Terror in the City of Champions (18 page)

Lupp asked McCutcheon if it would be possible “to inject typhoid germs into bottles of milk.” The inquiry staggered him. Typhoid was deadly and highly contagious. He told Lupp it was a foolish thing to ponder. Typhoid would spread “like wildfire.” In the coming weeks Lupp posed more questions to McCutcheon: Could the germ be produced in large quantities? Could it be put into milk bottles? Would the germs flourish in cottage cheese? Could typhoid be spread by jabbing an infected needle into an unsuspecting person on the street or in a theater? It became clear to McCutcheon that Lupp’s intended targets were “class enemies”—Jews, blacks, and Catholics. Lupp hoped to direct his efforts at entire neighborhoods. A registered pharmacist, McCutcheon had no intention of creating typhoid germs. He wanted to tell someone about Lupp’s reprehensible plan. But who? He knew the legion’s reach. He fretted over his predicament. He feared that Lupp would retaliate against his wife and young son.

Typhoid continued to intrigue Lupp. He visited “Doc” Guthrie at his home and inquired about his basement. It was warm and humid—ideal for breeding germs, Lupp noted. The comment baffled Guthrie until Lupp laid out his plan. He wanted to spread typhoid in targeted neighborhoods. Astounded, Guthrie said he would have no part of it. He told him it was Frankenstein-like. “It might wipe out the whole city,” Guthrie said. Realizing the gravity of the plot, Guthrie said he would tell police. Lupp reminded him that the Black Legion had spies in every police department and that they would frame Guthrie if he said anything.

Lupp was also curious as to whether Guthrie had the ability to make bombs. He brought him sketches of prototypes: one for a pocked grenade that would explode into shrapnel, one for a tube packed with dynamite, and one shaped like a cigarette that could be tossed into vehicles. He also asked what he knew about stench bombs and whether cyanide gas could be blown successfully through the keyhole of a synagogue door.

As the Black Legion spread, Major-General Bert Effinger must have wondered how to keep so many men motivated and in line. The legion had been targeting individuals, primarily union organizers, political enemies, and wayward members. But Effinger needed a more substantial project, something national in scope, to keep the men engaged.

Effinger didn’t like the changes being speedily implemented by President Roosevelt. He talked often about how much better the nation would be without Roosevelt. At a gathering in January, Effinger mentioned for the first time his plans to overthrow the US government. “They did it in Russia with 30,000 men and we are stronger than that here in the United States and are better equipped,” he said. He set the date for September 16, 1936.

Before 1,900 people at the glorious Wilson Theater—an ornate testament to the wealth of capitalistic automotive pioneer John Dodge and the generosity of his widow, Matilda—Maurice Sugar took the stage prior to British communist Evelyn John Strachey, the featured speaker. Sugar blasted publisher William Randolph Hearst, calling him “the greatest menace to the American people.” He also castigated the Detroit Board of Education for denying his own application to speak at Northern High School. But the audience members had come to see Strachey, not Sugar, and they cheered when he brought him to the stage.

Strachey, an eloquent and passionate proponent of Marxism, was facing deportation for his stormy lectures calling for political change in the United States. “This capitalist system must be in a precarious position indeed if it can’t afford a discussion of its difficulties,” he said. Author of
The Coming Struggle for Power
, Strachey criticized Father Charles Coughlin and Senator Huey Long of Louisiana. “There is nothing Coughlin or Long has said that was nearly so radical as what Hitler or Mussolini said. Goodness knows it isn’t hard to find things wrong with the capitalist system. But they hope by reckless demagoguery to switch off the masses—and they are an immense danger.”

Of course he wasn’t alone in targeting Coughlin and Long. On the very same day as Strachey’s talk, Orthodox Jewish leader Rabbi William Margolis called Coughlin “an alleged man of God . . . a false prophet” and his church, The Shrine of the Little Flower, “a tower of shame, for across its altar lies the trammeled figure of the priesthood.” In
The Nation
, just on newsstands, writer Raymond Gram Swing labeled Coughlin a fascist and leader of a movement “of passion and prejudice.” At the Cass Theater and then later in a Book-Cadillac banquet room, social commentator Alexander Woollcott, radio’s Town Crier and a member of New York’s literary Algonquin Round Table, spoke of the power of the new medium and the “toxic twaddle of the Gentleman from Louisiana,” Huey Long. He defended free speech and public discourse and said America could withstand “the huffing and puffing of such a big, bad wolf as Evelyn John St. Loe Strachey.”

Activists on the same side didn’t always see things the same way. At the Wilson Theater, after Strachey had spoken and while he was offstage gathering a breath before returning to answer questions, Maurice Sugar took to the podium again and invited attendees to drop coins into passing trays to support Strachey’s legal fight against deportation. Strachey’s family was affluent and he didn’t need the money. Furious, he rushed onstage, waving his arms.

“I have authorized no one to collect funds for me,” he said.

The stunned crowd quieted momentarily before Sugar filled the void: “Well, if Mr. Strachey needs no collection for fighting his deportation, there is a need, and an urgent need, for one to fight fascism in Detroit.” The contributions continued, but backstage Strachey chided Sugar, telling him the basket passing was “an utterly stupid thing to do.”

The night prior, as Strachey spoke in Ann Arbor, the Bullet Club—another name for the Black Legion—met behind curtained windows on the third floor of a Pontiac hall. Recently ousted police chief George Eckhardt had been making noise at civic hearings about a secret society that had infiltrated local politics. The club was presumably plotting its response. A snooping
Free Press
reporter watched as fifty men entered the building. He followed an elderly man up the stairs. A guard turned away the journalist, telling him it was a private meeting. The reporter described the attendees as “working men.” He noted, “Public officials, lawyers, police officers, and others who direct the club’s activities . . . seek to prevent their identity becoming known by never appearing at general membership meetings.” Weeks later, a story about a police hearing mentioned the Bullet Club again. “The club has operated under various names—the Night Riders, Searchlight Club, and Black Legion, among others.” It was likely the first mention in print of the Black Legion, but the attention was fleeting. The club name receded back into darkness. Reporters had no idea what they had almost stumbled upon.

In Lima, Ohio, home to Major-General Bert Effinger, a prominent businessman telephoned postal inspector J. F. Cordrey and asked to speak in confidence. He said he had learned about an organization from one of his employees, a young man who had been a member and felt his life was “in more or less constant jeopardy” after leaving the group. It was called the Black Legion.

Cordrey launched an investigation. What he found troubled him. He believed the legion was fomenting revolution against the Roosevelt administration. He highlighted what he had discovered in a three-page letter to his boss. He outlined the organization’s structure, naming Dr. Shepard in Bellaire, Ohio, as its head and Effinger as director of operations east of the Mississippi. Cordrey told of the robes, the Black Oath, and the armed inductions. He blamed Effinger for the destruction of the Lima movie house that had been showing
White Angel
, a film that presented Catholics favorably. He reported that Lima’s chief of police and other officers belonged, as did the vast majority of local Federal Emergency Relief Administration employees, including Effinger’s son, Guy, who worked as a timekeeper.

The postal inspector named several leaders, identified their local meeting places—primarily a farm and the Ford Dance Hall on Findlay Road—and revealed that members pledged to lie in court rather than testify against their brothers. “If they resign or abandon the organization,” he noted, “their only escape from punishment is suicide or to leave the country.” He related that Effinger had bragged that sixty-two legionnaires worked for the Department of Justice and other federal bureaus. Cordrey’s report moved quickly through the chain of command, from Lima to the Cincinnati inspector to the chief postal inspector to the attorney general’s office in Washington.

The report arrived on the desk of John Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hoover, his bureau, and the G-Men had ascended to heroic prominence. They had successfully executed a war on crime, depleting through arrests and shootouts a roster of bank-robbing, ransom-demanding, headline-hogging public enemies. On September 22, 1933, the G-Men had captured Machine Gun Kelly in Memphis. Eight months later, they had killed Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in Louisiana. John Dillinger fell that July in Chicago, followed by Pretty Boy Floyd in October and Baby Face Nelson in November. Now Hoover was reading a cover memo from Attorney General William Stanley’s office wondering about Cordrey’s report related to Justice Department employees. Hoover wasn’t inclined to investigate. In a note at the bottom of the memo, he directed an assistant to return the letter to Stanley “and state there is no indication that any members of the bureau belong and consequently no action needed here.”

Hoover might have thought he was done. But his curt response irked Stanley, who promptly offered a terse reply of his own. “In view of the fact that it is alleged that sixty-two employees of this department are members of this organization, I wish that you would conduct an investigation with a view to ascertaining who they are.”

On the night of March 29, 1935, Joe Louis defeated Natie Brown at Olympia, raising his professional record to 17–0. Afterward he and his local team celebrated at the Frog Club on Madison, working out an agreement with white New York promoter Mike Jacobs that would soon bring Louis into the lucrative Big Apple market and, they hoped, lead to a heavyweight title shot. Louis already had a group of black advisors in place, and they would remain with him. Detroit bookmaker John Roxborough, who had been managing Louis informally, had earlier signed Louis to be co-managed by Julian Black and trained by Jack Blackburn, both of Chicago. But they needed Jacobs and his cohorts to go further in a boxing world that, following the reign of controversial Jack Johnson, was reluctant to give another black fighter a significant opportunity. Jacobs also had Hearst’s national sportswriters in his pocket.

A mile and a half away at the Little Stone Chapel, Dayton Dean was getting his next assignment. Among those present were Lupp, Col. Roy Hepner, Wolverine Republican League president Leslie Black (a clerk to Judge Eugene Sharp), and the inelegant Harvey Davis. The plan called for two groups to head out the next night, one to torch a communist camp beyond the city limits and another to disrupt a campaign appearance by Maurice Sugar. Dean wanted to be with the arsonists but got assigned to the Sugar event.