Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (63 page)

114
Robert O’Meally,
Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday
, 67. White,
Billie Holiday
, 51; Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 68–69; BBC “Reputations”
documentary
Billie Holiday: Sensational Lady
; Shapiro,
Waiting for the Man
, 99.

115
Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 6.

116
White,
Billie Holiday
, 14.

117
Ibid., 17; Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 8; O’Meally,
Lady Day
, 171.

118
Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 13.

119
Ibid., 86.

120
Ken Vail,
Lady Day’s Diary: The Life of Billie Holiday, 1937–1959
, 4. In her autobiography,
Lady Sings the Blues
, Billie refers to him as “Mr. Dick.”

121
Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 15–16, 103.

122
Donald Clarke,
Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon
, 34. There is a dispute over how long Mr. Dick was in jail—Clarke says three months, Billie’s memoir says five years: see Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 17.

123
BBC “Reputations”
documentary
Billie Holiday: Sensational Lady
.

124
White,
Billie Holiday
, 18.
Other people confined in that institution later confirmed to interviewers that it was a very brutal place: see O’Meally,
Lady Day
, 79–81.
See also Julia Blackburn archives, box 18, Linda Kuehl notes, vol. VIII, interview with Peter O’Brien and Michelle Wallace.

125
Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 20. In her memoir, Billie says her mother sent for her, but most other accounts say she ran away to find her.

126
Julia Blackburn archives, box 18, Linda Kuehl notes, vol. VIII.

127
Maely Dufty files provided by her son, Bevan Dufty—document headed “Introduction.”

128
Ebony
magazine, July 1949, 32.

129
Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 23. Some people think she had in fact been pimped in Baltimore at an even younger age: see O’Meally,
Lady Day
, 84–87.

130
BBC “Reputations”
documentary
Billie Holiday: Sensational Lady
.

131
Blackburn,
With Billie
, 43. Clarke,
Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon
, 35. Mike Gray,
Drug Crazy
, 107.

132
Julia Blackburn archives, box 18, Linda Kuehl notes, vol. VIII, interview with Willard. His last name isn’t given.

133
As described in
The Long Night of Lady Day
, BBC documentary, 1984.

134
Chilton,
Billie’s Blues
, 127.

135
Ibid., 22.

136
Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 103–4.

137
Eugene Callender interview.

138
Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 34.

139
White,
Billie Holiday
, 29.

140
Clarke,
Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon
, 230.

141
Ibid. See also Julia Blackburn archives, box 18, Linda Kuehl notes, vol. VIII, Sylvia Simms interview.

142
Nicholson,
Billie Holiday
, 198.

143
BBC “Reputations”
documentary
Billie Holiday: Sensational Lady
.

144
Blackburn,
With Billie
, 209.
I wanted to check the original sources for this material about Jimmy Fletcher. The only primary source about him is Linda Kuehl’s interview with him. I contacted Toby Byron, who owns the archive. He told me—dismayingly—that the transcript of the interview with Fletcher has been lost. That means we will have to rely on secondary sources from now on. Both Julia Blackburn and Donald Clarke—who read the original transcript—describe it in detail, and also talked with me on the phone about it.

145
Douglas Valentine interview.

146
Blackburn,
With Billie
, 207.

147
Douglas Valentine interview.

148
Clarke,
Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon
, 254.

149
Blackburn,
With Billie
, 207.

150
BBC “Reputations”
documentary
Billie Holiday: Sensational Lady
.

151
Blackburn,
With Billie
, 94.

152
Ibid., 212.

153
Maely Dufty files, document marked “Introduction.”

154
Yolande Bavan interview. See also Julia Blackburn archives, box 18, Linda Kuehl notes, vol. VIII, interview with Peter O’Brien and Michelle Wallace.

155
William Dufty, “The True Story of Billie Holiday,” article 3,
New York Post
series, Julia Blackburn archive, box 18, file VII.

156
Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 118.

157
Blackburn,
With Billie
, 213.

158
Ibid. The dog’s name is given in Julia Blackburn archives, box 18, Linda Kuehl 1, interview with Memry Midgett.

159
Blackburn,
With Billie
, 214.

160
Ibid., 216. Ibid., 11.

161
John Levy interview, Linda Kuehl notes, vol. VII, box 18.

162
Louis MacKay interview, Linda Kuehl notes, vol. VIII, Julia Blackburn archives, box 18.

163
Blackburn,
With Billie
, 211.

164
Ibid., 11.

165
Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 127.

166
Chilton,
Billie’s Blues
, 116.

167
Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 129–30.

168
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2005/jul/14/street-diva/?pagination=false, accessed March 12, 2014.

169
Vail,
Lady Day’s Diary
, 103.

170
BBC “Reputations”
documentary
Billie Holiday: Sensational Lady
. White,
Billie Holiday
, 93.

171
Clarke,
Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon
, 252.

172
Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 125–26.

173
Maely Dufty files, “Introduction.”

174
White,
Billie Holiday
, 94.

175
Blackburn,
With Billie
, 162.

176
Ibid., 255.

177
Ibid., 304. Holiday,
Lady Sings the Blues
, 169–70. She was turned down as a foster parent because of her drug conviction. See Shapiro,
Waiting for the Man
, 97.

178
Julia Blackburn archive, box 18, Notes from Linda Kuehl 1, section marked “Billie H. Goes to Cuba.”

179
Julia Blackburn archives, box 18, Linda Kuehl notes, article from
Ebony
: “I’m Cured Now” [no date].

180
Julia Blackburn archives, box 18, Linda Kuehl notes, vol. VIII, interview with Peter O’Brien and Michelle Wallace.

181
Ray Tucker, “News Behind the News,” Anslinger archives, box 5, file 9.

182
McWilliams,
Protectors
, 101. It is likely that Judy Garland is the unnamed woman from among “our loveliest film stars” who Anslinger describes having “conducted a running battle for months . . . to save” in
Murderers
, 184–86.

183
Anslinger,
Murderers
, 166.

184
The best account of how this fits into the long history of racism in the United States is Michelle Alexander’s important book
The New Jim Crow
. There is also an excellent account of this in Timothy A. Hickman,
The Secret Leprosy of Modern Days
, 60–92. I first learned of the key role of this prejudice against the Chinese in early drug prohibition from Richard Lawrence Miller, who discusses it in Eugene Jarecki’s documentary
The House I Live In
. It is also discussed in his books
Drug Warriors and Their Prey
, 26, and
The Case for Legalizing Drugs
, 88–91.

185
Shapiro,
Waiting for the Man
, 87.

186
Anslinger archives, box 1, file 12, “Modern Medical Interviews.”

187
Anslinger archives, box 1, file 10, “New York Forum: Saturday, April 28, 1962, Program Transcript.” In fact, before criminalization, the official registers of addicts showed they were overwhelmingly white. It was only after criminalization that they started recording addicts as overwhelmingly black—suggesting these figures were the result of racist enforcement rather than a real reflection of how addiction was distributed throughout the American population. See King,
Drug Hang-Up
, 108–9.

188
 
Ioan Grillo,
El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency
, 28.

189
Hickman,
Secret Leprosy
, 77–78.

190
Ibid. See also the comments of Hamilton Wright before Congress in same book, 116. Even the idea that African Americans disproportionately used cocaine, or that it was a factor among psychotic African Americans, seems to be a myth: at the height of the “cocaine nigger” scare, of 2,100 African Americans admitted to an asylum in Georgia, only two were confirmed cocaine users. See Walker,
Drug Control in the Americas
, 14.

191
King,
Drug Hang-Up
, 27–28; Erlen and Spillane,
Federal Drug Control
, 12–13.

192
Benson Tong,
The Chinese Americans
, 2; there’s a good account of the reasons for the migration on pp. 21–22. David Musto,
The American Disease
, 6. Craig Reinarman and Harry Levine, eds.,
Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice
, 6. John Gibler,
To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War
, 44–45; Kohn,
Dope Girls
, 2–3. One of the books that best helped me to understand the history of this prejudice against the Chinese in America is Yunte Huang’s terrific
Charlie Chan: the Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History
.

193
Anslinger,
Murderers
, 29-36.

194
Anslinger,
Murderers
, 37. In general, he talks a lot about things being smuggled inside women’s vaginas (see Anslinger,
Protectors
, 4) or “ample bosoms” (49). He seems to have deliberately injected sex into his accounts.