals from gambler Virgil Ogletree, with whom he served in the US Marines, and gambler Herman J. Stevens, with whom he attended West Virginia State College. 97. Willis. 98. Potter Stewart, Majority Opinion, Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89 (1964). 99. For an interpretation of these events more sympathetic to Carl Delau, see Priscilla Machado Zotti, Injustice for All: Mapp vs. Ohio and the Fourth Amendment (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2005). 100. Risa Goluboff, Vagrant Nation: Police Power, Constitutional Change, and the Making of the 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 329. 101. “The Clouded Courtroom,” New York Newsday, April 18, 1966, 39. 102. Austin C. Wehrin, “Desmond Asserts High Court Ruling Foils Police,” New York Times, April 30, 1966, 13. 103. Sidney E. Zion, “Detectives Get a Course in Law,” New York Times, April 28, 1965, 60. 104. “Interview with Orlando Winfield Wilson, Chicago Police Superintendent: What to Do about Crime in the Big Cities,” U.S. News and World Report, March 12, 1962. 105. “Policy Prosecutions Here Cut by Curb on Evidence,” New York Times, July 16, 1962, 1. 106. “Privilege Ruling: Justices Widen Scope of Fifth Amendment in State Actions,” New York Times, June 16, 1964, 1.

NOT ES TO PAGES 117–126   183

107. Gerald Demeusy and Robert Waters, “State and Constitution Headed for a Showdown,” Hartford Courant, May 9, 1964, 1A. 108. Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1 (1964). 109. “Self-­Incrimination and the Federal Excise Tax on Wagering,” Yale Law Journal 76, no. 4 (March 1967): 839–47. 110. Oral Arguments, January 18, 1967, Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39 (1968). 111. Oral Arguments, October 10, 1967, Grosso v. United States, 390 U.S. 62 (1968). 112. Oral Arguments, October 11, 1967, Grosso v. United States, 390 U.S. 62 (1968). 113. Oral Arguments, October 10, 1967, Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39 (1968). 114. Oral Arguments, October 10, 1967, Grosso v. United States, 390 U.S. 62 (1968). 115. Memo from Hugo L. Black to John Marshal Harlan II, April 4, 1967, William J. Brennan Papers, box 164, folder 1, Library of Congress. 116. Katherine J. Frydyl, The Drug Wars in America, 1940–1973 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 352. 117. Fred Graham, “High Court Eases Curbs on Bugging; Adds Safeguard,” New York Times, December 19, 1967, 1. 118. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), petition, March 18, 1967. Louis Stokes went on to become the first black congressman to represent the state of Ohio. His brother Carl served as the first black mayor of Cleveland. 119. Christopher Lowen Agee, “Crisis and Redemption: The History of American Police Reform since World War II,” Journal of Urban History, April 28, 2017, 4. 120. Anna Lvovsky, “Fourth Amendment Moralism,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 166, no. 5 (April 2018): 1206. 121. Earl Warren, Dissenting Opinion, Grosso v. United States, 390 U.S. 62 (1968). Chapter Five

1. Letter from Emanuel Celler to Governor John W. King, May 22, 1963, Emanuel Celler Papers, box 302, Library of Congress. 2. Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Legalized Numbers in Washington: Implications with Respect to Law Enforcement, Civil Rights, and Control by the Community (Washington, DC, 1973), d-­24, d-­25, d-­15. 3. Edward J. Mowery, “Gambling Fever Grips Americans,” Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1964, WS7. 4. John Oswald, “Aid Cash Fills Policy Till, Wilson Says,” Chicago Tribune, April 22, 1964, A5. 5. Christopher Lowen Agee, The Streets of San Francisco: Policing and the Creation of a Cosmopolitan Liberal Politics, 1950–1972 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 92. Agee asserts this point with regard to police corruption and the policing of homosexuality in San Francisco. 6. Michael J. Murphy, The Gambling Situation 1964: A Report by Police Commissioner Michael J. Murphy on the Status of Illegal Gambling and Gambling Enforcement in New York City to the Select Legislative Committee on Off Track Betting, February 24, 1964, 4. 7. Murphy, 42. 8. Murphy, 11. 9. John Sibley, “Bill Authorizing a Lottery Approved by State Senate,” New York Times, June 15, 1965. 10. Sydney H. Schanberg, “Albany Trying Again on Lottery,” New York Times, January 30, 1966.

184  NOT ES TO PAGES 126–130

11. “Vote Right on Lottery,” Daily News, January 25, 1966. 12. “Legalizing the Lottery,” New York Times, January 27, 1966. 13. “Broderick Concurs in Court Criticisms,” New York Times, September 11, 1965, 8. 14. Sidney H. Schanberg, “Lottery Is Likely to Pass Albany,” New York Times, January 25, 1966. 15. “N.Y. Assembly Passes State Lottery Bill,” Chicago Tribune, February 9, 1966. 16. Richard L. Madden, “Foes of Lottery Mounting Forces,” New York Times, July 17, 1966. 17. Richard L. Madden, “Regents Opposed to Lottery Plan,” New York Times, August 27, 1966. 18. Richard L. Madden, “Rockefeller Bows on State Lottery,” New York Times, September 14, 1966. 19. “New York Lottery,” Washington Post, January 21, 1967. 20. “School for Gambling,” Wall Street Journal, January 24, 1967. 21. This dynamic of substituting rather than supplementing aid to education has been the norm among state lotteries that are nominally attached to education. Writing in 1998, the New York State Comptroller characterized the practice as a betrayal of the original promise of the lottery and called the attachment of lottery funds to the education budget “an artificial accounting device.” Office of the State Comptroller, The New York Lottery: Role in Financing Education (New York, 1998), 5–7. 22. Richard L. Madden, “Legislature Sits 21 Hours in Finale,” New York Times, April 3, 1967. 23. “Lottery Facts,” New York Times, April 3, 1967; “Profiteering on the Lottery,” New York Times, May 12, 1967. 24. “State Lottery Sales Won’t Be Handled by Western Union,” New York Times, May 23, 1967. 25. “Who Wins the Lottery,” New York Times, May 18, 1967. 26. “State Lottery Begins Today in New York as Tickets Go on Sale,” Wall Street Journal, June 1, 1967. 27. “Minister Urges a Boycott of Banks Aiding Lottery,” New York Times, May 22, 1967. 28. “Lottery Winners on N.Y. Relief Must Repay City,” Washington Post, May 26, 1967. 29. Robert E. Dallos, “News Media Divided on How to Handle Lottery,” New York Times, May 24, 1967. 30. Sydney H. Schanberg, “Lottery Tickets Go on Sale in 4,000 Locations Today,” New York Times, June 1, 1967. 31. Sydney H. Schanberg, “New Yorkers Rush for Tickets,” New York Times, June 2, 1967. Also see Richard Dougherty, “Lottery Tickets Sales Open in New York to Brisk Business,” Los Angeles Times, June 2, 1967. 32. “House Bars Bank Role in Lottery,” Washington Post, July 14, 1967. 33. Sydney H. Schanberg, “Lottery So Far a Big Bust,” New York Times, July 16, 1967. 34. James Gardner, “Sagging Lottery and Moral Unease,” Wall Street Journal, July 17, 1967. 35. “The Lottery Fiasco,” New York Times, July 22, 1967. 36. Sydney H. Schanberg, “Rockefeller Asks Bingo Maker’s Advice on Lottery,” New York Times, July 20, 1967. 37. “Mini-­Skirted Girls Spur Lottery Sales on Sidewalks,” New York Times, September 15, 1967. 38. Richard L. Madden, “Senate Restricts Banks in Lottery,” New York Times, November 14, 1967. 39. “Senate Bans Lottery Ticket Sale in Banks,” Los Angeles Times, November 14, 1967. 40. “Bank Lottery Sales to Be Barred April 1,” New York Times, December 16, 1967.

NOT ES TO PAGES 130–135   185

41. “New York State’s Lottery Unpopular; Question of Repeal Is Raised,” Washington Post, March 3, 1968. 42. “Lottery Ends Year Below Predictions,” New York Times, June 15, 1968. 43. Richard L. Madden, “F.C.C. Upholds Ban on State Lottery,” New York Times, September 27, 1968. 44. “State Lottery at New Low,” New York Times, February 17, 1970. 45. “Hope and the Lottery,” New York Amsterdam News, September 2, 1967. 46. Lotteries can be described as a regressive form of taxation because the tendency to play is higher among low-­income groups, and because a single lottery play represents a greater portion of a low-­income bettor’s expendable resources. See Robert Martin and Bruce Yandle, “State Lotteries as Duopoly Transfer Mechanisms,” Public Choice 64, no. 3 (1990): 253–64. Also see Brent Kramer, “The New York State Lottery: A Regressive Tax,” State Tax Notes, March 29, 2010. Anthony Miyazaki, Ann Hansen, and David Sprott, “A Longitudinal Analysis of Income-­Base Tax Regressivity of State-­Sponsored Lotteries,” Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 17, no. 2 (1998): 161–72; Charles T. Clotfelter and Philip J. Cook, “Implicit Taxation in Lottery Finance,” National Tax Journal 40, no. 4 (December 1987): 533–46. 47. According to Martha Biondi, Lawson’s nationalist outlook rejected “the social welfare policies of urban liberalism,” focusing instead on “self-­reliance, patriarchy, and ethnic solidarity.” See Martha K. Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 256. 48. James R. Lawson, “Nationalist Program,” New York Amsterdam News, August 8, 1964. 49. “Unity Pleas Made at Harlem Rally,” New York Times, August 12, 1964. 50. Paul L. Montgomery, “Speaker at Harlem Rally Seized,” New York Times, August 9, 1964. 51. Thomas A. Johnson, “Legality Is Urged for Numbers Play,” New York Times, December 18, 1966. 52. “North Phila. Legislator Urges Legalized Numbers Game,” Philadelphia Tribune, January 18, 1966. 53. Barbara Campbell, “Wingate Defends Harlem Numbers,” New York Times, January 21, 1971. 54. Thomas A. Johnson, “Numbers Called Harlem’s Balm,” New York Times, March 1, 1971. 55. On schools, see Jerald E. Podair, The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill–­Brownsville Crisis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002). On the construction industry, see David A. Goldberg and Trevor Griffey, eds., Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Action, and the Construction Industry (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press/Cornell University Press, 2010). Fainstein and Fainstein write that “the very term community control became a condensation symbol which evoked strong hostility from many whites.” Norman I. Fainstein and Susan S. Fainstein, “The Future of Community Control,” American Political Science Review 70, no. 3 (September 1976): 905–23. 56. John Darnton, “Crime Found to Be a Potent Economic Force in Bedford-­Stuyvesant,” New York Times, October 3, 1971. 57. Eric Pace, “Harlemite Urges Legal Policy Bets,” New York Times, September 18, 1971. 58. Eric Pace, “Lindsay Appoints a Philadelphian as Head of Police,” New York Times, February 16, 1966, L1. Leary implemented a dramatic shake-­up of the Philadelphia department in 1965 in the aftermath of extensive federal raids on local gambling spots that were clearly being ignored by the police. 59. Bernard Weinraub, “Police Review Panel Killed by a Large Majority in City,” New York Times, November 9, 1966, 1.

186  NOT ES TO PAGES 135–139

60. Vincent J. Cannato, The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 471. 61. Peter Kihss, “No Successor Yet,” New York Times, September 6, 1970, 1. 62. David Burnham, “East Side Police Quit for 4 Hours,” New York Times, December 5, 1970, 1. 63. “New York Police: Is the New Chief a ‘Cop’s Cop’?” New York Times, November 1, 1970, 177. 64. Patrick Vincent Murphy, “Police Employee Organizations” (MPA thesis, City College of New York, June 1960), 31. 65. The Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption, submitted to John V. Lindsay on December 26, 1972, 74–83. 66. David Burnham, “Course on Graft Hazards Being Offered by P.B.A.,” New York Times, October 3, 1972, 49. 67. David Burnham, “East Side Police Quit for 4 Hours,” New York Times, December 5, 1970, 1. 68. Frank Lynn, “Lindsay and the Police: Graft Inquiry and Pay Dispute Widening the Rift,” New York Times, December 11, 1970, 52. 69. Eric Pace, “Leaders of Police Groups at Meeting Here Are Critical of Corruption Panel,” New York Times, October 23, 1971, 20. 70. “PBA Calls Knapp Report Garbage,” Newsday, December 29, 1972, 9. 71. Damon Stetson, “P.B.A. to Request $16,000 Pay Base,” New York Times, October 27, 1970, 1. 72. Lawrence Van Gelder, “85% of Patrolmen Strike Here,” New York Times, January 16, 1971, 1. 73. Emanuel Perlmutter, “Murphy Vows Suspension If Police Refuse to Work,” New York Times, March 13, 1972, 1. 74. David Burnham, “Lie Detector Test for Police Weighed,” New York Times, March 14, 1972, 47. 75. Emanuel Perlmutter, “PBA Members Reject Contract,” New York Times, June 4, 1972, 56; Emanuel Perlmutter, “Pact Giving Base Pay of $13,550 Is Ratified,” New York Times, July 23, 1972, 1. 76. David Burnham, “Course on Graft Hazards Being Offered by P.B.A.,” New York Times, October 3, 1972, 49. 77. Knapp Commission Report, 74–83. Shortly after the Knapp Commission, the Pennsylvania Crime Commission examined police corruption in Philadelphia and recommended that the police be relieved of their responsibility for gambling enforcement. See The Pennsylvania Crime Commission: Report on Police Corruption and the Quality of Law Enforcement in Philadelphia (Harrisburg: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Justice, 1974), 216–17. 78. See Detroit Police Department, Annual Reports, 1950, 1969. 79. “City Police Changing Enforcement in Gambling and Narcotics, with Purpose of Focusing on Major Dealer,” New York Times, January 13, 1972, 33. 80. Knapp Commission Report, 79. 81. Selwyn Raab, “Longtime Numbers King of New York Goes Public to Clear His Name,” New York Times, July 15, 1997. 82. James Lawson, “Amnesty Is Answer to Policy Betting,” New York Amsterdam News, January 29, 1972. 83. Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Legalized Numbers in

NOT ES TO PAGES 140–145   187

Washington: Implications with Respect to Law Enforcement, Civil Rights, and Control by the Community (Washington, DC, 1973), d-­24, d-­25, d-­15. 84. Washington Lawyers’ Committee, 4. Statement refers to years 1969–1971 and is drawn from FBI Uniform crime reports. 85. Washington Lawyers’ Committee, d-­71. 86. “Lewis Caldwell Joins Dairy Company,” Chicago Defender, June 21, 1961, 5. 87. “Reception to Fete Candidate Caldwell,” Chicago Defender, April 23, 1966, 3. 88. Gary Rivlin, Fire on the Prairie: Chicago’s Harold Washington and the Politics of Race (New York: Henry Holt, 1992), 54. 89. Robert McClory, “Up from Obscurity: Harold Washington,” in The Making of the Mayor: Chicago, 1983, ed. Melvin G. Holli and Paul M. Green (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1984), 3. On Mike Sneed in the policy game, see John Camper, Cheryl Devall, and John Kass, “The Road to City Hall: A Half Century of Black Political Evolution,” Chicago Tribune, November 16, 1986, H12. 90. Letter from Harold Washington and Lewis Caldwell to Richard J. Daley, March 25, 1973, Harold Washington Papers, Illinois State Representative Records, Constituent Series, box 6, folder 2, Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago, IL. 91. Illinois House of Representatives, Policy Numbers Game Study Committee, “Report and Recommendations to the Legislature” (Springfield, IL, June 1975). 92. Commission on the Review of the National Policy Toward Gambling, Gambling in America: Appendix 3, Summaries of Commission Hearings (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1976), viii. 93. Gambling in America: Appendix 3, 30–38. 94. Commission on the Review of the National Policy Toward Gambling, Gambling in America: Final Report (Washington, DC, 1976), ix. 95. Gambling in America: Final Report, 6. 96. Gambling in America: Final Report, 15. 97. Gambling in America: Appendix 3, 238. 98. Gambling in America: Appendix 3, 239. 99. Gambling in America: Appendix 3, 238. 100. Gambling in America: Appendix 3, 235. 101. Gambling in America: Appendix 3, 257. 102. Gambling in America: Appendix 3, 295. 103. Gambling in America: Appendix 3, 432. 104. Gambling in America: Appendix 3, 439. 105. Gambling in America: Final Report, 143. 106. K. Leroy Irvis, “Time to Meet Needs of Elderly,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 17, 1977. 107. Joy Haenlin, “Tiff Over Terminals: Lottery Plan Faces a Fight,” Detroit News, February 11, 1980. 108. Gary Selesner and Michael Davis, “Riding out the Economic Storm in Michigan,” Gaming Business Magazine, March 1982. 109. “William Lloyd ‘Little Willie’ Adams, Prominent Venture Capitalist,” Baltimore Sun, June 28, 2011; Frederick N. Rasmussen, “Former Numbers Runner Became Venture Capitalist,” Baltimore Sun, June 29, 2011. 110. “Md. Lottery Chairmen Hits Bigger Jackpots,” Washington Post, January 27, 1979. Also “Md. Lottery Payouts Going Up 10 Pct.,” Washington Post, April 24, 1979.

188  NOT ES TO PAGES 145–151

111. “Blacks Bet the Numbers, Shun the Ohio Lottery,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 13, 1977. 112. “Operator Says State Can’t Stop Numbers,” Cleveland Call & Post, January 28, 1978; “Legalize Numbers Game,” Cleveland Call & Post, April 23, 1977. 113. “4 Legislators Want to Abolish Ohio Lottery,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 7, 1979. 114. State of Illinois, 80th General Assembly, transcript of floor debate on HB 41, House of Representatives, June 10, 1977. 115. State of Illinois, 80th General Assembly, transcript of floor debate on HB 41, State Senate, June 28, 1977. 116. “Fate Rests on New Daily Game: Lottery in Jeopardy—Thompson,” Chicago Tribune, September 28, 1979. 117. The Illinois Lottery went from $32 million in revenue for 1978 to $215 million in revenue for 1983. Meanwhile arrests for numbers (policy) in Chicago went from 833 in 1974 to 26 in 1986. See John Obi Ifediora, “The Impact of the Illinois State Lottery on the Economy of Chicago” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Chicago, 1989), 27, 78. 118. Gary Selesner and Michael Davis, “Resurrectors of the Lost Lottery,” Gaming Business Magazine, January 1983. 119. “Carey Given a Proposal for State Numbers Game,” New York Times, April 12, 1977. 120. Les Matthews, “Whites Planning to Take Over Harlem Numbers,” New York Amsterdam News, April 16, 1977. 121. “Offer State $20 Million for 400 OTB Locations,” New York Amsterdam News, May 7, 1977. 122. Joshua B. Freeman, Working-­Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II (New York: New Press, 2000), 256. 123. Jack Newfield and Wayne Barret, City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 137. 124. Transcript of State Assembly Debates on Tax Law 1612 held on April 2nd, 1980, 3128. Available by request at Public Information Office, room 202, Empire State Plaza, Albany, New York 12248. 125. State Assembly Debates, 3138. 126. State Assembly Debates, 3148. 127. Julilliy Kohler-­Hausmann, Getting Tough: Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 122. 128. “Albany Discovers the Numbers,” New York Amsterdam News, April 5, 1980. 129. Mary Ann Giordano, “Fear State Has Their Number,” Daily News, April 30, 1980. 130. “Lottery Company Starts $80,000 Blitz in District,” Washington Post, October 29, 1980. 131. Peter Reuter, Disorganized Crime: The Economics of the Visible Hand (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), 84. 132. Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Panel Says Cuban Emigres Run a Bet Ring,” New York Times, June 25, 1985. 133. Leonard Buder, “11 Are Accused in Fatal Blazes at Betting Sites,” New York Times, October 8, 1985. 134. President’s Commission on Organized Crime, Organized Crime and Gambling: Record of Hearing VII, June 24–26, 1985 (New York, 1985), 71–82. 135. “Stroke Kills Lawson, Popular Harlem Man,” New York Amsterdam News, July 13, 1985. 136. Peter Noel, “2 Nabbed in $7 Million Harlem Numbers Biz,” New York Amsterdam News, August 31, 1985.

NOT ES TO PAGES 151–157   189

137. Pennsylvania Crime Commission, Organized Crime in Pennsylvania: A Decade of Change, 1990 Report (Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1990), 214–23. 138. James R. Willis, interview with author, February 19, 2016. 139. “Jackpot Fever,” Public Gaming Magazine, August 1993. 140. Terri La Fleur, “Daily Numbers Game Still 1st in Sales,” Gaming and Wagering Business, June 1985. Conclusion

1. Vernon E. Jordan, “Legalize the Numbers,” Cleveland Call & Post, March 9, 1974. 2. State Lotteries: An Overview, Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States Senate, Ninety-­Eighth Congress, Second Session, October 3, 1984 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1985), 2. 3. Terri La Fleur, “Is There a Limit to the Lotto Supersize?” Gaming and Wagering Business, May 1985. 4. “Honeymoon Over, It’s Hardball Time for Lotto,” Gaming and Wagering Business, February 1986. 5. Terri La Fleur, “Lotteries in the News: Tri-­State Lottery Booms Amid Lotto Fever,” Gaming and Wagering Business, October 1985. 6. Terri La Fleur, “Lotteries: ‘America’s Game’ Could Mean Another 1.8 Billion,” Gaming and Wagering Business, July 1986. 7. State Lotteries: An Overview, 16. 8. Terri La Fleur, “Lotteries in the News: Tri-­State Lotto to Debut; Iowa Is Next,” Gaming and Wagering Business, July 1985. 9. “1987 Newsmakers,” Gaming and Wagering Business, December 15, 1987. 10. Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective,” American Economic Review 96, no. 2 (May 2006): 200–205. 11. New York Lottery Director John Quinn and Kentucky Lottery Director James Hosker, both hired away from their state jobs by Gtech, stand as examples. See William M. Bulkely and Steve Stecklow, “Long a Winner, Gtech Faces Resistance Based on Ethical Concerns,” Wall Street Journal, January 16, 1996, A1. 12. Victor Markowicz, “Editorial,” Public Gaming International, August 1988. 13. Thomas B. Edsall, “Profit and Presidential Politics: For Lobbying Firm, Business Is Booming,” Washington Post, August 12, 1989, A1. 14. Sharon LaFraniere and Kenneth Vogel, “Rick Gates Testifies He Committed Crimes with Paul Manafort,” New York Times, August 6, 2018. 15. Paul Jacobs and Virginia Ellis, “Lottery Firm Linked to Robbins Case,” Los Angeles Times, November 22, 1991, A3. 16. On Gtech in New Jersey and Kentucky, see Peter Elkind, “The Numbers Crunchers,” Fortune, November 11, 1996; on Gtech in Texas, see R. G. Ratcliffe, “Gtech Pays $725,000 in Lottery Suit, Settlement Is Related to Linares Controversy,” Houston Chronicle, September 18, 1998; also George Kuempel, “Texas Lottery Operator Settles Lawsuit That Sparked Bush Allegations,” Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, November 1, 1999. 17. “Lotto Nonsense,” The Economist, February 7, 1998. 18. José Silveira, “SFC 4—Sistema Federal de Corrupção,” Jornal do Commercio, October 12, 2005; also see “Caixa Economica Federal Abandona Sistema de Loteria da Gtech,” O Globo, October 20, 2005. 19. Todd Benson, “SEC Investigating Gtech,” New York Times, July 30, 2004.

190  NOT ES TO PAGES 157–162

20. Heather Timmons, “Operator of Italian Lottery to Buy Gtech for $4.6 Billion,” New York Times, January 11, 2006. 21. Q4 2008 Lottomatica S.p.a. Earnings Presentation, Final. Fair Disclosure Wire. Waltham, March 5, 2009. 22. “Italy’s GTECH to Buy Casino/Equipment Maker IGT,” Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2014. 23. Linda Sandler and Paulene Yoshihashi, “Gambling-­Equipment Stocks’ Winning Streak Has Some Saying Now Is Time to Cash Out,” Wall Street Journal, February 24, 1992, C2. 24. Byron White, Majority Opinion, California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, 480 U.S. 202 (1987). 25. Gary C. Anders, “Indian Gaming: Financial and Regulatory Issues,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 556, no. 1 (March 1, 1998): 98–108. 26. National Indian Gaming Commission, Gross Gaming Revenue Reports, Growth in Indian Gaming Graph, 1995–2004 and 2008–2017. 27. John Paul Stevens, Majority Opinion, Greater New Orleans Broadcasting Association., Inc. v. United States, 527 U.S. 173 (1999). 28. Samuel Alito, Majority Opinion, Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, 584 U.S._ (2018). 29. Richard N. Velotta, “IGT Executives Taking Long View on Sports Betting Rewards,” Las Vegas Review Journal, October 31, 2018. 30. “IGT and William Hill U.S. Form Strategic Partnership for U.S. Lotteries,” PR Newswire, September 25, 2018. 31. Daniel Bell, “Crime as an American Way of Life,” Antioch Review 13, no. 2 (Summer 1953). 32. “Chief Cawley Calls for Number Legalization,” New York Amsterdam News, September 1, 1973, 1.v

Index

ABC network, 129 Abyssinian Baptist Church, 59 Accardo, Tony, 29 Adams, Francis W. H., 73–75, 83 Adams, Willie “Little Willie,” 95–97, 145 Adams v. Maryland (1954), 95–97, 145 Afro-­American (newspaper), 96, 100 Agee, Christopher, 8 Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board (1965), 118 Allman, James P., 18 Americana Hotel, 129 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 113 American Municipal Association, 34 Anastasia, Albert, 70 anti-­policy act (Illinois; 1905), 16 Aqueduct Race Track, 2 Arm, Walter, 80 Arvey, Jacob, 25, 26, 49 Associated Negro Press, 24, 25, 41 Audubon Ballroom, 74 Baldwin, Davarian, 9 Baltimore Police Department, 96 Baltimore Sun, 99 Bane, Charles A., 44 Batch, Ralph, 124, 139, 144 Battle, Samuel J., 6 Bauler, Mathias “Paddy,” 45 Beck, William, 114, 115 Beck v. Ohio (1964), 115, 120 Bell, Daniel, 4, 5, 160

Berkman, Bernard, 113 Beytagh, Francis X., Jr., 118, 119 “Big Nine.” See Chicago City Council Emergency Crime Committee Biles, Roger, 22 bingo, 73–75 Birns, Shondor, 110, 112 Bivens, Jimmy, 110 Black, Hugo, 97, 102, 103, 114, 118, 119 Black, Julian, 24 Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, 157 Blueitt, Kinzie, 38 Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), 96 Boyland, Thomas, 148, 149 Brazilian Federal Lottery, 157 Brennan, William J., 117 Broderick, Vincent L., 89, 126, 135 Brooklyn Eagle, 65 Brown, Earl, 52, 64, 65, 70–75, 89, 91, 99 Brydges, Earl, 127, 130 Buckner, William P., 74 Burnham, David, 134 Burns, J. X., 68 Cahan, Charles, 107 Caldwell, Lewis, 17–19, 140, 141, 143, 146 California Supreme Court, 107 California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians (1987), 158 Call & Post (Cleveland), 114, 146 Capers, Jean M., 109 Capone, Al. See mob, Al Capone

192  INDEX

Carey, Archibald, 48 Carey, Hugh, 147–50 Cartan, John T., 18 Carton, John, 72, 83 casino gambling, 5, 158, 159; Las Vegas, 5; Native America, 158 Cassese, John J., 83, 84, 89 Cawley, Donald, 161 Cayton, Horace, 9, 14 CBS News, 87 Celler, Emanuel, 123 Cermak, Anton, 16, 17, 52 Chenowith, M. Gene, 103 Chew, Charles, 146 Chicago City Council Emergency Crime Committee (“Big Nine”) 43–47, 54, 56 Chicago Corporation Council, 44 Chicago Crime Commission, 19–21, 25–28, 33, 42, 44, 160 Chicago Daily News, 52, 53 Chicago Defender, 21, 24, 29, 48, 53, 54, 99, 100, 140 Chicago Democratic machine, 29, 49 Chicago Housing Authority, 48 Chicago Patrolmen’s Association, 46 Chicago Police Department, 12, 17–19, 26–28, 31, 32, 35–38, 42–49, 56, 79 Chicago Police Sergeants’ Association, 46 Chicago racket courts, 27, 28, 108 Chicago Relief Administration, 21 Chicago Sun-­Times, 50, 51, 53 Chicago Tribune, 21, 26, 47, 50–52 Cincinnati Police Department, 79 Civilian Complaint Review Board (New York), 72, 89, 135 Clark, Kenneth, 87 Clark, Tom, 107, 113 Cleveland City Council, 146 Cleveland Plain Dealer, 110, 145 Cleveland Police Department, 79, 93, 94, 106, 109–16; Bureau of Special Investigations, 110 Cobb, James A., 96 Combs, Hayes “Brownie,” 101 Commission on the Review of the National Policy toward Gambling, 142 Committee of 100,000 Citizens Against the Lottery Amendment, 127

Congregation Emes Wozedek, 74 Congressional Record, 80 Connecticut state lottery, 139 Cook County Bureau of Public Welfare, 18 Cook County Family Court, 140 Coolidge, Calvin, 84 Costello, Frank, 70 Courtney, Thomas, 25 Crowley, Wilbert, 41 Daily Worker (newspaper), 63 Daley, Richard J., 49, 52, 54, 55 Davis, Benjamin J., Jr., 63, 64 Dawson, William L., 22–28, 35, 41, 49–57, 61, 141, 162 Day, William R., 105 DC lottery, 150, 151, 155 Delau, Carl, 110–16 Delmonico Hotel, 128 Dent, Lois, 108 De Priest, Oscar, 16, 22, 24 Derrick, John, 65 Desmond, Charles S., 116 Despres, Leon, 55 Detroit Police Department, 79, 138 Dewey, Thomas, 66, 67, 160 Dickerson, Earl, 23 disorderly conduct, 77, 79 Douglas, William O., 102, 103, 114 Drake, St. Clair, 9, 14 Duke Bar Journal, 103 Dunlap, John B., 45, 100, 101 Durenburger, David, 153 Durk, David, 134 Ebony, 6 Escobedo v. Illinois (1964), 116 Evans, Rev. Joseph M., 20 Farrell, Herman, 148 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 20, 71 Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 130 Federal Wagering Occupational Stamp Tax, 94, 95, 97–105, 109, 117–22, 142 Fifth Amendment, 21, 40, 94–97, 101–5, 114–22 Fino, Paul A., 129

INDEX   193

First Amendment, 111, 112, 159 Fitzpatrick, F. Emmet, 143 Flynn, John, 67 Ford, Gerald, 142 Fortas, Abe, 118 Fourteenth Amendment, 113, 115, 117, 120, 121 Fourth Amendment, 93–95, 104–6, 109–17 Frankfurter, Felix, 102, 106, 112, 114 Franklin National Bank, 128 Freeman, Joshua, 147 Fuller & Ross & Smith, 130 Gaines, Dan, 24 Gambling Enforcement and Inspection Review Board, 84 Gaming and Wagering Business, 154 Gaming Business Magazine, 145 Garton, Stephen, 9 Garvey, Marcus, 132 Genovese crime family, 82 Georgia state lottery, 155 Gettig, Blair, 154 Gibbons, Redmond, 45 Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), 116 Gill, Joseph I., 50 Gilligan, Thomas, 86, 89 Glancey, Joseph R., 142 Goldberg, Louis, 74 Goluboff, Risa, 8, 77 Goodman, Louis E., 101 Gosnell, Harold, 16 Graf, Rev. Dr. Charles Howard, 128 Gray, Jesse, 86 Greater New Orleans Broadcasting Ass’n v. United States (1999), 159 Green, Adam, 54 Greenberg, Samuel, 126, 127 Gross, Charlie, 43 Gross, Harry, 68 Grosso, Anthony, 118, 119 Grosso v. United States (1968), 118–22 Gtech Corporation, 156–60 Guzik, Jake, 29 Haddock, Ambrose J., 63 Haller, Mark, 9, 15 Halley, Rudolph, 35 Hamilton, Charles V., 80

Haney, Michael, 110 Harlan, John Marshall, II, 112, 114, 119 Harlem Council for Economic Development, 132 Harlem Labor Union, 132 Harlem Riot of 1935, 72 Harlem Riot of 1964, 86–88, 132 Harriman, W. Averell, 74 Harris, LaShawn, 9 Harrison, George, 42 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act (1914), 97 Hartford Courant, 117 Hayes, George E. C., 96 Helgeson, Jeffrey, 55 Hildebrand, Rev. Richard Allen, 86 Holman, Claude, 55 Home Rule Act (1973), 140 Hood Memorial Baptist Church, 74 Hoover, J. Edgar, 78 Horan, Al, 49 House Ways and Means Committee, 97 Howard, Betty, 48 Howard, Donald, 48 Illinois Relief Commission, 19 Illinois state legislature, 140–42, 146, 147 Illinois State Lottery, 141, 144, 146, 147, 151, 154, 155 Illinois Supreme Court, 21, 46, 108 Impellitteri, Vincent, 68, 72 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (1988), 158 Interdenominational Ministers Fellowship, 18 Internal Revenue Service (IRS), 45, 46, 99– 101 International Game Technology (IGT), 158–60 Iowa state lottery, 155 Irvine, Patrick, 105, 106 Irvine v. California (1954), 105–7, 119 Irvis, K. Leroy, 144 jackpot games, 8, 10, 154–56 Jackson, Dan, 16 Jackson, Robert, 102, 107 James, Esther, 61 James v. Powell (1967), 61, 88 Javits, Jacob, 72, 130 Johnson, Edwin C., 98, 99

194  INDEX

Johnson, John “Mushmouth,” 16 Johnson, Lyndon, 130 Johnson, Marilynn, 71 Joint Council of Police Department Organizations (Chicago), 46 Jonas, Edgar A., 98 Jones, Edward, 24, 25, 29, 39–41, 96 Jones, George, 24 Jones, Henry “Teenan,” 16 Jones, McKissack “Mack,” 24 Jones, Michael J., 147 Jones brothers, 17, 24, 39, 42 Jordan, Vernon E., 153 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 20 Kahriger, Joseph, 101 Kansas state lottery, 155 Katz, Charles, 120 Katz v. United States (1967), 120 Kearns, A. L., 112, 113 Kefauver, Estes, 31, 34, 37, 40, 41, 78, 98 Kefauver Committee, 30, 32, 33, 35, 36–42, 70, 71, 94–99, 109, 125, 132, 145, 160 Kells, George, 29 Kelly, Edward, 17–19, 22–27, 29 Kennedy, Stephen P., 59, 75–78, 82–84, 94, 135 Kennelly, Martin H., 25–29, 32, 35–38, 42, 44, 47–57 Kentucky state lottery, 157 King, Donald, 110 King, John, 123 Kings County Grand Jury investigation into police corruption, 31, 65–70 Knapp Commission, 134–39, 150, 163 Knight, Jim, 24 Knights of Columbus, 74 “known gamblers,” 62, 77, 78, 85 Koch, Ed, 148, 151 Kohn, Aaron, 45 La Guardia, Fiorello, 66 Las Vegas casinos, 5 Lausche, Frank J., 130 Lautier, Louis, 100 Lawson, James R., 70, 132, 134, 139, 147, 149, 151, 162, 163 layoff betting, 15, 96

Leary, Howard, 134, 135 Leary v. United States (1969), 120 Lehman, Herbert, 66 Leibowitz, Samuel, 68 Lewis, Frank, 103 Lewis v. United States (1955), 103, 104, 119 Levin, Carl, 143 Lieutenants Benevolent Association, 138 Life (magazine), 64 Lindsay, John, 129, 134, 135 Lindway v. Ohio (1936), 113 Los Angeles Times, 93, 125 Lotto, 155 Lottomatica, 157 Louis, Joe, 24 Lowe, Edwin S., 129, 130 Lvovsky, Anna, 121 Lybarger, Donald, 110 Maclin, Tracey, 107 Mahon, Gertrude Bauer, 113 Maine-­Idaho-­Ohio policy wheel, 29 Maine state lottery, 155 Malloy, William, 117 Malloy v. Hogan (1964), 116, 117 Manafort, Paul, 157 Manning, Christopher, 22 Manno, Pat, 40 Mapp, Dollree, 93, 110–13, 120 Mapp v. Ohio (1961), 84, 91, 93, 109–17, 120, 125, 126 Marchetti, James, 118 Marchetti v. United States (1968), 104, 118–22 Marihuana Tax Act (1937), 97, 120 Markowicz, Victor, 156, 157 Marquez, “Spanish Raymond,” 82, 139 Martin, “Big Jim,” 29, 41, 42 Maryland Lottery, 139, 144, 145, 151, 155 Massachusetts Lottery, 139, 151, 154, 155 mass incarceration, 9 Mays, Bob, 42 McCarthy, Joseph, 34 McDonald, Miles, 65, 66–68 McKay, Claude, 2, 9 McKee, Duncan, 103 McKnight, William T., 115 McLeod v. City of Jackson (1947), 69 Mega Millions, 155

INDEX   195

Merriam, Robert, 42, 46, 47 Michalko, Mark, 154 Michigan Lottery, 139, 144, 151, 155 Miers, Harriet, 157 Miller, George, 148 Minton, Sherman, 103 Miranda v. Arizona (1966), 116 Mitchell, Parren, 145 mob: Al Capone, 21, 22, 29, 30; East Harlem, 81, 82; Genovese crime family, 82 Monaghan, George P., 69, 71–73 Moore, William Howard, 32 Morrison Hotel, 50, 54 Motts, Leon, 24 Motts, Robert T., 16 Murphy, Claude, 50, 54 Murphy, Frank, 106 Murphy, Michael J., 84–86, 89, 90, 125, 126 Murphy, Patrick V., 135–38, 143, 161 Murphy, Thomas F., 68, 69 Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association (2018), 159 Murphy v. Waterfront Commission (1964), 118 Murtagh, John M., 101

munity Control of Policy (ACCOP), 139, 149 New York Daily News, 126 New York Herald Tribune, 64, 65 New York Hilton Hotel, 129 New York Newsday, 116 New York Police Department (NYPD), 6, 59– 92, 102, 134–38, 151, 161–63 New York Post, 80–82 New York Senate, 126, 127 New York State Board of Regents, 127 New York State Court of Appeals, 116 New York state legislature, 7, 66, 71, 126–28, 133, 147–49 New York State Liquor Authority, 66 New York State Lottery, 1, 126–34, 139, 146– 51, 154 New York State Lottery Commission, 128 New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), 157 New York Times, 67, 77, 84, 88, 93, 117, 126, 129, 130 Northwestern University Law Review, 20, 103, 108 Nugent, William, 144

narcotics arrests, 85 Nash, Pat, 29 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 18, 72, 80, 86 Native American casinos, 158 NBC network, 129 Negro Chamber of Commerce, 140 New Jersey Lottery, 7, 124, 139, 144, 151, 157 New Journal and Guide, 99 New Hampshire Lottery, 123, 124, 155 New York Amsterdam News, 64, 86, 87, 91, 99, 131, 147, 149, 151 New York Archdiocese, 73 New York Assembly, 126, 127 New York Black Legislative Caucus, 140 New York City blackout of 1977, 148 New York City Council, 71,72 New York City Gamblers Court, 62 New York City Magistrates Court, 117 New York City padlock law, 151 New York City Welfare Department, 128 New York Clearing House, 2 New York Committee for Amnesty and Com-

O’Brien, William P., 67, 68 O’Conner, George P., 18 O’Conner, Timothy J., 42–44, 46, 47, 55 O’Dwyer, William, 63, 65–68, 70, 91, 133 off-­track betting (OTB), 75, 125, 133, 134, 140, 147 Off-­Track Pari-­Mutuel Betting Law (1970), 133 Ohio Lottery, 145, 146, 151, 154 Ohio Supreme Court, 106, 111 O’Neill, Joseph, 143 Oregon state lottery, 155 Organized Crime Control Act (1970), 142 “pad, the” 80–82, 136, 137, 139 Palma Boys Social Club, 82 Panarella, Charles, 69 pari-­mutuel betting, 75, 133 Parker, William, 107, 108 Patman, Wright, 129 Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (New York), 68, 69, 72, 83, 84, 135, 137, 138 Pavlic, Albert, 154

196  INDEX

Pennsylvania Crime Commission, 151 Pennsylvania General Assembly, 133 Pennsylvania State Lottery, 139, 144, 151, 152, 154 People v. Cahan (1955), 107, 108, 113 People v. Dent (1939), 108 People v. Edge (1950), 108 Peterson, Virgil W., 19, 20, 32–35, 51, 108, 160 Philadelphia Tribune, 42 Phillis Wheatley Society, 109 “plantation politics,” 55 police salaries, 36, 37, 67, 83, 84, 137 Policy Numbers Game Study Committee, 141 Powell, Adam Clayton, 59–61, 70–73, 77, 80, 83, 88, 91, 94, 134, 162 Powell, Colin, 1 Powell, James, 86 Powerball, 155 Prendergast, John C., 26, 35–37, 42, 48, 55, 94 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA), 159 Prohibition, 3,6, 8 prostitution, 79 Public Gaming International, 156 Rangel, Charles, 7, 132–34, 163 Reed, Stanley, 102 Reid, Ed, 65 Reisman, Leonard, 117 Revenue Act of 1951, 98, 99 Rhode Island state lottery, 155 Robbins, Alan, 157 Robertson, Stephen, 9 Robinson, George, 37–40 Rockefeller, Nelson, 127 Rodriguez, Francisco, 86 Roe, Theodore, 29, 35, 38–40, 42, 96 Royko, Mike, 49, 54 Salerno, Anthony “Fat Tony,” 82 Samuels, Howard, 133, 134 Scalley, Thomas, 103 Schlabach, Elizabeth, 10, 14, 15 Schultz, Dutch, 21, 62 Schwarz, George, 143 scratch tickets, 8 Sealy, Lloyd, 89

search warrants, 26, 37, 62, 84, 105–16 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 157 Senate Finance Committee, 97, 98 Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce. See Kefauver Committee Serpico, Frank, 134 Sharkey-­Brown-­Isaacs bill, 64 Silveira, José, 157 Simmons, Bob, 42 “single action” game, 81 Sixth Amendment, 116 Slater, Fred, 108 Sneed, Mike, 141 Snowden, Guy, 156 sports betting, 66, 159 St. Clair, Stephanie, 62 St. George, Katharine, 98 Stevens, James T., 90 Stevens, John Paul, 159 Stevens v. Marks Stevens v. Marks (1966), 90 Stewart, Potter, 115 Stokes, Louis, 120 Stone, Roger, 157 Story, Frank, 109 Symonette, Samuel, 62–64 Tammany Hall, 66 Tavernier, Clifford, 21 tavern owners, in Chicago, 26 Tenth Amendment, 102 Terry, John W., 120 Terry v. Ohio (1968), 120 Texas state lottery, 157 Thompson, James, 147 Thompson, William “Big Bill,” 11, 16 Transport Workers Union, 69 Traynor, Roger, 107 Tremont, Peter, 40 Tri-­State Megabucks, 155 Truman, Harry, 68 Trumbull Park housing project, 32, 48, 52–54 Trump, Donald J., 157 United African Nationalist Movement, 70 United States Congress, 61, 94, 97–99, 102–4, 118, 129, 142

INDEX   197

United States Department of Justice, 71, 123, 134 United States House of Representatives, 97, 98 United States Senate, 30, 32, 34, 130, 153 United States Supreme Court, 7, 69, 84, 85, 90, 91, 93–122, 158, 159 United States Treasury Department, 98; agents, 102 United States v. Calamaro (1957), 104 United States v. Kahriger (1953), 101–5 Urban League, 18, 20, 21, 133, 153 vagrancy, 77, 79 Vermont state lottery, 155 Virginia state lottery, 155 Wagner, Robert F., Jr., 72–75, 84, 91 Waldorf Astoria hotel, 128, 129 Walker, Johnnie, 70 Wallander, Arthur W., 63 Wall Street Journal, 97, 128, 129 Walsh, John Francis, 82 War on Drugs, 7, 120, 161 Warren, Earl, 113, 118, 122 Washington, Harold, 7, 141, 143, 146, 163 Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, 140

Washington Post, 127 Weeks, Fremont, 105 Weeks v. United States (1914), 105, 106 Welsh, George A., 101 Wemple, Clark, 148 Western Union, 128 West Side Story, 78 West Virginia state lottery, 155 WGN-­Radio, 42 WGN-­T V, 44, 50 White, Byron, 158 White, Shane, 9 White, Walter, 72 Whittaker, Charles E., 114 Willis, James R., 114, 115, 151 Wilson, James Q., 22 Wilson, O. W., 47, 125 Wingate, Livingston L., 133 Wolf, Julius, 106 Wolf v. Colorado (1949), 106, 107, 112–14 Works Progress Administration (WPA), 14 World’s Fair (1964), 85 Wright, Edward, 22 X, Malcolm, 9 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 18, 133