Mrs. Jack Johnson probably will be the chief patroness of these affairs. Other white wives of negroes also will participate. No matter what the attitude of the Lake Geneva people may be, we do not intend to draw the color line.
South Side real estate agent W. H. Harris, another member of the syndicate, said the Lake Geneva purchase was only the beginning. He and his associates hoped to buy up property in exclusive white communities all over the country, he said—Florida, Alabama, California, anywhere “it can be shown that we will make money out of it.”
On Christmas Eve, the elite of Lake Geneva held an emergency meeting to see what they could do to stop what the next day the New York Times called a “NEGRO INVASION.”
The situation put one Chicago Tribune writer in mind of Bert Williams and William Walker’s 1909 musical hit, Bandana Land:
In its original form, “Bandana Land” … told how a group of negroes purchased a plot of land in the heart of a fashionable settlement, and how the negroes sold out to the white folks who didn’t care for their proximity, at fabulous prices. There was a laugh in every line. As the play will open today for the benefit of Lake Geneva it assumes the aspect of a tragedy. Reduced to stern reality, with the Judson G. Sherman house … as the headquarters of the negro Lincoln Social and Athletic Club and with Jack Johnson … as the star actor, the laughs evaporate.
More pertinent perhaps was a similar move by several Negro investors who had quietly purchased a big house in the Chicago suburb of Wheaton a few years earlier, then told the newspapers a prominent Levee sport named “Honey” Moore planned to make it his home. Wealthy Wheaton residents pooled their money and bought back the house, providing the investors a handsome profit.
In the end, the Lake Geneva colonists proved cannier. They agreed that none of them would make an offer on the Sherman house, the Los Angeles Times reported on December 26, “but would allow the sale to go by default. Then, they say, if the negroes purchase the property and actually occupy it, steps will be taken to oust them.” Anderson, Johnson, and their friends let the option lapse and backed off.
On New Year’s Eve, Johnson and Lucille turned up unannounced for the 8th National Guard Regiment ball, organized each year by the all-black outfit that had twice sent its band to welcome the champion home to Chicago. When the Johnsons made their entrance, he in evening dress, she glittering with the diamonds Etta had been wearing only three months earlier, some women hissed, and an officer took Johnson aside and told him that since he had no invitation, he would have to leave.
A few days later, Johnson and several friends drove up to Bill O’Connell’s Chicago Gym. He’d been training there off and on for years, but this time O’Connell met him at the door. He was embarrassed, he said, but the rest of his regulars had told him they’d go elsewhere if he allowed the heavyweight champion of the world on the premises. Johnson got back in his car and drove away. When other arenas were closed to Jack Johnson, the sporting world had always welcomed him. Now that door, too, seemed to be closing.
At 2 a.m. on January 14, the telephone rang at the home of Bureau of Investigation Chief Charles DeWoody. A reporter was on the line. He’d heard that Johnson had jumped his bond and was already aboard a train on his way to Canada; Lucille was said to be with him; so was his valet, Joe Levy. DeWoody called the Johnson home. “Jack is upstairs sleeping,” his mother said. “I can’t wake him now. He will get up later and then you can talk with him yourself…. My boy would never run away.”
DeWoody sent a man to check, but he also placed calls to the chiefs of police in the three most important stops on the train’s route: Detroit, Port Huron, and Battle Creek, Michigan. The train had already passed through the first two. It was due in Battle Creek at 3:25 a.m.
As soon as the train hissed to a stop there, two officers boarded the champion’s car and banged on the door of his stateroom. He was under arrest, they said. The train was held for nearly half an hour in the cold while the Johnsons’ luggage was located and unloaded from the baggage car. A black policeman named John Patterson, with whom the champion happened to have grown up in Galveston, escorted the Johnsons and Levy to the home of Will Cook, a black barber. They spent most of the day there waiting for Special Agent Meyer, who was coming by train to escort Johnson back to Chicago.
Johnson insisted that he and his wife hadn’t been running away but were just planning to spend a few days in Toronto enjoying themselves and talking over with Tom Flanagan final arrangements for a spring fight in Paris with the “Iowa Giant,” Al Palzer. “If I had known I was going to stay here I’d have got off early and showed at a theater,” he told a reporter. “If pulling a fellow out of bed in the middle of the night when he is on a pleasure trip, mixed with a little business, wouldn’t make me mad, I’m a pretty good sort, ain’t I?” He’d cleared his trip with his bondsmen, he said, and hadn’t realized he’d also needed to get permission to travel from the district attorney’s office.
Charles DeWoody didn’t believe a word of it. He reported to Washington:
Personally, I have not the slightest doubt but that Johnson, knowing the Supreme Court would pass within a few days upon the constitutionality of the [Mann] act, intended [to place] himself in advance in a non-extraditable jurisdiction, [from] where he could proceed to France and Russia to carry out his plans for future fights, forfeiting the bonds for his appearance in this country; and I may add that this is [the] general and unanimous impression.
That impression was not shared by the one person who mattered most. Judge Carpenter found Johnson’s explanation plausible. He told him he should have informed the authorities of his plans, but he refused to do more than that, and he scolded Chief DeWoody and Special Agent Meyer for excessive zeal in halting Johnson’s train and bringing him back to Chicago. Under the terms of his bond, he said, they really had no power to insist that Johnson remain in the city so long as he was on hand for his trial.
On Tuesday February 3, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed Johnson’s habeas corpus petition. Judge Carpenter was now free to set a trial date. The smuggling case would be decided first, on February 28. “The impudent air of Jack Johnson has departed,” said the Milwaukee Free Press, “and the former boastful negro is now a humble, pleading coon, according to advices from Chicago. Your Uncle Samuel has swung about twenty adverse court decisions on the champion and Lil’ Artha is decidedly groggy.”
Everything was going badly for him now. Sig Hart was spying on the Johnsons for the government and filing reports on what his old employer was up to. When Johnson bought an old car and sent an agent north to map out the safest possible escape route to Canada by road, Hart made sure his new employers knew about it. Charlie Johnson went to the authorities, claiming that someone had threatened to “bump him off” if he went through with plans to testify against his brother in the smuggling case; he was afraid to go home, he said, and was handed a dollar for a night’s lodging.* Even Tiny Johnson was worrying aloud that if her boy ran away again and forfeited his bond, she would lose her home.
Meanwhile, though Johnson had paid out hundreds of dollars for detectives and even privately offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward to anyone who could tell him where Belle Schreiber was hidden, her whereabouts remained a mystery.
On February 17, Lucille informed the government that Johnson was confined to his bedroom and gravely ill with pneumonia. DeWoody now took nothing for granted. A week later, he sent Agent Lins with Benjamin Bachrach to verify the champion’s presence as well as the state of his health. Johnson’s longtime trainer, Barney Furey, let them in. They told Tiny Johnson they just wanted to see that Johnson really was ill and in bed and promised not to say a word to him if she’d just let them have a look. His mother said they’d have to speak to her daughter-in-law. Lucille would not let them go upstairs.
Bachrach suggested they call the attending physician. Dr. R. W. Carter—“(white)” according to Lins’ official report and therefore presumably reliable—who came right away. He said Johnson
was very ill, but they could certainly stick their heads in the door without doing him any harm. “But Mrs. Lucille Johnson would listen to no argument,” Lins reported, “stating that the Government was the cause of all of her and Jack’s troubles and she berated every one connected with the Government, saying she did not care who came to the house, no one should be allowed to see Jack.” Johnson’s nurses—also “(white)”—attested to the high fevers Johnson had been running. That was enough for the judge to grant a continuance on the smuggling trial until the champion was back on his feet.
On March 3 and again on the fourth, Johnson called DeWoody and asked if he would come and see him in his sickroom. It would “advantage and interest the government,” he said. The Bureau’s chief said he would wait until Johnson was able to come and see him at the Federal Building. He did so, on the tenth, walking “very feebly,” DeWoody noted, “with the assistance of convenient tables and chairs.” The champion said he was well enough for the smuggling trial to go ahead. (DeWoody would duly notify the judge, who set the date for April.) But it was the Mann Act trial Johnson wanted to talk about. He saw no need for the government to go to the trouble and expense of gathering witnesses from all around the country. He was happy to plead guilty and pay a “substantial” fine provided that the judge promised not to send him to prison. He had consorted with prostitutes, but he was no pimp, and the government would never be able to show he had ever earned a penny from any of the women he’d known. More important, “on account of his color it would be impossible for him to secure a fair trial.” The Chief told him there was no point in discussing this with him. Johnson could of course submit such a plea to the court, but there would be no guarantee of leniency; he would have to be prepared for the government to lay out its case and then request suitable punishment. “The defendant left in a downcast mood,” DeWoody reported, “and with a promise (or threat) to appear tomorrow with a list of cases where defendants had pled guilty to a violation of the White Slave Traffic Act and the cases involved pandering for profit, following which plea sentences consisting of fines only were imposed.”
March 31, 1913, was Johnson’s thirty-fifth birthday. Not even the coming trials were allowed to mute his family’s celebration. At least a hundred guests filed through Tiny Johnson’s house that evening to have dinner and pay tribute to her embattled son. “The table was a dream,” the Defender reported, covered in fine lace with a huge centerpiece basket of bridesmaid roses and lilies of the valley. Lucille headed the receiving line in a gown of “Copenhagen blue, décolleté, with a bodice beaded with jet and cut-steel buttons. She carried a huge bouquet of sweet peas and lilies of the valley. The champion looked immaculate in the conventional tuxedo.” One hundred choice filets mignons were served, along with 150 spring chickens, one hundred portions of French peas, three hundred loaves of bread, and a huge birthday cake—“thirty-five biscuits in circumference”—baked and decorated by William Ingram, the “Johnson major domo.”
The Elite Café, one of the best-known nightspots on the South Side, provided an orchestra. Johnson played along on his bass viol. “The champion enjoyed himself immensely … and discussed poetry,” the Defender concluded. “He spoke of the poem written by Miss Bettieloo Forton in 1910 predicting his victory. He lauded Paul Laurence Dunbar, and recited ‘If,’ his favorite poem by Kipling.”
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting, too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Johnson’s own time of testing was coming closer. Sol Lewinsohn, his supposedly influential friend, had done nothing for him. His deviousness in arranging Johnson’s bond had caused the champion to spend a week in jail. Since then, he had resisted repeated requests to hand back the thirty thousand dollars Johnson had advanced him on the night he was arrested, promising instead to use it to influence federal officials who owed him favors, including Harry Parkin and the U.S. commissioner who had set Lucille Cameron’s bond. When no such influence was detected, Johnson demanded repayment. Lewinsohn then confessed that he no longer had the money. He’d invested it with a friend, who’d turned out to be a crook. The money was gone. Johnson said he wasn’t interested in excuses. He could do little about it himself without attracting more unwanted attention from the law. Instead, he dispatched Lucille to Lewinsohn’s office with a pistol. He had twenty minutes to arrange payment in full, she told him. Lewinsohn came up with twenty-five thousand dollars of it by looting his own fledgling Trader’s Bank of Chicago, and soon had to skip town himself to escape prosecution.
On the afternoon of April 22, U.S. Marshal H. B. Coy called at the Johnson home. He’d been delivering subpoenas all day—to Sig Hart, Charles Johnson, even Walter Mueller, the salesman who supplied Belle Schreiber’s flat at the Ridgewood with beer. He had two to go—Joe Levy and Barney Furey—and both were thought to be at the house on Wabash Avenue. Levy was sitting on the porch. When Coy handed him the subpoena, the Englishman sighed. “I’ve got so many,” he said, “if I keep on getting cards my pockets won’t hold them.”
“You’re going to have a full deck,” Coy said. Levy said he already had one.
Johnson came onto the porch, asking, “What’s up?”
Coy asked for Barney Furey. Johnson said he’d call him. “Come on in.”
“How are all the boys and how do they feel about me?” he asked. Coy said he hadn’t heard much one way or the other. A servant brought a decanter and glass, and the marshal poured himself a drink.
Lucille greeted Coy warmly. She, too, wanted to know about the boys in the office. What had happened to their friend Deputy Marsales? Coy didn’t answer.
Furey was out, but Johnson took his subpoena and promised that his trainer would be present for the trial. Then he asked if he could see the list of other witnesses. Coy showed it to him. The champion’s face fell as he read the names of people he’d never dreamed would appear against him—old friends and lovers, former employees, his own adopted brother.
He thanked Coy and handed the list back. “Goodby and good luck to both of you,” Coy said as he left. “I’m sure Judge Carpenter will give both you and the Government a square deal.”*
The following day, Johnson was allowed to plead nolo contendere to having concealed Etta’s
necklace from the government, and to pay a one-thousand-dollar fine. The smuggling case was dropped, perhaps because the champion now claimed that his late wife had hidden the jewels without his knowledge. The Mann Act trial was set for May 5.
Meanwhile, the government went back to the grand jury and asked for four new indictments against Johnson, this time for “crimes against nature.” It was Harry Parkin’s idea, but Carpenter warned against it. He disliked having matters usually confined to the municipal courts take up time in a federal courtroom, and he thought “unnatural and perverted practices” beyond the purview of the Mann Act, which he believed pertained only to prostitution. DeWoody was also opposed at first. The only “evidence” they’d collected came from Yank Kenny, an alcoholic ex-sparring partner with a grudge against Johnson (who had fired him) and a patchy legal history of his own.†
Kenny claimed that in the middle of one night at Cedar Lake in 1909 he’d overheard Belle Schreiber say, “Don’t beat me any more and I will do it or I will do anything.” Precisely what “it” was, no one could say, and once Schreiber was on the stand, DeWoody wrote, he feared that “an effort to open the door upon this subject will only increase her embarrassment.” But he soon changed his mind. When agents gingerly raised the subject with Schreiber, he told his boss in a coded telegram, she had been quite prepared to add it to her bill of particulars against the champion.
PRINCIPAL WITNESS DOES TESTIFY CONTINUOUS ATTEMPTS BY JOHNSON FORCE HER COMMIT PERVERTED PRACTICES. SAYS ATTEMPTS WERE ACCOMPANIED BY VICIOUS BEATINGS. IS CORROBORATED BY AT LEAST ONE WITNESS WHO OVERHEARD THESE EFFORTS [KENNY]…. WHILE I WAS NOT INCLINED TO AGREE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE AS TO ADVISABILITY RETURNING INDICTMENT I NOW BELIEVE IN VIEW OF DEVELOPMENT EVIDENCE IT IS BEST. SEEMS TO ME THESE ACTS OF PERVERSION CONSTITUTE THE MOST VICIOUS ELEMENT IN THE CASE OVERCOMING DEFENDANT’S CONTENTION HIS VIOLATION IS TECHNICAL AND INVOLVING NO GREAT DEGREE IMMORALITY. COMPLAINING WITNESS IS IN EXCELLENT SPIRITS, ENTIRELY FRIENDLY WITH US, FREE FROM NERVOUSNESS AND APPARENTLY WILLING TESTIFY FOREGOING CHEERFULLY.
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