Speaker 1: Novel before we begin, a content warning the following episode
Speaker 1: contains difficult themes and violence. After making sure my little
Speaker 1: brother gets on his bus, I walk a couple of
Speaker 1: blocks up the hill to wait on mine. It's the
Speaker 1: fall of nineteen eighty three and I'm heading into the
Speaker 1: first grade throughout elementary school. Neighborhood. Friends and I meet
Speaker 1: at the driveway of some stranger's house to keep an
Speaker 1: eye out for the big yellow school bus that will
Speaker 1: take us through Nashville.
Speaker 2: For the next four years.
Speaker 1: I always sit next to the window so I can
Speaker 1: see the city go by. The morning journey starts in
Speaker 1: North Nashville, near Jefferson Street, a black historic neighborhood. The
Speaker 1: bus snakes through the streets of quiet homes where you
Speaker 1: just knew someone's grandparents lived. There are chairs on front porches,
Speaker 1: no matter how small, and carefully wild bushes of roses
Speaker 1: or honeysuckle or whatever, bright colorful flowers bloom when it's
Speaker 1: their time. Instead of taking the forty interstate that had
Speaker 1: devastated the neighborhood with its arrival in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: the bus bounces over railroad tracks into the west side
Speaker 1: of Nashville until we arrive in Sylvan Park, a white
Speaker 1: part of town. The deeper we go, the denser the
Speaker 1: trees grow, blocking the sun. Not in a menacing way,
Speaker 1: in an undisturbed way. The houses range from quaint to
Speaker 1: gingerbread to many country castles, and it's clear no one
Speaker 1: is sending an inner state through this neighborhood. As the
Speaker 1: bus glides into position in front of my elementary school,
Speaker 1: I steal myself.
Speaker 2: For the day ahead.
Speaker 1: Inside I'll be separated from my bus friends and become
Speaker 1: the only black girl in whatever they called gifted classes.
Speaker 1: Back then, I only see my black friends at lunch
Speaker 1: and pe and then again in the afternoon on the bus.
Speaker 2: Ride back to North Nashville.
Speaker 1: When I became an adult, I realized I'd been part
Speaker 1: of a long term bussing program to help desegregate schools
Speaker 1: in Nashville. The rhythms of my daily school year routine,
Speaker 1: the long winding bus journey, days split between black friends
Speaker 1: and family and white classmates and teachers, were all part
Speaker 1: of a bigger political project to address a deep legacy
Speaker 1: of discrimination and segregation. And though I didn't quite realize
Speaker 1: it at the time, I was learning not just about multiplications, spelling,
Speaker 1: and how to write incursive. I was also absorbing lessons
Speaker 1: about what it meant to succeed as a black girl
Speaker 1: in America. What was expected of you, what lines and
Speaker 1: worlds you had to carefully walk between. When I started
Speaker 1: working on this podcast, I recognized this part of myself
Speaker 1: in Unice Carter, the need to be respectable, to be
Speaker 1: able to move in white spaces. When we last left Unis,
Speaker 1: she had been dreaming of making an impact and had
Speaker 1: decided the law was the place she was going to
Speaker 1: do that. By nineteen twenty eight, Unice left her writing
Speaker 1: and the Harlem renaissance behind. When I was separated from
Speaker 1: my black friends in school for advanced classes, I did
Speaker 1: not enjoy being the only black person or the only
Speaker 1: black girl in the room. I wondered if being singled
Speaker 1: out for her intelligence and ambition was important to Unis
Speaker 1: as she separated herself from her parents' legacy and the
Speaker 1: rest of her community in Harlem. It seems like she
Speaker 1: wanted more for herself, But did she worry what would
Speaker 1: happen if she failed. I'm Nicole Perkins and from the
Speaker 1: teams at iHeartRadio and novel This Is the Godmother, Episode three,
Speaker 1: Breaking through.
Speaker 3: The gold past a point out where a lot of
Speaker 3: the like clubs were compass saying Phillips the Priscopal Church reading.
Speaker 1: During my walking tour of Harlem, one of the stops
Speaker 1: my guide was most excited to show me was Seventh Avenue.
Speaker 3: One of start going down Seventh Avenue. Okay, we can
Speaker 3: go by what Billie Holliday was discovered. We can go
Speaker 3: to the home of Langston News. We'll cut across p
Speaker 3: the avenue, go, of course of rankin Newser's house.
Speaker 1: At the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Seventh Avenue was
Speaker 1: the scene of some of its best night life, and
Speaker 1: just a few blocks south of Seventh Avenue and one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty fifth Street was.
Speaker 2: This large elm tree.
Speaker 1: It had grown there for decades, and it was nicknamed
Speaker 1: the Tree of Hope.
Speaker 2: Or the Wishing Tree.
Speaker 1: It gave Seventh Avenue the name the Boulevard of Dreams.
Speaker 1: The story is that one day one of Harlem's actors
Speaker 1: stood underneath this elm tree wishing for a job, and
Speaker 1: then a producer walked up to offer him one. In
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three, America is firmly in the midst of
Speaker 1: the Great Depression, passers by are touching that elm tree
Speaker 1: for good luck, placing their hands on this trunk, wishing
Speaker 1: for work, and wonder if Eunice was superstitious at all,
Speaker 1: if she ever made a wish on the tree trunk
Speaker 1: as she passed by. Six years have passed since we
Speaker 1: last saw Unice. As she's looking for somewhere to hang
Speaker 1: the shingle for her own private law practice. She'd settled
Speaker 1: on an office just a little way down from the
Speaker 1: Tree of Hope. She'd graduated law school and passed the bar.
Speaker 1: For all intentsive purposes, she'd succeeded in her plan to
Speaker 1: escape a more traditional life as housewife and social life.
Speaker 1: But if some of that elmtree luck rubbed off on
Speaker 1: Unis her first couple of years as a private practice
Speaker 1: attorney do not show it. It was a far cry
Speaker 1: from what she imagined for herself when she entered law school. First,
Speaker 1: let's go back in time a little bit to Eunice
Speaker 1: Hunting Carter arriving at the Woolworth Building downtown Manhattan on
Speaker 1: a bright September day in nineteen twenty seven. The Woolworth
Speaker 1: Building at two thirty three Broadway is glamorous and Gothic
Speaker 1: imagine Westminster Abbey, but slicker and as a skyscraper.
Speaker 2: It's got a cathedral like.
Speaker 1: Presence, all fifty eight floors looming over the city. Eunice
Speaker 1: enters the lobby that day, full of hope and with
Speaker 1: an ambitious plan. She needs to navigate her way out
Speaker 1: of the monotony facing her. She's not just a writer
Speaker 1: or a housewife and mother. She's not just missus Lyle Carter.
Speaker 1: She is more, or at least she plans to be.
Speaker 1: As Unice steps into that lobby for the first time,
Speaker 1: she is surrounded by intricate gold latticework, mosaics, glossy marble stone,
Speaker 1: shafts of light filtering through lead light windows. When she
Speaker 1: enters the elevator, an attendant dings the button that will
Speaker 1: take her up to the twenty seventh and twenty eighth floor.
Speaker 2: Fordham Law School.
Speaker 1: There's a library, three large classrooms, some offices for the
Speaker 1: dean and the registrar. There's a smoking room, and the
Speaker 1: most spectacular view the New York City skyline. It's around
Speaker 1: six o'clock in the evening, long shadows cast by the
Speaker 1: setting sun on the west side.
Speaker 4: She was attending at night while still working as a
Speaker 4: social worker. A lot of law schools made it difficult
Speaker 4: to attend if you were working or had other obligations.
Speaker 4: So women, black people, Jewish people, Catholics. Bar was trying
Speaker 4: to keep all these people out of the practice of law,
Speaker 4: and so Fordham was trying to be more inclusive by
Speaker 4: allowing people to attend night classes.
Speaker 1: Eunice's decision to attend law school probably came with considerable debate.
Speaker 1: She had a toddler at home, a perfectly good career
Speaker 1: under her belt already. Eunice's own mother, Addie, preached that
Speaker 1: the best place for a black woman was by her
Speaker 1: husband's side at home, not gallivanting around Manhattan at night.
Speaker 1: A masterclass example of the do as I say, not
Speaker 1: as I do lifestyle, Unice strikes me as a stubborn woman,
Speaker 1: and as a stubborn woman myself, I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 1: if all the possible backlash against her decision made her
Speaker 1: even more determined to earn her law degree. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there were plenty of people who doubted her ability to
Speaker 1: succeed her classmates. Is she stared at as she makes
Speaker 1: her way to class do her peers wonder whether she
Speaker 1: strolled in by accident.
Speaker 2: She probably got that a lot in her life.
Speaker 1: Surprised at seeing her in predominantly white spaces. I wonder
Speaker 1: if anyone accused her of cheating, or how many times
Speaker 1: she remained quiet so no one thought she was trying
Speaker 1: to prove herself better than everyone else. Maybe she had
Speaker 1: her own doubts. As smart and determined as she is,
Speaker 1: She's only human despite it all. During that first term
Speaker 1: at Fordham in nineteen twenty seven, Unice's marks are unsurprisingly good.
Speaker 4: She liked the study of law a lot, found it
Speaker 4: very interesting. She was very detail oriented.
Speaker 5: Eunice's forte was doing you know, research, and she kind
Speaker 5: of excelled in going through documents.
Speaker 1: But she's not at Fordham too long when clouds appear
Speaker 1: on the horizon and things start to slide to the left.
Speaker 1: In her second year at Fordham, Unice takes a sabbatical. Publicly,
Speaker 1: she tells people that it's because she's sick. Later she
Speaker 1: would say it was actually her son, Lyle Carter Junior
Speaker 1: who was ill. But there's some historical speculation over this.
Speaker 1: From everything I know about Unice, the idea of her
Speaker 1: taking a break from law school seems unusual. Maybe the
Speaker 1: loneliness of being the only black person and the sea
Speaker 1: of white men was getting to her. The only reason
Speaker 1: I question it is that she wasn't even resting during
Speaker 1: that time off.
Speaker 4: And even during her time off for illness, she was
Speaker 4: working still political activism and campaigning.
Speaker 1: This is Unice's first foray into politics. She's working on
Speaker 1: the campaigns of some Republican candidates. That was probably as
Speaker 1: much of an education as law school. Unice's leave of
Speaker 1: absence was eighteen months, but something must have drawn her
Speaker 1: back because eventually she returns to her evening studies. She
Speaker 1: doesn't have the kind of instant success she's probably used to.
Speaker 4: So she did fail the bar exam the first time
Speaker 4: that she took it and had to retake it and
Speaker 4: passed on the second.
Speaker 1: Try to be fair to Unice, her exam was on mortgages,
Speaker 1: so she might have had trouble staying awake. In the end,
Speaker 1: she does finally pass her exams. Between her education law
Speaker 1: school and her foray into politics, Unice has to recognize
Speaker 1: a theme. She's often the only black woman in white,
Speaker 1: male dominated spaces. Is this what she thought she had
Speaker 1: to deal with in order to be at the top.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty three, Unice becomes one of the first
Speaker 1: black female qualified lawyers in New York. But what has
Speaker 1: she sacrificed of herself to get there? Walking along the
Speaker 1: Boulevard of Dreams, past the Tree of Hope and towards
Speaker 1: her small private practice office in Harlem, Unice would have
Speaker 1: been carrying the weight of the decisions she'd made. To
Speaker 1: be a trailblazer sometimes means being so far ahead you
Speaker 1: end up alone.
Speaker 2: So when she.
Speaker 1: Does finally open up her business, things were pretty slow.
Speaker 1: There are no professional accolades and finalizing wills. No one
Speaker 1: is going to write an article about her for handling
Speaker 1: misdemeanor charges. It's not exactly prestigious work. Unice may have
Speaker 1: been a lawyer, but she wasn't exactly setting the world
Speaker 1: of law on fire.
Speaker 2: But she sticks with us for nearly two years.
Speaker 1: Did she ever worry she had flung herself in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction? Did she have too much pride to turn
Speaker 1: and back? Had she sacrificed too much to retrace her steps?
Speaker 1: I know I've made some decisions that made me question
Speaker 1: if I'd made the right move, But I kept moving forward.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that's the only way to shake off self doubt.
Speaker 1: This must have been the quote tale of long dark
Speaker 1: years she'd imagined for others when she wrote that essay
Speaker 1: of hers about blazing trails and breaking through. While she's
Speaker 1: struggling to break through on her path, Eunice's former neighbor
Speaker 1: from her Brooklyn childhood, Lucky Luciano, is succeeding beyond his
Speaker 1: wildest dreams. He had chosen a very different route up
Speaker 1: the mountain. Okay, so when we last left legendary New
Speaker 1: York mobster Lucky Luciano, he was graduating too, through the
Speaker 1: layers of the New York underworld hierarchy and in the twenties,
Speaker 1: as Units had been making her way in Harlem during
Speaker 1: her years as a czarina and social climber, Lucky was
Speaker 1: doing a similar thing, making new friends, new friends with
Speaker 1: a certain status.
Speaker 6: They called him the Broadway mob. Frank Costello, Myra Lansky,
Speaker 6: Benny Siegel.
Speaker 1: Hip hop heads and fans of gangster movies alike should
Speaker 1: recognize these names in a heartbeat. Lucky's new associates have
Speaker 1: traveled through time to become some of the most well
Speaker 1: known mobsters ever.
Speaker 6: What distinguished Lucky's Broadway mob from a lot of other
Speaker 6: gangs was that it was multi ethnic. Mayra Lansky was Jewish,
Speaker 6: Benny Siegel was Jewish, Frank Costello was Italian. Unlike his
Speaker 6: old fashioned mafia predecessors, what he called the old mustache beats.
Speaker 1: By the nineteen thirties, Lucky and his crew are serious
Speaker 1: players in the world of New York crime. And in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, as Unice is arriving downtown at the
Speaker 1: Woolworth Building each evening, struggling to finish law school, Lucky
Speaker 1: is finding.
Speaker 2: Things a little easier.
Speaker 1: Soon He's headed out each evening from an equally impressive
Speaker 1: Manhattan address, the Waldorf Astoria, the largest and tallest hotel
Speaker 1: in the world. This is Lucky Luciano's new home. Those
Speaker 1: who catch a glimpse of him riding down the elevator
Speaker 1: from his thirty ninth floor suite and walking confidently through
Speaker 1: the luxurious lobby will see an almost unrecognizable figure. He's
Speaker 1: no longer the scruffy street urchin from Little Italy.
Speaker 7: Lucky Luciano was known for silk underwear. Silk shirts, never
Speaker 7: a suit off the rack, always tailored. Pinky ring in particular,
Speaker 7: was gold The shoes were always, of course, Italian leather.
Speaker 7: If they would wear a fedora, it was usually some
Speaker 7: expensive fur.
Speaker 1: Everything from head to toe, especially tailored.
Speaker 7: This was the general dress of the guys that quote
Speaker 7: unquote made it. Yes, there was vanity. Some could argue
Speaker 7: it was narcissism.
Speaker 2: But there was more to it than that.
Speaker 7: They didn't want to look like gangsters. They wanted to
Speaker 7: look like upstanding, high society citizens. They want to look
Speaker 7: like the Rockefellers.
Speaker 1: Eunice and Lucky Luciano. Their journey to respectability is quite similar.
Speaker 1: Unis uses education and class status. Lucky uses a tailored
Speaker 1: and expensive wardrobe to prove himself, and for now, at least,
Speaker 1: Lucky's methods seem to be the ones getting results.
Speaker 7: It was New York high life, if there ever was one.
Speaker 7: Traveled in the best cars, dined in the finest restaurants,
Speaker 7: hobnobbed with celebrities, living high up in the Waldorf Astoria,
Speaker 7: all the best trappings, the best parties.
Speaker 1: For extra protection, he now uses bodyguards and uses frequent aliases.
Speaker 1: But not all of Lucky's physical changes since those days
Speaker 1: when he and Unice were kids in Brooklyn are deliberate
Speaker 1: He's had his own years of struggle too. Just a
Speaker 1: few years before he came to live at the.
Speaker 7: Astoria, Lucky Luciano was abducted, taken to Staten Island, beaten up, scarred, bleeding,
Speaker 7: passed out, and tossed out on a beach.
Speaker 2: Abducted by police, so the story goes.
Speaker 7: The reason they were beating him up, according to Lucky Luccianum,
Speaker 7: is they wanted information on a criminal who was more
Speaker 7: infamous than he was at that time. He wouldn't give
Speaker 7: it up, so they beat the hell out of him.
Speaker 1: So by nineteen thirty one, Lucky's appearances also marked by
Speaker 1: scars that line his face and a droopy eye.
Speaker 7: From that moment on, the mythology of Lucky Lucciano's scars
Speaker 7: was born.
Speaker 1: You can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs,
Speaker 1: and it's no surprise Lucky's rise to the Waldorf had
Speaker 1: caused him to get into some scrapes. Ever since Lucky
Speaker 1: had walked away from school, he was regularly in contact
Speaker 1: with some of the underworld's most violent citizens, and not
Speaker 1: just in Little.
Speaker 7: Italy, across the country, from New York to Chicago to
Speaker 7: Detroit to San Francisco. These people were all on the
Speaker 7: same page.
Speaker 2: And that page well.
Speaker 1: While units had been riding high on the socialized scene
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenties Harlem Renaissance, Lucky and his contemporaries had
Speaker 1: been getting rich supplying all the booze that had been
Speaker 1: helping Harlem swing. This is the era of Prohibition, when
Speaker 1: religious Zealous convinced the federal government to ban the production, sale,
Speaker 1: and transportation of alcohol during the twenties.
Speaker 8: Prohibition is the best thing that ever happened to the
Speaker 8: mob because we have something that is illegal, but for
Speaker 8: which there's still a very active and consistent market.
Speaker 1: The government had created a gold mine for all kinds
Speaker 1: of outlaws.
Speaker 9: Prohibition makes an entire sector of the economy, the booze sector,
Speaker 9: illegal overnight. That means if you want a glass beer,
Speaker 9: you're going to have to concert with criminals. All of
Speaker 9: a sudden need now to be more criminals to provide
Speaker 9: all this booze.
Speaker 1: Lucky isn't just any kind of outlaw. He has a
Speaker 1: particular knack for making friends in useful places and keeping them.
Speaker 8: There's so many little stories, not even major things, but
Speaker 8: there's just many stories of both men and women coming
Speaker 8: in contact with him and singling him out for being
Speaker 8: this very charismatic man.
Speaker 1: His experience of striving for more in multi ethnic Little
Speaker 1: Italy has given him a special appreciation for working across
Speaker 1: different gangs.
Speaker 8: He certainly wanted as much power for himself as possible,
Speaker 8: but if it benefited him, he did not see any
Speaker 8: problem with crossing ethnic lines.
Speaker 1: Lucky was able to make the kind of connections necessary
Speaker 1: when sourcing booze from across the country.
Speaker 9: That's where you see the rise of modern organized crime
Speaker 9: starting to work across state lines, across city line with
Speaker 9: bosses beginning to collaborate. Because it's very expensive and very
Speaker 9: difficult to move a lot of liquor, you need to
Speaker 9: have really good connections.
Speaker 2: To supply.
Speaker 1: For example, a Harlem speakeasy where jazz pioneer Fletcher Henderson
Speaker 1: might pop in to pass the time between sets. Maybe
Speaker 1: he sweet talks a young legal student who stopped by
Speaker 1: on her way home from her evening classes at the
Speaker 1: Woolworth Building, so the rumor goes something to help them
Speaker 1: both ignore that ring on her finger.
Speaker 8: Prohibition provides the opportunity for mobsters to become millionaires. Literally,
Speaker 8: these are men in their twenties and thirties that are
Speaker 8: making millions of dollars when the average salary is a
Speaker 8: couple thousand dollars in the United States.
Speaker 1: And that's how Lucky came to be living it up,
Speaker 1: riding high on the boozy wave of Prohibition, a wave
Speaker 1: that sweeps him as high as the thirty ninth floor
Speaker 1: of the Waldorf Astoria in nineteen thirty one. He's far
Speaker 1: from done riding that wave, but all waves eventually break.
Speaker 1: Lucky's existence in the early nineteen thirties isn't all high life. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's the jewelry, the silk shirts, the opium parties, the showgirls,
Speaker 1: but the scars that he sees on his face each
Speaker 1: morning in the mirror are likely an unnecessary reminder. Lucky
Speaker 1: operates in a high stakes business full of danger, death,
Speaker 1: and betrayal. At the start of nineteen thirty one, there
Speaker 1: are still those above Lucky in the mob food chain.
Speaker 1: Because New York is reaching the climax of an especially
Speaker 1: bloody mob feud, something that will be known as the Castella.
Speaker 2: Maes A War.
Speaker 1: Lucky is going to use that war to catapult himse
Speaker 1: to the top of the underworld food chain and unbeknownst
Speaker 1: to him, right into Eunice's orbit.
Speaker 2: So this Caste La Maries War.
Speaker 7: From nineteen thirty to nineteen thirty one, Lucky and many
Speaker 7: of his brethren are fighting against each other in a
Speaker 7: two pronged war between two would be mob bosses in
Speaker 7: New York.
Speaker 1: Two prongs, two mob bosses, Joe Mazzaia and Salvatoria Marizano.
Speaker 1: But you don't need to remember them. They're both about
Speaker 1: to die. These two guys have been the main New
Speaker 1: York mob powers for quite a while, so gangsters know,
Speaker 1: if you're involved in crime in New York, you've generally
Speaker 1: got to be kicking up some of your profits to
Speaker 1: one of them.
Speaker 7: And Lucky he was working from Masorea and realized, as
Speaker 7: did his brethren, Masoi was weak.
Speaker 1: On an April morning in nineteen thirty one, Lucky heads
Speaker 1: over to Coney Island for a spot of lunch with
Speaker 1: the boss Massaia. Legend has it he is at the
Speaker 1: table when gunmen roll into the restaurant, aim their guns
Speaker 1: at Joe Massaia and shoot, and.
Speaker 6: That ended the cast On Larrazi War.
Speaker 1: You might be wondering how Lucky made such a lucky escape.
Speaker 1: From lunch that day. But don't worry, he actually organized
Speaker 1: the whole assassination himself.
Speaker 6: Lucky Luciano agreed to kill Joe the Boss Massarea and
Speaker 6: throw his lot in with Salvatory Marenzano.
Speaker 1: And now, in this act of Macavelian betrayal, Lucky Luciano
Speaker 1: is an even more powerful mandebster. But he's not done there,
Speaker 1: especially when word reaches him that luck might not last
Speaker 1: with the new boss.
Speaker 7: Marenzano put a nail in his own coffin when he
Speaker 7: wrote a list of all the people he wanted knocked off,
Speaker 7: and on that list was Lucky Luciano.
Speaker 1: This mobster Marenzano had written down an actual hit list.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like a very wise thing for a
Speaker 1: wise guy to do. And in September nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: Mafia lore says that associates of Lucky's disguised themselves as
Speaker 1: treasury agents.
Speaker 7: They entered Maronzano's office, stabbed and shot him to death.
Speaker 1: Put yourself in lucky shoes. You've just portrayed your first boss,
Speaker 1: and now the man you've done it for is journaling
Speaker 1: about having you killed. He might not have felt he
Speaker 1: had any choice. Left, but to take some kind of
Speaker 1: action anyway. By the fall of nineteen thirty one, Lucky's
Speaker 1: taken out two bosses of New York's underworld.
Speaker 6: When the smoke cleared in nineteen thirty one, Lucky Luciana
Speaker 6: was a head of organized crime in New York.
Speaker 1: But then, according to gangster Laura again, Lucky is said
Speaker 1: to do something even more ambitious, something that a million
Speaker 1: mob movies and self claimed mob informants will refer back
Speaker 1: to for decades to come.
Speaker 10: Luciano decided it's not very safe to be a boss
Speaker 10: of bosses, because somehow you don't last very long in
Speaker 10: that capacity.
Speaker 8: What he really does is he creates a board of directors.
Speaker 1: Lucky is said to have created something called the Commission.
Speaker 1: He's going to be its head, a chairman of the
Speaker 1: board of sorts.
Speaker 8: He structures it so that everything, yes, kind of has
Speaker 8: to go through him, but also has to go through
Speaker 8: every other leader.
Speaker 10: He developed a new job description for the boss of bosses,
Speaker 10: Lucky Luciano.
Speaker 6: He's called the man who organized crime in America. For
Speaker 6: that reason.
Speaker 1: That's how Lucky. We'll end up at the Waldorf Astoria
Speaker 1: sleeping easily in his big featherbed each night. But remember
Speaker 1: he is a mobster, and the quiet life can only
Speaker 1: last for so long. Just a few years later, in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, as Unis sits in her Harlem law
Speaker 1: office waiting for her next client to call with an
Speaker 1: exciting will or mortgage application, alarm bells are going off
Speaker 1: across organized crime in America.
Speaker 2: Prohibition is coming to an end.
Speaker 9: All of a sudden, This huge illegal economy just goes away,
Speaker 9: and you have all these bootleggers looking around thinking, what's
Speaker 9: our next opportunity? Where are we going to go? They're
Speaker 9: not going to go get jobs in the insurance industry.
Speaker 1: It's time for Lucky and his crew to conjure up
Speaker 1: some new ways to keep those silk shirts on their backs.
Speaker 1: But these guys are professional opportunists, and all around they
Speaker 1: see a world.
Speaker 2: Ripe for exploitation.
Speaker 1: If you'd been to most speakeasies or jazz clubs in
Speaker 1: New York in the era of prohibition, you're likely to
Speaker 1: have noticed a few consistent things. The music, of course,
Speaker 1: free and flowing. This is the jazz age. After all,
Speaker 1: there's the booze illegal. But thanks to the likes of
Speaker 1: Lucky and his networks, just as free flowing as the
Speaker 1: jazz around you. Then there's the crowd full of bright
Speaker 1: light and inner people like Unice in her twenties and thirties,
Speaker 1: cool and glamorous, but linger a little longer, look a
Speaker 1: little closer, you might notice some others in the crowd,
Speaker 1: maybe looking a little bit more world weary.
Speaker 9: You are at all interested in the jazz age, that
Speaker 9: means you are probably interested in nightlife. It's like a
Speaker 9: three legged stool. You gotta have music, you gotta have
Speaker 9: some kind of stimulant, and you gotta have women. And
Speaker 9: turns out there are not enough women to populate every
Speaker 9: speakeasy and every jazz club, every dive in New York
Speaker 9: City unless you pay them.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we're back in the late twenties now, Prohibition
Speaker 1: is still in full swing, so to speak. Unice was
Speaker 1: having a harder time that she's used to at law school,
Speaker 1: and Lucky is still just a man on the way
Speaker 1: up in the underworld. We're in a on the Upper
Speaker 1: West Side, just a little farther downtown from the places
Speaker 1: Unis frequence in Harlem. And to be honest, the place
Speaker 1: we're in is it the kind of spot unis would
Speaker 1: likely choose to visit anyway. Across the room sits a small,
Speaker 1: pale woman with scarlet painted lips, or at least that's
Speaker 1: how the papers will come.
Speaker 2: To describe her.
Speaker 1: Her name is Florence Newman or Florence Brown or Cokeie
Speaker 1: Flow Brown or just Cokie Flow. I'm going to stick
Speaker 1: with Cokeie Flow, and she's had a pretty rough journey
Speaker 1: before arriving here this evening.
Speaker 9: There are, of course, vas swaths of women who are
Speaker 9: in fact compelled, who are trafficked, who are manipulated or
Speaker 9: beaten into being prostitutes. In many ways, it's a very difficult, stressful,
Speaker 9: a dangerous job for a lot of people, but it
Speaker 9: pays well and it can offer women amendous amount of autonomy.
Speaker 1: Koki Flow first came to New York in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: By the way of Cleveland, Ohio, and Duluth, Minnesota, haven't
Speaker 1: been taken in by a businessman at just fifteen years old.
Speaker 2: By eighteen, Cooki Flow.
Speaker 1: Has moved on to become a mistress to three different
Speaker 1: underworld figures.
Speaker 9: There are people who are using it just like a
Speaker 9: stepping stone in their career.
Speaker 1: By the late nineteen twenties. She's in New York and
Speaker 1: running her own brothels on the Upper east Side and
Speaker 1: some across town.
Speaker 2: On the East Side, she operated as a madam.
Speaker 9: You could really find sex at every price point.
Speaker 1: If you're looking to buy sex. It's not just Cokie
Speaker 1: flows houses that you want to consider. New York City
Speaker 1: provides a world of options.
Speaker 9: There are top dollar joints. They were like high end
Speaker 9: speakeasies where they have the best food and they have cooks,
Speaker 9: so you could stop by anytime for a night cap
Speaker 9: and some free food and top flight booth and you
Speaker 9: could hang out. You could gamble. You could just come
Speaker 9: and drink with your friends by backgammon with the madam
Speaker 9: and maybe head off to the bedroom or maybe not.
Speaker 2: From there, you moved down the scale.
Speaker 9: There were ten dollar houses where you could show up
Speaker 9: and it would be nice and you might get a
Speaker 9: little rushed.
Speaker 2: And further down the scale two dollar houses where.
Speaker 9: They would actually have a ticket that you would wear
Speaker 9: on your bathroom and as you service some man, the
Speaker 9: housekeeper would click it so that at the end of
Speaker 9: the night you would see how many people. And there
Speaker 9: are women who were servicing thirty forty men a night,
Speaker 9: they just move you through.
Speaker 1: Sex Workers in the twenties also face the new challenges
Speaker 1: because across America a general atmosphere of unspoken tolerance towards
Speaker 1: the profession is now turning sour.
Speaker 9: At the beginning of the two twentieth century, it was
Speaker 9: still super common for young men to lose their virginity
Speaker 9: in brothels. Most towns of any size had a red
Speaker 9: light district where it wasn't legal, but it was sort
Speaker 9: of tolerated. The problem comes for the people in the
Speaker 9: business of the flesh trades around World War One, where
Speaker 9: there is an uproar over prostitution gaining visibility. You got
Speaker 9: all these young boys joining the military, going overseas and
Speaker 9: going to brothels with all kinds of sexually transmitted diseases
Speaker 9: and all kinds of bad habits, and so the government
Speaker 9: feels like we cannot be having all these young men
Speaker 9: bringing home sexually transmitted diseases and bringing shame upon our
Speaker 9: war and our army. So they require any town that
Speaker 9: hosts troops to shut down all of their red light districts.
Speaker 1: So by the early twenties, the madams running brothels, so
Speaker 1: they have to be fairly discreet.
Speaker 9: Now, that doesn't mean there's no more prostitutes. They just
Speaker 9: go under ground.
Speaker 1: You might meet a woman like Koki Flow and a
Speaker 1: speak easy, but her trade is usually carried out from
Speaker 1: somewhere else nearby.
Speaker 9: The women have to go into apartment buildings where they're
Speaker 9: not going to be seen by cops as much, where
Speaker 9: they're going to be able to hide.
Speaker 1: Just as people sell dinner plates or do hair from
Speaker 1: their homes, there are some women who run sex work
Speaker 1: operations out of these apartments. Think Airbnbs for sex. Scattered
Speaker 1: across the city.
Speaker 9: There were just places where you could do whatever you
Speaker 9: weren't supposed to be doing out in public. So that's
Speaker 9: where you start to see the rise of the booker.
Speaker 9: All you had to do is if you got a call,
Speaker 9: you could say, okay, go to West seventy third Street.
Speaker 9: The key is under the mat. There will be a
Speaker 9: girl waiting for you, or there will be a girl
Speaker 9: that arrives. In fact, real estate and prostitution are deeply intertwined.
Speaker 9: One of the ways you could be sure to both
Speaker 9: fill upon artment buildings during economic downturns and get top
Speaker 9: dollar for them is by renting them to madams and prostitutes.
Speaker 9: They would often pay triple. It also meant that your
Speaker 9: superintendent was going to get a bribe, because it's very
Speaker 9: hard to keep that secret. Your doorman would often get
Speaker 9: a bribe. This is the era when elevators were not automated,
Speaker 9: so there would usually be an elevator operator who would
Speaker 9: usually get a bribe. So it was an expensive business
Speaker 9: to be a madam actually, but it was a lucrative
Speaker 9: business if you were a landlord.
Speaker 1: And it's not just dorman, superintendents, elevator operators, and landlords
Speaker 1: with their hands out taking money from sex workers during
Speaker 1: the twenties. A specific kind of organized criminal is taking
Speaker 1: money from them too.
Speaker 9: It is, in fact, the government entities the vice ring
Speaker 9: of the nineteen twenties, which is not dominated by criminals.
Speaker 9: It's not dominated by syndicated c that got other things
Speaker 9: to do that are far more profitable. It's a ring
Speaker 9: between the lawyers, the cops, the judges, and the girls.
Speaker 9: It is the law who are bleeding the prostitutes dry.
Speaker 1: But as we move into the early thirties, as lucky
Speaker 1: as playing both sides in the Castela Maries a war,
Speaker 1: something surprising happens. A whole bunch of these corrupt officials,
Speaker 1: the judges and cops profiting off the sex workers, start.
Speaker 2: To get arrested.
Speaker 1: City Hall tries to clean house as part of sweeping
Speaker 1: anti corruption drives. It doesn't end corruption in New York politics,
Speaker 1: far from it, but it does have an impact on
Speaker 1: sex work, and it means that at the start of
Speaker 1: the thirties Koki flow in her colleagues into their own
Speaker 1: strange kind of golden age.
Speaker 9: Those early years in the thirties are kind of a
Speaker 9: free for all and a great time to be running
Speaker 9: a house of prostitution because nobody's harassing you from the
Speaker 9: vice squad. The dirty judges have been mostly kicked out.
Speaker 1: But remember this is nineteen thirties America, and a woman
Speaker 1: run unexploited industry was never going to last.
Speaker 9: When prohibition ends, everything changes. You have all these bootleggers
Speaker 9: who are looking around thinking what's our next opportunity? Where
Speaker 9: are we going to go? So the first thing they
Speaker 9: do is they say, let's get in on this booking business.
Speaker 1: On the southern side of East Manhattan, you'll find Mott Street.
Speaker 1: It's a narrow, bustling thoroughfare. One of the streets where
Speaker 1: Lucky Luciano grew up, and by the end of prohibition
Speaker 1: it's the headquarters of Italian organized crime. These headquarters are
Speaker 1: run on Lucky's behalf by a bunch of well characters.
Speaker 9: Real scumbags, if I may say so.
Speaker 1: These gangsters from Mott Street were creatively known as the
Speaker 1: Mott Street Boys.
Speaker 9: Who had been working for Lucky Luciana for years, running
Speaker 9: the liquor exchange, busting' heads, dealing drugs, whatever was profitable.
Speaker 1: The Mott Street Boys are led by a mid level
Speaker 1: mob enforcer.
Speaker 9: A guy named Tommy the Bold Pinocchio.
Speaker 1: And at the start of nineteen thirty four, when the
Speaker 1: Mott Street Boys and other former bootleggers are still scratching
Speaker 1: their heads for new ways of making money post Prohibition,
Speaker 1: it's Tommy the Bull who has the bright idea.
Speaker 9: Tommy thinks, look, there's a whole untapped industry here that
Speaker 9: we could begin to shake down.
Speaker 1: An industry that does not seem to be suffering. Despite
Speaker 1: New York being in the midst of the Great Depression.
Speaker 9: The taste for brothels and for prostitutes did not decline.
Speaker 1: The mob hasn't had much of a connection to that trade.
Speaker 1: Before at this point, because sex work is a bit
Speaker 1: of a cottage industry.
Speaker 9: Individual women servicing individual men.
Speaker 1: But the Mott Street Boys have an idea a way
Speaker 1: for scaling up their involvement across lots of sex work operations.
Speaker 1: They start busting up brothels and once inside they give
Speaker 1: those businesses an offer they can't refuse to use their
Speaker 1: money as a kind of protection racket for the sex
Speaker 1: workers in case of trouble with the law.
Speaker 9: That is to say, pooling money to get women out
Speaker 9: of jail when they get arrested, and that certainly helps
Speaker 9: and you can have it. In terms of booking talent.
Speaker 1: These bookers have become a crucial component to the way
Speaker 1: sex work in this era operates.
Speaker 9: Prostitution bookers would treat it like a talent agency where
Speaker 9: they had a roster of girls that they would send
Speaker 9: out to different brothels around the city.
Speaker 1: But as well as connecting the sex workers with customers,
Speaker 1: bookers provide another service.
Speaker 9: The women pay the booker ten bucks a week and
Speaker 9: then if you get arrested, he'll come bail you out.
Speaker 1: So now Mott Street Boys are going to run the
Speaker 1: bookers and the sex workers.
Speaker 9: They begin to encounter problems almost as soon as they start.
Speaker 9: Most of the women did not want to work with
Speaker 9: Tommy the Bull and his gang as thugs, and it's.
Speaker 1: Not like sex workers have much spare money to start
Speaker 1: handing out for this mob protection.
Speaker 8: They worked twelve hour days, six days a week. They
Speaker 8: pocketed about forty dollars out of their roughly two hundred
Speaker 8: dollars in weekly earnings.
Speaker 2: But what choice do they really have?
Speaker 1: So the mob moves in and brings an end to
Speaker 1: that ever so brief golden age of sex work. Under
Speaker 1: the new system, the men working as bookers are making
Speaker 1: money from the sex workers and the madams, but not
Speaker 1: as much as those at the top of the tree,
Speaker 1: men like Luciano, who demand a cut of all the profits.
Speaker 1: Sex work is not the only industry noticing an increased
Speaker 1: mob presence since the fall of Prohibition. As New York
Speaker 1: moves into the mid thirties, this model of diversification grows
Speaker 1: and grows, and who was going to stop it?
Speaker 6: Many suspected, as was the case, that New York politics
Speaker 6: were deeply corrupted by organized crime.
Speaker 1: Why were the police so ineffective when it came to
Speaker 1: curbing some of this organized crime?
Speaker 2: Violence.
Speaker 11: I got. The first thing to do if you're going
Speaker 11: to be a good criminal is to start doing something
Speaker 11: with the police.
Speaker 1: The mob is on the move across New York, which
Speaker 1: meant Harlem as well.
Speaker 2: I imagine for unis.
Speaker 1: Part of Harlem's appeal is the community, the glitz, and
Speaker 1: the people. But the mob, of course has more nefarious motivations,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to an industry.
Speaker 2: My own family knows.
Speaker 1: A thing or two about that's coming up in episode
Speaker 1: four of The Godmother. On this episode of The Godmother,
Speaker 1: you heard Carolyn Johnson, my Harlem tour guide.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Harlem. That's the name of my company.
Speaker 2: I'm still My name is Leah Carter.
Speaker 4: I am Eunice Carter's great granddaughter. Her son. Lyle is
Speaker 4: my dad's father. Unis influenced my grandfather, and he influenced
Speaker 4: my dad, and my dad influenced me. Now that I
Speaker 4: have a grand unified theory of that exactly.
Speaker 5: I'm Marilyn Greenwald. I'm a professor Emerita of journalism at
Speaker 5: Ohio University, and I'm the author of five biographies, including
Speaker 5: one of Eunice Hunting Carter.
Speaker 6: My name is Chuck Greeves. Before becoming a writer. I
Speaker 6: spent twenty five years as a Los Angeles trial lawyer.
Speaker 6: My fourth novel was basically a fictionalization of the famous
Speaker 6: nineteen thirty six vice trial, in which Luckily Chiana was
Speaker 6: prosecuted by Thomas Dewey.
Speaker 7: My name is Christian Sipollini and I am an author
Speaker 7: and a historian with a specialty in the fields of
Speaker 7: true crime, organized crime, and cartel history.
Speaker 8: I am Claire White and I am the director of
Speaker 8: education at the Mob Museum in downtown Las Vegas. I
Speaker 8: grew up in Las Vegas, which kind of gives me
Speaker 8: a leg up in that regard.
Speaker 9: I'm Debbie Applegate. I'm a historian and biographer, and I
Speaker 9: am the author of Madam, The Biography of Polyadler Icon
Speaker 9: of the Jazz Age.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 9: My name is Ellen Paulson.
Speaker 10: I research and I write books about criminal acts and
Speaker 10: devis that took place during the nineteen thirties in the
Speaker 10: United States, and my focus so far has been women
Speaker 10: who were involved with notorious gangsters and desperadoes.
Speaker 2: My name is Leshawn Harris.
Speaker 1: I am an associate professor of history at Michigan State
Speaker 1: University in the Department of.
Speaker 11: My name is Robert Whalen, and I'm an Emerathus professor
Speaker 11: of History at Queen's University of Charlotte here in Charlotte,
Speaker 11: North Carolina. And I've written on both European and American history.
Speaker 11: I suppose the most relevant book is what I published
Speaker 11: on a Murder Incorporated, which involved people like Thomas Dewey
Speaker 11: and Junis Carter and so forth.
Speaker 1: The Godmother is produced by Novel for iHeartRadio. For more
Speaker 1: from novel, visit novel dot Audio. The Godmother is hosted
Speaker 1: and written by me Nicole Perkins. Our producer is Leona Hamid.
Speaker 1: Additional production from Ajuajima Broumpong, Ronald Young Junior and Ziana Yusuf.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Ajua Jima Broumpong. Additional story editing from
Speaker 1: Max O'Brien and Mitha Lee Raw and our researcher is
Speaker 1: Ziana Yusuf. Additional research from Mohammed Ahmed. David wa Is
Speaker 1: our executive producer. Field production by Tnito Romani and Pallas Shaw.
Speaker 1: Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempsen.
Speaker 1: Our score was written, performed and recorded by Jeff Parker
Speaker 1: Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Production management
Speaker 1: and endless Patients from Sharie Houston, Sarah Tobin and Charlotte Wolfe.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Fendel Fulton and Dania Suleiman. Story development
Speaker 1: by Madeline Parr, Jess Swinburne Aseana Yusuf. Willard Foxton is
Speaker 1: our Creative Director of Development. Special thanks to Leah Carter,
Speaker 1: Stephen Carter, Angela J. Davis, Andrew Fernley, Marilyn Greenwald, Sondra Lebedy,
Speaker 1: Katherine Godfrey, Nadia Maidie, Amalia Sortland, Sean Glenn, Neil Krishnan,
Speaker 1: Julia Bromberg, Katrina Norvel, Carly Frankel, and all the team
Speaker 1: at Day w Emmy
Speaker 2: Novel