Infamous America - DIXIE MAFIA: PHENIX CITY Ep. 1 | “Lawless”

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

The story of the Dixie Mafia begins in Phenix City, Alabama. The town was sometimes called “the wickedest city in America.” It was sometimes called “America’s original sin city.” By the 20th century, crime was institutionalized to the point that only a revolution could solve the problem. But long before high-profile crimes forced the clean-up, the city grew into an unlikely hotspot for all things illicit and illegal. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Noiser+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons. Hit “JOIN” on the Infamous America YouTube homepage.  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm4V_wVD7N1gEB045t7-V0w/featured For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gerard was originally what might be compared to a cesspool. Here, in consequence of the lawless condition of the country, was collected a conglomerated mixture of gamblers, blacklegs, murderers, thieves, and drunkards, all of whom mingled together, indiscriminately produced a moral odor offensive to the idea of good morals. Those were the words of Reverend Francis Lafayette Cherry, who, along with being a preacher, was a farmer in Russell County, Alabama in the mid-1800s. Russell County was in the east-central part of the state on the Chattahoochee River, across from the mill town of Columbus, Georgia.

Gerard was the county seat, and many of the residents on both sides of the river shared the reverend's sentiments. The town was so debauched and so immoral that it had earned a biblical nickname, Sodom. But no one could ever point to the time when the moment. moral fall of the town took place. To the men and women of Russell County, it seemed like the patch of land that was home to Gerard had always been cursed. It was as if something vile had mixed with the dirt and red clay to spoil anything people tried to build there. Fort Mitchell, which once occupied the area that became Gerard, was supposed to be an outpost to help maintain order

during the Creek Indian War in the early 1800s. But that ground attracted violence of all kinds, not just acts of war. Loathsome men robbed and pillaged Native Americans and each other. If a dispute in Columbus, Georgia escalated to violence, the combatants took it across the Chattahoochee River to Girard to settle it. The town had already become a haven of liquor and gambling and prostitution by the time the United States began the Civil War. When Union and Confederate troops clashed in Girard near the end of the war, the town burned.

But the burning didn't cleanse the soil to prepare for a new type of rebirth. Gerard quickly rebuilt itself in its old image and returned to its old ways, and it only grew in lawlessness and reputation as the new century began. The First World War couldn't slow down Girard. In fact, it inadvertently added fuel to the fire. When a new army base was created outside Columbus, Georgia, thousands of young men poured into the area. When those young men wanted entertainment, they poured across the river and into Girard. The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which outlawed alcohol throughout the nation,

didn't even pause activities in Girard, nor could changing its name. During that prohibition era, when alcohol was illegal, Gerard merged with another small town in its area, and became what it is today, Phoenix City. But a name change was just cosmetic. It was just superficial and didn't change the nature of the town. As folks of those generations were fond of saying, it was like putting lipstick on a pig. It didn't matter what you called the small city on the Chattahoochee.

Names came and went. The major players in town came and went. But the city itself remained. It became a character all of its own in American history. its criminal underworld and its reputation for vice and corruption expanded and deepened throughout the Great Depression, World War II and the post-war years. Phoenix City became known as the wickedest city in America. Decades later, those who were inclined to, would trace the roots of the Dixie Mafia

back to Phoenix City during its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s. The name Dixie Mafia was just a handy label for loosely organized organized and loosely connected criminal groups in the South. Those groups didn't have anything near the structure of the Italian mafia, but the Southern crime groups had some similarities in flavor, so to speak. And some said Phoenix City, which was sometimes called America's original sin city, was ground zero. Phoenix City certainly had the history to back up the nickname,

and its heyday was as wild as any city of its size. But the story of Phoenix City is also a story of redemption. It had its dark early days. It had its peak of insanity. And then it had its reckoning and its revolution. And it shed its most sinister layers of skin in order to start a new history. From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer.

And this season we're beginning the long and complex story of the Dixie Mafia. If you had to point to a place of origin, that place is one of America's original Sin Cities, Phoenix City, Alabama. This is Phoenix City Episode 1, Lawless. Long before the height of the city's criminal machine in the years after World War II, and long before the boom in vice that came with the opening of Fort Benning during World War I, lawlessness in East Central Alabama was rampant. The Chattahoochee River forms half the border between Alabama and Georgia. On the Georgia side of the river, about halfway down that border section,

there's a high bluff on which the thriving mill town of Columbus was founded in 1828. On the Alabama side, in the early 1800s, there were the nations of the Muskogee Indians, also known as the Creek. The creek would probably argue that the greatest crime in the history of the area that would become Phoenix City, Alabama, was the theft of their homeland. Following a civil war between factions of Creek nations where the U.S. government,

as well as French, British, and Spanish colonial governments took sides with their eyes on future land grabs, the creek ceded the vast majority of their ancestral land to America. In the Treaty of Fort Jackson, the U.S. government gained nearly 20 million acres of land, much of which would become the state of Alabama in 1819. Over the next 15 years or so, America would add millions more acres and forcibly march the tribes of the southeast to present-day Oklahoma

in an event that was known as the Trail of Tears. But that's another story for another time. During what is now known as the Creek War, Fort Mitchell was established by the U.S. government just a few miles from what would become Phoenix City. In theory, the outpost was designed to protect settlers in the region while the Creek War raged. In reality, Fort Mitchell was a lawless place. Settlers formed raiding parties to attack Creek settlements,

and the creek formed raiding parties to respond in kind. Even after the area became part of the new state of Alabama, Fort Mitchell remained an unincorporated part of the territory for decades. It had no sheriff or judge, and it was under the jurisdiction of what people called frontier justice. A common practice in the first half of the 1800s was to try to get some sort of justice through a duel, but the tradition was already fading by the time Alabama was created. Across the river in Columbus and throughout Georgia, the practice of men settling disputes with pistols had been outlawed. But on the Alabama side of the Chattahoochee,

Just about anything went. When affluent gentlemen in Columbus couldn't find any other way to settle their grievances, they crossed the river to settle them on the spot that would one day be Phoenix City. In 1828, two well-educated aristocrats, George Crawford and Thomas Burnside, took pistols, witnesses, and a grudge across the Chattahoochee. Both men were members of the Georgia State Congress. Crawford and his family were anonymously disparaged in the newspapers, Crawford demanded to know who wrote the article that he claimed was full of lies. Crawford's friend, Thomas Burnside,

defended the publisher's right to protect the source of the information. That simple difference of opinion was too much for George Crawford to handle. He demanded satisfaction, and apparently only a shooting match would provide it. The witnesses claimed, that an apology from either man might have ended the feud without bloodshed. But no apologies came, and on a misty morning in the shadows of Fort Mitchell, the men took their places, turned, and fired. Burnside's shot missed its mark, but Crawford shot was true and accurate, and it tore through his fellow congressman's chest. Thomas Burnside died in minutes.

Burnside was buried in the Fort Mitchell Cemetery, and George Crawford would go on to become governor of Georgia and then a cabinet secretary for President Zachary Taylor in the late 1840s. Dules were eventually outlawed in Alabama, as in every other state in the country. But while the dueling fields near Fort Mitchell were abandoned, the spirit of the area remained. A community continued to grow, and it adopted a new name. But it was still a hot spot for good times in the region, or bad times if that's what you wanted. In the late 18, 20, 20, around the time of the duel, a banker from Philadelphia named Stephen Gerard, which was probably pronounced Stefan, purchased much of the land that would become Russell County and Lee County.

While Gerard, a naturalized French citizen, was known for his philanthropy, he was also a slave owner who padded his fortune by profiting from the sale of opium. Gerard was one of the first multimillionaires in the United States, though his name has not resonated throughout history like that of John Jacob Astor. Gerard's Bank in Philadelphia provided the vast majority of the credit that was needed by the young nation to fight the British Empire in the War of 1812. He used some of his wealth to buy a huge tract of land in what was then the southern and western frontier, but he never lived in Alabama.

He died from complications from an accident when he was struck by a horse-drawn carriage in Philadelphia. But when Russell County, Alabama was established in 1832, the town that became the county seat was named in his honor. The transition from frontier outpost to burgeoning community took time. Schools, banks, and churches didn't appear overnight. But while infrastructure, and more importantly, law and order, developed slowly in Girard, vice and crime did not. Almost as soon as the town was incorporated, a dilapidated neighborhood of shanties sprouted up south of town. Historians point out that this seedy part of Girard kept authorities busy long before a courthouse was constructed. Makeshift trials were held on a patch of grass in what would become the center of town,

and sentences were passed on gamblers and drunks, bootleggers and prostitutes. The young state of Alabama had no state prison sense. system, so offenders were generally punished with heavy fines and or long stints in local jail houses. But the punishments didn't stop the offending behavior. As long as the taverns and public houses remained open, and they were always open, people kept coming, even if they'd been busted previously. More than a hundred years in the future, historians could trace the strange economic dynamic of Girard, Alabama, back to this time period. The dynamic turned out to be pretty simple. People wanted to have a good time. If the things they wanted to do were illegal,

they were going to do them anyway. If they were going to do them anyway, the town might as well profit from their routine. Business owners profited from the sale of the good times in all their forms, and the town government profited by collecting fines from the people who got busted. Gradually, party goers realized that if they got busted, all they had to do was pay a fine, and then they could go on their way. Usually, they went right back to doing the thing that got them busted, which resulted in another fine, and the whole cycle continued. Slowly, the town of Girard became dependent, to some degree, on crime,

and it could be scary for the good people who wanted a safe and simple life. heinous crimes like murder and rape were not uncommon. Murderers, rapists, horse thieves, and slave thieves were hanged. The ghoulish practice of grave robbing became frequent in the area as well. The graves of the indigenous people were violated because of the common belief that members of the Creek nations buried their dead with valuables, specifically gold. The historian, Reverend Francis Lafayette Cherry, reflected a few

decades later on the grim state of Gerard in the 1830s. He said, Gerard was what might be compared to a cesspool which received the scum and filth from Columbus. Here, in consequence of the lawless conditions, was a conglomerated mixture of gamblers, blacklegs, murderers, and thieves. The Reverend added that in its earliest days, Gerard drew comparisons to the biblical city of Sodom that God destroyed for its decadence and vice. In the early 1860s, the secession of 11 states, including Alabama and Georgia, that opposed the abolition of slavery,

thrust the U.S. into turmoil. For most of the Civil War, Alabama and Georgia were spared the destructive battles that raged in Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and the states along the Mississippi River. But in late 1864, the war came to Georgia. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman led an army that ravaged the northern half of the state. Sherman's near-mythical march to the sea cut a diagonal line across the middle of the state.

Columbus, Georgia, on the Chattahoochee River, was outside of Sherman's path, and thus spared his wrath. But the war finally arrived in Columbus when it was essentially over. In early April, 1865, Union General James Wilson, He was Wilson marched his army from Nashville, Tennessee, straight down through the center of Alabama. It was the first real fighting in the state, and when Wilson reached Montgomery, he turned east and headed straight toward Girard and Columbus. Wilson didn't care about Gerard. In the brutal terms of war, there was nothing to care about in Girard. But he did care about Columbus, directly across the Chattahoochee River. By April 1865, the final month of the war,

Columbus was one of the last manufacturing cities of any significance in the South. Capturing it would be a nail in the coffin of the Confederacy. And to get there, Wilson had to go through Girard, Alabama. On April 9, 1865, Confederate Commander Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union Commander Ulysses S. Grant. The surrender didn't end the war right then and there, but it signaled that the end was very near. General Wilson attacked Gerard and Columbus one week later on Easter Sunday, April 16, 1865. Known both as the Battle of Gerard and the Battle of Columbus, the engagement was one of the last of the war. Confederate troops were entrenched around the edges of Columbus.

They fought Union troops to a standstill through the afternoon, but Union troops launched a nighttime raid that broke the Confederate lines. With Columbus's defenders gone, Union soldiers ransacked the town. They captured more than 200 train cars. They seized 100,000 bales of cotton and burned manufacturing plants and textile mills. An ironclad ship was under construction near the river, and the soldiers. and the soldiers set it on fire and sank it in the river. The next month, Union forces captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and the war was well and truly done.

As the restored Union of the United States of America moved into its reconstruction era, Columbus, like most of the South, tried to rebuild. There wasn't a need for war material anymore, but the manufacturing industries in Columbus had deep roots. Many rebuilt and reshaped themselves for the new era. Across the river in Girard, the town rebuilt itself as well, but it went right back to the way it had been before the war. Over the next 25 years after the Civil War,

Gerard's population grew very slowly. It went from roughly 3,900 people in 1870 to just 5,500 people in 1890. By comparison, the population was a population. of Columbus, Georgia jumped from 7,000 to 17,000 in that same period. As the 19th century moved into the 20th century, a trolley system served Columbus and its growing suburbs. There was no trolley system in Girard,

but it continued to chug along, growing ever so slowly but surely. As America hurtled toward the era of decadence that was known as the roaring 20s, Americans fought new wars. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, giant industrial companies expanded to become massive international conglomerates. The men who owned and ran them became wealthy beyond even today's billionaires. Their factories, mines, mills, and oil fields employed millions, and in the 19-teens, labor wars raged across America as workers fought for better wages and working conditions. Simultaneously, temperance groups fought a war against alcohol. They wanted to stop the production, sale, and consumption of beer, wine, and liquor.

In Alabama, they did their work well. But they soon discovered that people were going to drink anyway. And bootleggers were going to get rich by making the drinks that people were going to drink anyway. And lawmen and city officials were going to get rich by protecting the people who made the drinks. Before dawn on the morning of May 17, 1916, 40 Alabama tax revenue agents stepped off the train in Girard. The men fanned out and made their way to every known distillery of illegal whiskey and every storefront that had a bootleg brewery for watermelon beer.

The agents met little resistance as they began wheeling out barrels of illegal alcohol and smashing them with axes. They spilled so much liquor into the street that by mid-morning, a crowd of nearly a thousand people gathered to watch the Whiskey River flow to the banks of the Chattahoochee. Under pressure from pious teetotaling groups like the Anti-Saloon League and the American Temperance Society, the state of Alabama had banned the production, sale, transportation, and consumption of all alcohol in 1914. nearly five years before the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution banned it across the entire country. Gerard ignored those laws.

With very little above-board industry to speak of, the illegal liquor business had become the community's primary economy in the years leading up to the new law. Temperance groups had history, political support, and often deep pockets, but they couldn't be everywhere at once. Two years after they succeeded in their crusade to outlaw liquor in Alabama, 40 revenue agents stormed Girard and smashed kegs of beer and whiskey.

But as soon as the agents moved on to another town, the backroom distilleries and breweries opened up again. And one year after the big raid, a life-changing decision was made in Washington, D.C., that brought thousands of thirsty customers to the Girard area. In April 1917, the U.S. joined World War I. One year after America committed to the war, the U.S. Army opened an infantry school in Columbus, Georgia, directly across the Chattahoochee River from Girard, Alabama.

For the first time, the Army had to train soldiers for a massive campaign on another continent. The Army base was called Fort Benning, and it was named after Confederate General Henry L. Benning. The war ended barely a year after the base was established, and while other training facilities closed their doors, Fort Benning remained and grew. It began with fewer than 400 soldiers living in tents on a patch of ground outside Columbus. In just a few years, it grew to more than 9,000 acres of land, and it housed more than 7,000 servicemen. That meant 7,000 young men were looking for entertainment and recreation when they weren't training. And what better way for those soldiers to blow off steam

than to head across the river to Girard, a city that had not been slowed by the federal prohibition of alcohol? Nor had it been slowed by laws, federal, state, or local, that made gambling and prostitution illegal. So the top three things that young soldiers wanted to spend their money on were illegal in Alabama, but they were all still readily available. in Gerard. For those young servicemen, and really for anyone who was looking for a good time,

Gerard had everything their hearts desired. While Gerard's reputation grew locally, it was still just a tiny town in an out-of-the-way part of a largely rural state. As America rolled into the roaring 20s, the big cities still dominated the headlines. In Chicago, Al Capone was at the height of his power. In New York, legions of gangsters ran their operations in the days before Lucky Luciano consolidated power by organizing the mafia system under the name of the syndicate. In the south, Miami and Atlanta had their fair share of illicit gin joints and brothels. And New Orleans was, well, it was New Orleans. Trying to stop New Orleans from having a good time was like trying to hold back ocean waves with your hands. But they were,

a couple growing hotspots in the south as well. By the 1920s, the Gulf Coast City of Galveston, Texas had become a resort town that operated as an unofficial free state, in quotation marks. Sicilian brothers Sam and Rosario Massio controlled gambling, prostitution, and alcohol on the island. They opened clubs and casinos that seemed to be beyond the reach of the restrictions that were imposed in other places. A similar situation arose in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where gangsters mingled with celebrities and the wealthy elite in a resort town where illegal activities were an open secret. And down in Alabama, the town of Girard took its next step forward.

For 100 years, Gerard had been in a twin city relationship. There were two towns in close proximity on the banks of the Chattahoochee. Gerard was the southern town. The town just up the road to the north was called Brownville. Over time, the name became confusing because there was already a town called Brownville near Tuscaloosa. In the 1870s, Brownville along the Chattahoochee changed its name to lively. No one knows why, but folklore says it's because of the lawless nature of the area. Then the name changed back to Brownville.

And then, finally, in 1897, the Alabama legislature changed the name of the town to Phoenix City. As the towns of Phoenix City and Girard moved into the 1900s and went through statewide prohibition, then World War I, then the creation of Fort Benning, and then nationwide prohibition, they slowly grew closer to each other. In 1923, the two towns merged under the name of Phoenix City. Gerard became the southern neighborhood of the overall town. By merging the towns, the new municipality had a population of more than 10,000 people. In terms of numbers, it was still far behind its sister community of Columbus, Georgia, across the river. But Phoenix City was still the preferred place for entertainment.

And that's not to say that Columbus didn't have speakeasies and hidden brothels and gambling parlors. It did. but the entertainment industry in Phoenix City would grow much faster than the population. By 1923, America was three years into its nationwide experiment with prohibition. Ten years later, the country would admit that the experiment had not only failed, but backfired in spectacular fashion. Around that time, two men emerged from the shadows of prohibition to lead the industries of alcohol, gambling, and prostitution into the new era of Phoenix City. They were the original kingpins,

and they would help institutionalize corruption on a whole new level. Phoenix City was about to start its truly wild days. Next time on infamous America, Phoenix City fends off prohibition and produces its first organized crime syndicate with two godfathers at the top. The rise of a popular gambling scheme

leads to a tragedy, but it will take more than a single incident. to change the ways of Phoenix City. That's next time on Infamous America. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials,

and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by Jamie Lyko. Original music by Rob Valier. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, or on our social media channels. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrell Media on Twitter.

And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Infamous America Podcast. Thanks for listening.