During Andrew Jackson’s U.S. presidency, anti-gambling sentiment began sweeping the Southern states. By 1835, it had hit Louisiana and was making its way up the Mississippi River. The fever peaked mid-year in Vicksburg, Mississippi when a band of vigilantes committed a criminal act that shocked the world.

Generally, the steps taken to eradicate gambling in a region included passing laws prohibiting the activity, ordering gamblers (operators and professional cheaters) to leave the jurisdiction and raiding and shutting down illegal operations. What happened in Vicksburg, however, was unprecedented and radical.

The Last Straw

Dissent toward the gamblers in the city burgeoned over a couple of days, starting on July 4 at a party held by the corps of Vicksburg Volunteers and attended by numerous residents. When, at the shindig, an officer attempted to quiet everyone for a toast, a gambler named Francis Cabler allegedly insulted him and then hit a guest. Cabler was shown the door.

After the festivities ended, many of these militia members as well as locals went to the city’s public square. Cabler showed up, too, and made a beeline for the group. Before he reached it, however, two volunteers arrested him and found a loaded gun, knife and dagger on his person.

The mob tied him to a tree, tarred and feathered him and ordered him to leave Vicksburg within 48 hours.

Get Out Or Else

That night, numerous Vicksburg residents met in the courthouse, formed an ad hoc anti-gambling committee and passed the following resolutions, as noted in a Vicksburg dispatch published in numerous newspapers, including The Watchman:

• “That a notice be given all professional gamblers, that the citizens of Vicksburg are resolved to exclude them from this place and its vicinity; and that 24 hours’ notice be given them to leave the place.”
• “That all persons permitting faro dealing in their houses, be also notified that they will be prosecuted therefor [sic].”
• “That 100 copies of the foregoing resolutions be printed and stuck up at the corners of the streets — and that this publication be deemed notice.”

The next morning, Sunday, July 5, the notices were posted throughout the city.

Crescendo Of Violence

Immediately after the deadline passed, on the 6th, the militia, followed by several hundred citizens, marched to and stormed the “kangaroos,”* the known and suspected gambling houses in the waterfront district. In their frenzy, this vengeful faction destroyed any gambling equipment it came upon, leaving pieces of faro tables and roulette wheels in its wake.

The multitude sought out the coffeehouse owned by Alfred North, “one of the most profligate of the gang,” the Vicksburg report described. Acting on the rumor that armed gamblers were hiding inside, the mob surrounded the building and burst open the back door, which revealed only darkness.

The occupants fired their guns, instantly killing one of the pack’s leaders, reportedly a well-respected community member.

“This unexpected reception aroused the citizens to madness and desperation,” wrote the Natchez Courier (July 13, 1835).

The vigilantes shot back, and a bloody riot ensued. Outnumbering and overpowering the gamblers, the disgruntled mob extracted the four men inside, one of whom had been hit by a bullet. North wasn’t among them, but someone apprehended him nearby.

Before a mass of looky-loo townspeople, the alleged gamblers were hanged. Those executed were North, Hullums, Dutch Bill, Smith and McCall (full names weren’t published).

“All sympathy for the wretches was completely merged in detestation and horror of their crime,” the Vicksburg dispatch noted, referring to the gamblers.

Next, the entire procession collected, piled and burned all of the wooden gambling equipment littering the streets.

The following day, July 7, the dangling corpses were cut down from the gallows and buried in a ditch.

In The Minority

The dispatch from Vicksburg indicated that its citizens wholly supported the lynchings and those who carried them out. The report read:  

“Our city has for some days past been the theatre of the most novel and startling scene that we have ever witnessed. While we regret that the necessity for such scenes should have existed, we are proud of the public spirit and indignation against offenders displayed by the citizens, and congratulate them on having at length banished a class of individuals, whose shameless vices and daring outrages have long poisoned the springs of morality, and interrupted the relations of society.”

On the other hand, much of the rest of the U.S. and the world considered the lynchings vile. One such opinion was published in The Watchman (Aug. 8, 1935). It read, “It seems to us that the proceedings of the people of Vicksburg cannot be sanctioned by any well regulated mind. They are subversive of every principle of law and the good order of society, and ought to be discountenanced with horror by every good and just man.”

Exodus To More Tolerable Locales

After the Vicksburg murders, other towns along the Mississippi River exiled the gamblers from their communities.

The “proceedings at Vicksburg have kindled a spirit throughout the lower country which is breaking forth at every point, and obliging the blackleg fraternity to make their escape with all haste,” reported Niles’ Weekly Register (Aug. 8, 1835).

Due to these expulsions, the gamblers moved en masse to the West Coast.

—————————————

* The people of Vicksburg referred to the local gambling houses as “kangaroos” because one of the former casinos, which had burned down the year before, was called the Kangaroo Saloon.

Sources

The Red Carpet in Biloxi was cheating its craps players by using a “juice joint,” a two-ton electromagnet that controlled metal-containing dice on a game table, in 1965. At the time, Mississippi prohibited all forms of clean, never mind dirty, gambling.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launched an investigation. Agents learned that Harry Bennett, 63, had turned his three-bedroom home into The Red Carpet, which he ran. One room contained two roulette wheels, two blackjack tables and one Beat My Shake table. Another room housed two craps tables. The third room featured slot machines and a bar. The Red Carpet owner of record, however, was Dewey D’Angelo, 39, because Bennett had been under federal indictment in Iowa when he’d started the club.

A Widespread Network

Inquiries about the juice joint led federal investigators to Tulsa, Oklahoma businessman, Jack E. Kress, whose company had manufactured and had sold the contraption to Bennett for $15,000 ($125,000 today). Kress also helped install it in The Red Carpet’s concrete floor. The 1951 Transportation of Gambling Devices Act prohibited the crossing of state lines with any and all gambling equipment via any method (mailing, shipping, vehicle transport, etc).

Kress

Ultimately, as part of its query, which carried over into 1966, the FBI raided multiple illegal Mississippi casinos, in Biloxi, Mississippi City and Jackson, finding various cheating implements — magnets, weighted dice, marked cards and more. Agents also searched Kress’ factory, Kress Manufacturing Co. (see Part I).

Ultimately, the federal law enforcement agency arrested 15 people, including Bennett, D’Angelo and Kress, from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma and Nevada.

Agents also collared Wilbur K. Sullivan (aka Pat Sullivan), 56. He owned and operated Christy and Jones Inc., a dice manufacturing firm in Las Vegas, Nevada and competitor of Kress Manufacturing. In 1965, FBI agents confiscated from Christy and Jones misspot dice, weighted dice and company records. Among them, they found evidence that Sullivan had manufactured and had shipped an order of crooked dice in June 1965 to illegal gambling operator, James L. Porter, in Gulfport, Mississippi.

In early April 1966, Sullivan renamed his enterprise to Las Vegas Card Co. and moved it to a different Sin City location. Two months later, he was arrested and sold the business to a former gambling equipment manufacturer.

Conspiracy, Aiding And Abetting

A federal grand jury indicted all 15 suspects on four counts related to illegal gambling. The first count was conspiracy to promote gambling (racketeering) through, one, transportation of a juice joint from Tulsa to Biloxi in a U-Haul trailer and, two, use of the U.S. mail. The second count charged aiding and abetting relative to the conspiracy. The final two counts alleged the use of two checking accounts to house funds collected for gambling debts.

About a month before the trial was to begin in January 1968, Bennett was found murdered outside his Biloxi apartment, having been shot eight times.

The Dice Reveal

The U.S. government reduced the number of defendants in the trial to seven, Kress and D’Angelo included. Sullivan testified on behalf of the government. A total of 56 witnesses took the stand during the eight-day proceeding.

The jury deliberated for four hours and returned an across-the-board guilty verdict. Twenty months later, the appeals court would uphold all of these convictions in its September 1969 ruling.

In the meantime, a federal judge punished Kress with two consecutive sentences: for count one, five years in prison and a $5,000 ($36,000 today) fine, and on count two, a $10,000 ($71,000) fine and five years of probation.

Sullivan, sentenced for the same charges as Kress, received one year in prison followed by five years’ probation.

D’Angelo got three years of prison on count one; two years on count two, the sentences to be served consecutively; and a $3,000 ($21,000) fine on count three.

——————————–

Was this FBI investigation a productive or nonproductive use of time, money and effort? What do you think and why?

Sources

Entrance to Bally’s Las Vegas Hotel & Casino

Today

Bally Manufacturing Corp., at one time decades ago, was heavily involved in the gambling industry. It owned six hotel-casinos in the U.S. It was a major producer of state lottery games and developer of slot and video poker machines.

After its peak, the corporation divested all of its various but its hotel-casino (some still use the Bally name), and changed its name in 1994 to Bally Entertainment Corp. to reflect its single focus.

However, in 1996, Bally sold its casino properties to Hilton Hotels Corp., which, since, sold them, too.

Here’s the current status of former Bally-owned hotel-casinos: 

Louisiana:
Bally’s New Orleans: now closed

Mississippi:
Bally’s Casino Tunica: now 1st Jackpot Casino Tunica, owned by Gaming & Leisure Properties

Nevada:
Bally’s Las Vegas: now Bally’s Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, owned by Eldorado Resorts
Paris Las Vegas: owned by Eldorado Resorts
Bally’s Reno: now Grand Sierra Resort and Casino, owned by the Meruelo Group

New Jersey:
Bally’s Park Place: now Bally’s Atlantic City Hotel & Casino, owned by VICI Properties

Photo from Wikimedia Commons: by Pedro Szekely

1940

They couldn’t just agree to disagree. They were the sheriffs of two bordering counties in different states.

Sheriff Guy Joyner of Shelby County, Tennessee insisted illegal gambling was taking place just past the state line in The Magnolia State whereas Sheriff Elton S. Baxter of DeSoto County, Mississippi asserted no such activity was occurring in his jurisdiction.  

Fueling The Embers

Joyner reignited and escalated the ongoing dispute when on Monday, December 9, 1940, he had a 10-by-30-foot sign erected on the side of the highway in his county that read:

“Down the road in Mississippi are gambling dens run by thieves; they cheat you, they rob you, they slug you, they get your money.”

In this message, “down the road” referred to DeSoto County, and in fact many nightclubs operated there, within about 100 yards of the border. Joyner had armed deputies guard the sign around the clock. “Anyone who thinks he can drive by and shoot it down will have his tires blown off, and he will be dealt with severely,” he publicly warned (The Kingsport Times, Dec. 12, 1940).

Striking Back

Mississippians were unhappy with the sign. Citizen groups expressed their outrage, as did local newspaper editorial writers who suggested Memphis first “‘clean its own house’ before seeking to reform the world.”

Baxter said, “The battle that is raging between Tennessee and Mississippi is not over morals. Memphis and Shelby County want to keep the money that is being spent in the night clubs at home. It isn’t gambling and drinking or anything like that which is causing the rumpus, but a question of cold, hard cash on the part of Tennessee interests. Memphis people are running DeSoto County’s night clubs.”

When Mississippi Governor Paul E. Johnson was asked to weigh in, he paraphrased a Bible verse in Proverbs. “As Solomon said, ‘He that meddleth in strife not of his own making is like he who passeth by and pulleth a dog’s ear.’”

Upping The Ante

Joyner wrote in a letter to Baxter that “some day or night with axes, bloodhounds and sledgehammers, ‘I will break down those doors,’” referring to the clubs, “‘and make kindling wood of all gambling equipment’” (The Kingsport Times, Dec. 15, 1940).

Countering The Threat

On Saturday, Baxter replied: “I advise you to confine your activities north of the state boundary line. There are plenty of citizens in this county who are anxious to defend the county against your proposed activity. I intend to treat you like I would any other ordinary law violator if you, any of your deputies or any person connected directly or indirectly with your offices comes into the state of Mississippi and especially DeSoto County and undertakes to presume the prerogatives of officers of this county.” He reiterated he was unaware of any places with gambling operating in his county, but if they existed, he wouldn’t protect them.

Softening The Blow

Then, Joyner sought to learn where the exact boundary line between the two counties lay. He noted the dividing line hadn’t been established in court. “It may be, after all, those dens are in Tennessee,” he said (The Biloxi Daily Herald, Dec. 16, 1940).

Eight days after having the billboard installed, Joyner modified it, adding the words “two miles” and “Memphis,” perhaps thinking that might pacify Mississippians. The new version read:

“Two miles down the road in Mississippi are gambling dens run by Memphis thieves; they cheat you, they rob you, they slug you, they get your money.”

Taking A Stand

Subsequently, Johnson said he’d ordered operators of the stateline establishments to close and leave Mississippi. After praising the governor for that move, Joyner ordered the sign painted over. It was done. He noted it would be taken down soon, and that was done, too.

With the final word on the issue, in 1940 at least, Baxter said he hadn’t heard from Johnson that he’d kicked out the gamblers.

Sources

Mississippi photo from Wikimedia Commons: by Thomas R. Machnitzki
Tennessee photo from FourSquare.com: by KaShon N.