January 15, 2024 • 43 mins
In 1930s New York, infamous mob boss Lucky Luciano is standing trial. His story will inspire Hollywood retellings for decades to come. But beneath the mythology, there’s another story being overshadowed. That of the woman who masterminded his downfall: Eunice Carter.
She was one of the first Black female prosecutors in America, and her story begins in Atlanta, at the turn of the 20th century.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Novel. Before we begin, a content warning. The following episode
contains difficult themes and violence. The Manhattan Courthouse is surrounded.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
There were over one thousand people who showed up outside
the courtroom. They had snipers on the roofs in Foley Square.
They had police officers with riot guns in the hallway.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Inside Courtroom one forty eight, smoke stained shades do all
they can to block out the sun and any industrious
lucky loose hoping to get a peek inside, and who
could blame them.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
At the time, it was called the Trial of the Century.
It really was national news.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Men in dark suits crowded every available seat.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
The entire gallery during the trial was full.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Of press their hats, rest on their knees or turn
in their hands. Some fidget, some slouch, others sit ramrod straight.
Everyone is focused on the scene in front of them,
a man with a carefully groomed mustache walking confidently toward
the stand.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
He was very aggressive and very ambitious.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
That was his personality. Dewey loved being in the spotlight.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Thomas E. Dewey, famed investigator of the crime syndicates, casting
a menacing shadow across America.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
How do you take this random mayhem of violence and
bring it under the law.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
Thomas Dewey enters the picture on that platform.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
His assistant attorney's shuffle papers. The courtroom leans closer towards
the main attraction. The man facing Dewey on the stand
he is.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Called sometimes the boss of bosses.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
Slender, slightly darker skin tone of Sicilian extraction.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
A suit jacket covers tattoos on the defendant's forearms.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
All symbols of luck. He took great effort to keep
those tattoos out of the public light. At the time,
tattoos were not exactly the upstanding citizen kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
A silk shirt and gold watch mark him as a
man with expensive taste. He wipes a handkerchief over his
brow and meets the eyes of the courtroom. Everyone can
see it. Charles Lucky Luciano, one of the most feared
mafia leaders anyone ever knew, is sweating. Maybe he was flustered.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Maybe the government really did put him on edge.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
He used to be so sure of himself, but now
things don't seem so certain anymore.
Speaker 6 (03:00):
Luciano really never stands a chance.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
He never should have taken the stand. That was the
nail in Lucky's.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Coffin a few blocks from the courthouse, on the fourteenth
floor of Manhattan's gothic Woolworth Building, there is an office
serviceable tidy inside sits the woman responsible for putting Lucky
Luciano on trial, Eunice Hunting Carter, thirty six years old
(03:32):
in nineteen thirty six, bright eyes the kind of quietly
amused expression that makes you think she's laughing at a
joke she can't share. She's New York's first black female
prosecutor for the District Attorney's Office in Manhattan. This is
the biggest case of her career. But as Lucky Luciano
(03:54):
squirms on the stand, Eunice Hunting Carter is not there
on center stage. Her name never appears in court transcripts.
Why not. There would be no trial of the century
without her. But Unice's work on this case is far
from over. Destiny has more in store for the trial's
(04:18):
key players, uniting them forever in unexpected ways. Lucky, Dewey
and Unice, all born within five years of each other,
similar ages, similar ferocious ambitions, and.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Their lives intersect in a courtroom for one month in
nineteen thirty six.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
But only two we're given the opportunity to stand out.
Lucky and Dewey will go down in history. Eunice was
kept from the spotlight. Maybe it's not surprising that in
nineteen thirty six a black woman was not given room
to share the stage, But nearly ninety years later, Eunice
Hunting Carter still isn't the hose household name. And that
(05:01):
is surprising, or at least I think it should be,
because recently I've come to learn about Unice Hunting Carter
and she wasn't just the engineer of this one defining
moment in mob history. Eunice was a pioneer across all
kinds of spheres that have come to shape America. Eunice
(05:22):
was there navigating worlds designed to hold her back, often
leaving them transformed. So I've been talking to some people
who have remembered her name, people who can help me
tell her story.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Unice Carter was the spark that started the.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Fire, a black woman who took on one of the
country's most notorious mobsters. I want more people to hear
what she did, even more than her achievements. I want
to understand who she was.
Speaker 7 (05:55):
It's not even just that not everyone remembers Unis, but
that people don't even believe she could have existed.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
She was really active in the Harlem Renaissance.
Speaker 8 (06:05):
Eunis ran for office. People thought she was going to win.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
She didn't back down in an argument.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
This is a straight shooter who will say something and
mean it. But I think she was guarded.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I did wonder if she felt stifled. All around us today,
from school rooms to halls of legislation, Black American history
is being erased. Remembering Eunice Hunting Carter feels more urgent
than ever. But is that even possible when so many
(06:39):
years of erasure and forgetting lie in our way. I
want to find out to try to put Eunice Hunting
Carter back in the spotlight.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
And I'm going to ask first Missus Eunice Carter to
tell us some of the things that she has on
our mind.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
This is awesome, Well, Missus Roosevelt, I have to agree,
and our association agrees with what doctor Malack just said.
We are concerned more though, with the implementation of human
rights for all mankind.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I'm Nicole Perkins and from the teams at iHeartRadio and Novel,
this is the Godmother Episode one, Atlanta, nineteen twenty four
(08:00):
replica by Eunice ROBERTA.
Speaker 9 (08:03):
Hunting noonday sun scorched a treeless ribbon of brick red road.
A breeze, hot and languid, stirred, fitfully angry, red dust
rose in great puffs, only to settle back heavily on
all who dared the road. And then impasse for the
(08:27):
way ended quite suddenly in according of vehicles, a ford,
shining anew rubbed shoulders, with a road mender's pitch cart.
They were all there, these and dozens of others, barricading
the entrance to a grove of Georgia oaks.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Long before I moved to New York and became a writer,
I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. This was during the
eighties and nineties, and when it came time for me
to go to college, I knew I wanted to stay
in the South. I wanted the familiar, soupy heat, the
magnificent magnolia and oak trees. Schools in Atlanta were some
(09:14):
of the first I applied to. The city was the
place to be for American black folks. Atlanta was about
four hours away, the perfect destination for weekend trips and
date nights for the black bourgeoisie and those who wanted
to be It was where we went to shop for
luxury brands that hadn't made it to Nashville yet. It
(09:36):
was one of the top places in the country for
black people who wanted wealth and education without leaving the South.
The Atlanta I knew about a city that held so
much promise for black people was shaped by the lives
of those who arrived over one hundred years before. In
eighteen sixty five, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, but the
(09:58):
Jim Crow laws of the late eighteen hundred It's established
a new form of segregation, and so to foster their
own success, black people began creating communities like in Nicodemus, Kansas,
or Greenwood, Tulsa. And in Atlanta.
Speaker 8 (10:18):
Hundreds, if not thousands, of African Americans migrated from rural
areas of the state and elsewhere to Atlanta. They saw
it as a place where they could make a life
for themselves. That was really the first phase of Atlanta
being viewed as a mecca for Black America.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
The Huntings are among those drawn to Atlanta. William Alfaez
Hunting Senior and Addie Waite Hunting met in Norfolk, Virginia
before moving there. William is thirty six Atty twenty four.
It's eighteen ninety nine and they've just had a daughter.
This was ADDIE's third pregnancy, and a difficult one. They've
(11:04):
already lost two babies. They aren't sure this child will survive.
For the first few weeks of her life, William and
Addie just call her Sugar. But she's strong, healthy, and
once her parents are sure she'll survive, they name her Unice.
(11:27):
As Unice's childhood begins, the Hunting's are part of a thriving,
regenerated Atlanta. They lived in the Auburn Avenue neighborhood.
Speaker 8 (11:35):
Auburn Avenue would be come by near twentieth century what
Fortune magazine called the richest Negro street in the world,
not just in the country, but in the world.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
It's close to the white part of town and near Peachtree,
the Lively business district. I try to imagine Unice as
a child, watching brick buildings go up around her, holding
her mother ADDIE's hands as they walk downly paved streets.
Units probably sees people from all walks of life, postal workers, seamstresses, accountants, reporters, bakers, tailors,
(12:12):
hat makers.
Speaker 8 (12:14):
Whatever business that was needed by the black community was
provided by black business people who catered to the needs
of black residents and also in many cases, catered to
the needs of whites.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Off Peachtree, her family can do all their shopping knowing
they're supporting black businesses and that the money remains in
this community, lifting some families out of poverty.
Speaker 8 (12:40):
In the city, the majority of black people lived in poverty,
as was the case in much of the South, but
you had a strong emerging black middle class and upper
middle class, and Atlanta became a magnet that drew these
people who wanted to, of course find wealth, but I
also wanted to aid in the uplift of the black community.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
The house that the Hunting's live in, it's big enough
to require a maid, a cook, and a gardener. I'd
love to have a maid and a cook right now.
Speaker 8 (13:14):
The Hunting family had a very nice home, like twelve
to fifteen room home on Houston Street. Houston Street's where
you had many prominent African Americans.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
I think they liked to have pleasant surroundings. But the
most important thing to them was learning about the world.
I get the impression that you would be surrounded by books,
you'd be surrounded by bookcases.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Unlike literally ninety nine percent of the Black community at
that time. Unice's parents have been to college.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Her father, William, was really active in his job, traveling
through the South in the United States. He was gone
a lot.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
William Huntson is the first Black Secretary of the International.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
YA, trying to integrate and establish the YMCA for Black People.
Speaker 10 (14:05):
And Addie hunting She was a social activist in her
own right, one of the founders of the National Association
of Colored Women and then eventually one of the founding
members of the Council of Negro Women.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Addie writes long articles and gives speeches in front of
packed crowds, and her audience hears a message of responsibility,
how the first duty of black women is to their
homes to focus on their families and children, and their
next duty was to uplift the race. But Addie isn't
(14:41):
really practicing what she preaches, just like her husband, her
career often takes her away from Unice and her home,
and as she begins to work with the National Association
for the advancement of colored people. She starts taking even
more trips away from her family.
Speaker 8 (15:00):
She alone, black woman would travel to various cities in
which there have been unrest, attacks on the black community,
attacks on those who attempted to establish branches of the NAACP.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
These trips were dangerous journeys, especially for a black woman.
I can only imagine the kind of responses she got
from strangers. To me, it speaks to her determination and dedication,
her passion to be more than what society expects.
Speaker 8 (15:31):
She went to explore, to find out, to gather evidence,
to talk to those to encourage individuals in those cities
to establish the branches, and she was quite successful of it.
She did so without fear.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
This makes me think of my own mother, because she
sacrificed her own ambitions for our family. She made sure
to tell my older sister and I to do more
with our lives. As much as she loved us, she
wanted us to pursue our dreams. I wonder if Addie
had similar talks with unus. Addie seemed to sacrifice her
(16:08):
home life for her larger ambitions at such a young age.
Did Yunus understand that sacrifice or was she resentful of it.
Eunice's parents are trying to help build a world where
black people have rights and opportunities, a South where they
(16:29):
can thrive racial uplift, but not everyone is thrilled by
that vision. As a small child, perhaps staring wide eyed
at a city being built around her, at her parents
making waves in Black America, Unice cannot possibly know that
she is standing in the middle of a tinder box.
(17:05):
In July nineteen oh six, Eunice Hunting is seven years old,
and she's got a younger brother to keep her busy.
Now al Faeus, they're about four years apart. But you know,
she's doing what little girls do, probably wanting toys or
trips to the candy store, maybe even the library. She's
(17:25):
definitely not thinking about who's going to be elected governor,
which is a campaign happening around her in Atlanta that year.
That election is just a few months away. Both candidates
are Democrats.
Speaker 8 (17:37):
Pake Smith and Clark Howell. These were the owners publishers
of Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution newspapers, two separate newspapers
at that time, and each of those newspapers wrote sensational
and largely false stories on a daily basis.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
So these two white men are stirring up a lot
of racist unrest and flat out lying in order to
make white Georgians afraid of the power of the black vote,
which across America is still just a few decades old.
Speaker 8 (18:08):
African Americans were also granted the right of citizenship. The
fourteenth Amendment and the fifteenth Amendment guaranteed voting rights for
African American men, and so when African American men were
given the right to vote declared citizens, it signaled to
them a new day in terms of opportunities.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
And that threatened Smith and Howell, especially because when black
men did turn out to vote, they were not voting
for men like them, men whose families had defended slavery.
Speaker 8 (18:40):
African Americans were able to garner a degree of political power.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
White democrats like Smith and Howell were afraid of black
voting power.
Speaker 8 (18:51):
They considered African Americans an economic threat because they felt
they were in competition against these black businesses that were
doing very well.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
At this point. As Atlanta heads into the twentieth century,
black businesses are thriving, which is not what the country
is used to. There are wealthy black people in places
like Tulsa and Charleston, but you have to go looking
for them. In Atlanta, segregation is still everywhere, but those
(19:24):
black businesses exist side by side, So the growing prosperity
of the black community is unavoidable. Why should black people
have the same or better lives than the white citizens
of Atlanta.
Speaker 8 (19:39):
It was during that time that the newspapers began to
literally create stories that black men were assaulting white women
in an attempt to really fan the flames of racism.
The leadership of the white power structure really pulling the
strings and manipulating their constituency.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Meanwhile, at the Hunting home, letters arrive from both Addie
and William Hunting from their work travels on the road.
William revels and news of Unice. How smart she is
even as a little girl, but still just seven years
old in that summer of nineteen oh six. I wonder
(20:22):
if she's picking up on the rising tensions. Does her
mother hold her hand tighter when white men come by
on the street. Do they have a cold word in
case they need to run? Whether or not Yunus understands
what's happening around her. William and Addie have a crystal
clear read of the situation.
Speaker 8 (20:41):
Black people were highly aware that something was about to happen.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
The black community in Atlanta is now preparing for the worst.
Speaker 8 (20:52):
They clandestinely ship in on train's weapons arms guns so
they could protect themselves.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
It's the evening of September twenty second, nineteen oh six,
a week and a half before the Smith Howell election.
Speaker 8 (21:11):
A Saturday evening. People were leaving work. People were coming
into the downtown area to go to restaurants or the theater.
People were going into the city to start work if
they had night shifts or whatever.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
It may be the end of September, but summer in
the South likes to linger, and Atlanta is a bowl
of humidity.
Speaker 8 (21:38):
The streets were crowded and the street cars were crowded.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
It's also time for the latest edition of the evening
newspapers to unleash their new fictions.
Speaker 8 (21:48):
The Atlanta Evening News on that day had just published
an edition that screamed headlines about more texts on white women,
newspaper boys out in the street, going extra, extra extra.
This was an extra edition of the Atlanta Evening News.
It was timed to really spark the animosity that was
(22:09):
already building up they knew that there would be a
number of people in the streets.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Everybody black and white are crowded together on the street cars,
bumping against each other on the sidewalk. It's hot.
Speaker 8 (22:25):
These newspaper boys yelling out black men, rapes, white women.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
People are irritated.
Speaker 8 (22:31):
The street cars were supposed to be segregated. You could
imagine at the end of a day, when it's crowded,
you got a long day at work, you don't really
want to get up and give up your seat to somebody.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
People are getting in each other's faces.
Speaker 8 (22:45):
The animosity, that sense of urgency had been building.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Up, and then the violence starts on the street. Things
get ugly fast.
Speaker 8 (23:01):
People said we're gonna kill every black person in sight.
Then they say every black person. They used the N word,
whether it's a man, whether it's a woman, whether it's
a child. They did not care whether that person was
just simply trying to get home and get away from
the crowd, or that person was taking a stand and
said I'm not gonna let anybody intimidate me. They would
(23:22):
grab that person, pull them off the street cars, first
of all, run them down if they were walking in
the streets. And now it's time to essentially rid ourselves
of as many black people as possible.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Mobs of white men are now roaming around downtown Atlanta.
Speaker 8 (23:40):
The mob of terrorists grew to about ten thousand men
and boys. They knew exactly where.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
To go.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Across the Peachtree Business District. Straining with rush hour, they
wreak havoc.
Speaker 8 (23:54):
There was a young black man named Frank Smith who
was a messenger, and he was trying to get back
to wherever his office was in the business district. They
grabbed him, they murdered him. They threw one man off
the for Side Street bridge onto the railroad track. They
(24:16):
pulled people off street cars and beat them, killed them.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
It's nightfall now.
Speaker 8 (24:30):
This assault, this murder, this pillage continued. They dragged bodies
of their victims to the base of the statue that
still exists on for Syde Street of Henry Grady.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Grady was another white supremacist journalist.
Speaker 8 (24:49):
He was revered by white citizens in Atlanta, particularly.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
A precursor to Smith and Howell.
Speaker 8 (24:56):
He was a symbol of what they were a to
achieve in terms of leadership, in terms of dominance of
white Atlantas in the city of Atlanta and really Georgia
and throughout the South.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
In the Atlanta night, the vicious crowd spreads out from
downtown towards residential areas of the city.
Speaker 8 (25:20):
The terrorists were actually headed to the Auburn Avenue community.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
That's Eunice's neighborhood. Her home is right on the border
between white and black Atlanta. There the Hunting's wait trapped inside.
Speaker 8 (25:36):
They were in their home looking out the window, and
mister Hunting, who was ready to defend his family, defend
his home against the rioters if necessary.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
I wonder where Unice is at this time. Are she
and her brother hiding someplace? Does she hear the crowd
of angry men? Is she peeping through the shutters? At
the last minute, the mob suddenly stops a few houses
before her home. The ringleaders declare that homes in this
(26:08):
part of town seem too nice for negroes to live in,
and so the mob moves on, bringing destruction and violence
to someone else's door.
Speaker 8 (26:20):
So it moved east to what's called the Fourth War
in Atlanta that's populated by working class and poor blacks.
This is thousands of attackers moving into that community to
essentially destroy homes kill people. The residents repel the angry mob.
(26:40):
They were also in their homes, weapons in hand, ready
to defend themselves if the mob should get to them.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
The terror in Atlanta lasts for another three full days.
Speaker 8 (26:54):
Many many more were killed.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Eventually, Georgia's governor calls in the militia and the violence
in the center of the city starts to die down.
Speaker 8 (27:08):
No one really knows how many African Americans died. The
estimate is between fifty to one hundred, and perhaps even more,
and in many cases the bodies were spirited away, they disappeared.
People did not want their dead to be associated with
the riot because even though they were the victims, they
feared that there would be consequences.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
The fallout of the attacks in Atlanta went well beyond
those three days in late September.
Speaker 8 (27:39):
Even after the carnage and the murders, you still had
the repercussions of the trauma of having experienced.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
That Atlanta could rebuild, It could become the place I
would excitedly visit as a teenager many years later. But
what about the idea of Atlanta. It had become a
place that was no longer safe. It's clear Atlanta and
its Black community would never be the same.
Speaker 8 (28:07):
Most people think about the Great Migration as being a
movement of African American men, women, and children from the
rural south to the urban north, but you had variations
of that. You had what occurred and the aftermath of
the nineteen oh six Atlanta race massacre. African Americans moving
from the urban south on north to the meccas to
(28:30):
the big cities where they felt they could be safer,
even though for sure racism was present in the North,
but they felt they would not be under the constant
threat of assault that they were in the South.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
More than five thousand black people left the city as
a result of the massacre. The Huntings never returned to Atlanta.
When I try to understand the impact the events in
Atlanta had on seven year old Unis, I think back
to a night I experienced in my own childhood when
my family home burned to the ground. I was fifteen,
(29:11):
so a little older than Unice, and the fire was
an accident. But what I remember is not having time
to grab clothes for my brother, so he was standing
outside in his underwear. I remember that it took a
long time for the fire department to show up but
my mother says they arrived quickly. It didn't feel like it.
(29:33):
These kinds of events always change you in some way.
I keep a full outfit in my purse near my
bedside now in case of emergencies. The details of the
fire have softened in my memory, but the results of
the night remain sharp. The Huntings joined millions of others
(29:55):
in a great migration away from the South. Addie and
William packed up their family for New York. Unus may
have been too young to know the full significance of
what has happened, but Atlanta will stay with her. She'll
later recall the proximity of the attacks of family members
and write vividly about the Georgia she'd experienced all around
(30:17):
her before the violence of that night made it disappear.
For both Eunice and her little brother Alphaeus, their experiences
here would seem to shape how they approach their futures,
albeit in very different ways. At the turn of the
(30:48):
twentieth century, America enters an era of transition never seen
before or since. And in two bedrooms in Brooklyn, New York,
in the winter of nineteen oh seven, two children from
two sides of the Swell of that movement are asleep.
(31:09):
One is an eight year old Unice with her family,
The Hunting's Addie William and her baby brother Alphaeus, all
arrived in New York for the next chapter of their
lives just a few months before. But black people escaping
violent racism weren't the only people on the move during
this era. Millions of new immigrant families are reaching US
(31:33):
soil too, also looking for new chapters, many of them
via New York. A few streets away from Unice, in
Brooklyn that winter night sleeps a young Italian boy and
his family.
Speaker 5 (31:49):
Lucky Lucciano, arrives in the United States as a young
boy from the western coast of Sicily.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Lucky is just ten years old when he comes to Brooklyn.
These two sleeping children aren't destined to cross paths just yet.
They'll both awake to very different realities before their two
paths come together, and soon Lucky's family will be off again,
this time just a few miles across the Hudson to
(32:17):
Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Speaker 5 (32:23):
Lower East Manhattan is crammed with immigrants. At this point
in time, it was predominantly Jewish and Italian extraction, all
shoved into one tiny area of ten story and more tenements.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
If you've seen films like Gangs of New York or
Once Upon a Time in America, you can probably picture
Lower East Manhattan at this time, overcrowded, noisy, new people
appearing daily in a neighborhood becoming known as Little Italy.
Lucky's family has come to New York in the midst
(33:06):
of what's known as the Great Arrival. Millions more Italian
immigrants will relocate to the US, most from the south
of Italy, escaping epidemics and natural disasters. Many are in
Little Italy, essentially looking for the same thing the Huntings
are in their move to Brooklyn, a new page, fresh opportunities.
(33:27):
But immigrants arriving in Little Italy instead find a disappointing familiarity, poverty,
and a new threat too constant suspicion.
Speaker 5 (33:41):
The ones already established assimilated New Yorkers Americans at large
viewed as a threat. Were these foreigners speaking these foreign
languages with different religions. It wasn't an easy climb for
those people to come up the ladder.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Black upward mobility in cities like Atlanta was stopped in
its tracks because of white fear and jealousy. Many immigrants
ran into the same white supremacy in the form of xenophobia.
But soon after arriving in Little Italy, Lucky, who at
this point is still known as Salvatore Lukanya, which has
a nice ring to it, actually shows he's not going
(34:26):
to accept that this new reality is all American life
can offer him.
Speaker 6 (34:31):
Very early on, he starts getting into trouble. He's kind
of a rough kid. He's kind of a moody kid.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Before long, Lucky's spending most of his days out on
the bustling streets of the Lower East Side, playing truant
from school and looking for action.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
Like many of his peers in Lower East Manhattan in
the early twentieth century, coming from poverty. Yeah, it's the
same old story, but very true. They wanted more.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
I picture Lucky and other neighborhood kids dodging the crowds,
taking chances.
Speaker 6 (35:07):
He begins pickpocketing. He begins extorting younger kids for protection money,
stealing kids lunch money.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Deprived of the opportunities available to wider society, they're responsible
for their own education.
Speaker 6 (35:21):
By the time he's a young teen, he has dropped
out of school. Both his parents and the state of
New York have sent him to Truancy School, but doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
While Lucky has been finding his way to Truancy School, Unie,
with her college educated parents, has been shown a very
different path where education leads to success. First, she's taken
away from Brooklyn to live in Germany with Addie and Alfais,
while William remains on the road traveling with his career.
Eighteen months later, Unics is back and at one of
(35:54):
the best schools for black students in New York, and
then on again to become one of the first black
women to attend the prestigious Smith College. With her parents' example,
she has a path to respectability and to success that
Lucky just doesn't have, even with a monster of racism
(36:15):
keeping her from certain avenues. So while she's in class
learning how to become the exception to the rule in
order to get ahead, Lucky Luciano continues his education in
a very different way.
Speaker 5 (36:31):
He, like many of his peers, changed or altered their
names to be more easily pronounced or more Americanized. He
went with Luciano, and even still there were people had
a difficult time pronouncing it. He finally changed it to
Lucky keep it simple.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
He learns how to circumvent the rules.
Speaker 6 (36:57):
Luciano gets involved with the Five Points gang as a
teenager selling drugs.
Speaker 5 (37:02):
Lucky did have some jobs. He worked as a hat
delivery boy, but he was pinched at age sixteen for
delivering a hat box with heroin in it.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
This would be Lucky's only arrest for the next two decades,
but it's a significant one. With a record, he is
now prevented from entering many so called respectable trades. The
die has been cast, and soon Lucky ends up under
the wing of some of the era's underworld leaders.
Speaker 5 (37:35):
He's already been mentored by financer Arnold Rostein for a
tutelage in organized crime.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
But there's still nothing here to suggest the notorious gangster
America will be reading about in newspaper headlines in the
coming decades, even less so that he and Unice will
somehow connect through the world of vice and crime. With
her smith college education and her parents' legacy behind her,
she's far from that life. For all her experiences and advantages.
(38:11):
By the time America reaches the nineteen twenties, Unice is
kind of separated from the realities of average Black American life.
But that's about to change because Unice is headed uptown
towards Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance. By the nineteen twenties,
(38:32):
Harlem was referred to as being the capital of the
Black world, also known as the Mecca. Unice's education can
only shield her for so long. She's about to discover
a world that was much more familiar to Lucky Lugiano
than it was to her.
Speaker 8 (38:51):
Black Harlem was not wealthy or elite as in other
parts of the country. The majority of the black community
were imparvished and struggling.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
How much of what we know about Eunice's childhood comes
from her parents' letters sent to each other and to friends.
It's a frustrating distance to observe her from, but by
the nineteen twenties, Unice begins writing her own story very carefully,
and in doing so, she also changes American history. That
(39:21):
chapter of her life too often ends up as a
footnote in someone else's story, and frankly, that's a shame.
Eunice's life deserves more than a quick skim. That's coming
up in episode two of The Godmother. On episode one
(39:51):
of The Godmother, you.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Heard Marilyn Greenwald. I'm a professor Emerita of journalism at
Ohio University, and I'm the author of bi biograph, including
one of Eunice Hunt and Carter.
Speaker 8 (40:03):
My name is doctor Clarissa Merik Harris, and I am
a tenured professor of Africana Studies at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.
I am a native Atlanta and so that sparked curiosity
in me the stories that I should know that I don't,
(40:24):
and I wanted to learn those stories and share that history.
Speaker 6 (40:28):
I am Claire White and I am the director of
Education at the Mob Museum in downtown Las Vegas. I
grew up in Las Vegas, which kind of gives me
a leg up in that regard, although the number of
organized crime groups that we've had in our city certainly
will never rival a city like New York.
Speaker 5 (40:46):
My name is Christian Sipolini and I am an author
and a historian with a specialty in the fields of
true crime, organized crime, and cartel history.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
My name is Leah Carter.
Speaker 7 (41:00):
I am Eunice Carter's great granddaughter. Her son Lyle is
my dad's father. Unis influenced my grandfather and he influenced
my dad, and my dad influenced me, not that I
have a grand unified theory of that exactly.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
The Godmother is produced by Novel for iHeartRadio. For more
from Novel, visit novel Dot Audio. The Godmother is hosted
and written by me Nicole Perkins. Our producer is Leona Hamid.
Additional production from Ajuajima Broumpong, Ronald Young Junior and Zianna Yusuf.
(41:40):
Our editor is Ajua Jima Broumpong. Additional story editing from
Max O'Brien and Mitha Lee Raw. Our researcher is Zianna Yusuf.
Additional research from Mohammad Ahmad. David Waters is our executive producer.
Field production by Tnito Romani and Pallas Shaw, Sound design,
mixing and by Nicholas Alexander. Our score was written, performed
(42:04):
and recorded by Jeff Parker. Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander
and David Waters. Production management and endless patients from Sharie Houston,
Sarah Tobin and Charlotte Wolfe. Fact checking by Fendel Fulton
and Dania Suleiman. Story development by Madeline Parr, Jess Swinburne,
Aseana Yusuff Willard Foxen is our Creative Director of Development.
(42:29):
Special thanks to Leah Carter, Stephen Carter, Angela J. Davis,
Andrew Fernley, Marilyn Greenwald, Sondra Lebtty, Katherine Godfrey, Nadia Maidie,
Amalia Sortland, Sean Glenn, Neil Krishnan, Julia Bromberg, Katrina Norvelle,
Carly Frankel, and all the team at w Emmy Novel
Novel. Before we begin, a content warning. The following episode
contains difficult themes and violence. The Manhattan Courthouse is surrounded.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
There were over one thousand people who showed up outside
the courtroom. They had snipers on the roofs in Foley Square.
They had police officers with riot guns in the hallway.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Inside Courtroom one forty eight, smoke stained shades do all
they can to block out the sun and any industrious
lucky loose hoping to get a peek inside, and who
could blame them.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
At the time, it was called the Trial of the Century.
It really was national news.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Men in dark suits crowded every available seat.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
The entire gallery during the trial was full.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Of press their hats, rest on their knees or turn
in their hands. Some fidget, some slouch, others sit ramrod straight.
Everyone is focused on the scene in front of them,
a man with a carefully groomed mustache walking confidently toward
the stand.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
He was very aggressive and very ambitious.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
That was his personality. Dewey loved being in the spotlight.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Thomas E. Dewey, famed investigator of the crime syndicates, casting
a menacing shadow across America.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
How do you take this random mayhem of violence and
bring it under the law.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
Thomas Dewey enters the picture on that platform.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
His assistant attorney's shuffle papers. The courtroom leans closer towards
the main attraction. The man facing Dewey on the stand
he is.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Called sometimes the boss of bosses.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
Slender, slightly darker skin tone of Sicilian extraction.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
A suit jacket covers tattoos on the defendant's forearms.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
All symbols of luck. He took great effort to keep
those tattoos out of the public light. At the time,
tattoos were not exactly the upstanding citizen kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
A silk shirt and gold watch mark him as a
man with expensive taste. He wipes a handkerchief over his
brow and meets the eyes of the courtroom. Everyone can
see it. Charles Lucky Luciano, one of the most feared
mafia leaders anyone ever knew, is sweating. Maybe he was flustered.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Maybe the government really did put him on edge.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
He used to be so sure of himself, but now
things don't seem so certain anymore.
Speaker 6 (03:00):
Luciano really never stands a chance.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
He never should have taken the stand. That was the
nail in Lucky's.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Coffin a few blocks from the courthouse, on the fourteenth
floor of Manhattan's gothic Woolworth Building, there is an office
serviceable tidy inside sits the woman responsible for putting Lucky
Luciano on trial, Eunice Hunting Carter, thirty six years old
(03:32):
in nineteen thirty six, bright eyes the kind of quietly
amused expression that makes you think she's laughing at a
joke she can't share. She's New York's first black female
prosecutor for the District Attorney's Office in Manhattan. This is
the biggest case of her career. But as Lucky Luciano
(03:54):
squirms on the stand, Eunice Hunting Carter is not there
on center stage. Her name never appears in court transcripts.
Why not. There would be no trial of the century
without her. But Unice's work on this case is far
from over. Destiny has more in store for the trial's
(04:18):
key players, uniting them forever in unexpected ways. Lucky, Dewey
and Unice, all born within five years of each other,
similar ages, similar ferocious ambitions, and.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Their lives intersect in a courtroom for one month in
nineteen thirty six.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
But only two we're given the opportunity to stand out.
Lucky and Dewey will go down in history. Eunice was
kept from the spotlight. Maybe it's not surprising that in
nineteen thirty six a black woman was not given room
to share the stage, But nearly ninety years later, Eunice
Hunting Carter still isn't the hose household name. And that
(05:01):
is surprising, or at least I think it should be,
because recently I've come to learn about Unice Hunting Carter
and she wasn't just the engineer of this one defining
moment in mob history. Eunice was a pioneer across all
kinds of spheres that have come to shape America. Eunice
(05:22):
was there navigating worlds designed to hold her back, often
leaving them transformed. So I've been talking to some people
who have remembered her name, people who can help me
tell her story.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Unice Carter was the spark that started the.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Fire, a black woman who took on one of the
country's most notorious mobsters. I want more people to hear
what she did, even more than her achievements. I want
to understand who she was.
Speaker 7 (05:55):
It's not even just that not everyone remembers Unis, but
that people don't even believe she could have existed.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
She was really active in the Harlem Renaissance.
Speaker 8 (06:05):
Eunis ran for office. People thought she was going to win.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
She didn't back down in an argument.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
This is a straight shooter who will say something and
mean it. But I think she was guarded.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I did wonder if she felt stifled. All around us today,
from school rooms to halls of legislation, Black American history
is being erased. Remembering Eunice Hunting Carter feels more urgent
than ever. But is that even possible when so many
(06:39):
years of erasure and forgetting lie in our way. I
want to find out to try to put Eunice Hunting
Carter back in the spotlight.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
And I'm going to ask first Missus Eunice Carter to
tell us some of the things that she has on
our mind.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
This is awesome, Well, Missus Roosevelt, I have to agree,
and our association agrees with what doctor Malack just said.
We are concerned more though, with the implementation of human
rights for all mankind.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I'm Nicole Perkins and from the teams at iHeartRadio and Novel,
this is the Godmother Episode one, Atlanta, nineteen twenty four
(08:00):
replica by Eunice ROBERTA.
Speaker 9 (08:03):
Hunting noonday sun scorched a treeless ribbon of brick red road.
A breeze, hot and languid, stirred, fitfully angry, red dust
rose in great puffs, only to settle back heavily on
all who dared the road. And then impasse for the
(08:27):
way ended quite suddenly in according of vehicles, a ford,
shining anew rubbed shoulders, with a road mender's pitch cart.
They were all there, these and dozens of others, barricading
the entrance to a grove of Georgia oaks.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Long before I moved to New York and became a writer,
I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. This was during the
eighties and nineties, and when it came time for me
to go to college, I knew I wanted to stay
in the South. I wanted the familiar, soupy heat, the
magnificent magnolia and oak trees. Schools in Atlanta were some
(09:14):
of the first I applied to. The city was the
place to be for American black folks. Atlanta was about
four hours away, the perfect destination for weekend trips and
date nights for the black bourgeoisie and those who wanted
to be It was where we went to shop for
luxury brands that hadn't made it to Nashville yet. It
(09:36):
was one of the top places in the country for
black people who wanted wealth and education without leaving the South.
The Atlanta I knew about a city that held so
much promise for black people was shaped by the lives
of those who arrived over one hundred years before. In
eighteen sixty five, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, but the
(09:58):
Jim Crow laws of the late eighteen hundred It's established
a new form of segregation, and so to foster their
own success, black people began creating communities like in Nicodemus, Kansas,
or Greenwood, Tulsa. And in Atlanta.
Speaker 8 (10:18):
Hundreds, if not thousands, of African Americans migrated from rural
areas of the state and elsewhere to Atlanta. They saw
it as a place where they could make a life
for themselves. That was really the first phase of Atlanta
being viewed as a mecca for Black America.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
The Huntings are among those drawn to Atlanta. William Alfaez
Hunting Senior and Addie Waite Hunting met in Norfolk, Virginia
before moving there. William is thirty six Atty twenty four.
It's eighteen ninety nine and they've just had a daughter.
This was ADDIE's third pregnancy, and a difficult one. They've
(11:04):
already lost two babies. They aren't sure this child will survive.
For the first few weeks of her life, William and
Addie just call her Sugar. But she's strong, healthy, and
once her parents are sure she'll survive, they name her Unice.
(11:27):
As Unice's childhood begins, the Hunting's are part of a thriving,
regenerated Atlanta. They lived in the Auburn Avenue neighborhood.
Speaker 8 (11:35):
Auburn Avenue would be come by near twentieth century what
Fortune magazine called the richest Negro street in the world,
not just in the country, but in the world.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
It's close to the white part of town and near Peachtree,
the Lively business district. I try to imagine Unice as
a child, watching brick buildings go up around her, holding
her mother ADDIE's hands as they walk downly paved streets.
Units probably sees people from all walks of life, postal workers, seamstresses, accountants, reporters, bakers, tailors,
(12:12):
hat makers.
Speaker 8 (12:14):
Whatever business that was needed by the black community was
provided by black business people who catered to the needs
of black residents and also in many cases, catered to
the needs of whites.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Off Peachtree, her family can do all their shopping knowing
they're supporting black businesses and that the money remains in
this community, lifting some families out of poverty.
Speaker 8 (12:40):
In the city, the majority of black people lived in poverty,
as was the case in much of the South, but
you had a strong emerging black middle class and upper
middle class, and Atlanta became a magnet that drew these
people who wanted to, of course find wealth, but I
also wanted to aid in the uplift of the black community.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
The house that the Hunting's live in, it's big enough
to require a maid, a cook, and a gardener. I'd
love to have a maid and a cook right now.
Speaker 8 (13:14):
The Hunting family had a very nice home, like twelve
to fifteen room home on Houston Street. Houston Street's where
you had many prominent African Americans.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
I think they liked to have pleasant surroundings. But the
most important thing to them was learning about the world.
I get the impression that you would be surrounded by books,
you'd be surrounded by bookcases.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Unlike literally ninety nine percent of the Black community at
that time. Unice's parents have been to college.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Her father, William, was really active in his job, traveling
through the South in the United States. He was gone
a lot.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
William Huntson is the first Black Secretary of the International.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
YA, trying to integrate and establish the YMCA for Black People.
Speaker 10 (14:05):
And Addie hunting She was a social activist in her
own right, one of the founders of the National Association
of Colored Women and then eventually one of the founding
members of the Council of Negro Women.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Addie writes long articles and gives speeches in front of
packed crowds, and her audience hears a message of responsibility,
how the first duty of black women is to their
homes to focus on their families and children, and their
next duty was to uplift the race. But Addie isn't
(14:41):
really practicing what she preaches, just like her husband, her
career often takes her away from Unice and her home,
and as she begins to work with the National Association
for the advancement of colored people. She starts taking even
more trips away from her family.
Speaker 8 (15:00):
She alone, black woman would travel to various cities in
which there have been unrest, attacks on the black community,
attacks on those who attempted to establish branches of the NAACP.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
These trips were dangerous journeys, especially for a black woman.
I can only imagine the kind of responses she got
from strangers. To me, it speaks to her determination and dedication,
her passion to be more than what society expects.
Speaker 8 (15:31):
She went to explore, to find out, to gather evidence,
to talk to those to encourage individuals in those cities
to establish the branches, and she was quite successful of it.
She did so without fear.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
This makes me think of my own mother, because she
sacrificed her own ambitions for our family. She made sure
to tell my older sister and I to do more
with our lives. As much as she loved us, she
wanted us to pursue our dreams. I wonder if Addie
had similar talks with unus. Addie seemed to sacrifice her
(16:08):
home life for her larger ambitions at such a young age.
Did Yunus understand that sacrifice or was she resentful of it.
Eunice's parents are trying to help build a world where
black people have rights and opportunities, a South where they
(16:29):
can thrive racial uplift, but not everyone is thrilled by
that vision. As a small child, perhaps staring wide eyed
at a city being built around her, at her parents
making waves in Black America, Unice cannot possibly know that
she is standing in the middle of a tinder box.
(17:05):
In July nineteen oh six, Eunice Hunting is seven years old,
and she's got a younger brother to keep her busy.
Now al Faeus, they're about four years apart. But you know,
she's doing what little girls do, probably wanting toys or
trips to the candy store, maybe even the library. She's
(17:25):
definitely not thinking about who's going to be elected governor,
which is a campaign happening around her in Atlanta that year.
That election is just a few months away. Both candidates
are Democrats.
Speaker 8 (17:37):
Pake Smith and Clark Howell. These were the owners publishers
of Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution newspapers, two separate newspapers
at that time, and each of those newspapers wrote sensational
and largely false stories on a daily basis.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
So these two white men are stirring up a lot
of racist unrest and flat out lying in order to
make white Georgians afraid of the power of the black vote,
which across America is still just a few decades old.
Speaker 8 (18:08):
African Americans were also granted the right of citizenship. The
fourteenth Amendment and the fifteenth Amendment guaranteed voting rights for
African American men, and so when African American men were
given the right to vote declared citizens, it signaled to
them a new day in terms of opportunities.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
And that threatened Smith and Howell, especially because when black
men did turn out to vote, they were not voting
for men like them, men whose families had defended slavery.
Speaker 8 (18:40):
African Americans were able to garner a degree of political power.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
White democrats like Smith and Howell were afraid of black
voting power.
Speaker 8 (18:51):
They considered African Americans an economic threat because they felt
they were in competition against these black businesses that were
doing very well.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
At this point. As Atlanta heads into the twentieth century,
black businesses are thriving, which is not what the country
is used to. There are wealthy black people in places
like Tulsa and Charleston, but you have to go looking
for them. In Atlanta, segregation is still everywhere, but those
(19:24):
black businesses exist side by side, So the growing prosperity
of the black community is unavoidable. Why should black people
have the same or better lives than the white citizens
of Atlanta.
Speaker 8 (19:39):
It was during that time that the newspapers began to
literally create stories that black men were assaulting white women
in an attempt to really fan the flames of racism.
The leadership of the white power structure really pulling the
strings and manipulating their constituency.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Meanwhile, at the Hunting home, letters arrive from both Addie
and William Hunting from their work travels on the road.
William revels and news of Unice. How smart she is
even as a little girl, but still just seven years
old in that summer of nineteen oh six. I wonder
(20:22):
if she's picking up on the rising tensions. Does her
mother hold her hand tighter when white men come by
on the street. Do they have a cold word in
case they need to run? Whether or not Yunus understands
what's happening around her. William and Addie have a crystal
clear read of the situation.
Speaker 8 (20:41):
Black people were highly aware that something was about to happen.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
The black community in Atlanta is now preparing for the worst.
Speaker 8 (20:52):
They clandestinely ship in on train's weapons arms guns so
they could protect themselves.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
It's the evening of September twenty second, nineteen oh six,
a week and a half before the Smith Howell election.
Speaker 8 (21:11):
A Saturday evening. People were leaving work. People were coming
into the downtown area to go to restaurants or the theater.
People were going into the city to start work if
they had night shifts or whatever.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
It may be the end of September, but summer in
the South likes to linger, and Atlanta is a bowl
of humidity.
Speaker 8 (21:38):
The streets were crowded and the street cars were crowded.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
It's also time for the latest edition of the evening
newspapers to unleash their new fictions.
Speaker 8 (21:48):
The Atlanta Evening News on that day had just published
an edition that screamed headlines about more texts on white women,
newspaper boys out in the street, going extra, extra extra.
This was an extra edition of the Atlanta Evening News.
It was timed to really spark the animosity that was
(22:09):
already building up they knew that there would be a
number of people in the streets.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Everybody black and white are crowded together on the street cars,
bumping against each other on the sidewalk. It's hot.
Speaker 8 (22:25):
These newspaper boys yelling out black men, rapes, white women.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
People are irritated.
Speaker 8 (22:31):
The street cars were supposed to be segregated. You could
imagine at the end of a day, when it's crowded,
you got a long day at work, you don't really
want to get up and give up your seat to somebody.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
People are getting in each other's faces.
Speaker 8 (22:45):
The animosity, that sense of urgency had been building.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Up, and then the violence starts on the street. Things
get ugly fast.
Speaker 8 (23:01):
People said we're gonna kill every black person in sight.
Then they say every black person. They used the N word,
whether it's a man, whether it's a woman, whether it's
a child. They did not care whether that person was
just simply trying to get home and get away from
the crowd, or that person was taking a stand and
said I'm not gonna let anybody intimidate me. They would
(23:22):
grab that person, pull them off the street cars, first
of all, run them down if they were walking in
the streets. And now it's time to essentially rid ourselves
of as many black people as possible.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Mobs of white men are now roaming around downtown Atlanta.
Speaker 8 (23:40):
The mob of terrorists grew to about ten thousand men
and boys. They knew exactly where.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
To go.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Across the Peachtree Business District. Straining with rush hour, they
wreak havoc.
Speaker 8 (23:54):
There was a young black man named Frank Smith who
was a messenger, and he was trying to get back
to wherever his office was in the business district. They
grabbed him, they murdered him. They threw one man off
the for Side Street bridge onto the railroad track. They
(24:16):
pulled people off street cars and beat them, killed them.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
It's nightfall now.
Speaker 8 (24:30):
This assault, this murder, this pillage continued. They dragged bodies
of their victims to the base of the statue that
still exists on for Syde Street of Henry Grady.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Grady was another white supremacist journalist.
Speaker 8 (24:49):
He was revered by white citizens in Atlanta, particularly.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
A precursor to Smith and Howell.
Speaker 8 (24:56):
He was a symbol of what they were a to
achieve in terms of leadership, in terms of dominance of
white Atlantas in the city of Atlanta and really Georgia
and throughout the South.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
In the Atlanta night, the vicious crowd spreads out from
downtown towards residential areas of the city.
Speaker 8 (25:20):
The terrorists were actually headed to the Auburn Avenue community.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
That's Eunice's neighborhood. Her home is right on the border
between white and black Atlanta. There the Hunting's wait trapped inside.
Speaker 8 (25:36):
They were in their home looking out the window, and
mister Hunting, who was ready to defend his family, defend
his home against the rioters if necessary.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
I wonder where Unice is at this time. Are she
and her brother hiding someplace? Does she hear the crowd
of angry men? Is she peeping through the shutters? At
the last minute, the mob suddenly stops a few houses
before her home. The ringleaders declare that homes in this
(26:08):
part of town seem too nice for negroes to live in,
and so the mob moves on, bringing destruction and violence
to someone else's door.
Speaker 8 (26:20):
So it moved east to what's called the Fourth War
in Atlanta that's populated by working class and poor blacks.
This is thousands of attackers moving into that community to
essentially destroy homes kill people. The residents repel the angry mob.
(26:40):
They were also in their homes, weapons in hand, ready
to defend themselves if the mob should get to them.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
The terror in Atlanta lasts for another three full days.
Speaker 8 (26:54):
Many many more were killed.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Eventually, Georgia's governor calls in the militia and the violence
in the center of the city starts to die down.
Speaker 8 (27:08):
No one really knows how many African Americans died. The
estimate is between fifty to one hundred, and perhaps even more,
and in many cases the bodies were spirited away, they disappeared.
People did not want their dead to be associated with
the riot because even though they were the victims, they
feared that there would be consequences.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
The fallout of the attacks in Atlanta went well beyond
those three days in late September.
Speaker 8 (27:39):
Even after the carnage and the murders, you still had
the repercussions of the trauma of having experienced.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
That Atlanta could rebuild, It could become the place I
would excitedly visit as a teenager many years later. But
what about the idea of Atlanta. It had become a
place that was no longer safe. It's clear Atlanta and
its Black community would never be the same.
Speaker 8 (28:07):
Most people think about the Great Migration as being a
movement of African American men, women, and children from the
rural south to the urban north, but you had variations
of that. You had what occurred and the aftermath of
the nineteen oh six Atlanta race massacre. African Americans moving
from the urban south on north to the meccas to
(28:30):
the big cities where they felt they could be safer,
even though for sure racism was present in the North,
but they felt they would not be under the constant
threat of assault that they were in the South.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
More than five thousand black people left the city as
a result of the massacre. The Huntings never returned to Atlanta.
When I try to understand the impact the events in
Atlanta had on seven year old Unis, I think back
to a night I experienced in my own childhood when
my family home burned to the ground. I was fifteen,
(29:11):
so a little older than Unice, and the fire was
an accident. But what I remember is not having time
to grab clothes for my brother, so he was standing
outside in his underwear. I remember that it took a
long time for the fire department to show up but
my mother says they arrived quickly. It didn't feel like it.
(29:33):
These kinds of events always change you in some way.
I keep a full outfit in my purse near my
bedside now in case of emergencies. The details of the
fire have softened in my memory, but the results of
the night remain sharp. The Huntings joined millions of others
(29:55):
in a great migration away from the South. Addie and
William packed up their family for New York. Unus may
have been too young to know the full significance of
what has happened, but Atlanta will stay with her. She'll
later recall the proximity of the attacks of family members
and write vividly about the Georgia she'd experienced all around
(30:17):
her before the violence of that night made it disappear.
For both Eunice and her little brother Alphaeus, their experiences
here would seem to shape how they approach their futures,
albeit in very different ways. At the turn of the
(30:48):
twentieth century, America enters an era of transition never seen
before or since. And in two bedrooms in Brooklyn, New York,
in the winter of nineteen oh seven, two children from
two sides of the Swell of that movement are asleep.
(31:09):
One is an eight year old Unice with her family,
The Hunting's Addie William and her baby brother Alphaeus, all
arrived in New York for the next chapter of their
lives just a few months before. But black people escaping
violent racism weren't the only people on the move during
this era. Millions of new immigrant families are reaching US
(31:33):
soil too, also looking for new chapters, many of them
via New York. A few streets away from Unice, in
Brooklyn that winter night sleeps a young Italian boy and
his family.
Speaker 5 (31:49):
Lucky Lucciano, arrives in the United States as a young
boy from the western coast of Sicily.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Lucky is just ten years old when he comes to Brooklyn.
These two sleeping children aren't destined to cross paths just yet.
They'll both awake to very different realities before their two
paths come together, and soon Lucky's family will be off again,
this time just a few miles across the Hudson to
(32:17):
Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Speaker 5 (32:23):
Lower East Manhattan is crammed with immigrants. At this point
in time, it was predominantly Jewish and Italian extraction, all
shoved into one tiny area of ten story and more tenements.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
If you've seen films like Gangs of New York or
Once Upon a Time in America, you can probably picture
Lower East Manhattan at this time, overcrowded, noisy, new people
appearing daily in a neighborhood becoming known as Little Italy.
Lucky's family has come to New York in the midst
(33:06):
of what's known as the Great Arrival. Millions more Italian
immigrants will relocate to the US, most from the south
of Italy, escaping epidemics and natural disasters. Many are in
Little Italy, essentially looking for the same thing the Huntings
are in their move to Brooklyn, a new page, fresh opportunities.
(33:27):
But immigrants arriving in Little Italy instead find a disappointing familiarity, poverty,
and a new threat too constant suspicion.
Speaker 5 (33:41):
The ones already established assimilated New Yorkers Americans at large
viewed as a threat. Were these foreigners speaking these foreign
languages with different religions. It wasn't an easy climb for
those people to come up the ladder.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Black upward mobility in cities like Atlanta was stopped in
its tracks because of white fear and jealousy. Many immigrants
ran into the same white supremacy in the form of xenophobia.
But soon after arriving in Little Italy, Lucky, who at
this point is still known as Salvatore Lukanya, which has
a nice ring to it, actually shows he's not going
(34:26):
to accept that this new reality is all American life
can offer him.
Speaker 6 (34:31):
Very early on, he starts getting into trouble. He's kind
of a rough kid. He's kind of a moody kid.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Before long, Lucky's spending most of his days out on
the bustling streets of the Lower East Side, playing truant
from school and looking for action.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
Like many of his peers in Lower East Manhattan in
the early twentieth century, coming from poverty. Yeah, it's the
same old story, but very true. They wanted more.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
I picture Lucky and other neighborhood kids dodging the crowds,
taking chances.
Speaker 6 (35:07):
He begins pickpocketing. He begins extorting younger kids for protection money,
stealing kids lunch money.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Deprived of the opportunities available to wider society, they're responsible
for their own education.
Speaker 6 (35:21):
By the time he's a young teen, he has dropped
out of school. Both his parents and the state of
New York have sent him to Truancy School, but doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
While Lucky has been finding his way to Truancy School, Unie,
with her college educated parents, has been shown a very
different path where education leads to success. First, she's taken
away from Brooklyn to live in Germany with Addie and Alfais,
while William remains on the road traveling with his career.
Eighteen months later, Unics is back and at one of
(35:54):
the best schools for black students in New York, and
then on again to become one of the first black
women to attend the prestigious Smith College. With her parents' example,
she has a path to respectability and to success that
Lucky just doesn't have, even with a monster of racism
(36:15):
keeping her from certain avenues. So while she's in class
learning how to become the exception to the rule in
order to get ahead, Lucky Luciano continues his education in
a very different way.
Speaker 5 (36:31):
He, like many of his peers, changed or altered their
names to be more easily pronounced or more Americanized. He
went with Luciano, and even still there were people had
a difficult time pronouncing it. He finally changed it to
Lucky keep it simple.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
He learns how to circumvent the rules.
Speaker 6 (36:57):
Luciano gets involved with the Five Points gang as a
teenager selling drugs.
Speaker 5 (37:02):
Lucky did have some jobs. He worked as a hat
delivery boy, but he was pinched at age sixteen for
delivering a hat box with heroin in it.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
This would be Lucky's only arrest for the next two decades,
but it's a significant one. With a record, he is
now prevented from entering many so called respectable trades. The
die has been cast, and soon Lucky ends up under
the wing of some of the era's underworld leaders.
Speaker 5 (37:35):
He's already been mentored by financer Arnold Rostein for a
tutelage in organized crime.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
But there's still nothing here to suggest the notorious gangster
America will be reading about in newspaper headlines in the
coming decades, even less so that he and Unice will
somehow connect through the world of vice and crime. With
her smith college education and her parents' legacy behind her,
she's far from that life. For all her experiences and advantages.
(38:11):
By the time America reaches the nineteen twenties, Unice is
kind of separated from the realities of average Black American life.
But that's about to change because Unice is headed uptown
towards Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance. By the nineteen twenties,
(38:32):
Harlem was referred to as being the capital of the
Black world, also known as the Mecca. Unice's education can
only shield her for so long. She's about to discover
a world that was much more familiar to Lucky Lugiano
than it was to her.
Speaker 8 (38:51):
Black Harlem was not wealthy or elite as in other
parts of the country. The majority of the black community
were imparvished and struggling.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
How much of what we know about Eunice's childhood comes
from her parents' letters sent to each other and to friends.
It's a frustrating distance to observe her from, but by
the nineteen twenties, Unice begins writing her own story very carefully,
and in doing so, she also changes American history. That
(39:21):
chapter of her life too often ends up as a
footnote in someone else's story, and frankly, that's a shame.
Eunice's life deserves more than a quick skim. That's coming
up in episode two of The Godmother. On episode one
(39:51):
of The Godmother, you.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Heard Marilyn Greenwald. I'm a professor Emerita of journalism at
Ohio University, and I'm the author of bi biograph, including
one of Eunice Hunt and Carter.
Speaker 8 (40:03):
My name is doctor Clarissa Merik Harris, and I am
a tenured professor of Africana Studies at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.
I am a native Atlanta and so that sparked curiosity
in me the stories that I should know that I don't,
(40:24):
and I wanted to learn those stories and share that history.
Speaker 6 (40:28):
I am Claire White and I am the director of
Education at the Mob Museum in downtown Las Vegas. I
grew up in Las Vegas, which kind of gives me
a leg up in that regard, although the number of
organized crime groups that we've had in our city certainly
will never rival a city like New York.
Speaker 5 (40:46):
My name is Christian Sipolini and I am an author
and a historian with a specialty in the fields of
true crime, organized crime, and cartel history.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
My name is Leah Carter.
Speaker 7 (41:00):
I am Eunice Carter's great granddaughter. Her son Lyle is
my dad's father. Unis influenced my grandfather and he influenced
my dad, and my dad influenced me, not that I
have a grand unified theory of that exactly.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
The Godmother is produced by Novel for iHeartRadio. For more
from Novel, visit novel Dot Audio. The Godmother is hosted
and written by me Nicole Perkins. Our producer is Leona Hamid.
Additional production from Ajuajima Broumpong, Ronald Young Junior and Zianna Yusuf.
(41:40):
Our editor is Ajua Jima Broumpong. Additional story editing from
Max O'Brien and Mitha Lee Raw. Our researcher is Zianna Yusuf.
Additional research from Mohammad Ahmad. David Waters is our executive producer.
Field production by Tnito Romani and Pallas Shaw, Sound design,
mixing and by Nicholas Alexander. Our score was written, performed
(42:04):
and recorded by Jeff Parker. Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander
and David Waters. Production management and endless patients from Sharie Houston,
Sarah Tobin and Charlotte Wolfe. Fact checking by Fendel Fulton
and Dania Suleiman. Story development by Madeline Parr, Jess Swinburne,
Aseana Yusuff Willard Foxen is our Creative Director of Development.
(42:29):
Special thanks to Leah Carter, Stephen Carter, Angela J. Davis,
Andrew Fernley, Marilyn Greenwald, Sondra Lebtty, Katherine Godfrey, Nadia Maidie,
Amalia Sortland, Sean Glenn, Neil Krishnan, Julia Bromberg, Katrina Norvelle,
Carly Frankel, and all the team at w Emmy Novel
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