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| Army: Alabama National Guard In Phenix City-A High Watermark, The |
The Alabama National Guard has participated, in varying degrees, in every significant military action undertaken by this country since the War of 1812, including World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Bosnia and Kosovo, and now Afghanistan and Iraq, helping to defeat dictators and terrorists the world over. Nowhere has the Guard distinguished itself more, however, than in the battle for Phénix City in 1954, right at home in Alabama.
For more than 120 years, Phenix City had been a cesspool of decadence, where gamblers, vice lords and thugs, protected by corrupt local officials, exploited human weaknesses. After Fort Benning, Ga., was established just across the Chattahoochee River, many young soldiers, often away from home for the first time, fell victim to this wide-open den of iniquity. Sporadically, the state of Alabama tried to clean up Phenix City, but every effort failed until a sensational murder set the stage for the Alabama National Guard to tame "the wickedest city in America."
In 1833, the village of Girard, Ala., sat on the west bank of the Chattahoochee near the point where the first federal road crossed into Alabama. Girard was a lawless frontier town, as bad or worse than any cattle town of the old west, where booze flowed freely, gambling openly flourished, prostitution was rampant, and beatings, cuttings and killings were common. The frontier moved westward, but Girard remained a pocket of depravity in southeast Alabama. Periodically, the state cracked the whip, but as soon as the outsiders left, criminal activity in Girard returned to normal.
In 1923, in yet another attempt to tame wicked Girard, which was in Russell County, the town was merged with a God-fearing community just across the line in Lee County. The seat of the merged towns was moved to the Russell County side of the county line. The influence of the decent people of Phenix City, however, could not overcome generations of lawlessness; as soon as the state's back was turned, Phenix City became just as corrupt and wide-open as the former Girard, but there was at least now a counterculture of decent, but intimidated, citizens.
In the years just before World War II, and indeed during the war, conditions went from bad to worse as thousands and thousands of soldiers passed through Fort Benning and sought adventure when they were outside the gates. Lured by bright lights, liquor, open gambling and fast women, soldiers from Fort Benning were an easy mark in Phenix City. Neither the soldiers nor the honest citizens could turn to local authorities for help. Gambling kingpins and vice lords bought votes, counted votes of long since dead voters and terrorized honest citizens so that every political leader and law enforcement officer in the county owed their jobs to the crooks. The outlaws, in turn, paid license fees, taxes and fines that kept Phenix City from going bankrupt during the Great Depression.
Typically, a soldier would go to one of Phenix City's bars and be greeted by a friendly bar girl. He would buy her watered-down drinks until she got him drunk. She would then take him to a back room where slot machines and table games were played. (In addition, there were two lotteries running continuously in Phenix City.) Playing against loaded dice and marked cards, the drunken soldier was easy pickings. If he quit gambling before he was broke, he could take the girl to a side room for the going rate of a dollar a minute. If he did not drink enough, knockout drops could be slipped into his drink and he would then be rolled. Some Phenix City women married eight or ten soldiers and had allotment checks coming from them all. In one house of prostitution, the owner tattooed a mark inside the lower lip of his girls; if they tried to seek work elsewhere, the next proprietor would know to whom they belonged and send them back.
If a soldier caused trouble in Phenix City, the lucky ones were merely arrested by local police or sheriff's deputies, charged with being drunk and disorderly and turned over to the MPs. If they were too rowdy, there were brass knuckles, chains, clubs, knives and guns readily at hand, and the less lucky soldiers might be severely beaten. The most unlucky of all-those soldiers causing the biggest problems-were killed and their bodies thrown into the Chattahoochee River.
At the end of World War II, a lot of good soldiers came home to Phenix City, determined to rid their hometown of corrupt politicians, gamblers and vice lords. It proved to be an exceedingly difficult and frustrating task-one marked with arson, bombings, beatings and eventually, murder.
In 1951, an organization known as the Russell Betterment Association (RBA) was formed in the offices of a lawyer named Albert Patterson. Patterson practiced law with his son, John, a former artillery officer who had served in North Africa and Italy during World War II. Patterson himself was a partially disabled World War I veteran, having had one leg mangled by a German machine gun. The express purpose of the RBA was to bring law and order to Phenix City.
The association began to bring heat on corrupt politicians and gamblers, who, in turn, tried to intimidate the RBA. The home of one of RBA's leaders, Hugh Bentley, was bombed, and his young son was thrown out into the back yard, miraculously unhurt. Albert Patterson's law office was set afire and most of his files were destroyed. During the 1952 elections, thugs at the polling places severely beat Hugh Bentley and several of his friends as well as a reporter from the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger. For a while, it looked like the thugs were going to win once again.
Although the players changed from generation to generation, in the early 1950s, the sheriff's department was being run by a corrupt deputy named Albert Fuller, over whom the sheriff had no control whatsoever. Fuller was extorting protection money from one group of racketeers. The police department was run by Fuller's competitor, the "night chief," Buddy Jowers, the nephew of the mayor, who completely overshadowed the real police chief, got protection money from the rest of the crooks and was co-owner of one of the prostitution rings.
By early 1954, Albert Patterson and his colleagues in RBA realized that it would take a state effort to make a dent in the Phenix City rackets. Accordingly, Patterson decided to turn his law practice over to his son, John, now an Army major just home from being called up during the Korean War, and run for attorney general of Alabama in the May Democratic primary. His campaign emphasized his pledge to fight crime and especially to clean up Phenix City. The vice lords of Phenix City, of course, supported one of his opponents, but to their dismay, when the votes were counted, Albert Patterson was in the runoff.
In the three weeks between the primary and runoff election, the gamblers poured thousands and thousands of dollars into Patterson's opponent's campaign, bought votes and intimidated voters, and-to add insult to injury-spread rumors that Patterson was the candidate of the Phenix City gamblers and vice lords.
Notwithstanding their best efforts, however, Patterson won the runoff according to the unofficial count announced the day after the election; the tally agreed with the vote count taken by two of the state's leading newspapers. The primary election results were to be turned over to the sheriff by the party election officials by noon Friday after the election so he could forward them to Montgomery for the official tally.
On Friday morning, the state attorney general's secretary called the Jefferson County Democratic Party chairman, a 28-year-old lawyer, and told him that the attorney general wanted to meet with him in Birmingham at 2 P.M. in his hotel room to review the vote tally sheets. Attorney General Si Garrett had already spoken to the chairman the previous day and told him that Patterson's campaign had stolen some 1,700 votes and was trying to steal the election. When the chairman arrived at the attorney general's room, he was warmly greeted by the attorney general and Arch Ferrell, the district attorney of Russell County.
After the two lawyers thoroughly trashed Albert Patterson, they suggested to the chairman that if he ran a tape and retallied the votes, he might find that the vote count was off by about 2,000 votes that should have gone to Patterson's opponent. When the committee chairman resisted, the state's chief legal officer showed him the door, keeping the tabulations so he could "study" them.
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Later that day, the young chairman was informed by the attorney general and Russell County district attorney that they only needed 600 votes in Jefferson County since other counties would be making adjustments in their totals. Over the course of the weekend, the two state law enforcement officials persuaded the county party chairman that, to defeat the gamblers, he had to turn in tabulations that had been doctored to show Patterson's opponent receiving 600 more votes in Jefferson County than he actually received. The fraudulent tally sheets were turned in on Monday, suspiciously, three days late.
When the votes were tabulated in Montgomery, however, not enough votes had been changed or stolen, and Albert Patterson won the Democratic nomination by a mere 804 votes. Nevertheless, the uproar that erupted in the press because of the late report and changed vote totals in Jefferson and other counties convinced the Jefferson County district attorney to ask a sitting grand jury to investigate whether election fraud had occurred. The grand jury began taking testimony immediately.
On the morning of Friday, June 18, Attorney General-elect Patterson was in Montgomery telling friends that he would be going before the Birmingham grand jury the following Monday and that he "had the goods" on Garrett and Ferrell. Returning to Phenix City that afternoon, Patterson went by his office to work on thank-you notes to his supporters around the state. About 9:00 P.M. he walked out of the building to his car parked in the adjoining alley. As he opened the car door, three shots rang out. Albert Patterson staggered from the alley and fell dead on the sidewalk. One of the bullets had been fired into his mouth as a warning to others who might be tempted to talk.
As news of Albert Patterson's assassination ricocheted around the state and nation, all hell broke loose. The governor, Gordon Persons, quickly dispatched Maj. Gen. Walter J. (Crack) Hanna, Adjutant General of the Alabama National Guard, to Phenix City. The governor knew that only one organization in the state had the unquestioned integrity, will and discipline to handle Phenix City-and that was the Alabama National Guard. Gen. Hanna, accompanied by his senior military police officer, Col. Jack Warren, was in the city before daylight the next morning, and National Guard troops were on the streets by that afternoon, initially with the mission of just keeping the peace and preventing further bloodshed.
Shortly after the shooting, Phenix City police officers were dispatched to warn gamblers, thugs, prostitutes and con men to get out of town, and they began bailing out of Phenix City by every mode of transportation available.
When Gov. Persons arrived later that day, he met with local officials and read them the riot act. Before arriving in Phenix City, he called Gen. Joe Harper, commanding general at Fort Benning, and asked him to put the entire town of Phenix City off limits. Despite the governor's admonition, after he left, local law enforcement officials merely went through the motions, rounded up the usual suspects, and, as had been done so many times before, chose to bide their time until the heat was off.
On June 23, Attorney General Garrett was called before the Jefferson County grand jury looking into the election fraud allegations. The grand jury had expanded its inquiry to see if there were any ties between voter fraud and the murder of Albert Patterson. The attorney general was grilled by the grand jury for more than 10 hours, after which he immediately left the state and checked himself into a psychiatric clinic in Texas.
Gov. Persons appointed an acting attorney general to investigate the murder and a special prosecutor in Phenix City to handle other cases. The Supreme Court sent Circuit Judge Walter B. Jones to try the cases and ordered the jury box emptied and a new blue-ribbon grand jury empanelled. Although there were witnesses who had information about the murder and other lawless acts, because of fear and years of intimidation, no one would come forward with evidence or to talk to investigators about the murder or the rackets.
About two weeks later, in early July, Gen. Hanna was fed up with watching the cover-up. The no-nonsense Hanna was a cross between Gen. George Patton and Gen. Curtis LeMay. He was a tough World War II veteran who chomped an ever-present cigar and barked orders, punctuated with mild profanities, that he expected to be followed, and he pulled no punches. He met Gov. Persons in Montgomery and insisted that the governor let him do something. Persons, hoping the local authorities would finally do the right thing, declined. Hanna told the governor he was a fool if he thought anything had changed in Phenix City. Persons told his general to do his job and keep the peace-that was all he was there for.
Instead, Gen. Hanna went back to Phenix City and created an intelligence unit, put them in civilian clothes and ordered them to find out what was going on, where and who was involved. The investigators located barns loaded with gambling paraphernalia waiting to be brought back to Phenix City when things calmed down. In addition, witnesses began to talk with Gen. Hanna and his men under the cover of darkness.
Two weeks later, about four weeks after Patterson's murder, Hanna went back to Gov. Persons, told him what he had uncovered and demanded that the governor declare martial law so that he could clean up the rat's nest of Phenix City once and for all. Again the governor told Hanna to do his job and follow orders. Hanna told the governor that he hoped that he would not have to arrest him, but he would if it was necessary. After the tense meeting, Hanna did something unthinkable for a soldier under normal conditions-he called the Jefferson County district attorney and the executive editor of the Birmingham Post Herald and arranged to meet them in Birmingham. After a night-long meeting outlining what was going on in Phenix City and how nothing was being done, Hanna returned to his post in Phenix City.
The next day, the Post Herald published an open letter to the governor noting that four weeks had passed since the Patterson murder and no apparent progress had been made in Phenix City. The paper urged the governor to act swiftly and decisively. That same day the Jefferson County district attorney called the governor, but the governor declined to appear before the grand jury. The grand jury foreman took the phone and told the governor that he would come voluntarily or he would be subpoenaed. Three hours later, the governor appeared before the grand jury.
Finally, on July 22, the governor called Gen. Hanna and told him he would be declaring martial law in Phenix City at 4:30 that afternoon. The governor had traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the FBI and other constitutional authorities, because the action he was about to take was unprecedented. At 5:30 P.M. local time, truckloads of soldiers carrying rifles with fixed bayonets surrounded the county courthouse and City Hall. Gen. Hanna and his troops removed, disarmed and took the badges of the sheriff and his deputies, and the police chief and his police officers. The Alabama National Guard took control of law enforcement in Phenix City.
In anticipation of the declaration of martial law, Gen. Hanna had his staff screen the records of all National Guard soldiers to find lawyers, policemen, jailers, wardens and the like to bring to Phenix City to execute the mission once all was ready. Col. Jack Warren was named military sheriff of Russell County and Col. James Brown was appointed military police chief of Phenix City. Judge Advocate General (JAG) officer Maj. Ray Acton, who as a civilian was mayor of Homewood, near Birmingham, was appointed legal advisor to the military police chief and later became the acting military mayor.
After the takeover, Hanna gathered his troops in the National Guard Armory for a motivational session:
"The situation here is as serious as combat and is the moral equivalent of war. Thugs and gangs who figure they are above the law have ambushed and killed the attorney general-elect, threatened the governor of this state and his family and have a whole town under siege by intimidation and fear.
"We are going to change all that. I want this mission accomplished without so much as the firing of one shot. Our ammunition is going to be evidence, something the law enforcement of this town has never been able to come up with before.
"When I say evidence, I mean an avalanche of evidence that will bury these bastards under the weight of their own misdeeds, misconduct and lawlessness.
"We're going to do everything the law allows. I want every one of them, no exceptions, hit with every law they've ever violated, so hard and so fast that they'll have no time for masterminding mischief and intimidation; their only concern will be how to save themselves, in other words, an enemy in full retreat.
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"Our job here is to restore law and order and the constitutional rights to the people, and I mean to see to it that it gets done. If in the doing, any soldier of mine is threatened or harmed, in any way whatsoever, I'll lower the goddam boom on this town. If a combat situation arises, you are armed and have been trained to use your weapon. You know what to do, and I expect you to do it.
"Now, as for you legal eagles, I don't want to hear any moaning or groaning and carrying on about 'What if,' or 'Maybe,' I won't stand for any hesitation and hand-wringing. I want this job done and I want it done right. I don't want any cases lost on loopholes or reversals. I want you to make damn sure we stay within the law and if it looks like an action is on the edge of the law or questionable, then I want you to find me a law to get it done.
"Jim Fullan [a young JAG officer], I want you standing right at my shoulder. I don't want to hear a word out of you, but if it looks like I've gone too far on an action, I want you to nudge my elbow and let me know. The rest of you have your orders. Get busy and get it done."
In a whirlwind of activity, beginning at 2 A.M. on Saturday, July 24, Gen. Hanna and the Alabama National Guard began to make life miserable for Phenix City's gamblers and vice lords. Over the next several weeks, dozens of lawbreakers were arrested, some 26 gambling houses were raided and tons of gambling devices and other evidence was seized and turned over to the special prosecutor. Several houses of prostitution were also closed and boarded up.
On August 30, the blue-ribbon grand jury returned its first indictments-545 indictments against 59 people were announced that day. Meanwhile, in Birmingham, Attorney General Si Garrett and District Attorney Arch Ferrell, along with the county Democratic Party chairman, were indicted by the grand jury for election fraud.
Over the next three months, despite threats and attempts at bribery, the full weight of the National Guard was employed in searching, seizing and arresting wrongdoers of all persuasions, from the mayor on down. In the course of the investigation, it was discovered that in addition to gambling, prostitution, lotteries and the like, Phenix City was the home to a baby mill where infants were bought and sold like commodities. A factory was discovered where loaded dice and marked cards were produced and a school for safecrackers was uncovered.
On December 9, the grand jury finally returned murder indictments and the news again sent shock waves through the state. Albert Fuller, the deputy sheriff of Russell County, Arch Farrell, the district attorney of Russell County, and Si Garrett, the attorney general of Alabama, were all charged with the murder of Albert Patterson. Fuller had already been tried and convicted on bribery charges stemming from his protection operation. He was convicted of the murder of Albert Patterson. Arch Farrell was tried for election fraud, but he was acquitted. He was subsequently tried and acquitted for the murder of Albert Patterson. Si Garrett was in and out of mental institutions and other hospitals for the next nine years and was never brought to trial. He died in 1967.
After Albert Patterson's death, the Democratic Party gave its nomination for attorney general to his son John, the former artillery major just home from the Army after service during the Korean War. John Patterson served one term as attorney general where he continued to help in the Phenix City cleanup, then ran for and was elected governor in the only race George Wallace ever lost. He served many years on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.
When the smoke had cleared, with the mountain of evidence Gen. Hanna and his soldiers had accumulated, the special grand jury had handed down a total of 749 true bills against 152 people for violations of 46 different statutes. Much to Gen. Hanna's delight, none of the convictions were reversed on appeal. The back of the criminal community had been forever broken in Phenix City, and in December 1954, the National Guard was quietly pulled out and sent home. In mid-December, Governor-elect James E. Folsom announced that he would be appointing a new adjutant general to replace Gen. Hanna, who went back to his steel business in Birmingham where he lived to the ripe old age of 83.
In July 2004 at the State Capitol, Gen. Hanna was posthumously awarded the U.S. Army Distinguished Service Medal, and Albert Patterson was posthumously awarded the State of Alabama Distinguished Service Medal.
The Alabama National Guard served with distinction in World War I, World War II, Korea and Desert Storm. In the 1960s, the Alabama Guard enforced federal law when it removed Gov. George C. Wallace from the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama to integrate that university. The Guard also provided protection for demonstrators during the famous Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965.
Although the Alabama National Guard has served proudly and well in Alabama and in many corners of the world, the battle for Phenix City is clearly the high watermark in its illustrious history.
By Brig. Gen. Richard F. Allen
AUS retired
BRIG. GEN. RICHARD F. ALLEN, AUS Ret., served as acting attorney general for the State of Alabama and for many years as chief deputy attorney general. Before that he was in private law practice in Montgomery, Ala. Gen. Alien was commissioned in the Ordnance Corps as a second lieutenant and detailed to the Field Artillery. He served on active duty from 1963 to 1970, commanding units in Germany and Vietnam, and continued to serve in the Army Reserve, commanding the 375th Field Depot and the 3rd Transportation Brigade before retiring in 1993. Gen. Alien received his law degree from the University of Alabama. He is now practicing law.
Copyright Association of the United States Army Aug 2005
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved |
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