Never Been a Time by Harper Barnes

Bluitt that their complaints would be thoroughly studied. He called in police chief Ransom Payne, who furiously denied that his officers were practicing any favoritism and insisted the police were doing a fine job of enforcing the law with an even hand. 7
    As spring crept toward summer, tension between the races in East St. Louis tightened even more, like a powerful spring under increasing pressure. At Fifteenth Street and Boismenue Avenue in Denverside, a neighborhood blacks had been moving into in recent years, three white national guardsmen in their summer dress khakis overpowered a city detective, stole his service revolver, and went on a rampage. They already were carrying Army 45s, and with their impressive arsenal they robbed three black men at gunpoint and wrecked a saloon in a black neighborhood after drinking a considerable amount of the whiskey on hand. Outside the saloon, they were subdued by police and national guardsmen before, as the
Journal
put it, “They started a race riot.” The three young men were said to be from wealthy Springfield, Illinois, families. 8
    At the beginning of the last week in June, attorney Maurice V. Joyce introduced a resolution to the chamber of commerce urging companies to stop importing blacks to East St. Louis and calling on city officials to “employ every legitimate means to prevent the influx of negroes into East St. Louis, and thereby take every precaution against crime, riot and disorder.” The resolution was tabled. 9
    As attacks on blacks increased, a committee of blacks headed by Dr. LeroyBundy went to the mayor again asking for help. Once again, the mayor tried to calm them, saying things were not as bad as they thought. On June 28, the aluminum workers’ strike whimpered to an end. The number of pickets had dwindled, at times, to a handful. A union spokesman said the strike was being called off for “patriotic” reasons. Very few of the strikers were ever rehired. 10
    Meanwhile, as the
Post-Dispatch’s
relentless Paul Y. Anderson reported, East St. Louis had once again stopped enforcing Sunday closing laws as well as the ordinances against prostitution and gambling. After the Reverend George W. Allison, a source for Anderson’s stories, complained to Mayor Mollman about growing lawlessness, the minister was summoned to a meeting with Mollman and political baron Locke Tarlton at city hall. Mollman shut the door to his office and the three men talked for three quarters of an hour. Allison said he felt that he had been betrayed after working hard to get Mollman elected, and, his anger building, mentioned by name a bar owner who was illegally open on Sunday, selling drinks and, it appeared, the services of prostitutes. Allison said he had confronted the man and told him he was going to report his activities to the mayor, and the man had laughed and said the mayor already knew all about it and had no intention of honoring his campaign promise to enforce Sunday closing laws.
    Tarlton sighed deeply and said, “Reverend, the trouble about it is, the damn city is just like it has always been.” The mayor heaved himself out of his well-cushioned desk chair and said, “Locke, you don’t mean that?”
    Tarlton replied, “Yes, mayor, it is just like it has always been.”
    â€œWhy Locke,” said the mayor, “didn’t I run those penitentiary birds out from the rear of the police station here?”
    Tarlton laughed and said, “Yes, mayor, you ran them out of
here
, but they are still in town. Your old friends are all here, mayor, they are all here.”
    And Mollman, his long, thin face and balding scalp turning red from barely stifled laughter, sat back down and said, “Well, I’ll be damned if I don’t believe I’ll join the Third Artillery and go to France.” Tarlton and Mollman shared a long, hearty laugh.
    Allison, a tough, righteous Texan who had seen a lot of sin in his life, ended