WEBVTT - Ep 4: Panic 0:00:06.519 --> 0:00:06.880 Novel. 0:00:11.520 --> 0:00:15.880 Before we begin, a content warning. The following episode contains 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:22.720 difficult themes and violence. Mama, I called my mom back 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:24.040 in the middle of lunch recently? 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:28.400 What you doing looking at YouTube videos? 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:33.800 I'd missed her earlier call, and she tends to worry 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:36.040 if I take too long to call her back. So 0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:38.199 I thought I'd make use of the opportunity to ask 0:00:38.280 --> 0:00:40.960 her about a connection I have to Eunice Carter's story. 0:00:41.720 --> 0:00:42.680 Let me ask you this. 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:44.879 Do you know anybody who ran numbers? 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:45.840 Play dumb? 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:46.319 Yes? 0:00:47.040 --> 0:00:48.440 Yeah, uh huh. 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:50.879 Let me see what was his name? He was a 0:00:50.920 --> 0:00:54.920 big number man in Nashville, Girl. He long needed money 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:57.080 to get the bath hom fixed. 0:00:57.680 --> 0:01:01.600 My childhood in Nashville and Harlem nineteen twenties are quite 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:05.479 different in lots of ways. But if the little slips 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:08.119 of paper I sometimes saw in my uncle's pockets as 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:11.280 a child, or anything to go by black folks playing 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:16.440 the numbers is a shared history across America. My late 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:21.280 great uncle was a hard working, respectable man. He was quiet, stern, 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:24.720 kept his own private stash of Pepsi's no one else 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:27.479 was allowed to drink. But he had a gold tooth 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:30.440 that winked out at the world when he laughed, showing 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:32.720 a little bit of the slick country charm that must 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:35.920 have stolen my aunt's heart. He believed in the stability 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:39.440 of an honest day's work, but he also enjoyed taking 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:43.480 a chance on the game of numbers. There was community 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:46.560 in the game. If the meteorologist on television said we 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:49.400 were going to have four days of ninety eight degree weather, 0:01:49.800 --> 0:01:53.400 a living room chorus of elders would erupt four ninety eight. 0:01:53.600 --> 0:01:57.400 Write that down, play that number. The numbers game is 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:01.640 like an unofficial lottery. To play, you start by selecting 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:04.920 any three digit number and betting some money on it 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:05.640 with a bookmaker. 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:09.560 You could claim the number and you put a nickel 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:12.560 like just say on at a thirteen. 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:16.600 The winning digits are announced the next day by whoever 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:21.040 runs the game. They're usually drawn from some random, publicly published, 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:24.440 hard to predict number, like the last three digits of 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:27.800 Federal Reserve Bank clearings for that day. A lot of 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:30.359 people had a special system for figuring out which numbers 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:32.919 to bet. My great uncle was one of them. 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:37.080 He would sit down to workout numbers certain times, so 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:39.880 the years, certain numbers always fall. 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:43.560 I remember one time my uncle deviated from his system 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:46.240 by asking my cousin, who was studying to become a 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:48.760 preacher at the time, to look in the Bible for 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:49.760 some divine help. 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:51.400 And she wouldn't do it. 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:53.200 She wouldn't do it. 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:57.640 Yeah, the numbers game is a game of chance. 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:03.040 My aunt and her husband would host our extended family 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:06.440 for almost all the major holidays and family events. My 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:09.360 uncle's friends would come over, and after all the greeting 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:12.160 formalities were out of the way, they'd ask what it 0:03:12.240 --> 0:03:15.440 hit for, and the jargon would fly too quickly for 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:19.120 my child's mind to follow. I still wasn't really sure 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:21.680 what the numbers were. I just knew that a lot 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:24.960 of conversations with a certain group of elders included them 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:28.120 asking each other if their number had hit today, and 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:30.640 if someone showed up with a new car, they look 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:33.559 at the license plate and say, I'm gonna play that number. 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:38.760 One time. Maybe. When I was around six years. 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:42.760 Old, the house was full of people and music and food. 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:47.040 All the big elders were sitting at the kitchen table 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:51.200 reminiscing and laughing. There was a gallon jug of what 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:53.960 I thought was great fruit punch sitting there between the 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:57.800 ash trays and discarded dessert plates. I decided to help 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:00.760 myself to a cup. But I remember I'm thinking that 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:02.760 it was great creature cooler because it was just in 0:04:02.840 --> 0:04:05.760 a one of them regular old classic gallon jumps. I 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:08.280 thought it was a local brand of fruit punch. My 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:11.040 granddaddy stopped me just in time to keep me from 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:14.800 drinking some homemade wine. 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:19.680 Yeah it to you, so whatever you know. 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:28.600 As fuzzy as this memory is, it's one of my favorites, 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:33.040 especially now that forty years later, so much has changed. 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:37.120 Granddaddy's been gone a long time. We can't trust my 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:40.039 great aunt, once famous for her hot water corn bread 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:43.679 and potato salad, to cook anymore, and my great uncle, 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:49.480 her husband, passed away several years ago as well. By 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:51.680 the time I was a teenager, my great aunt and 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:54.599 uncle had stopped drinking and smoking, but I think my 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:56.080 uncle maintained. 0:04:55.600 --> 0:04:57.200 At least that one little vice. 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:05.120 As Unice Hunting Carter walked through the streets of Harlem, 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:08.159 perhaps on her way to and from law school, the 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:11.000 numbers game would have been going on all around her too, 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:15.080 not necessarily out in the open. Playing the numbers is 0:05:15.120 --> 0:05:19.080 a secretive business. That's why some of my mom's answers 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:21.760 are a bit frustratingly vague. 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:25.560 People that were running the numbers, they looked like your 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:29.320 average person. You could go to the barber shops, the 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:31.960 beauty shops, the worst store. 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:34.000 To who though like it had to be somebody on 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:36.320 the side. It wasn't actually going to Kroger and placing 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:37.840 a bit with crogh. 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:40.200 The Tennessee has a state. 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:43.280 Lottery, right, but I'm not talking about the lottery. I'm 0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:45.960 talking about numbers like that's nothing different. 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:50.000 Numbers were supposed to be illegal. 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:56.120 It was a shared, open secret between friends. Lucrative but illegal. 0:05:56.760 --> 0:06:01.320 Well, but your contact was they would tell you who 0:06:01.440 --> 0:06:02.720 you need to see in. 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.120 The grocery store. Agana could have worked there. It could 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:10.760 have been the butcher, could have been anybody in Nick. 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:14.800 The reason why it was illegal is because it was 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:20.000 an underground thing and it was mostly in the black neighborhoods, 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:21.760 just like up in Harlem. 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:25.240 So in Harlem, as the twenties turned to the thirties 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:28.120 and Eunice was learning the letter of the law, she 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:31.520 passes many of her neighbors who are surviving by breaking it. 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:34.440 Not that many play the numbers because they thought it 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:35.560 was going to make them rich. 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:38.839 The odds of winning are six hundred to one. 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:42.280 The more money you put on it to bi of 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:45.200 your return. So they would put. 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:47.080 A penny on the number, they put a. 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:50.920 Niffle, they put a quarter. People didn't make a whole lot. 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:53.960 Of money in it as ordinary to my childhood as 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:56.960 a cabbage patch kid or the sounds of MTV playing 0:06:57.000 --> 0:07:00.240 in the background. For a long time. It's also been 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:03.200 a way to establish hope and agency and black communities, 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:07.520 especially when times got hard. But where does all the 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:08.040 money go? 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:14.640 Nobody win, but people like the people all at what 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:17.320 all that money adds up? 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:21.320 Seems like in Unice's days, just as in my childhood, 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:24.320 the people running the game are the ones making the profits. 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:27.280 And in Harlem in the nineteen twenties and into the 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:31.440 early thirties, one of those people was called Stephanie Saint Clair, 0:07:33.520 --> 0:07:37.320 as glamorous and as ambitious as Unice. But just as 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:40.160 we saw in Atlanta in nineteen oh six during the 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:44.160 violent riots that shaped the trajectory of Unus's life, black 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:47.320 wealth attracts a lot of white attention. 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:53.080 Black folks said that then white folks won it. 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:57.360 They could from the teams at iHeartRadio and novel. I'm 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:25.239 Nicole Perkins and this is the God Episode four Panic, 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:43.480 New York City, Wednesday morning, November twentieth, nineteen twenty nine, 0:08:44.160 --> 0:08:46.800 and unus hunting. Carter has just started her break from 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:50.280 Fordham Law School. This morning, she's getting ready for a 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:57.120 day of political campaigning for Republican mayorial candidate Fiorella LaGuardia. 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:01.200 But right now, in this moment, she's taking time for 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:05.600 herself to read the newspaper. She opens the New York 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:09.640 Amsterdam News. Her eyes are immediately drawn to a large ad. 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:14.480 It features a glamorous black woman looking back at Unice. 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:18.959 She's wearing a coat, jewels what looks like a close hat. 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:23.920 Her hands rest just above her hips. Beneath the picture, 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:27.120 she's written a letter addressed to the people of New 0:09:27.200 --> 0:09:28.000 York City. 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:30.319 To the members of my race. 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:34.120 I have received letters and telephone messages from men who 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:37.680 have annoyed me very much, and I take this occasion 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:42.320 to ask them publicly to please not annoy me. I, 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:47.320 Madame Saint clair Am not looking for a husband or 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:56.760 a sweetheart. Eunice recognizes the woman in the ad immediately, so. 0:09:56.760 --> 0:10:02.400 Stephanie Sinclair is very, very flamboyant. 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:06.440 One of Harlem's wealthiest and more notorious residents. And maybe 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:09.240 the two of them have more in common than at 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:10.000 first glance. 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:15.600 Their backgrounds are different, but these two women are the same. 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:19.040 They want the same things. Then they see themselves as leaders. 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:22.559 By this point, at the end of the twenties, Stephanie 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:25.440 Saint Clair is in the paper all the time, in 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:28.520 her own ads like this one and in news articles. 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:34.440 By today's standards, she'd be a millionaire, and she is 0:10:34.600 --> 0:10:36.000 not coy about it. 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:41.040 She's one of those people who would definitely be famous 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:45.559 in twenty twenty three. Stephanie Sinclair knew how to use 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.679 the press. She knew how to use word of mouth. 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:50.080 She knew how to use gossip. 0:10:54.320 --> 0:10:56.800 Stephanie Saint Clair lives at an address that many of 0:10:56.840 --> 0:11:00.640 the other movers and shakers of Harlem's Renaissance also call home. 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:05.440 Up on sugar Hill four to oh nine Edgecombe Avenue, 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:08.960 the Grand thirteen story complex, my Harlem tour guide had 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:11.680 told me about during my visit to the neighborhood. It 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:15.600 sits on a raised section of Harlem with sweeping views 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:19.000 to the east. It's home to the likes of W. E. B. 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:24.280 Du Boyce, Aaron Douglas, and, of course, later in her life, Eunice. 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:28.360 But in the winter of nineteen twenty nine, another resident 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:32.200 is walking across the parquet floors and through its lush lobby, 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:33.880 tipping her hat to the dorman. 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.240 When Stephanie Saint Clair lived in that building during the 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:41.160 twenties and the early nineteen thirties, everyone who lived in 0:11:41.160 --> 0:11:44.240 that building knew who she was, and they knew what 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:45.160 she did for a living. 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:54.280 Stephanie Saint Clair is an illegal gambling racketeer, and a 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:58.120 successful one at that. She's known as Harlem's policy Queen. 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:01.920 That means she hed runs the neighborhood numbers game being 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:06.480 played all over Harlem. Saint Clair employs at least fifty 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:10.840 runners who spill out across Harlem, collecting slips and bets 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:17.400 and salons, grocers and living rooms. She is arrogant, fashionable, glamorous, 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:20.840 and smart. She has a reputation for profanity. 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:24.280 All of this led an air to mystery to her. 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:27.800 That was a part of her mystique. 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:30.840 She's kagy about the details of her past, but we 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:33.280 know she arrived in New York City from the Caribbean 0:12:33.520 --> 0:12:36.360 just prior to the Great Migration, and she's said to 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:38.920 have led a local gang called the Forty Thieves in 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:41.360 her youth until she found her niche in. 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:42.160 The numbers game. 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:45.480 Here you have a woman who's able to really build 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:49.000 a small empire in a short amount of time. 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:53.400 Soon, Eunice Hunting Carter and Stephanie Saint Clair will share 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:57.080 a common enemy, but it's Stephanie who will learn his 0:12:57.160 --> 0:12:59.000 name first. 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:07.680 So Dutch Schultz is this bootlegger. He's a roofless gangster. 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:10.760 Dutch was a major figure in organized crime from the 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:14.760 nineteen twenties. His family had owned a trucking company, which 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:18.080 came in handy for the transportation of illegal alcohol. But 0:13:18.280 --> 0:13:20.959 in nineteen thirty three, with prohibition coming to an end, 0:13:21.600 --> 0:13:25.680 his prospects look less profitable. So, just like his associate 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:30.600 Lucky Luciano, he's searching for new opportunities to exploit. Unlike Lucky, 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:33.720 he doesn't have the same kind of charisma about him, 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:36.000 or forethought for that matter. 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:40.240 Every time he has a run in with someone, he 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:43.320 sort of doubles down, like I gotta kill more people. 0:13:43.360 --> 0:13:46.880 I gotta be more aggressive next time. He sort of 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:50.360 consistently learns the wrong lessons. 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:53.880 So as Lucky's Mott Street boys are moving into sex work, 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:57.480 Dutch Schultz's idea for a new revenue stream is the 0:13:57.520 --> 0:14:01.920 neighborhood numbers games, particularly one neighborhood where it appears to 0:14:01.960 --> 0:14:02.600 be flourishing. 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:08.880 This is someone who wants to really control Harlem's numbers racket. 0:14:09.760 --> 0:14:15.800 He had been pretty successful in forcing black numbers bankers 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:19.480 out of their businesses by force by violence. 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:23.880 But just like Eunice, Harlem's policy queen is no pushover. 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:32.280 Stephanie Sainclair is not going to let someone like a 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:35.200 Dutch Shultz come in and take the business. 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:46.760 So in the early thirties, just as Unice is holding 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:49.720 her ground, trying to find a path forward in the 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:53.720 male dominated world of law and preventing her career from stagnating, 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:58.359 Stephanie Saint Clair is holding her ground too. She's engaged 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:01.480 in a game of cat and mouse with Schultz. Rumor 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:04.800 has it she's taken to walking across Harlem's rooftops to 0:15:04.840 --> 0:15:07.720 avoid being spotted by Dutch or his cronies on the street. 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:12.120 Because Stephanie is still working her numbers business even as 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:15.280 Dutch is trying to box her out, but the mafia 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:18.960 has no issues with strong arming women. With the walls 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:22.760 of prohibition coming down, mobsters across New York are on 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:23.240 the move. 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:29.160 It's not just the occasional bandit that would stick up 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:31.840 a liquor store. It was very well organized and very 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:34.280 violent coming out of prohibition. 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:38.480 And the press are jumping on this emerging story. Suddenly, 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:41.320 these mobsters are no longer the friendly facilitators of your 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:44.680 boozy party are putting the wine on your table with dinner. 0:15:45.320 --> 0:15:46.360 They're coming for you. 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:51.040 They want a thumb in every pie, and they don't 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:56.400 care if that pie is baked with your blood. It's 0:15:56.440 --> 0:16:00.760 a story that's salacious, it's got drama. It's perfect for 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:02.720 crime reporters to fill their columns. 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:07.720 All of a sudden, we began to see more panic. 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:12.560 And readers are told this crime wave isn't just in 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:18.840 the underworld. It's seeping into everyday life. The rise of 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:22.840 the criminal underworld. Every mobster is a direct threat to 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:27.240 the American way of life. Imagine opening up your morning 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:30.320 paper and reading that while you do your god given 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:33.600 duty as an American husband and father, going to work 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:37.280 each day to put food on the table. Some flashy 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:41.160 gangster wants to rob your store, or kidnap your daughter, 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:44.400 or make you give up your hard earned salary for protection. 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:49.360 Nowhere is safe. Everything has value to the mob. 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:03.400 This market economy crazy. Everything's for sale. The leading hoodlums 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:06.560 of the day as well as Luciano, talked about everything 0:17:06.640 --> 0:17:09.080 being for sale. This is the ultimate market. So cops 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:12.199 are for sale, prosecutors are for sale, judges are for sale. 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:15.840 Sex is for sale. Women are for sale. Everything's for sale. 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:17.679 And whether it's the cop on a beat, then you 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:20.000 give them five bucks to look the other way, or 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:22.760 whether it's somebody higher up in the system or wherever 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:23.880 they were ineffective. 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:27.160 Those who have been quietly operating on just the other 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:30.280 side of the law until recently, whether it's numbers like 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:33.359 Stephanie Saint Clair or in sex work like Coochie Flow, 0:17:33.920 --> 0:17:36.879 are now labeled as complicit with the ones trying to 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:40.320 take over their businesses. Suddenly they're the culprit. It's in 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:41.640 a much bigger scandal. 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:46.159 New York was practically a failed city. The ability of 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:48.600 the state and the police to maintain law and order 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:51.679 in a democratic way was largely failing, and that there 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:54.960 were all these people. All these gangsters of all kinds, 0:17:54.960 --> 0:18:00.159 who operated as virtually independent warlords were practically taking or 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:02.399 the city. 0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:06.520 Are things really as bad as they seem? Is the 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:11.320 very fabric of society falling apart. By the time the 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:15.200 Guardia is elected as mayor on January first, nineteen thirty four, 0:18:15.760 --> 0:18:16.960 it doesn't seem to matter. 0:18:18.080 --> 0:18:21.240 Every politician in New York promised to do something about this. 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:23.920 Certainly a Fiorella or the Guardia promised that he would 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:26.240 be the one who would find some way to deal 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:29.520 with completely out of control of crime. There was a 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:41.240 push by all sorts of people to do something. 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:48.400 The story of how New York came to a point 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:51.920 is mob Crusader is a little convoluted. For the detail oriented, 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:56.000 it's a story Unis might enjoy herself, but for others 0:18:56.040 --> 0:19:01.800 it was essentially on the one hand, a problem. 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:03.480 In New York was, how do you take this random 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:07.840 mayhem of violence and bring it under the law. How 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:10.359 do you do that? That's very difficult. 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:14.000 And on the other a seemingly unlikely solution. 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:19.000 Let's have a democratic process that is competent, that is transparent, 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:23.439 but is also strong enough to repress all of this 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:27.919 terrible violence. That was the great challenge that LaGuardia faced 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:28.680 in the thirties. 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:32.000 The stars needed to somehow align for someone to be 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:36.679 given actual power to go after the mob But who, who, 0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:40.080 in the corrupt world of nineteen thirties politics, would be 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:43.200 given that kind of authority, and who would even want 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:45.080 to take on such a dangerous task. 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:47.520 Well, the answer. 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:53.479 Came from something called a runaway grand jury. They're basically 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:57.639 a group of citizens chosen to investigate specific allegations of 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:00.880 corruption and vice. But the New York d who appointed 0:20:00.920 --> 0:20:03.400 them had underestimated how impatient. 0:20:02.960 --> 0:20:03.800 They were for change. 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:07.160 They've had enough of the state of politics and corruption 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:08.160 in New York. 0:20:08.320 --> 0:20:10.240 And there was a big stink. 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:13.600 And so the grand jury ran away all the way 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:15.600 to the Governor of New York up in Albany. 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:19.280 Grand juries can do lots of stuff, and once they're impaneled, 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:21.760 they not only can call in witnesses and so on, 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:24.199 but they can complain about attorneys. 0:20:24.840 --> 0:20:28.000 Their runaway grand jury demands the governor appoint someone strong 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:31.120 enough to rid the city of mobsters once and for all. 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:35.520 All right, all right, all right, I'll appoint a special 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:40.359 prosecutor to basically replace the sitting district attorney. 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:43.200 But the still raises the question of who would want 0:20:43.240 --> 0:20:46.120 to do this. It's not like there's a long list 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:49.920 of bipartisan people with the necessary experience who are going 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:53.399 to raise their hands to make matters worse. All of 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:56.080 the governor's initial candidates for the job are rejected by 0:20:56.119 --> 0:21:02.040 the grand Jury members. They want someone's an energetic. 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:05.360 Efficient, confident, hardworking, not camera. 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:10.760 Shy, focused and ambitious, someone with an extremely striking mustache. 0:21:11.119 --> 0:21:17.080 Thomas Dewey enters the picture on that platform. 0:21:19.400 --> 0:21:22.520 Just a few years after Addie and William Hunton welcomed 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:26.080 their sugar into the world and named her Unice. Thomas 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:29.600 Dewey was born to a middle class family in a Wassaw, Michigan. 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:34.399 Like Eunice, his education was marked by academic excellence. Also, 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:38.800 like Eunice, Dewey's parents were committed Republicans. His dad was 0:21:38.840 --> 0:21:41.679 a newspaper man who owned and published a Michigan paper. 0:21:42.200 --> 0:21:46.280 It was an abolitionist newspaper, a pro Lincoln newspaper, and 0:21:46.359 --> 0:21:49.160 Dewey himself was very attentive to the media of the day. 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:52.240 As a child, he grew up with this realization that 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:54.600 the printed paper that was important. 0:21:54.920 --> 0:21:57.679 Ever since his early days, Dewey had been something of 0:21:57.720 --> 0:22:01.280 a ham. He loves putting on a good show, despite 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:07.640 what some consider an unremarkable appearance. Always well groomed, He's 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:10.720 average height with slick backed hair, part it carefully on 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:14.480 the left side. You could practically count the teeth marks 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:17.640 from his comb. But that facial hair he. 0:22:17.680 --> 0:22:21.239 Insisted on having his little mustache that irritated people. I 0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:24.840 can remember my dad, who grew up in New York State, 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:27.280 saying he'd never vote for that Dewey guy because of 0:22:27.280 --> 0:22:30.240 that badgum mustache. And I would think, Dad, what's the 0:22:30.320 --> 0:22:31.479 mustache got to do with it? 0:22:31.800 --> 0:22:37.240 And Dewey's demeanor yloof, cocky, conceded, condescending, He rubbed a 0:22:37.280 --> 0:22:38.280 lot of people the wrong way. 0:22:38.600 --> 0:22:41.440 But he was also ambitious. 0:22:42.000 --> 0:22:45.160 Dewey has one powerful tool for success. 0:22:45.640 --> 0:22:48.600 As a very young man growing up in Michigan, he 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:52.400 was blessed with this remarkable voice, this great baritone voice. 0:22:52.440 --> 0:22:54.080 He thought he was going to be a singer, and 0:22:54.160 --> 0:22:57.199 he always had a kind of theatrical side to him. 0:22:57.359 --> 0:23:00.720 In college, he'd actually traveled down to North Carolina for 0:23:00.800 --> 0:23:02.280 a singing competition. 0:23:02.200 --> 0:23:05.440 And young Tom Dewey sang his way around in the mountains. 0:23:05.720 --> 0:23:08.680 Singing was how Dewey met his future wife. 0:23:08.680 --> 0:23:11.760 Of course, in the end he doesn't pursue a singing career, 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:14.920 but he'd continued to use that voice. 0:23:15.600 --> 0:23:19.120 You witnessed the tragic effect of crime on its victims, 0:23:19.160 --> 0:23:22.000 the unbelievable viciousness of the underworld. 0:23:22.920 --> 0:23:25.840 This is from a radio show dow We had on WNYC. 0:23:26.720 --> 0:23:30.320 Somehow hypnotic yet energizing at the same time. 0:23:30.640 --> 0:23:35.200 The hardships under which the police another law enforcement agencies labor, 0:23:35.760 --> 0:23:39.040 and the schemes and tricks to which criminals resort to 0:23:39.080 --> 0:23:40.200 get around the law. 0:23:41.400 --> 0:23:44.080 As Eunice was starting her writing and social career during 0:23:44.080 --> 0:23:47.320 the nineteen twenties Harlem Renaissance, Dewey had moved to New 0:23:47.359 --> 0:23:50.680 York and launched his legal career, initially in private practice 0:23:50.680 --> 0:23:52.000 as a lawyer on Wall Street. 0:23:52.560 --> 0:23:54.879 But that was just the start. Thomas E. 0:23:55.080 --> 0:24:00.920 Dewey decided at one point to have political aspiration along 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:04.359 with his law enforcement aspirations. 0:24:04.800 --> 0:24:07.919 For Dewey, the law is just a wrong on a ladder. 0:24:08.800 --> 0:24:12.880 The problem is that as a politician he lived in 0:24:12.920 --> 0:24:17.000 an age of basically very charming and lovable politicians. Franklin 0:24:17.080 --> 0:24:21.640 Roosevelt had enough charm for about twelve different people. Fiorella 0:24:21.720 --> 0:24:25.959 LaGuardia also a very charming kind of character. So Dewey 0:24:26.000 --> 0:24:29.399 had great strengths, but on the charm scale he was 0:24:29.440 --> 0:24:30.320 a little challenged. 0:24:30.960 --> 0:24:33.760 But as the son of a newspaper man, do we 0:24:33.920 --> 0:24:37.200 know some things the other want to be politicians don't. 0:24:37.520 --> 0:24:40.600 He was friendly with the press because he understood that 0:24:40.920 --> 0:24:43.480 to get attention to him, which he craved, it was 0:24:43.560 --> 0:24:45.080