Speaker 1: Novel.
Speaker 2: Before we begin, a content warning. The following episode contains
Speaker 2: difficult themes and violence. Mama, I called my mom back
Speaker 2: in the middle of lunch recently?
Speaker 3: What you doing looking at YouTube videos?
Speaker 2: I'd missed her earlier call, and she tends to worry
Speaker 2: if I take too long to call her back. So
Speaker 2: I thought I'd make use of the opportunity to ask
Speaker 2: her about a connection I have to Eunice Carter's story.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this.
Speaker 2: Do you know anybody who ran numbers?
Speaker 3: Play dumb?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 5: Yeah, uh huh.
Speaker 3: Let me see what was his name? He was a
Speaker 3: big number man in Nashville, Girl. He long needed money
Speaker 3: to get the bath hom fixed.
Speaker 2: My childhood in Nashville and Harlem nineteen twenties are quite
Speaker 2: different in lots of ways. But if the little slips
Speaker 2: of paper I sometimes saw in my uncle's pockets as
Speaker 2: a child, or anything to go by black folks playing
Speaker 2: the numbers is a shared history across America. My late
Speaker 2: great uncle was a hard working, respectable man. He was quiet, stern,
Speaker 2: kept his own private stash of Pepsi's no one else
Speaker 2: was allowed to drink. But he had a gold tooth
Speaker 2: that winked out at the world when he laughed, showing
Speaker 2: a little bit of the slick country charm that must
Speaker 2: have stolen my aunt's heart. He believed in the stability
Speaker 2: of an honest day's work, but he also enjoyed taking
Speaker 2: a chance on the game of numbers. There was community
Speaker 2: in the game. If the meteorologist on television said we
Speaker 2: were going to have four days of ninety eight degree weather,
Speaker 2: a living room chorus of elders would erupt four ninety eight.
Speaker 2: Write that down, play that number. The numbers game is
Speaker 2: like an unofficial lottery. To play, you start by selecting
Speaker 2: any three digit number and betting some money on it
Speaker 2: with a bookmaker.
Speaker 3: You could claim the number and you put a nickel
Speaker 3: like just say on at a thirteen.
Speaker 2: The winning digits are announced the next day by whoever
Speaker 2: runs the game. They're usually drawn from some random, publicly published,
Speaker 2: hard to predict number, like the last three digits of
Speaker 2: Federal Reserve Bank clearings for that day. A lot of
Speaker 2: people had a special system for figuring out which numbers
Speaker 2: to bet. My great uncle was one of them.
Speaker 3: He would sit down to workout numbers certain times, so
Speaker 3: the years, certain numbers always fall.
Speaker 2: I remember one time my uncle deviated from his system
Speaker 2: by asking my cousin, who was studying to become a
Speaker 2: preacher at the time, to look in the Bible for
Speaker 2: some divine help.
Speaker 3: And she wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the numbers game is a game of chance.
Speaker 2: My aunt and her husband would host our extended family
Speaker 2: for almost all the major holidays and family events. My
Speaker 2: uncle's friends would come over, and after all the greeting
Speaker 2: formalities were out of the way, they'd ask what it
Speaker 2: hit for, and the jargon would fly too quickly for
Speaker 2: my child's mind to follow. I still wasn't really sure
Speaker 2: what the numbers were. I just knew that a lot
Speaker 2: of conversations with a certain group of elders included them
Speaker 2: asking each other if their number had hit today, and
Speaker 2: if someone showed up with a new car, they look
Speaker 2: at the license plate and say, I'm gonna play that number.
Speaker 1: One time. Maybe. When I was around six years.
Speaker 2: Old, the house was full of people and music and food.
Speaker 2: All the big elders were sitting at the kitchen table
Speaker 2: reminiscing and laughing. There was a gallon jug of what
Speaker 2: I thought was great fruit punch sitting there between the
Speaker 2: ash trays and discarded dessert plates. I decided to help
Speaker 2: myself to a cup. But I remember I'm thinking that
Speaker 2: it was great creature cooler because it was just in
Speaker 2: a one of them regular old classic gallon jumps. I
Speaker 2: thought it was a local brand of fruit punch. My
Speaker 2: granddaddy stopped me just in time to keep me from
Speaker 2: drinking some homemade wine.
Speaker 3: Yeah it to you, so whatever you know.
Speaker 2: As fuzzy as this memory is, it's one of my favorites,
Speaker 2: especially now that forty years later, so much has changed.
Speaker 2: Granddaddy's been gone a long time. We can't trust my
Speaker 2: great aunt, once famous for her hot water corn bread
Speaker 2: and potato salad, to cook anymore, and my great uncle,
Speaker 2: her husband, passed away several years ago as well. By
Speaker 2: the time I was a teenager, my great aunt and
Speaker 2: uncle had stopped drinking and smoking, but I think my
Speaker 2: uncle maintained.
Speaker 1: At least that one little vice.
Speaker 2: As Unice Hunting Carter walked through the streets of Harlem,
Speaker 2: perhaps on her way to and from law school, the
Speaker 2: numbers game would have been going on all around her too,
Speaker 2: not necessarily out in the open. Playing the numbers is
Speaker 2: a secretive business. That's why some of my mom's answers
Speaker 2: are a bit frustratingly vague.
Speaker 6: People that were running the numbers, they looked like your
Speaker 6: average person. You could go to the barber shops, the
Speaker 6: beauty shops, the worst store.
Speaker 2: To who though like it had to be somebody on
Speaker 2: the side. It wasn't actually going to Kroger and placing
Speaker 2: a bit with crogh.
Speaker 3: The Tennessee has a state.
Speaker 1: Lottery, right, but I'm not talking about the lottery. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about numbers like that's nothing different.
Speaker 3: Numbers were supposed to be illegal.
Speaker 2: It was a shared, open secret between friends. Lucrative but illegal.
Speaker 6: Well, but your contact was they would tell you who
Speaker 6: you need to see in.
Speaker 3: The grocery store. Agana could have worked there. It could
Speaker 3: have been the butcher, could have been anybody in Nick.
Speaker 3: The reason why it was illegal is because it was
Speaker 3: an underground thing and it was mostly in the black neighborhoods,
Speaker 3: just like up in Harlem.
Speaker 2: So in Harlem, as the twenties turned to the thirties
Speaker 2: and Eunice was learning the letter of the law, she
Speaker 2: passes many of her neighbors who are surviving by breaking it.
Speaker 2: Not that many play the numbers because they thought it
Speaker 2: was going to make them rich.
Speaker 1: The odds of winning are six hundred to one.
Speaker 3: The more money you put on it to bi of
Speaker 3: your return. So they would put.
Speaker 6: A penny on the number, they put a.
Speaker 3: Niffle, they put a quarter. People didn't make a whole lot.
Speaker 2: Of money in it as ordinary to my childhood as
Speaker 2: a cabbage patch kid or the sounds of MTV playing
Speaker 2: in the background. For a long time. It's also been
Speaker 2: a way to establish hope and agency and black communities,
Speaker 2: especially when times got hard. But where does all the
Speaker 2: money go?
Speaker 3: Nobody win, but people like the people all at what
Speaker 3: all that money adds up?
Speaker 2: Seems like in Unice's days, just as in my childhood,
Speaker 2: the people running the game are the ones making the profits.
Speaker 2: And in Harlem in the nineteen twenties and into the
Speaker 2: early thirties, one of those people was called Stephanie Saint Clair,
Speaker 2: as glamorous and as ambitious as Unice. But just as
Speaker 2: we saw in Atlanta in nineteen oh six during the
Speaker 2: violent riots that shaped the trajectory of Unus's life, black
Speaker 2: wealth attracts a lot of white attention.
Speaker 3: Black folks said that then white folks won it.
Speaker 2: They could from the teams at iHeartRadio and novel. I'm
Speaker 2: Nicole Perkins and this is the God Episode four Panic,
Speaker 2: New York City, Wednesday morning, November twentieth, nineteen twenty nine,
Speaker 2: and unus hunting. Carter has just started her break from
Speaker 2: Fordham Law School. This morning, she's getting ready for a
Speaker 2: day of political campaigning for Republican mayorial candidate Fiorella LaGuardia.
Speaker 2: But right now, in this moment, she's taking time for
Speaker 2: herself to read the newspaper. She opens the New York
Speaker 2: Amsterdam News. Her eyes are immediately drawn to a large ad.
Speaker 2: It features a glamorous black woman looking back at Unice.
Speaker 2: She's wearing a coat, jewels what looks like a close hat.
Speaker 2: Her hands rest just above her hips. Beneath the picture,
Speaker 2: she's written a letter addressed to the people of New
Speaker 2: York City.
Speaker 1: To the members of my race.
Speaker 2: I have received letters and telephone messages from men who
Speaker 2: have annoyed me very much, and I take this occasion
Speaker 2: to ask them publicly to please not annoy me. I,
Speaker 2: Madame Saint clair Am not looking for a husband or
Speaker 2: a sweetheart. Eunice recognizes the woman in the ad immediately, so.
Speaker 7: Stephanie Sinclair is very, very flamboyant.
Speaker 2: One of Harlem's wealthiest and more notorious residents. And maybe
Speaker 2: the two of them have more in common than at
Speaker 2: first glance.
Speaker 7: Their backgrounds are different, but these two women are the same.
Speaker 7: They want the same things. Then they see themselves as leaders.
Speaker 2: By this point, at the end of the twenties, Stephanie
Speaker 2: Saint Clair is in the paper all the time, in
Speaker 2: her own ads like this one and in news articles.
Speaker 2: By today's standards, she'd be a millionaire, and she is
Speaker 2: not coy about it.
Speaker 8: She's one of those people who would definitely be famous
Speaker 8: in twenty twenty three. Stephanie Sinclair knew how to use
Speaker 8: the press. She knew how to use word of mouth.
Speaker 8: She knew how to use gossip.
Speaker 2: Stephanie Saint Clair lives at an address that many of
Speaker 2: the other movers and shakers of Harlem's Renaissance also call home.
Speaker 2: Up on sugar Hill four to oh nine Edgecombe Avenue,
Speaker 2: the Grand thirteen story complex, my Harlem tour guide had
Speaker 2: told me about during my visit to the neighborhood. It
Speaker 2: sits on a raised section of Harlem with sweeping views
Speaker 2: to the east. It's home to the likes of W. E. B.
Speaker 2: Du Boyce, Aaron Douglas, and, of course, later in her life, Eunice.
Speaker 2: But in the winter of nineteen twenty nine, another resident
Speaker 2: is walking across the parquet floors and through its lush lobby,
Speaker 2: tipping her hat to the dorman.
Speaker 7: When Stephanie Saint Clair lived in that building during the
Speaker 7: twenties and the early nineteen thirties, everyone who lived in
Speaker 7: that building knew who she was, and they knew what
Speaker 7: she did for a living.
Speaker 2: Stephanie Saint Clair is an illegal gambling racketeer, and a
Speaker 2: successful one at that. She's known as Harlem's policy Queen.
Speaker 2: That means she hed runs the neighborhood numbers game being
Speaker 2: played all over Harlem. Saint Clair employs at least fifty
Speaker 2: runners who spill out across Harlem, collecting slips and bets
Speaker 2: and salons, grocers and living rooms. She is arrogant, fashionable, glamorous,
Speaker 2: and smart. She has a reputation for profanity.
Speaker 8: All of this led an air to mystery to her.
Speaker 8: That was a part of her mystique.
Speaker 2: She's kagy about the details of her past, but we
Speaker 2: know she arrived in New York City from the Caribbean
Speaker 2: just prior to the Great Migration, and she's said to
Speaker 2: have led a local gang called the Forty Thieves in
Speaker 2: her youth until she found her niche in.
Speaker 1: The numbers game.
Speaker 7: Here you have a woman who's able to really build
Speaker 7: a small empire in a short amount of time.
Speaker 2: Soon, Eunice Hunting Carter and Stephanie Saint Clair will share
Speaker 2: a common enemy, but it's Stephanie who will learn his
Speaker 2: name first.
Speaker 7: So Dutch Schultz is this bootlegger. He's a roofless gangster.
Speaker 2: Dutch was a major figure in organized crime from the
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties. His family had owned a trucking company, which
Speaker 2: came in handy for the transportation of illegal alcohol. But
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty three, with prohibition coming to an end,
Speaker 2: his prospects look less profitable. So, just like his associate
Speaker 2: Lucky Luciano, he's searching for new opportunities to exploit. Unlike Lucky,
Speaker 2: he doesn't have the same kind of charisma about him,
Speaker 2: or forethought for that matter.
Speaker 8: Every time he has a run in with someone, he
Speaker 8: sort of doubles down, like I gotta kill more people.
Speaker 8: I gotta be more aggressive next time. He sort of
Speaker 8: consistently learns the wrong lessons.
Speaker 2: So as Lucky's Mott Street boys are moving into sex work,
Speaker 2: Dutch Schultz's idea for a new revenue stream is the
Speaker 2: neighborhood numbers games, particularly one neighborhood where it appears to
Speaker 2: be flourishing.
Speaker 7: This is someone who wants to really control Harlem's numbers racket.
Speaker 7: He had been pretty successful in forcing black numbers bankers
Speaker 7: out of their businesses by force by violence.
Speaker 2: But just like Eunice, Harlem's policy queen is no pushover.
Speaker 7: Stephanie Sainclair is not going to let someone like a
Speaker 7: Dutch Shultz come in and take the business.
Speaker 2: So in the early thirties, just as Unice is holding
Speaker 2: her ground, trying to find a path forward in the
Speaker 2: male dominated world of law and preventing her career from stagnating,
Speaker 2: Stephanie Saint Clair is holding her ground too. She's engaged
Speaker 2: in a game of cat and mouse with Schultz. Rumor
Speaker 2: has it she's taken to walking across Harlem's rooftops to
Speaker 2: avoid being spotted by Dutch or his cronies on the street.
Speaker 2: Because Stephanie is still working her numbers business even as
Speaker 2: Dutch is trying to box her out, but the mafia
Speaker 2: has no issues with strong arming women. With the walls
Speaker 2: of prohibition coming down, mobsters across New York are on
Speaker 2: the move.
Speaker 9: It's not just the occasional bandit that would stick up
Speaker 9: a liquor store. It was very well organized and very
Speaker 9: violent coming out of prohibition.
Speaker 2: And the press are jumping on this emerging story. Suddenly,
Speaker 2: these mobsters are no longer the friendly facilitators of your
Speaker 2: boozy party are putting the wine on your table with dinner.
Speaker 1: They're coming for you.
Speaker 2: They want a thumb in every pie, and they don't
Speaker 2: care if that pie is baked with your blood. It's
Speaker 2: a story that's salacious, it's got drama. It's perfect for
Speaker 2: crime reporters to fill their columns.
Speaker 10: All of a sudden, we began to see more panic.
Speaker 2: And readers are told this crime wave isn't just in
Speaker 2: the underworld. It's seeping into everyday life. The rise of
Speaker 2: the criminal underworld. Every mobster is a direct threat to
Speaker 2: the American way of life. Imagine opening up your morning
Speaker 2: paper and reading that while you do your god given
Speaker 2: duty as an American husband and father, going to work
Speaker 2: each day to put food on the table. Some flashy
Speaker 2: gangster wants to rob your store, or kidnap your daughter,
Speaker 2: or make you give up your hard earned salary for protection.
Speaker 2: Nowhere is safe. Everything has value to the mob.
Speaker 9: This market economy crazy. Everything's for sale. The leading hoodlums
Speaker 9: of the day as well as Luciano, talked about everything
Speaker 9: being for sale. This is the ultimate market. So cops
Speaker 9: are for sale, prosecutors are for sale, judges are for sale.
Speaker 9: Sex is for sale. Women are for sale. Everything's for sale.
Speaker 9: And whether it's the cop on a beat, then you
Speaker 9: give them five bucks to look the other way, or
Speaker 9: whether it's somebody higher up in the system or wherever
Speaker 9: they were ineffective.
Speaker 2: Those who have been quietly operating on just the other
Speaker 2: side of the law until recently, whether it's numbers like
Speaker 2: Stephanie Saint Clair or in sex work like Coochie Flow,
Speaker 2: are now labeled as complicit with the ones trying to
Speaker 2: take over their businesses. Suddenly they're the culprit. It's in
Speaker 2: a much bigger scandal.
Speaker 9: New York was practically a failed city. The ability of
Speaker 9: the state and the police to maintain law and order
Speaker 9: in a democratic way was largely failing, and that there
Speaker 9: were all these people. All these gangsters of all kinds,
Speaker 9: who operated as virtually independent warlords were practically taking or
Speaker 9: the city.
Speaker 2: Are things really as bad as they seem? Is the
Speaker 2: very fabric of society falling apart. By the time the
Speaker 2: Guardia is elected as mayor on January first, nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem to matter.
Speaker 9: Every politician in New York promised to do something about this.
Speaker 9: Certainly a Fiorella or the Guardia promised that he would
Speaker 9: be the one who would find some way to deal
Speaker 9: with completely out of control of crime. There was a
Speaker 9: push by all sorts of people to do something.
Speaker 2: The story of how New York came to a point
Speaker 2: is mob Crusader is a little convoluted. For the detail oriented,
Speaker 2: it's a story Unis might enjoy herself, but for others
Speaker 2: it was essentially on the one hand, a problem.
Speaker 9: In New York was, how do you take this random
Speaker 9: mayhem of violence and bring it under the law. How
Speaker 9: do you do that? That's very difficult.
Speaker 1: And on the other a seemingly unlikely solution.
Speaker 9: Let's have a democratic process that is competent, that is transparent,
Speaker 9: but is also strong enough to repress all of this
Speaker 9: terrible violence. That was the great challenge that LaGuardia faced
Speaker 9: in the thirties.
Speaker 2: The stars needed to somehow align for someone to be
Speaker 2: given actual power to go after the mob But who, who,
Speaker 2: in the corrupt world of nineteen thirties politics, would be
Speaker 2: given that kind of authority, and who would even want
Speaker 2: to take on such a dangerous task.
Speaker 1: Well, the answer.
Speaker 2: Came from something called a runaway grand jury. They're basically
Speaker 2: a group of citizens chosen to investigate specific allegations of
Speaker 2: corruption and vice. But the New York d who appointed
Speaker 2: them had underestimated how impatient.
Speaker 1: They were for change.
Speaker 2: They've had enough of the state of politics and corruption
Speaker 2: in New York.
Speaker 9: And there was a big stink.
Speaker 2: And so the grand jury ran away all the way
Speaker 2: to the Governor of New York up in Albany.
Speaker 9: Grand juries can do lots of stuff, and once they're impaneled,
Speaker 9: they not only can call in witnesses and so on,
Speaker 9: but they can complain about attorneys.
Speaker 2: Their runaway grand jury demands the governor appoint someone strong
Speaker 2: enough to rid the city of mobsters once and for all.
Speaker 9: All right, all right, all right, I'll appoint a special
Speaker 9: prosecutor to basically replace the sitting district attorney.
Speaker 2: But the still raises the question of who would want
Speaker 2: to do this. It's not like there's a long list
Speaker 2: of bipartisan people with the necessary experience who are going
Speaker 2: to raise their hands to make matters worse. All of
Speaker 2: the governor's initial candidates for the job are rejected by
Speaker 2: the grand Jury members. They want someone's an energetic.
Speaker 9: Efficient, confident, hardworking, not camera.
Speaker 2: Shy, focused and ambitious, someone with an extremely striking mustache.
Speaker 11: Thomas Dewey enters the picture on that platform.
Speaker 2: Just a few years after Addie and William Hunton welcomed
Speaker 2: their sugar into the world and named her Unice. Thomas
Speaker 2: Dewey was born to a middle class family in a Wassaw, Michigan.
Speaker 2: Like Eunice, his education was marked by academic excellence. Also,
Speaker 2: like Eunice, Dewey's parents were committed Republicans. His dad was
Speaker 2: a newspaper man who owned and published a Michigan paper.
Speaker 9: It was an abolitionist newspaper, a pro Lincoln newspaper, and
Speaker 9: Dewey himself was very attentive to the media of the day.
Speaker 9: As a child, he grew up with this realization that
Speaker 9: the printed paper that was important.
Speaker 2: Ever since his early days, Dewey had been something of
Speaker 2: a ham. He loves putting on a good show, despite
Speaker 2: what some consider an unremarkable appearance. Always well groomed, He's
Speaker 2: average height with slick backed hair, part it carefully on
Speaker 2: the left side. You could practically count the teeth marks
Speaker 2: from his comb. But that facial hair he.
Speaker 9: Insisted on having his little mustache that irritated people. I
Speaker 9: can remember my dad, who grew up in New York State,
Speaker 9: saying he'd never vote for that Dewey guy because of
Speaker 9: that badgum mustache. And I would think, Dad, what's the
Speaker 9: mustache got to do with it?
Speaker 1: And Dewey's demeanor yloof, cocky, conceded, condescending, He rubbed a
Speaker 1: lot of people the wrong way.
Speaker 9: But he was also ambitious.
Speaker 1: Dewey has one powerful tool for success.
Speaker 9: As a very young man growing up in Michigan, he
Speaker 9: was blessed with this remarkable voice, this great baritone voice.
Speaker 9: He thought he was going to be a singer, and
Speaker 9: he always had a kind of theatrical side to him.
Speaker 2: In college, he'd actually traveled down to North Carolina for
Speaker 2: a singing competition.
Speaker 9: And young Tom Dewey sang his way around in the mountains.
Speaker 1: Singing was how Dewey met his future wife.
Speaker 2: Of course, in the end he doesn't pursue a singing career,
Speaker 2: but he'd continued to use that voice.
Speaker 12: You witnessed the tragic effect of crime on its victims,
Speaker 12: the unbelievable viciousness of the underworld.
Speaker 2: This is from a radio show dow We had on WNYC.
Speaker 2: Somehow hypnotic yet energizing at the same time.
Speaker 12: The hardships under which the police another law enforcement agencies labor,
Speaker 12: and the schemes and tricks to which criminals resort to
Speaker 12: get around the law.
Speaker 2: As Eunice was starting her writing and social career during
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties Harlem Renaissance, Dewey had moved to New
Speaker 2: York and launched his legal career, initially in private practice
Speaker 2: as a lawyer on Wall Street.
Speaker 1: But that was just the start. Thomas E.
Speaker 13: Dewey decided at one point to have political aspiration along
Speaker 13: with his law enforcement aspirations.
Speaker 1: For Dewey, the law is just a wrong on a ladder.
Speaker 9: The problem is that as a politician he lived in
Speaker 9: an age of basically very charming and lovable politicians. Franklin
Speaker 9: Roosevelt had enough charm for about twelve different people. Fiorella
Speaker 9: LaGuardia also a very charming kind of character. So Dewey
Speaker 9: had great strengths, but on the charm scale he was
Speaker 9: a little challenged.
Speaker 2: But as the son of a newspaper man, do we
Speaker 2: know some things the other want to be politicians don't.
Speaker 9: He was friendly with the press because he understood that
Speaker 9: to get attention to him, which he craved, it was
Speaker 9: important to be involved with the.
Speaker 2: Media, and that irritating little mustache doesn't have quite the
Speaker 2: same impact over the airwaves six.
Speaker 4: Pm Naval Observatory Time, New York City's own station WNYC.
Speaker 2: As far as cutting edge mass media tech goes in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties, audio is it.
Speaker 4: Ladies and gentlemen of the radio audiuce.
Speaker 2: And Dewey is learning how to use it for his
Speaker 2: own purposes.
Speaker 4: Station WNYC occupies a prominent place among the radio stations
Speaker 4: of our country in the presentation and discussion of the many,
Speaker 4: complex and multiple problems which confront all people.
Speaker 2: Radio is his specialty, but as his career progresses, he
Speaker 2: keeps all the media close, making sure he's making the
Speaker 2: right kind of news.
Speaker 14: I don't think he ever felt that he couldn't manipulate
Speaker 14: the press. He knew exactly how to deal with reporters
Speaker 14: and with journalists. Did he get that from his family,
Speaker 14: from his father?
Speaker 1: Maybe he did.
Speaker 14: He knew how to manipulate people, he knew how to
Speaker 14: talk to people.
Speaker 2: By the time Eunice was finishing law school, Dewey had
Speaker 2: left Wall Street behind for new opportunities, and around the
Speaker 2: time she's failing her first law exams in nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 2: he's being appointed as a prosecutor and chief Assistant US Attorney.
Speaker 2: As Dewey looks around him at the career trajectory of
Speaker 2: other lawyers in his new role, it.
Speaker 1: Seems obvious.
Speaker 2: The higher the profile of the defendant in the dock,
Speaker 2: the more pressed attention the prosecutor gets, and the faster
Speaker 2: they move up the career ladder. So in nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 2: just as Eunice was about to set up her own
Speaker 2: law practice down the street from the Tree of Hope,
Speaker 2: Dewey gets his shot in the crosshairs. Was a notorious
Speaker 2: former bootlegger.
Speaker 9: Waxy Gordon was one of his first.
Speaker 2: Targets, and Dewey is soon making headlines for convicting this
Speaker 2: wanted gangster on tax evasion.
Speaker 9: And that's how he first got involved with prosecuting organized crime.
Speaker 2: Next, Dewey turns his eye toward another gangster with another
Speaker 2: great name, a colleague of Lucky Luciano's.
Speaker 11: And that was Irish American gangster Jack Legg's diamond.
Speaker 2: Dewey helps put Leg's diamond away too. And so when
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five comes around and the Governor of New
Speaker 2: York is looking to appoint his mob busting special prosecutor,
Speaker 2: there was the man with the mustache.
Speaker 1: Thomas E.
Speaker 13: Dewey came up like the boys Scout prosecutor.
Speaker 2: Someone not yet tainted by corruption by partisan white male do.
Speaker 9: We had a reputation among both Republicans and Democrats.
Speaker 2: Honestly, the governor doesn't have many other options.
Speaker 11: Thomas Dewey was an idealist. Thomas Dewey was a crusader
Speaker 11: who grabbed on to the general public's disenchantment with gangsterism
Speaker 11: as a whole.
Speaker 1: It has to be Dewey.
Speaker 11: He totally fit the bill for a guy to take
Speaker 11: down the mob.
Speaker 2: Dewey is officially appointed to the role in the spring
Speaker 2: of nineteen thirty five He's thirty three years old with
Speaker 2: about a decade of law experience. Dewey knows he needs
Speaker 2: to strike strategically. A high profile blow was the answer,
Speaker 2: like Waxy and Legs, but this time he needs someone
Speaker 2: even bigger, someone with an even more violent reputation. One
Speaker 2: of these gangsters had gotten rich during Prohibition and is
Speaker 2: now spreading out his operations across New York. A huge,
Speaker 2: high profile target, he chooses Dutch Schultz. Dutch is going
Speaker 2: to be Dewey's ticket to the top, and Dewey knows
Speaker 2: he's not going to be able to take him out
Speaker 2: on his own. As Dutch chases Stephanie Saint Clair across
Speaker 2: Harlem's rooftops, Dewey knows he needs someone on the ground uptown.
Speaker 2: It's important to remember respectability is a type of performance.
Speaker 2: Lucky Luciano dresses himself in fancy clothes and jewelry to
Speaker 2: hide his rough beginnings and fit in places he may
Speaker 2: not have been allowed otherwise, And from the summer of
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five, Dewey has his mob crusade to rebuild
Speaker 2: the public's trust in the law. Even though Eunice came
Speaker 2: from a middle class, well educated black family, it's easy
Speaker 2: to assume she still has to be careful about showcasing
Speaker 2: her intelligence and predominantly white spaces to avoid ruffling any feathers,
Speaker 2: both in her legal career and as she starts participating
Speaker 2: in politics working for the LaGuardia campaign. In nineteen twenty nine,
Speaker 2: when Unice first started political campaigning during that temporary break
Speaker 2: from law school, the Republican Party was losing black voters,
Speaker 2: and by nineteen thirty two, as she's graduating from Fordham
Speaker 2: and setting up her own practice, the Republican Party is
Speaker 2: running black candidates in urban districts. In Harlem, an otherwise
Speaker 2: popular incumbent had his campaign severely weakened by corruption allegations.
Speaker 2: The Republican Party hoped to find the right candidate to
Speaker 2: replace him in the State Assembly. Ideally, they wanted a
Speaker 2: black person who was smart, ambitious, outspoken, someone from a
Speaker 2: good family who knew Harlem well Eunice Hunting Carter. The
Speaker 2: summer of nineteen thirty four is the hottest on record,
Speaker 2: and as Unice begins campaigning for the nineteenth district Assembly seat,
Speaker 2: I picked to her standing in the heat of a
Speaker 2: curious but skeptical Harlem crowd.
Speaker 1: As she makes this.
Speaker 5: Speech for myself, I make no please. I live here,
Speaker 5: I have lived here, I am going to continue to
Speaker 5: live here. I am one of you, and I want
Speaker 5: things for Harlem. I have an eight year old son
Speaker 5: whom I hope will live and who I expect to
Speaker 5: work here. You have known me for the better part
Speaker 5: of half of my life that I have lived right
Speaker 5: here with you. I need say no more as to
Speaker 5: my interest in this community than the fact that I
Speaker 5: will put the community first.
Speaker 2: Despite her socialized status, Unice could not have failed to
Speaker 2: see the way many in Harlem had suffered during the
Speaker 2: Great Depression.
Speaker 7: So if you were already poor during the Harlem Renaissance,
Speaker 7: than you were extremely poor during the nineteen thirties. Now,
Speaker 7: people who were already subjected to low wage household work
Speaker 7: have to compete with white people who in normal times
Speaker 7: would not take those low paying jobs.
Speaker 2: Unice's commitment to the community wins her the endorsement of
Speaker 2: the Amsterdam News and the New York Age. She opens
Speaker 2: a campaign headquarters just a few blocks north of her
Speaker 2: law practice on the Boulevard of Dreams, even closer to
Speaker 2: the Tree of Hope this time, so she might have
Speaker 2: seen with her own eyes the day workmen arrived to
Speaker 2: cut it down. It's a Monday in late August. That
Speaker 2: hottest of summer is drawing to a close. Seventh Avenue
Speaker 2: is set to be widened, and so the tree has
Speaker 2: got to go. A crowd of onlookers gathered to watch,
Speaker 2: taking chips of bark with them as souvenirs for a
Speaker 2: piece of luck. Just a couple of months after the
Speaker 2: tree of Hope comes down, so too do Unice's dreams
Speaker 2: of political office.
Speaker 14: She lost by an extremely narrow margin. She almost beat
Speaker 14: somebody very popular and incumbent.
Speaker 2: Unice doesn't win the Assembly seat, but she does win herself.
Speaker 2: Some powerful political allies. Fiorello LaGuardia, who's now won his
Speaker 2: second run at mayor, is among them, and soon she'll
Speaker 2: have the opportunity to put her commitment to community to
Speaker 2: the test.
Speaker 14: Shortly after that election, there was this terrible race riot
Speaker 14: in Harlem.
Speaker 2: March nineteen thirty five is the day the Harlem race
Speaker 2: riot began. Art when a teenage boy gets arrested at
Speaker 2: a local store.
Speaker 15: After being accused of shoplifting and a store, a white
Speaker 15: store in Harlem.
Speaker 7: The police beat him up a little bit, But there's
Speaker 7: this room that spreads in Harlem that he's killed.
Speaker 15: He's not killed, he was whisked away by the police.
Speaker 2: This kid, Lino Rivera, is assumed to have been beaten
Speaker 2: to death. An agitated crowd descends on the store. A
Speaker 2: nearby ambulance speeding away from the scene heightens their confusion.
Speaker 2: Suddenly frustrations reached the surface.
Speaker 15: Black people were angry, not only because of the arrest
Speaker 15: of that young black man. This is during the depression
Speaker 15: when everybody was suffering, but African Americans suffered even more.
Speaker 15: All of Black Harlem was not wealthy or elite, lack
Speaker 15: of jobs, lack of adequate housing, just determed of getting
Speaker 15: a meal, getting something.
Speaker 7: To eat, being surveiled by police, subject to verbal violence
Speaker 7: by the police, physical violence by the police, intense policing
Speaker 7: of black bodies, and also black spaces to any type
Speaker 7: of public space becomes criminalized because there's this perception about
Speaker 7: black people and who they are.
Speaker 2: Within hours, hundreds have gathered in protest. Then someone throws
Speaker 2: a rock through the store window.
Speaker 15: That was the spark that really ignited.
Speaker 2: Rioting begins throughout the neighborhood. Even though the teenager originally
Speaker 2: accused of theft had already been arrested and released. Misinformation, confusion,
Speaker 2: and long held grievances take over.
Speaker 15: The revolt against the conditions in which the majority of
Speaker 15: black people were living during that time.
Speaker 2: When the rioting subsides, three people have died. There is
Speaker 2: an estimated two million dollars in property damage across the community.
Speaker 14: The Mayor, Firella LaGuardia immediately said we have to do something.
Speaker 14: Within days, he appointed a commission to look into what
Speaker 14: are the causes of this riot and how do we
Speaker 14: stop this from happening again.
Speaker 2: Mayor LaGuardia staffs up his commission with more black members
Speaker 2: than white, and he.
Speaker 14: Knew Unus just because she had run for office.
Speaker 15: She was the only woman on the commission.
Speaker 14: And as secretary she kept the books. She was kind
Speaker 14: of you in charge of what was going on and
Speaker 14: keeping the minutes. So this group met and they came
Speaker 14: up with some really great suggestions.
Speaker 15: And their report pointed out the reasons for the revolt
Speaker 15: and what needed to be done to ensure that African Americans'
Speaker 15: concerns were addressed.
Speaker 14: They did a great job, and this was partially because
Speaker 14: of Unis.
Speaker 15: If you look at that final version of that report
Speaker 15: and was for the time radical in its own right,
Speaker 15: because it clearly pinpointed the issues that black people were
Speaker 15: dealing with and noted that there were specific kinds of
Speaker 15: changes that needed to occur to address the concerns of
Speaker 15: the black community.
Speaker 2: The significance of this movement is probably not in what
Speaker 2: the Commission would go on to achieve. Many of their
Speaker 2: final report recommendations are seen as too progressive, and it
Speaker 2: will not surprise you to learn that police brutality, inequality,
Speaker 2: and economic disparity all continue in Harlem despite the work
Speaker 2: Units and her peers put into the Commission. The Commission
Speaker 2: may have been window dressing, but it also marks another
Speaker 2: key moment in Unice's ambition. Units had been chosen by
Speaker 2: white men nificant power. Her name is clearly out there
Speaker 2: now for positions of influence. She's a name the establishment
Speaker 2: feels they can trust.
Speaker 1: To call on.
Speaker 2: Maybe not across all of New York, but definitely in Harlem.
Speaker 2: While Eunice is working on this committee, she's also spending
Speaker 2: some of her time volunteering as a kind of law
Speaker 2: clerk in a women's court.
Speaker 13: Sounds outrageously sexist today, but there actually was a women's court.
Speaker 10: In New York City. The women's court is in a
Speaker 10: building that still stands, called the Jefferson Market Courthouse.
Speaker 13: It is a.
Speaker 10: Beautiful old Gothic brick building with a big bell tower.
Speaker 10: Now actually not far from where the Mott Street Gang
Speaker 10: began and had their headquarters. A court that was devoted
Speaker 10: entirely to females cremitting crimes like shoplifting or prostitution, or
Speaker 10: whatever kinds of vagrancy, whatever sorts of things that women
Speaker 10: could be accused of, came out of that same period
Speaker 10: that prohibition comes out of that. It seems unlady like
Speaker 10: to have strangers sitting in court staring at these women
Speaker 10: as they talk about these vice ridden lifestyles and all
Speaker 10: these crimes.
Speaker 2: In the summer of nineteen thirty five, Unice's volunteering pays off.
Speaker 2: The New York DA appoints Unice as an assistant prosecutor
Speaker 2: in the court.
Speaker 14: So when Eunice was hired at the Prosecutor's office in
Speaker 14: thirty five, she was the first black woman in the
Speaker 14: New York Prosecutor's Office.
Speaker 2: I'm fascinated by Unice's decision to become a prosecutor and
Speaker 2: not a public defender. For someone looking to uplift the
Speaker 2: black community, it seems an unusual choice.
Speaker 16: I wonder if she saw it as a challenge as
Speaker 16: one of the few women and African Americans going into
Speaker 16: being a prosecutor. Anyone who is a prosecutor, they were
Speaker 16: all pretty feisty and self confident, and I really admire that.
Speaker 16: At the same time, I think there are African Americans
Speaker 16: who go into becoming prosecutors because it is a traditional
Speaker 16: route to power.
Speaker 2: A route to power. Maybe that's it. It's certainly not.
Speaker 1: The glamour of the women's court.
Speaker 10: It was dingy and dirty. There weren't even electric lights
Speaker 10: for much of the early twentieth century. It was jammed
Speaker 10: with lawyers and dirty cops and judges. It was no
Speaker 10: place that anybody wanted to be, but many women were
Speaker 10: there of dozens and dozens of times.
Speaker 2: The drama of the court has to get Unice's blood
Speaker 2: pumping more than the wills and contracts he was leaving
Speaker 2: behind in her private practice. Plus Unice excels and research
Speaker 2: like going through court documents, so there's plenty of work,
Speaker 2: booking forms, evidence sheets, courtroom transcripts. Detail heaven for someone
Speaker 2: like Unice, she looks through every piece of paper she can.
Speaker 2: I can picture Unis at a table in the courtroom
Speaker 2: with poor lighting, in a room that smells like smoke.
Speaker 2: Everyone smoked in public back then. I wonder if she
Speaker 2: has a little ashtray by her side. As she pours
Speaker 2: over the documents, she probably likes noticing the way information
Speaker 2: gets distilled from the frantic energy of the courtroom into
Speaker 2: the stenographer's notes. And as she sits there, she starts
Speaker 2: noticing patterns. Who signs their names with ex's how often
Speaker 2: the same women get picked up, or how so many
Speaker 2: of them have the same lawyer it's the same lawyer
Speaker 2: for all the women being released without a conviction.
Speaker 1: Does she talk.
Speaker 2: About this pattern with her colleagues? Someone as detail focused
Speaker 2: ash she is probably begins taking her own notes, just
Speaker 2: in case they'll be useful later. Unice doesn't strike me
Speaker 2: as a woman who would notice these things and shrug them.
Speaker 8: Off, files that knowledge away.
Speaker 2: Unice keeps her nose to the grindstone. But soon someone
Speaker 2: from city Hall calls looking for her. Because while Unice
Speaker 2: has been learning the ropes at the Women's Court, Thomas
Speaker 2: Dewey has been appointed new York's Special Prosecutor, and now
Speaker 2: he's assembling a team.
Speaker 14: Thomas Dewey said, I am looking for the twenty best
Speaker 14: attorneys in New York.
Speaker 2: Hey receives a huge number of applications from lawyers who
Speaker 2: all believe they're worthy.
Speaker 14: Because everybody wanted this glamorous, kind of sexy case.
Speaker 2: But Dewey doesn't just want the best. He's looking for
Speaker 2: people with very specific skills.
Speaker 14: I don't care their race, I don't care their religion,
Speaker 14: I don't care their gender. I want the best people.
Speaker 14: He also named Jewish attorneys at the time there were
Speaker 14: such a strong streak of anti Semitism.
Speaker 2: Who first suggested the name Eunice Hunting Carter, one.
Speaker 14: Of Dewey's assistants, described her was, Oh, she's a real
Speaker 14: go getter. Dewey said, let me interview her. She looks
Speaker 14: like she might be a candidate for this.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 14: What made it even harder for Unice was, you can
Speaker 14: imagine all these people are white. They're all men. You know,
Speaker 14: how on earth would a black woman be on this team.
Speaker 14: It was the mid thirties.
Speaker 1: This doesn't seem to put Dewey off.
Speaker 8: He knows he needs to assemble a strong team, but
Speaker 8: he also has to assemble a kind of diverse and
Speaker 8: also kind of unknown team. And that's because he has
Speaker 8: to assemble people who if they're going out into the community,
Speaker 8: if they're questioning witnesses, if they're questioning anyone, they don't
Speaker 8: necessarily want immediately for someone like dut Schultz to be like,
Speaker 8: I know that cop, I know that prosecutor. I've seen
Speaker 8: that attorney before. They want people who are knowledgeable but
Speaker 8: still a little bit outside of this world.
Speaker 1: Like Unice Carter.
Speaker 14: She knows Harlem. Dewey talk to her and he said, yes,
Speaker 14: I want her on my team.
Speaker 2: On July first, nineteen thirty five, Special Prosecutor Thomas A.
Speaker 2: Dewey appoints Unice Hunting Carter as a deputy Assistant prosecutor
Speaker 2: and the largest investigation of organized crime in US history.
Speaker 2: Unice Carter is just thirty six years old, the only
Speaker 2: woman and the only person of color on Dewey's team, the.
Speaker 1: Only black woman.
Speaker 2: Her hiring instantly makes national news, but that's nothing compared
Speaker 2: to the headlines she's about to generate that's coming up
Speaker 2: in episode five of The Godmother. In this episode of
Speaker 2: The Godmother, you heard.
Speaker 10: I'm Debbie Applegate. I'm a historian and biographer, and I
Speaker 10: am the author of Madam, The Biography of Polyadler Icon
Speaker 10: of the Jazz Age.
Speaker 11: My name is Christian Sippolini and I am an organized
Speaker 11: crime historian and author.
Speaker 14: I'm Marilyn Greenwald. I'm a professor Emerita of Journalism at
Speaker 14: Ohio University, and I'm the author of five biographies, including
Speaker 14: one of Eunice Hunt and Carter.
Speaker 1: My name is Leshawn Harris.
Speaker 7: I am an Associate professor of history at Michigan State
Speaker 7: University in the Department of History.
Speaker 15: My name is doctor Clarissa Myrik Harris, and I am
Speaker 15: a tenured professor of Africana Studies at Moorhouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 2: HI.
Speaker 17: My name is Ellen Paulson. My research and I write
Speaker 17: books about criminal acts and davis that took place during
Speaker 17: the nineteen thirties in the United States, and my focus
Speaker 17: so far has been women who were involved with notworious
Speaker 17: gangsters and desperadoes.
Speaker 9: My name is Robert Whalan and I'm an Amerithus Professor
Speaker 9: of History at Queen's University of Charlotte here in Charlotte,
Speaker 9: North Carolina.
Speaker 8: I am Claire White, and I am the director of
Speaker 8: Education at the Mob Museum in downtown Las Vegas.
Speaker 16: I'm Gatherine Powell, the Unis Hunt and Carter Research Professor
Speaker 16: of Law at Port of Law School.
Speaker 9: My name is Chuck Greeves.
Speaker 18: Becoming a writer, I spent twenty five years as a
Speaker 18: Los Angeles trial lawyer. My fourth novel was basically a
Speaker 18: fictionalization of the famous nineteen thirty six vice trial.
Speaker 2: The Godmother is produced by Novel for iHeartRadio. For more
Speaker 2: from novel, visit novel dot Audio. The Godmother is hosted
Speaker 2: and written by me Nicole Perkins. Our producer is Leona Hamid.
Speaker 2: Additional production from Ajuajima Broumpong, Ronald Young Junior and Zianna Yusuf.
Speaker 2: Our editor is Ajua Jima Broumpong. Additional story editing from
Speaker 2: Max O'Brien and Mitha Lee Raw and our researcher is
Speaker 2: Ziana Yusuf. Additional research from Mohammed Ahmed. David Waters is
Speaker 2: our executive producer. Field production by Tnito Romani and Pallas Shaw,
Speaker 2: Sound design, mixing and school by Daniel Kempsen. Our score
Speaker 2: was written, performed and recorded by Jeff Parker. Music supervision
Speaker 2: by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Production management and endless
Speaker 2: patients from Charie Houston, Sarah Tobin and Charlotte Wolfe. Fact
Speaker 2: checking by Fendel Fulton and Donia Suleiman. Story development by
Speaker 2: Madeline Parr, Jess Swinburne, Esseana Yusuf. Willard Foxton is our
Speaker 2: Creative Director of Development. Special thanks to Leah Carter, Stephen Carter,
Speaker 2: Angela J. Davis, Andrew Fernley, Marilyn Greenwald, Sondra Lebedy, Katherine Godfrey,
Speaker 2: Nadia Maidie, Amalia Sortland, Sean Glenn, Neil Krishnan, Julia Bromberg,
Speaker 2: Katrina Norvelle, Carly Frankel, and all the team at w
Speaker 2: Emmy
Speaker 1: Novel