Hello my name is Jason Watts. Welcome to HistoryPodcast episode 49. The Olympics.
I hope you enjoy this abbreviated historypodcast. Things are a bit busy in the Watts household this week and of course I want to watch the olympics this evening. Check out the website at historypodcast.blogspot.com for more information about this and all other episodes.
Olympia, the site of the ancient Olympic Games, is in the western part of the Peloponnese which, according to Greek mythology, is the island of “Pelops”, the founder of the Olympic Games. Imposing temples, votive buildings, elaborate shrines and ancient sporting facilities were combined in a site of unique natural and mystical beauty.
Olympia functioned as a meeting place for worship and other religious and political practices as early as the 10th century B.C. The central part of Olympia was dominated by the majestic temple of Zeus, with the temple of Hera parallel to it. The ancient stadium in Olympia could accommodate more than 40,000 spectators, while in the surrounding area there were auxiliary buildings which developed gradually up until the 4th century B.C. and were used as training sites for the athletes or to house the judges of the Games.
The Olympic Games were closely linked to the religious festivals of the cult of Zeus, but were not an integral part of a rite. Indeed, they had a secular character and aimed to show the physical qualities and evolution of the performances accomplished by young people, as well as encouraging good relations between the cities of Greece. According to specialists, the Olympic Games owed their purity and importance to religion.
The Olympic victor received his first awards immediately after the competition. Following the announcement of the winner’s name by the herald, a Hellanodikis (Greek judge) would place a palm branch in his hands, while the spectators cheered and threw flowers to him. Red ribbons were tied on his head and hands as a mark of victory.
The official award ceremony would take place on the last day of the Games, at the elevated vestibule of the temple of Zeus. In a loud voice, the herald would announce the name of the Olympic winner, his father’s name, and his homeland. Then, the Hellanodikis placed the sacred olive tree wreath, or kotinos, on the winner’s head.
ATHENS 1896
Games of the I Olympiad
Opening date: 06 April 1896
Closing date: 15 April 1896
Country of the host city:Greece (GRE)
The first Session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was held in Paris on 18-23 June 1894. It was during the first Session that the city of Athens was selected for the Games of the I Olympiad.
The revival of the ancient Olympics attracted athletes from 14 nations, with the largest delegations coming from Greece, Germany, France and Great Britain. On 6 April 1896, the American James Connolly won the triple jump to become the first Olympic champion in more than 1,500 years. Winners were awarded a silver medal and an olive branch. The German athlete Carl Schumann finished in the top five events of three different sports. The people of Athens greeted the Games with great enthusiasm. Their support was rewarded when a Greek shepherd, Spyridon Louis, won the most popular event, the marathon.
14 NOCs (Nations)
241 athletes (0 women, 241 men)
43 events
Athens 1896. Closure Ceremony. The procession of the medal-holders. At the head Spyridon Louis (GRE) 1st in the marathon.
Official opening of the Games by: His Majesty The King George I
Lighting the Olympic Flame by: The Olympic flame was first lit during the opening ceremony of the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam.
Olympic Oath by: The first athletes’ oath was sworn at the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belgium.
Official Oath by: The first officials’ oath was sworn at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.
James CONNOLLY
The First Champion of the Modern Olympics
On 6 April 1896, James Connolly won the triple jump (then two hops and a jump), and thus became the first Olympic champion in 1527 years. He also placed second in the high jump and third in the long jump. A 27-year-old undergraduate student, Connolly dropped out of Harvard University and traveled to Athens by freighter and train, arriving the day before the Olympics began. Connolly later became a well-known journalist and novelist and was offered an honorary doctorate by Harvard, which he turned down.
Thank you for listening to this short HistoryPodcast. You can find more information about the Olympics and the other 48 episodes at historypodcast.blogspot.com. While you are there make your mark on the Frapper map and leave a comment or suggestion on the Forums. You can contact me at historypodcast@gmail.com. Thank you again for listening and stay subscribed.
In 1954, “Sin City, U.S.A.” wasn’t a sexy slogan for a burgeoning oasis in the Nevada desert. It was an apt description of Phenix City, AL, a place so evil the press dubbed it “America’s Wickedest City,” and Gen. George S. Patton once threatened to flatten it with his tanks.
The town just north of Columbus, GA offered every conceivable vice: gambling, prostitution, bootleg whiskey, drugs. Backroom abortions and baby selling were also part of the local trade. Phenix City even had a factory that produced loaded dice and marked cards and a school that taught how to crack safes.
The fact that all of these activities were illegal in Alabama meant nothing. Phenix City and its then population of 23,000.
Other military towns and lonely outposts of the day may have tolerated some of the same attractions. Numbers and prostitution rackets thrived in many big cities. But nowhere else did criminal interests have such a ruthless grip on the local judicial, political and law-enforcement hierarchy. In some cases, they were one and the same.
For several decades, homegrown mobsters and thugs actually ran the town and trampled the citizens. Beatings and bombings were common. Unprotected young women were forced into prostitution. Elections were meaningless because the crooks counted the votes. And as they also controlled the courts, no crime was punished.
But their favorite prey was soldiers from Fort Benning. The world’s toughest fighting men were easy targets in Phenix City’s bars and brothels. Lured by bright lights and big come-ons, many soldiers dropped entire paychecks in a single night. Most were simply fleeced by hookers and crooked dice. Others were slipped knockout drops and robbed. Those resisting were sent home battered as well as broke. A few wound up dead in the Chattahoochee River.
None of this was a secret outside the town. Newspapers across the river kept up a steady drumbeat of exposure. The place was notorious in military channels. And state officials were well aware of the Phenix City’s reputation, normally dismissing it as a “local matter.”
That’s how the brutal vice trade flourished. It might have thrived years longer if not for a tenacious Alabama adjutant general and a force of National Guardsmen. They took control of the town 50 years ago this summer after the assassination of Albert Patterson, the presumptive Alabama attorney general-elect.
Patterson, a local attorney, had vowed to clean up Phenix City if elected. In the wake of his death, the Alabama National Guard made good on that pledge.
It just wasn’t always known as Phenix City.
In 1833, the village of Girard sat across from Columbus. Girard, or “Sodom” as travelers knew it, was a frontier trading post where booze, gambling and prostitution were plentiful, and differences were often settled with a knife. As the 19th century unfolded, the frontier moved west, but the village never shed its vigilante code.
State officials periodically tried to crack the whip. As soon as the outsiders left; however, the violence and criminal activity invariably returned. Frustrated, authorities consolidated Girard with a newer and more civilized community nearby in 1923, eventually renaming the combined town Phenix City, which later became the new seat of Russell County.
The hope was that Girard’s lawless population would gradually adopt the rest of the merged town’s more law-abiding ways.
Phenix City was largely a bedroom community for low-income textiles workers who toiled in the mills across the river in Columbus. It had little tax base. When the Depression pushed the town to the brink of bankruptcy, city fathers compromised with the only industry in town, permitting otherwise illegal gambling for the payment of annual licensing fees.
“The folks in Montgomery at the state capital looked the other way,” says John Patterson, Albert Patterson’s son, now 82, in an interview last month. “The federal people did not get involved. And Phenix City was just left to go its own way.”
“At first, it doesn’t look so bad,” he says. “Phenix City mobsters contributed a lot of money to Little League ball teams and charity and paid mortgages on churches and things like that, and the people said, ‘They’re not bad guys.'”
They also employed hundreds of Phenix City residents at a time when jobs were scarce. Their license fees funded schools and public services while keeping taxes low. The brothels and gambling houses catered to outsiders, Patterson says, so it was easy for many locals to avert their eyes and let the ends justify the means.
But it was only a matter of time, he says, before a growing criminal syndicate controlled the juries and the ballot boxes, either through payoffs, intimidation or fraud. Eventually, every local official and law-enforcement officer owed his job to what became known as the Phenix City “machine.”
Meanwhile, this veil of local legitimacy enabled the racketeers to grow their businesses at a time when Fort Benning’s World War II expansion increased demand for their products and services. It also allowed them to operate with near impunity.
No practice was out of bounds. Unconsumed beer was rebottled and re-sold. Drinks were spiked. Bar and brothel customers were rolled. Players faced marked cards, loaded dice, mechanically controlled roulette wheels and slot machines that retimed less than five cents on a dollar. Pawnshops took the uniforms off soldiers’ backs and the boots off their feet. And brass knuckles, chains and nightsticks awaited anyone who complained.
Fort Benning commanders knew what awaited their soldiers in Phenix City. They occasionally put the worst establishments off limits. In 1940, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, after reviewing the Army’s classified record of the troops beaten, robbed and murdered in the town, declared it the “wickedest city in America.” That’s also when Patton publicly proposed his combat-engineering solution to the problem.
The danger, however, only seemed to fuel the lure. Fort Benning officials once estimated that 80 percent of their 80,000 personnel dropped more than half of their pay in the town. That helped push the combined take of all the rackets to about $100 million a year (the rough equivalent of nearly $1 billion today).
After World War II, many Phenix City residents were growing weary of what their town had become and its impact on future generations. But it took courage to speak out, let alone openly fight the machine.
“If you didn’t like [what the machine was doing], they would pressure you, they would threaten you,” Patterson says. “And if that didn’t work, they would kill you.”
The pressure didn’t stop a small group of citizens from forming in 1951 the Russell Betterment Association (RBA), whose goal was to bring honest government back to Phenix City and Russell County.
The association “sent delegations to Montgomery to see the governor,” Patterson says. “It always fell on deaf ears. Before you got out of the governor’s office, somebody would be on the phone calling Phenix City and telling [the machine] who was there and what they said. And somebody would be waiting for you when you got home.”
Such activities triggered harsh reactions. Bentley’s home was bombed in 1952 while his family slept. Miraculously, no one was hurt. Later that year, Bentley and several of his friends and a Columbus Ledger reporter were beaten at a polling place, and the Patterson law office was set on fire.
Bruised and nearly out of other options, the RBA decided it could achieve its goals only with the strenuous support of the state’s chief legal officer. In 1954, Albert Patterson turned his law practice over to his son and ran for attorney general.
Patterson pledged to fight crime, especially the rackets in Phenix City. He easily won the three-candidate Democratic Primary May 4 to earn a spot in automatic runoff June 1 with second-place finisher, Lee Porter.
The machine poured thousands of dollars into Porter’s campaign, bought votes and intimidated voters. Porter also had the support of the outgoing Attorney General Silas Garrett. (Alabama law precludes statewide officeholders from running for consecutive terms.)
Despite the formidable opposition, Patterson prevailed election night by 874 votes out of 400,000 votes cast. The results, however, wouldn’t become official until the state Democratic Party validated the totals in Montgomery June 10. This left time for behind-the-scenes mischief, and stories about tally manipulation were rampant.
The official canvass June 10 declared Patterson the winner by 854 votes, but that hardly ended the controversy. Within days, Lamar Reid, Jefferson County Democratic Committee chairman, testified before a grand jury that Garrett and Arch Ferrell, Russell County District Attorney, had pressured Reid to change vote totals to aid Porter.
Patterson had heard of similar activities involving Garrett and Ferrell elsewhere in the state. He promised to tell “all I know” before the same grand jury June 21. Patterson was also getting death threats. So many that he told a church group June 17 that his chances of taking office were less than 100-1.
On the evening of June 18, Patterson, after working late at his Phenix City office, was gunned down next to his car. He was struck three times: in the chest, in the arm and in the mouth, the death-mark for informers.
News of the assassination quickly swept across Alabama. Gov. Gordon Persons knew the killing was akin to throwing a lit match on a powder keg and immediately ordered Maj. Gen. Walter J. “Crack” Hanna and the Alabama National Guard to Phenix City to prevent further bloodshed.
At 5 feet, 7 inches, “Crack” Hanna, who earned his nickname on the rifle range, was built like a bulldog and twice as aggressive.
He was a tough warrior general who chomped on an ever-present cigar and barked orders, sometimes with an expletive or two, which he expected to be followed. He was also brutally candid, whether he was speaking with a superior or his lowest subordinate.
Phenix City was for Hanna another military objective, no less important than his World War II battles, and perhaps even more so because this fight was in Alabama. He felt he had two missions. The first was to keep the peace, which began when his troops arrived June 19.
Hanna’s second mission was to help local authorities clean up Phenix City. The governor had warned locals that the “days of Sin City were over.” The problem was that anybody of any authority in Phenix City was part of the machine, and had no interest in either cleaning up the town or prosecuting Patterson’s assassin. This meant the Guard and local law enforcement were working dual missions.
“It slowly became apparent that the crime and corruption were on a scale, and of a magnitude, that was almost beyond comprehension,” Lt. Col. Jack Warren told NATIONAL GUARD magazine in 1981. Warren, a Birmingham Police officer in 1954, was one of Hanna’s key subordinates. “If you were a burglar, you couldn’t get caught. If you were a murderer, you’d get off. The whole place was involved, up to and including the court system.”
Hanna had an even more colorful description of what he found: “It was a whole damn town of ill repute,” he said in 1981. “We uncovered 28 murders that had taken place in the previous four years, without even an indictment, much less a conviction. Much of the time, it was cheaper and safer-to kill people than to buy’ em, because dead people stay dead.”
Frustrated, Hanna went to the governor in early July 1954 and asked for more authority. Persons, hoping the Guard’s continued presence alone would compel the local authorities to do the right thing, told Hanna to go back and just keep the peace. Instead, the general, ever the battlefield tactician, returned and created his own plain-clothes intelligence cell. Often working at night, his sleuths conducted interviews with informants and found barns filled with gambling equipment waiting to be brought back when things cooled down.
The general returned to Montgomery two weeks later with what he had uncovered. This time he demanded that his superior declare martial law so that the Guard could enforce the law without interference from the machine. Persons again balked, telling Hanna one more time to return to his post and follow his orders. The adjutant general then told his governor that he hoped he would not have to arrest him, but he would if necessary.
Hanna then did something else unthinkable for a soldier under normal circumstances. After the meeting, he called the Jefferson County District Attorney and arranged to meet the editor of the Birmingham Post-Herald, bluntly filling in both on the obstacles to progress in Phenix City. Only then did Hanna return to his post.
The next day, the Post-Herald published an open letter to Persons noting the lack progress in Phenix. The paper urged the governor to move swiftly. Later the same day, under a threat of immediate subpoena, Parsons reluctantly appeared before the Jefferson County Grand Jury. He was none too pleased by the rebukes, which he knew were forcing his hand.
On July 22, after a quick trip to Washington, D.C., to consult with President Dwight Eisenhower, FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover, and constitutional lawyers, Persons declared limited “Martial Rule” in Phenix City. The move, the first such declaration by any U.S. governor, required the Alabama National Guard to fire the Phenix City police, the Russell County sheriffs and immediately take over their law-enforcement duties.
After instigating the public criticism of Persons, Hanna made sure that he was prepared-personally and operationally-for the governor’s inevitable declaration.
On July 20, Hanna ordered his staff to screen the records of every Alabama National Guardsmen for lawyers, police officers and prison guards. He wanted a specialized force that could get to Phenix City on short notice and seamlessly assume law-enforcement duties. The ensuing task force totaled 60 men already on annual training. Other Guardsmen could then be called to relieve the initial force in the weeks that followed.
Persons announced his martial rule proclamation at 4:30 p.m. Hanna only had a few hours notice, but it was sufficient time to deploy his handpicked force. As the governor read his order in Montgomery, the general and a small band of Guardsmen with fixed bayonets marched into Russell County Courthouse and fired the sheriff and his deputies. He then moved over to City Hall and dispatched the Phenix City Police Department.
When the takeover was complete, Hanna gathered his entire Phenix City force for a motivational session. He said the mission before them “is as serious as combat and is the moral equivalent of war.” But he emphatically added that he wanted it 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,” he said. “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.”
Within hours, Hana’s forces launched a series of around-the-clock raids on every establishment suspected of offering gambling or other illegal activities. They broke down doors when owners refused to cooperate and collected truckloads of gambling, bootlegging and drug paraphernalia, much of it found in secret rooms. They also apprehended dozens of people and began closing gambling houses and brothels.
The initial raids got the machine’s attention. Several Guardsmen were threatened. Hanna received death threats and bribe offers that reached $250,000 (more than $2 million today). Undaunted, Guardsmen uncovered the full depth of Phenix City’s activities: the baby mill, the safecracking school and the printing factory producing the marked cards and loaded dice.
Meanwhile, hundreds of previously intimidated informants came forward. Their testimony coupled with a mountain of evidence led to 749 indictments against 152 people. The list read like a who’s who of Phenix City and Russell County officials. Of these, all but two either pleaded guilty or were found guilty.
Among those indicted was Russell County’s chief deputy sheriff, who provided legal protection to area houses of prostitution for a cut of up to half the profits. Albert Fuller also used his badge to force many young women into prostitution. He would keep an eye peeled for unaccompanied women looking for employment in Phenix City and arrest them on trumped-up charges. He then would arrange for brothel owners to bail the women out in exchange for “work.”
Under Fuller’s protection, the world’s oldest profession was prosperous and brutal. When the Guard arrived, Phenix City had up to 1,000 prostitutes. Many were not only leveraged into the trade, but regularly beaten and forced to steal. One brothel tattooed a mark under the lower lip of each of its women so others would know to whom the prostitutes belonged. Others forcibly shipped their women elsewhere to meet demand.
No more than 150 Guardsmen served in Russell County at any one time during the cleanup. By the end of 1954, most were quietly withdrawn and sent home. Gone, too, was any semblance of the machine or the criminal activity that defined Phenix City for so long. And they remain gone today.
Phenix City’s vice trade, the Patterson assassination and the resulting Guard cleanup under martial rule generated headlines across the nation, several books and a 1955 movie. They also dramatically altered Alabama politics.
John Patterson, a man without previous aspirations for elected office, took his father’s place on the ballot and ran unopposed in the November 1954 general election. After a term as attorney general, he became in 1959, at age 37, Alabama’s youngest governor, delaying for four years George Wallace’s inexorable ascent to power in the state.
Hanna received the Army Distinguished Service Medal and for Patterson and Jones Alabama Distinguished Service Medal.
Source:National Guard Association of the United States Aug 2004
This episode is a suggestion from listener Tim Williamson a student at Auburn University. Thank you Tim!
Sandra Day O’Connor has been an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 1981. She was the first woman to serve on the Court. Due to her case-by-case approach to jurisprudence and her relatively moderate political views, she was the crucial swing vote of the Court for many of her final years on the bench. In 2004, Forbes Magazine called her the fourth most powerful woman in the United States and the sixth most powerful in the world.
This podcast was produced in parts. Only my part is listed below.
On April 30th, 1762, at the age of 56 Franklin receives a honoary Doctor of Civil Law from Oxford. In the same year he invented probably his least known invention the glass armonica. He had a glassmaker create 37 hemispheres made of glass, with each hemisphere being a different size and thickness to produce different pitches. Franklin ran an iron rod through a hole in the top of each hemisphere so that they could nest together from largest to smallest. He linked all of this to an apparatus like a spinning wheel, with a foot treadle that turned the rod, making the glass hemispheres rotate. Franklin moistened his fingers and held them against the rims of the glass hemispheres as they turned, producing a sound similar to musical glasses. The instrument gained popularity with many including Marie Antoinette, Beetohven and Mozart, but by the early nineteenth century the popularity of the instrument had faded.
In 1763 Franklin sent a letter to an English friend where he stated that he felt black people were equal to whites. In that same year he worked with charity schools for blacks in Philidelphia. Later in 1772 Franklin releases all slaves in his service.
During the stamp act, which Franklin was opposed. He made the mistake of purchasing stamps to sell at his print shop. His wife Deborah, fearing her house would be mobbed called on her male realitives to guard her home. In 1764 Franklin travelled to London to act as an agent for the Assembly to oppose the Stamp Act in parliament.
In 1768 proving to be a true renassiance man Franklin wrote a brief history of the relations between the American Colonies and Britian. In that same year he published charts showing the course of the gulf stream in the Atlantic Ocean.
Sadly in 1769, his wife suffers a stroke and her health begins to dterrioate. She later dies in December of 1774.
In 1773 and 74 Franklin was involved in the “Hutchinson Affair.” Thomas Hutchinson was an English-appointed governor of Massachusetts. Although he pretended to take the side of the people of Massachusetts in their complaints against England, he was actually still working for the King. Franklin got a hold of some letters in which Hutchinson called for “an abridgment of what are called English Liberties” in America. He sent the letters to America where much of the population was outraged. After leaking the letters Franklin was called to Whitehall, the English Foreign Ministry, where he was condemned in public.
In November of 1775, the Second Continental Congress created the Committee of Secret Correspondence for the purpose of furthering the American cause in England and Europe. This was the colonies’ first foreign intelligence operation. The committee conducted covert operations, devised ciphers and codes, employed secret agents, and paid for propaganda activities. Benjamin Franklin was one of the five original members of this committee.
And of course as we all know in 1776 Franklin helped draft and signed the Decleration of independence. Later in 1785 he invents bi-focal lenses and is elected to his last public office, President of the Supreme Executive Coucil of Pensyvania. The next year he becomes the presidnet of the Pensyvania Society of Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. In 1789 he takes it a step further writing and signing a formal protest aganist slavery given to American Congress.
In 1790 Franklin dies at his home to Pleurisy on April 17. Buried April 21 beside wife, Deborah, and son Francis in Christ Church burial ground, Philadelphia.
A listener request from Brandon M. Thanks Brandon! Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp, was a buffalo hunter, officer of the law, gambler, and saloon-keeper in the Wild West and the U.S. mining frontier from California to Alaska. He is best known for his participation in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral along with Doc Holliday, Virgil Earp, and Morgan Earp.
Thank you all for subscribing to HistoryPodcast. Opening the show was Ruby Shuz with Time Will Tell. This is the show for you if you enjoy history. For in depth information about this podcast and all the past episodes please visit historypodcast.blogspot.com. On the website you will find detailed show notes from all of the podcast including links on the web to related information, and links to books about the podcast subject. Also on the website is the Frapper map where you can see were the listeners of historypodcast are from. To talk to other listeners of historypodcast you can also join in the converstation on the forums.
Todays podcast will be on Wyatt Earp a request from Brandon M. After the show please stay tuned for a promo from Matt’s Today in History.
Wyatt Earp legendary frontiersman of the American West, who was an saloonkeeper, gambler, lawman, gunslinger, and confidence man. The first major biography, Stuart N. Lake’s Wyatt Earp, Frounter marshall (1931), written with Earp’s collaboration, established the rather fictionalized portrait of a fearless lawman.
On March 19, 1848 in Monmouth, Illinois Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was born. Earp and his four brothers-James C., Virgil W., Morgan and Warren B.- spent their early lives in Illinois and Iowa, but in 1864 he moved with their parents to San Bernardino, California. In 1868 the family moved back to Illinois, Wyatt and Virgil working on a Union Pacific Railroad crew on the way home. After the Earp’s moved to Lamar, Missouri, Wyatt married in 1870 and was elected local constable, but upon his wife’s death of typhoid, he took off, drifting from Indian territory to various towns in Kansas. He worked as a police officer in Wichita and Dodge City, went off to the gold rush in the Black Hills, and returned to Dodge City as an Assistant Marshal, where he became noted as both a lawman and gambler and where he befriended such gunmen as Doc Holiday and Bat Masterson.
Leaving Dodge City with his second wife, he went to New Mexico and then California, working for a time as a Wells Fargo guard, and ended up in 1878 in the Wild West town of Tombstone, Arizona, where most of the Earp family had congregated, buying real estate and businesses, and where Wyatt became a gambler and guard in the Oriental Saloon and where his brother Virgil became the town marshal. He also met his third wife Joise in Tombstone. By 1881 a feud had developed between the Earp’s and a gang led by Ike Clanton and was resolved at the O.K. Corral (Oct. 26, 1881), pitting the Clanton gang against three Earp brothers (Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan) and Doc Holiday. Three Clanton gang were killed, but Ike and another member escaped. The townspeople then discharged Virgil Earp, on suspicion that the gunning was murder rather than crime fighting. In March 1882 Morgan Earp was killed by unknown assassins, and Wyatt, his brother Warren, and some friends subsequently killed at least two suspects. Accused of murder, Wyatt fled, moving first to Colorado, then to several boomtowns in the west and eventually California, where the supported himself variously by police work, gambling, mining and real-estate deals.
Bonnie and Clyde (Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow) were infamous criminals, known as bank robbers, but who far preferred small stores and gas stations to banks to rob, and who traveled the central United States during the Great Depression, often with various members of the Barrow gang.
Your listening to historypodcast episode 41, Bonnie and Clyde.
Opening up the show was Amplifico with “All Your Sins”. Before we get started, a while back, episode 30 we played a great piece from Griddlecakes Radio. A lot of you liked the show and wanted to hear the second part. Well, here is a sneak peak at Griddlesode 16…..
She was a lonely waitress longing for excitement and romance. He was a volatile ex-con who vowed that he would never go back to prison. They found each other in the slums of Dallas, TX in the early 1930’s and proceeded to go on a crime spree that shocked the nation. Fueled by passionate love, the desire to escape poverty and the utter contempt for authority, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow united.
Since their death 60 years ago, the lives of Bonnie and Clyde have been romanized and glamorized in films, books, music and on television.
For two incredible years Bonnie and Clyde lead their notorious gang on a blood crime wave that stretched across five states. They robbed banks, pulled a string of armed robberies and left a bloody trail of murder victims in their wake.
All the while hundreds of law enforcement personnel from 5 southwestern states hotly pursued the couple. Yet the pair was able to elude authorities and avoid capture until they were taken out in a hail of bullets.
“No man but the undertaker will ever get me, if officers cripple me to where I see they will take me alive I will take my own life.” Clyde Barrow
A tough man who lived in tough times. Clyde Barrow was born in Telico, Texas on March 21, 1909. He was the sixth child of Henry and Cuby Barrow. He was described as a “Mama’s boy”.
There was plenty of love in the Barrow family, but very little money. Henry Barrow was a poor tenant farmer. When Clyde was 12 years old the family was forced to give up farming, they moved to Dallas, Tx.
By age 16 Clyde had quit school. He was slender and small in stature. Barely 5’7” and possessed an innocent look. Following the example of his older brother Buck, Clyde embarked on a life of crime. It started with small transgressions. He then moved into stealing cars. He quickly became well known to the Dallas police.
In October of 1929 police were searching for Clyde in connection with a number of local robberies. He was trying to elude police and was in hiding. When he met the woman who would become his soul mate, Bonnie Parker.
Bonnie Parker was born in October 1910. She had an older brother and a younger sister. Her father Henry died when Bonnie was just 4 years old. Her mother Emma then moved the family to a suburb of Dallas known as “cement city”. Bonnie’s family managed to get her through high school. She worked as a waitress and married at 16, but her husband Roy Thorton was sent to Easton prison for bank robbery. He was an abusive drunk and would sometimes disappear for weeks at a time. She left him without filing for divorce. Wearing her wedding ring to her death.
In January 1930 Bonnie Parker met another dangerous man who would be her true love and her undoing, Clyde Barrow.
Clyde was 20 years old, and Bonnie just 19. Their first encounter took place when Bonnie came to the aid of a sick girlfriend. Clyde was already wanted by the police at the time. They were together for the next two weeks until Clyde was finally arrested. He was convicted of 5 auto thefts and was sentenced to 2 years. Clyde was bent on escape from prison and Bonnie was more than willing to help.
Bonnie smuggled a Colt 32 automatic into the prison and Clyde was able to escape. Within a couple weeks he was re-captured in Minnesota. He received a 14-year sentence this time.
Clyde was remanded to the Huntsville penitentiary where he met fellow inmate Ralph Fults. They worked on the prison farm together. Prisoners were regularly beaten and abused at Easton. It is reported that the guards routinely killed inmates to keep the other prisoners in line. Soon Fults found himself on the receiving end of a guard beating. The beating was a punishment for a previous escape Fults had made. Clyde stood by while Fults was being beat. This distracted the guards and they stopped beating Fults, this possibly save Fults from death. They developed a plan together to escape, return to the prison with a gang and release all the inmates, while killing all the guards. This plan would take 3 years to put into action.
Meanwhile, Clyde’s relationship with Bonnie intensified as the pair regularly corresponded through letters.
In February 1932 Clyde came home to Dallas. Life in prison had had a devastating effect on him.
Clyde started to work, but when there was a crime the police would visit him at his place of work. So much so that he frequently lost jobs because of this police questioning. This was during the depression and jobs were rare. After 2 weeks Clyde gave up looking for the next job.
Bonnie and Clyde were not very efficient thieves. They never seemed to plan. The moved about the country and when they depleted their funds, they would rob another bank. This meant they were taking very little money. Often risking their lives for 20 or 50 dollars. 2,000 dollars was a huge haul for them. Clyde fancied himself a modern day Jesse James.
He avoided killing innocent victims and mostly shot police, sometimes even kidnapping cops to later release them unharmed.
In March of 1932, traveling in a stolen car Bonnie and Clyde went on the road together for the first time. Ralph Fults joined them for the trip. Bonnie participated in a botched robbery with Fults and Clyde but she and Ralph were captured and taken into custody.
While Bonnie and Fults were in jail Clyde teamed up with another former inmate buddy, Raymond Hamilton. During a robbery Clyde killed a shopkeeper. He knew if he was captured he would get the chair. There was now no turning back for Clyde.
In June 1932 Bonnie was acquitted for lack of evidence and released from jail. She quickly rejoined Clyde. The governor of Texas offered a 250 dollar reward for the capture of Clyde.
On the night of August 5th 1932 at a country dance the gang murdered Deputy Ugene Moore and seriously injured the sheriff in Stringtown, Oklahoma.
Bonnie and Clyde would survive 22 more months after the Stringtown murders, but life on the run was far from luxurious. They were camping and living in tourist camps. They would secretly meet with their families during this time as well.
During a family visit in Michigan Hamilton was captured and sentenced to 264 years at Easton. Clyde vowed to get Ray out.
In late March of 1933 Buck Barrow was released from prison. For two weeks Buck and his wife lived with Bonnie and Clyde in Joplin, Missouri. Suspicious neighbors had alerted police that bootleggers may be living in the apartment. The police were met at the door by Clyde and WD Jones. The officers did not stand a chance. Clyde and WD mowed them down. Bonnie then grabbed an automatic weapon and began to shoot out the kitchen window. A shooting frenzy in sewed. Clyde managed to get everyone but Blanch, Buck’s wife into the car for a get-away.
On June 8th 1933, at Willimington, Texas Bonnie was seriously injured in a car accident when the car caught fire from overturning and she was badly burnt on her leg.
In Platte City, Missouri on July 1933, the gang stopped for a break, but the police were tipped off. The gang was surrounded. Again the police came to the door. Blanch politely said she wasn’t dressed, buying the men time to arm themselves. Again the police at the door were the first to die. And again more shooting broke out. Blanch was injured when she got shards of glass in her eyes, Buck took a bullet in the brain. Clyde and the gang drove out of there with one hand on the wheel and shooting his gun.
He went right thought the police lines and escaped. On July 20th they stopped at an abandoned amusement park near Dexter, Iowa. After 4 days the police discovered the hideout and moved in. All but Buck and Blanch escaped. Buck and Blanch surrendered. Buck died on July 30th, 1933. Blanch was sent to jail and spent 10 years in prison.
On January 16th 1934 Clyde kept his promise to Raymond Hamilton. He mastermind a break out at Easton. Hamilton and 4 other prisoners escaped.
Soon after the prison break, Texas highway patrols found Bonnie and Clyde but they did not live to capture them. Once again fellow police officers were outraged at these deaths and the search for Bonnie and Clyde intensified.
On the morning of May 23, 1934 in Arcadia, Louisiana Bonnie and Clyde drove into an ambush. Henry Methmus, father of one of the 4 escaped Easton convicts had betrayed Bonnie and Clyde in exchange for amnesty for his son. The ambush worked, Bonnie and Clyde were riddled with bullets and died together in the front seat of a sedan.
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