Hanging Curve (7 page)

Ken Williams’s power display was almost enough to convert me to a fan of the long ball. I’d always been a proponent of the “inside” game exemplified by John McGraw and Ty Cobb, where you relied on your wits instead of sheer strength and used the bunt and the stolen base to play for one run at a time. Watching the drives of Ken Williams, though, I had to admit that there’s something awfully pretty about a baseball arcing its way over the fence.

After the game, while reporters were still huddled around Williams in the locker room, scribbling furiously to record his long-winded comments, I left to meet Karl Landfors at the gate.

As the two of us walked to catch a trolley for home, Karl couldn’t stop raving about Williams’s home-run exhibition. Since I’d been trying for years to turn Karl into a baseball fan, it was gratifying to hear his enthusiasm.

Not until we’d transferred at Delmar Boulevard, was I finally able to give him a full report on my meeting with Tater Greene. I concluded it by saying, “I don’t think Greene knows anything. And if the team was behind Crawford’s lynching, he would have heard about it.”

“What about talking to some of the other players?” he asked. “If any of them are Klansmen, maybe they know who was involved even if they weren’t themselves.”

“If they do, they sure aren’t going to say so. Besides, why are you so sure it’s the Klan?” I still thought Crawford’s killers were probably Klansmen, too, but there were a couple of aspects of the lynching that I didn’t understand.

Karl frowned. “It seems obvious, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, but you said yourself, they usually brag about it when they lynch somebody. Why not this time? And before now, it’s mostly been in the South, right? Why suddenly here?” In the Midwest, the Klan was generally seen as just one more fraternal organization with funny names and secret rituals. It even staged public parades and rallies.

“That’s the worry,” Karl said. “What if it’s spreading here?”

“I don’t know.” But I didn’t want to find out; I had other matters on my mind. “Sorry, Karl. Wish I could have been more help.”

“Maybe you—”

I cut him off. “I don’t have to get on my knee, do I?”

He blinked behind his thick glasses. “Pardon me?”

“When I ask Margie to marry me. Do I have to get on my knee?”

“I don’t know.” Karl was clearly at a loss. “They do in the movies ... but I don’t believe I’ve ever read anything authoritative on the matter.”

For the rest of the ride home, Karl proved as useless in advising me how to propose as I would be in advising Ken Williams how to hit home runs.

K
arl Landfors paced himself over the next few days. He began by mentioning his lawyer friend once or twice, then a few more times, along with some casual suggestions that I’d probably enjoy meeting the man. Before I knew it, Karl had set a time and date.

Early Wednesday morning, Karl and I were on Market Street, in a predominantly colored section of downtown St. Louis. At the corner of Twenty-first Street, the Comet Theatre was showing Oscar Micheaux’s
The Gunsaulus Mystery,
billed as “The Greatest Colored Photoplay Yet Made.” Next to the movie theater was an ancient, but well-preserved, brick office building.

We walked into the front office of
F. W.
Aubury, Attorney-at-Law, and were greeted by his receptionist, a pretty Negro girl with bobbed hair. “Mr. Landfors,” she said with a prompt smile, “you’re right on time.” Reaching for the telephone, she nodded a greeting in my direction, and informed the person on the other end of the line that we’d arrived.

She then showed us into a small office that was sparse on furnishings but flush with papers. They sprouted from the open drawers of an oak file cabinet, and spilled over from above the law books that lined the back wall. There were also teetering stacks of papers on the desk, piled so high that they almost hid the slim colored man seated behind them. If not for his calm demeanor, I would have guessed that the office had been ransacked.

“Mickey,” Karl said, “this is Franklin Aubury.”

“Good to meet you,” I said.

Aubury stood, rising to a height of about five-eight, and we shook hands. “My pleasure. Karl has told me quite a bit about you.” The lawyer’s speech was clipped and precise, and his appearance was equally fastidious, although not fashionable. His stark black suit and stiff-collared white shirt were so similar to Karl’s that the two of them might have shared the same tailor. They were also similarly devoid of hair, Karl having lost his to nature while the lawyer’s head was shaved. Besides skin color, and the fact that Aubury had some muscle under his, the most noticeable difference between the two men was in their choice of spectacles: Aubury wore gold pince-nez that made him appear older than the thirty or thirty-five years I estimated him to be.

He gestured to a couple of chairs and invited us to sit down. Karl and I had to clear off so many newspapers and journals before we could that I wondered when Aubury had last had a client in his office.

“What kind of law do you practice?” I asked. “Karl mentioned you work for the NAACP.”

“I work
with
them on certain issues,” he said. “But I do not work for them. I work for all people of the colored race, and with anyone who shares our goals. Lately, my efforts have been directed primarily toward passage of antilynching legislation.”

He and Karl not only dressed alike, I thought, but they both spoke in the same humorless tone.

Aubury removed his pince-nez, and methodically cleaned the lenses with his pocket handkerchief. “But let us talk baseball for a moment, if we may. I’m quite a fan—I even played a bit myself back in college.”

I glanced at Karl, who I knew was utterly devoid of athletic ability, and smiled, relieved to hear that there was a difference between these two. “I’m always happy to talk baseball,” I said.

Aubury leaned back. “Do you know when the League of Colored Base Ball Clubs was organized?”

“Two years ago, wasn’t it? 1920.”

“No, that’s the Negro National League. The first professional league for Negro players was the League of Colored Base Ball Clubs—in 1887.”

“Huh.” I had no idea they’d organized a league that long ago.

“Have you heard of Sol White?” he asked next.

I shook my head no.

“He published the first history of colored baseball back in 1907. White was also a fine player in his time, and still coaches.” Aubury adjusted his glasses. “How about Frank Grant—do you know of him?”

Strike three. “Did you want to talk baseball,” I replied, “or give me a history test?”

Karl cleared his throat at my bluntness.

Aubury flashed a surprisingly warm smile. “Point taken.” He let his chair spring upright. “What I would like you to understand is that colored baseball is not a recent development. Baseball is part of our culture, and important to our community. It’s almost as important as church—in fact, some colored churches change the times of their services when they conflict with scheduled ball games. Colored boys dream of becoming baseball players the same as white boys do, and a Negro League ballplayer is as much a hero to our people as a Babe Ruth or a Walter Johnson.” Aubury pressed his fingertips together in a peak. “That brings me to Slip Crawford.”

From the first time Karl suggested that I meet his friend, I knew it was primarily because of the pitcher’s death. “What about him?” I asked.

“Slip Crawford was a local hero. He grew up in a shanty in East St. Louis, and played semipro baseball with the old Imperials there. Last year, he made it to the Negro National League, pitching for the Indianapolis ABCs—struck out twenty batters in his second game. And this season his pitching would have given the St. Louis Stars a shot at the championship.” Aubury paused. “Unfortunately, his pitching was too good. He beat a white team, and they hanged him for it.”

“You know for sure it was the Elcars?” I asked. “I got to believe it takes a better reason than losing a baseball game to kill a man.”

Aubury held out the back of one hand; with the other, he pinched a fold of dark brown skin. “Here is all the reason they need.”

I wished I could argue, but I knew that what he said was all too often true. I shot a look at Karl; he’d said almost nothing since we arrived, and I had the feeling that the direction the conversation was taking came as no surprise to him.

Aubury’s next words confirmed my suspicion. “Karl and I have had some discussions,” he said. “We believe that you would be the ideal person to look into Crawford’s lynching.”

“All I did was play in one ball game with the Elcars,” I said. “That doesn’t mean I know anything, or have any idea how to find out anything.”

“Having played with Enoch’s club,” Aubury answered, “you have a legitimate reason for contacting the Elcars again. And they might assume you share their racial sympathies.” He waved off my protest that I didn’t. “I don’t mean to suggest that such an assumption would be accurate. But if they’re inclined to believe it is, they might be more forthcoming with information.” He looked to Karl. “Also, Karl tells me you’ve been involved in a couple of murder investigations in the past, and had some success with them. Equally important, he vouches for your sense of justice.”

I knew it was intended as a compliment, but I didn’t feel like thanking Karl for trying to draw me into this. “Those were murders, not lynchings,” I said, recalling Karl’s explanation of the difference. “Even if I do learn whether it was ballplayers or Klansmen behind Crawford’s killing, it was a mob of them, not one person. Do you really think I can track down everybody who took part? Or that the police would arrest them all if I did? What’s the point of me putting my neck out if there’s no chance it’s gonna do any good?”

Aubury considered my argument before replying, “This isn’t about bringing Crawford’s killers to justice. I know
that’s
not going to happen. But I do want to prevent any additional deaths—to people of either race.”

Karl spoke up. “Our concern is that there’s going to be retaliation for Crawford’s death, and then whites will retaliate for that, and so on and so on, until the whole damn city’s at war.”

“We do not want a repeat of 1917,” Aubury said. “Hostilities escalated for two months before culminating in the riot.”

I hadn’t known that there was a buildup to the riot; I thought they usually erupted suddenly. “How did it start?” I asked.

“With a city council meeting,” Aubury answered softly. He began another ritual cleaning of his eyeglasses. “The United States had entered the war, and industries were short of workers. Some of the companies in East St. Louis recruited Negroes from the South, and they moved up here in droves—factory jobs are far more lucrative than picking cotton in Mississippi. But a lot of their new neighbors didn’t like the idea of colored folk taking ‘white’ jobs.

“So, at the end of May, a mob of whites showed up at a city council meeting demanding that all Negroes be driven out of town. They found a friend in one of the local politicians, Alexander Flannigan, who said he agreed that ‘East St. Louis must remain a white man’s town.’ Then he pointed out that the citizens could do the evicting themselves because ‘there’s no law against mob violence.’

“They took his advice. The mob left City Hall and ran out to the streets, pulling colored people from streetcars and beating them. Then they went to Negro homes and set them on fire. For three days, whites went on a rampage, trying to drive the colored population out. Some of the Negroes did leave, crossing over to this side of the river.

“Fortunately, no one was killed. But over the next weeks, white agitators spread rumors that the colored people who remained were arming themselves for a Fourth of July massacre of white people. Newspapers picked up the rumors and published them as if they came from credible sources. Soon all of East St. Louis was living in fear.

“Shortly before the holiday, a group of white men decided to make a preemptive attack. They drove through a colored neighborhood spraying the houses with bullets. Some residents fired back ... a couple of whites were killed. And then—” Aubury looked from Karl to me. “Well, if you two have time, perhaps I can take you on a little tour.”

 

Karl and I waited at the intersection of Broadway and Collinsville Avenue in East St. Louis, not far from City Hall. We huddled in our overcoats against the chilly, overcast day.

“I never noticed about the streetcars before,” I said.

“Some things are hard to see,” he replied thoughtfully. “When you’re dining in a restaurant, you don’t bother to think about whether the waiter has had a chance to eat.”

It took a moment until I got Karl’s point. “Guess you’re right.”

Franklin Aubury couldn’t travel with us because he’d had to wait for a “colored” streetcar. And since St. Louis didn’t have nearly as many trolleys for Negroes as it had for white passengers, he still hadn’t arrived.

“Besides,” Karl said, “a lot of these Jim Crow laws are new. Ten years ago, we could have ridden together. But now it seems there are more kinds of segregation in the Midwest than there are in Dixie.”

It was another ten minutes before Aubury stepped off an overcrowded streetcar. When he joined us, he made no mention of the delay. He simply straightened the knot of his necktie, adjusted the brim of his derby, and picked up the conversation as if we’d never been separated. “This was where the killing started, gentlemen,” he said. “Right at this intersection.”

There were no visible signs that anything had happened there, no indications of burning or destruction. People of both races bustled about, doing their shopping and filing in and out of office buildings.

“On the morning of July 2,” Aubury continued, “white workers gathered at the Labor Temple, a couple of blocks from here, for a protest meeting. What they were protesting was the fact that colored people had had the audacity to defend their homes and families the night before. What they decided was to drive the Negroes out once and for all.

“They marched down here, and when a colored man stepped off a streetcar on his way to work they shot him. Once they got their first taste of blood, they wanted more—and they proved insatiable.”

Aubury started walking east on Collinsville, Karl and I on either side of him. “For the next two hours, blood flowed all over this street. Trolleys were stopped and all Negroes—men, women, and children—were pulled out. The lucky ones got a quick bullet. The others were clubbed, or stoned, or kicked to death—and it often continued after they were dead, until they could no longer be recognized as human. The white mob grew as the killing went on; even women and children joined in, using hatpins and penknives on their victims. And spectators lined the sidewalks, cheering the massacre.”

I couldn’t have said anything if I’d wanted to; my throat felt like I was trying to swallow a chunk of broken glass.

When we reached Illinois Avenue, Aubury said, “It continued all the way to here. By then the mob was so large, it split up into smaller gangs, who started rampaging through the rest of the city.” He led us around the corner, and then turned on Fifth Street, back toward Broadway.

I was finally able to croak out a question. “What about the police?”

“Most remained in their station houses,” Aubury answered. “Of the officers who did venture onto the streets, few did so for law-enforcement purposes. Some of the police egged the mob on, thinking it was fine entertainment to watch Negroes die.” His tone was matter-of-fact, and I didn’t know how he could sound so calm. Then I saw how tightly clenched the muscles were in Aubury’s jaw. “With the police useless,” he went on, “the mayor belatedly called for the National Guard. The militia began to arrive by early afternoon, and I will give them due credit: Most of the Guardsmen tried to restore order and stop the killing.”

“But not all of them,” Karl put in.

“No, not all. There was one incident in which a Guardsman came upon a gang of whites beating a colored man. When they saw the soldier, they stopped, and asked him if his rifle was loaded. He demonstrated that it was by shooting the Negro to death.”

The tightness in my throat had spread to my stomach, and I was hoping the tour would conclude soon; I didn’t want to learn any more about how cruel humans could be to each other.

We crossed Broadway, and continued to Brady Avenue, then turned toward the river. This was the area Margie and I had seen from the trolley on our way to Cubs Park. A few dozen wood shanties were scattered throughout the otherwise desolate section of town, and Negro children played in the street. Beyond the shanties was the railroad yard, with the Mississippi River past the tracks.