Terror in the City of Champions (44 page)

Actual killers tried to use the Black Legion to sidetrack investigators. In San Luis Obispo, California, the body of a twenty-eight-year-old felled by a shotgun blast lay near a note that said, “Think you know too much. The Black Legion.” More significant historically was the murder of nightclub hostess Florence Castle in a Chicago hotel room. When her young son awoke to the sight of his mother being strangled by Robert Nixon, he asked what he was doing. Nixon said he was a doctor and that the boy’s mother was sleeping. He told the boy he would write his name on the nightstand mirror. Nixon drew a skull and crossbones and scrawled “Black Legion Game” in lipstick. Nixon, a serial killer, would become the inspiration for Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright’s 1940 classic novel
Native Son
.

“A veritable nationwide Black Legion hysteria seems to have developed,” declared the
Toledo Blade
. In a syndicated editorial cartoon published across the country, Nelson Harding portrayed the Black Legion as the rattling tail on a snake of intolerance and terrorism. “There remains life in the menace, and it must not be permitted to revive and spread new terror,” he wrote. Fellow Pulitzer winner Rollin Kirby depicted a parade of hooded legionnaires hoisting a US flag that proclaimed, “The Right to Murder.” He titled the cartoon “Moronic Criminality.”

Heywood Broun drew parallels between the legion and the rise of a fascist president in Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel
It Can’t Happen Here
. “Indeed, when I looked at a photograph of the black shirt leader I was inclined to say, ‘You’re not real; you’re a character in a story. Sinclair Lewis invented you.’ ” Syndicated columnist Frederic J. Haskin of the
Kansas City Star
proffered that the legion “springs from an inferiority complex.” A legionnaire can “patronize entire communities because he knows the mumbo-jumbo of passwords and countersigns and, while cloaking his own real identity, can bring terror to persons who are not of the elect.” The
Washington Post
editorialized against night riders who “stripped of their hoods reveal a characteristic low intelligence often verging on dementia.” The
Washington Times
added: “Homicidal fanatics of the Black Legion type have no place in America.” The
New York Herald-Tribune
described members as “a strange and particularly evil manifestation of the mob spirit.” The
New York Daily Mirror
called the Black Legion “a new zoological specimen” dealing out “its own masked mockery of ‘justice.’ ” The
Indianapolis News
wondered whether poor law enforcement—and maybe collusion between police and the legion—could be to blame for the organization’s growth.

Time
,
Newsweek
,
New Republic
,
Liberty
, and
Nation
magazines, among others, joined in the coverage. Retired Major George Fielding Eliot posited that the legion had higher, unnamed leaders than Bert Effinger. “Outside the grooves of his prejudices, his mind flounders badly. . . . He is but a tool,” Eliot said. Pennsylvania Governor George Earle decried the legion as a product of “the diseased minds of fanatics and bigots.” A Democrat, he blamed Republicans. “The responsibility for this shameless, un-American, barbaric organization rests directly upon the doorsteps of those powerful financial and industrial interests which control the Republican party today,” he said. In Vatican City Cardinal Dennis Dougherty of Philadelphia, after meeting with Pope Pius, predicted the legion would “fall to pieces as soon as it is dragged out into the sun.” In Boston a Harvard history professor dispelled the society’s claim of ties to the tea party patriots of 1773. “Bosh!” said professor Albert Bushnell Hart.

Newspaper editorials focused on whether the FBI should—or could—investigate. Attorney General Homer S. Cummings and Director J. Edgar Hoover repeatedly rejected pleas for the bureau to get involved, contending no evidence had been presented of federal violations that would allow the G-Men to take the lead. Most newspaper editors who weighed in on the debate urged federal control. “There are indications that several Michigan office holders have not been above using the legion for political purposes,” noted the
Boston Herald
. “They cannot be expected to aid in the exposure of it.” The
New York Herald-Tribune
’s Dorothy Thompson, whose “On the Record” column appeared in 170 newspapers, challenged the FBI director: “J. Edgar Hoover says the federal government can do nothing. . . . What the federal government can do, however, under the law is to investigate! Let us at least find out how widespread, how numerous, are these murder bands.”

The
Chicago Daily Times
offered, “If the state inquiry reveals kidnapping conspiracies, the G-Men ought to step into the picture at once.” The
New York Post
called for a quick resolution: “The sooner this thing is dragged out into the open, the less harm it will be able to do.” The UAW and the communist
Daily Worker
wanted a national probe. So did Hiram Evans, imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who condemned the legion’s “lawlessness.”

On the morning of May 29, a woman set off from Dumont, New Jersey, for Washington, 240 miles away. In the early afternoon she arrived at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and at the office of Assistant Director Edward Tamm. She was frantic. Tamm referred her to agent Richard Hood, a Pittsburgh law school grad with two years on the job. He tried to calm her. She insisted that the FBI must investigate the Black Legion. “I advised her,” Hood reported, “that in the absence of a violation of federal law, this bureau was conducting no investigation. . . . She became hysterical.” The woman asked Hood to call the White House. He refused. Hood tried to soothe her. He told her that she was “unduly alarmed” and should head home.

Worried residents flooded the FBI with letters and telegrams demanding a probe. They inundated Hoover’s office. They reported suspicious activities, leveled charges against neighbors, and begged him to save the nation. “John Dillinger was a gentleman in comparison to this organization,” wrote a man from Kansas City. A Detroit physician said that the legion’s political strength would prevent an honest investigation locally. “Decent Michigan people would welcome action,” he said. A California orange grower asked Hoover to “show these outlaws . . . that this is a free country run by constituted authorities under the flag of justice to all.” From the Mt. Alverno Retreat in Warwick, New York, Father Columban F. Kelly gently nudged Hoover. “Certainly this organization is a far greater menace to our rights and security than the gangsters,” he said.

One cable message cut through the clutter and found its way to Hoover’s desk. A news editor at the
Flint Journal
, R. E. Roberts, wired the director in confidence: “Organization intends harm to President Roosevelt—planning armed march on Washington. Informant available. Believe 2,000 here.” Tamm phoned W. H. Moran, chief of the Secret Service, with the tip, and Hoover followed up hours later, ensuring that the message had been received. The Secret Service investigated and deemed the legion dangerous but the threat on Roosevelt’s life not currently credible.

Appeals for action also came from politicians. Prosecutor McCrea in Detroit asked for federal assistance repeatedly, as did a few Michigan congressmen and several nationally prominent progressive lawmakers, including Representative Sam Dickstein of New York and Senator Elmer Benson of Minnesota. Given evidence of the interstate nature of the Black Legion and rumors of a government takeover, Hoover and Attorney General Cummings could have made a case for federal involvement. Neither one did. President Roosevelt also kept silent publicly on the issue.

Why the disinterest at the federal level?

Doris Fleeson, a respected political reporter, offered one theory in her “Capital Stuff” column. She said it had to do with presidential politics. She hinted that Roosevelt’s relationship with southern states-rights Democrats played into the no-federal-probe determination. Describing Attorney General Cummings as “a savvy Connecticut Yankee,” she said, “he knows he’s got a good thing in the G-Men. But he has been long in politics and he realizes it would take very little extra zeal on his part in the use of those same G-Men to bring some very vocal senators or congressmen bounding into the arena. . . . Hence his unwillingness to inject his men into the Black Legion situation until he is dead certain specific federal laws are being violated.”

A news reporter asked the attorney general whether the FBI would investigate if it were shown that Roy Pidcock, discovered on Canada’s Fighting Island, were a legion victim. In such a case a victim would have been taken across international lines. Cummings did not answer. But in Michigan a veteran State Police commander had been wondering the same thing.

Frenzied Nerves

Mickey Cochrane couldn’t sleep. The stress had become unbearable. As Black Legion hysteria spread nationally with calls to expose everyone involved, Cochrane was falling apart. He was sleeping at most two hours per night. In Detroit he would sometimes head to the airport and go flying in the moonlit hours after midnight. He’d soar toward the heavens, trying to soothe his nerves. From the plane everything below seemed smaller and less significant. It didn’t always work though.

The Tigers were in Philadelphia on Wednesday, June 3, when Cochrane went hitless in five at-bats in an 11–7 loss. That night he did not sleep at all. Not a single hour. Still, the next day he penciled himself into the lineup at Shibe Park. He had already batted twice when he came to the plate for his third appearance. It was only the third inning. The bases were filled. Cochrane connected and drove a ball deep to center field. It struck the scoreboard. Cochrane charged around the diamond as the ball ricocheted and fielders gave chase. He slammed second base and then third. Rogell, Owen, and Fox scored. Cochrane rounded third and committed to home. He raced toward the plate. The relay throw was coming in. It arrived too late. It was an inside-the-park, grand-slam home run. The adrenaline carried Cochrane to the dugout. But he was exhausted.

After the explosive ten-run inning, Cochrane started toward his position wearing his catcher’s gear. Huge dark spots appeared in his eyes. Suddenly he felt on the verge of collapse. Cochrane turned back and went to the trainer’s room. His heart was racing. The game went on without him as a doctor settled on a diagnosis: Mickey Cochrane, the game’s most intense competitor, was on the threshold of a nervous breakdown. The doctor said Cochrane needed immediate rest, but Cochrane was not convinced. The next day he appeared at the ballpark in Washington, intending to play. But he suffered another spell and spent the game coaching along the first base line. He said he would be examined at Johns Hopkins but he waited. On June 6 he attempted once again to play, but a sense of vertigo overtook him. Frankie Reiber caught instead. On Sunday he sat as well.

The team traveled to Boston, nearer to his parents and his childhood home. The series was to begin on Monday. Cochrane consulted a physician at St. Elizabeth’s, who confirmed the diagnosis—a nervous breakdown—and ordered isolation for ten days. Cochrane left the team and returned to Detroit. His wife and Russell Gnau, one of Harry Bennett’s confidants at Ford, picked him up at the Windsor, Ontario, train station. They took him to Henry Ford Hospital. Doctors there prescribed complete rest. Only family would be allowed to visit. Newspapers and radios were banned from his room. He wouldn’t be following the Tigers—or the Black Legion investigation. No one was allowed to talk baseball. Cochrane honored the prohibition for most of a week.

Dayton Dean and the Negro Reporter

Dayton Dean was stammering. Seated in a fourth-floor room at police headquarters, Dean, a white racist dressed in white shirt and white pants, was being quizzed by Russell J. Cowans, a black reporter from a black newspaper. Several white journalists and white detective Jack Harvill were also in the room. Beyond race Cowans and Dean differed starkly. Dean had attended grade school. Cowans had a graduate degree in English from the University of Michigan. Dean had grown up in a small town, Cowans in a big city. Until his arrest Dean had worked as a laborer, wrapping asbestos on pipes. Cowans’s fortunes were soaring. A sportswriter for the nation’s top black newspaper, the
Chicago Defender
, he doubled as tutor and press agent for Joe Louis—a lucrative conflict of interest in an era before modern journalism ethics. Cowans belonged to Louis’s inner circle. He was part of his entourage.