Martha Jean the Queen—Patron Saint of Blue Collar Detroit

Martha Jean the Queen painted by DeVon Cunningham (1976)

 

A couple of radio executives from WCHB-AM in Detroit were driving through Memphis on business in 1963 when they heard the voice of Martha Jean the Queen (MJQ) on their radio. They liked the Queen’s Southern accent and her facile deejay patter. These Northern radio men were in the South shopping for an African American disc jockey that could help WCHB-AM (Inkster, Michigan) capture the vast Detroit Black radio market. Most Black Detroiters had Southern roots, so it seemed like a sensible marketing strategy.

MJQ was number one in her Memphis time slot which was a notable achievement in the Jim Crow South for a Black woman disc jockey—a testament to her ability to draw an audience. These Northern radio execs called Martha Jean at WDIA–AM and offered her a raise of $30 a week if she would take her radio program to Detroit. MJQ was a recently divorced, single mother of three daughters who didn’t want to move, but Martha Jean had custody and needed the extra income, so she took the job.

Martha Jean Jones was born on September 9, 1930 in Memphis and graduated from a Catholic school. She began nursing school but the harsh realities of life and death pushed her into business school. As fate would have it, Martha fell in love with jazz trumpeter Luther Steinberg, married him, and had three daughters in quick succession. She saw her life as the manifest destiny of a young Southern Black woman, a child of poverty, followed by a volatile marriage, bondage to babies, and a lifespan of degradation by Whites.

Luther Steinberg was struggling in the music business when he became abusive to Martha Jean, so she divorced him. “There are two things I can’t stand,” she said commenting on her failed marriage in a Detroit Free Press feature article on January 10, 1982, “a man who is cheap and a man who runs around on his woman.”       

Martha Jean used the power of positive thinking to pick herself up and provide for her children. “We should all try to see the beautiful side, the positive side (of life),” she said, “but the ugly side has been with us as a people for a long time and with me personally as a divorced woman with children.”

Martha Jean Steinberg became a receptionist for Memphis radio station WDIA-AM. Because she had a pleasing manner dealing with everyone who walked through the door, the station manager gave her a try on the radio in 1954 as a substitute for an ill disc jockey and she stayed there for nine years learning the radio business and earning the title The Queen. Her patented tagline "You betcha!" after she read advertising copy was like money in the bank for advertisers.

In a May 21, 1967 Detroit Free Press Sunday interview, MJQ was asked what her radio name “The Queen” meant to her. In figurative deejay fashion she answered, “I was written in the sands of time 5,000 years ago, endorsed and smiled upon by the gods. I have a purpose, and I’m on my way to fulfill my purpose…. I am the Queen of the people, they are my purpose.”

When MJQ came to Detroit, WCHB wanted her to play easy listening rhythm and blues and read advertising copy. MJQ’s Homemakers Delight program ran from 10:00 AM until 12:00 PM for three years. One of her early challenges was the perception that she sounded too White to project the Black image over the airwaves. “I had to get down with it to prove I was Black enough and find my place in Detroit’s Negro community, so in many ways, I had to act and sound more colored than colored. Detroit had long been a haven for jazz musicians, so I introduced jazz to my musical lineup and my audience grew.”

MJQ became known for supporting women’s rights throughout the 1960s reminding blue collar wives when it was payday at the Ford plant or Great Lakes Steel—the two largest employers of Black men in the Detroit area. “Get that check from your man before it disappears, ladies.” Martha Jean was proud of herself for making it without "the crutch of a man.” She never forgot the desolation of being left alone with three daughters and no money. The Queen was an inspiration to her soul sisters in the audience.

Unsatisfied with her limited role at WCHB, MJQ jumped stations again when WJLB-FM offered her more money, air time, and freedom to co-produce her own programming. In addition to playing music, she added a fifteen minute call-in segment named Tasting Time where she gave her daily salute to blue collar people around the Detroit area.

In a Detroit Free Press feature article on October 23, 1966, MJQ explained her move, “WJLB-FM will give me a better opportunity to serve my people and do things for them. The secret of my success in Detroit are the people—the forgotten blue collar workers. I like and enjoy people. I feel a disc jockey has command of so many hearts and minds…. I give my listeners a positive reality and that surge of hope necessary to exist. I feel my day is in vain if I can’t touch someone or lift their spirits.

“In my own Southern way of talking, a lot of people started listening to me. My positive message gives people self-confidence to accomplish whatever is challenging them. I’d play blues, and between each bar of a song, I’d talk without interfering with the lyrics and say things like ‘Hey! You cats at Kelsey Hayes’ or ‘You guys in the hole on Ecorse Road’ when the Wayne County Road Commission was working on the roadway. These blue collar workers were listening on transistor radios at work, and it made them feel like somebody when I mentioned them or their place of work on the air. Soon, places all over town began asking me to give them a call out over the airwaves. My slogan was ‘You’re somebody, act like it’.”

 

During the 1967 Detroit Riots/Rebellion, MJQ broadcast for 48 hours straight urging Black demonstrators to get off the streets and stay home. She helped police negotiate with armed Black Panthers barricaded in a house into surrending peacefully to avoid bloodshed because innocent women and children were inside. That terrible conflagration was transformative for Detroiters. From that moment onward, Martha Jean felt a responsibility to be a bellwether for her people. In the 1970s, MJQ moderated a show called Buzz the Fuzz with Detroit Police Commissioner John F. Nichols credited with improving police/community relations. Every Thursday from 7:00 PM until 7:30 PM, callers could ask Commissioner Nichols questions.

On January 11, 1971, MJQ gave a short scream into the microphone at noon, and then there was three hours of radio silence. Nine Black WJLB staff members—including MJQ—staged a sit-in by locking the studio door and barricading the plate glass front window of the station’s offices on the 31st floor of the David Broderick Tower. The on-air staff was all Black but management was all White. The staff charged that the outgoing station manager failed to live up to an earlier agreement to appoint a Black station manager to replace him. After all, WJLB’s listening audience was primarily Black. The sit-in strike ended at about 3:00 PM after attorneys for both sides met to settle the matter with Norman L. Miller being named as WJLB’s first Black station manager.

Three weeks later on February 2, 1972, Martha Jean had an on-air, religious epiphany. While doing her Inspiration Time program, she announced, “I was just touched by the Holy Spirit.” Then there was a brief pause. Pensively she continued, “It was as if something, a different entity, came through my soul and told me my mission is to help bring Jesus Christ to the people,” she explained. From that moment, MJQ shifted from Soul Mistress of Detroit to Radio Evangelist and began featuring gospel music.

In 1972, Martha Jean became an ordained minister and established her own nondenominational church in 1974. She purchased a two-story house on Grand River Avenue with a $70,000 Kresge Foundation Grant and named her church The Home of Love. She set about fulfilling her mission to serve the downtrodden and forgotten people of Detroit. Her organization raised money and bought the house next door for a church community nursery and preschool for daycare to help young Black women earn a living and get a leg up on life. The $12,500 mortgage for the Joy Building was paid off in cash.

MJQ left WJLB-FM on May 30, 1982 over a scheduling dispute. Their new station manager told Martha Jean he was switching her popular midafternoon time slot to their spiritual hour at 5:00 AM. The time change was unacceptable, and she wasn’t having any of it.

Two weeks later, MJQ signed with station WQBH-AM that specialized in Black-oriented religious and inspirational programming. She took over her familiar 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM afternoon time slot.  The new job also came with a pay raise in line with her new status as station vice president and program director. Fifteen years later, MJQ formed The Queen’s Broadcasting Corporation and purchased WQBH for $4.1 million dollars becoming the first woman-owned radio station in the country. She financed the purchase on the strength of her radio personality, her lucrative radio contract income, and her advertising agreements.You betcha!

Martha Jean the Queen passed away at the age of sixty-nine from an undisclosed illness at 10:45 AM on January 29, 2000 in Detroit’s Harper Hospital. Upon learning of Martha Jean the Queen Steinberg’s passing, The Detroit News reported, “She was hailed as an inspirational force that motivated people and served as a conscience for those needing guidance. Her listeners were the common, everyday folks from Detroit who lived from paycheck to paycheck.” MJQ had a private funeral service and was buried in Detroit’s Elmwood Cemetery.

In her lifetime, Martha Jean the Queen was honored as one of rock music’s pioneering disc jockeys—the only woman so honored. She is also a member of the Black Radio Hall of Fame, Michigan’s Black Women’s Hall of Fame, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and what she was most proud of, the founder and spiritual leader of the Queen’s Community Workers of America, that did charitable works around the city for Detroit's forgotten people.

In 1976, Detroit docu-artist DeVon Cunningham painted MJQ’s portrait where she is wearing a blue caftan and surveys the heavens. It commemorates her trip to the Holy Land with seventy members of her Order of the Fishermen ministry. The painting is listed in the registry of the National Portrait Gallery of American Biography at the Smithsonian Institute.

Docu-artist DeVon Cunningham 

Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry Murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts

The Rivera Courtyard

In 1932, noted Mexican painter and muralist Diego Rivera was commissioned by the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) to paint twenty-seven murals including the massive north and south walls of the Roman Baroque Marble courtyard. The original space was filled wih fountains, potted plants, and austere marble pillars. The first DIA director William Valentiner wanted to fill the space with colorful murals representing Detroit's industrial miracle and the workforce that gave life to the assembly line.

When two out of five Detroit autoworkers were out of work during the Great Depression, raising money for public art was a hard sell. Patrons of the arts Edsel Ford, president of the Ford Motor Company, and his wife Eleanor, underwrote the project with $20,000 of their own money to pay Rivera his commission. It was DIA Director William Valentiner, who brought Diego Rivera to the attention of Mr. and Mrs. Edsel Ford.

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo

Rivera and his new wife Frida Kahlo arrived in Detroit on April 21, 1932. Rivera spent three months touring the Rouge Plant, the Parke-Davis plant, and Downriver industry including the chemical plants in Wyandotte. He prepared sketches of the entire assembly line process with American Labor toiling at work. FoMoCo's official Rouge Plant photographer aided Rivera in his research, guiding the artist through the company's extensive photographic archive.

Using the Renaissance technique called frescoe, it took expertise and teamwork to grind pigment and paint the wet plaster before it dried. Rivera and his skilled assistants usually began working at noon and ended fifteen hours later, but they finished the twenty-seven panels in eight busy months. Rivera lost one hundred pounds in the process.

North Wall of Rivera Court

The large north wall fresco depicts the manufacturing process of Ford's famous V-8 engine from the steel-making blast furnances in the background to the labyrinth of conveyer belts laden with engine parts awaiting assembly. In the lower right section of the mural, Edsel Ford and Director William Valentiner are overlooking the scene. Rivera followed the fresco tradition of painting the patron(s) somewhere in the work of art.

South Wall of Rivera Court

Likewise, the south wall shows the manufacturing of the exterior parts of the automobile. Again, Edsel Ford and Director Valentiner appear on the right side of the fresco standing in front of a chalk board signifying that Edsel was a car designer and an artist in his own right. Laid out before him on a drafting table are the tools of his trade. Ford and Valentiner gaze into the gallery from the painting.

At the unveiling of the mural, Edsel Ford invited members of Detroit's religious community to comment on the mural. Catholic and Episcopalian clerics condemned the murals as blasphemous, mainly over one panel that was a modern take on traditional Christian images of the Holy Family and the nativity. They considered that panel a parody rather than an homage and demanded the mural be destroyed.

The conservative Detroit News weighed in and called the murals "vulgar" and "un-American", but Ford and Valentiner refused to destroy the epic work of mural art. Some historians suggest that the controversy may have been engineered by Edsel Ford to garner free publicity from the local media.

The first Sunday the Detroit Industry murals were on public exhibit, the bad publicity prompted 10,000 Detroiters to visit the mural to see for themselves. The people of Detroit were in awe of this masterpiece that celebrated the working man. On the strength of the public's response, the Detroit City Council increased the DIA's yearly budget.

In the early 1950s, United States Senator Joseph McCarthy was conducting anti-American hearings in Washington D.C.. Since the 1930s, Diego Rivera had gained notoriety for his Marxist philosophy, prompting the DIA to place a disclaimer at the entrance to the Rivera Courtyard stating that Rivera's personal politics did not take away from one of the crowning achievements of twentieth-century art. The notice defended the artistic merits of the murals while criticizing Rivera's politics.

For the one-hundredth birthday of Diego Rivera during February of 1986, the DIA held a celebration of his work. Of Edsel and Eleanor Ford's four children, only their daughter Josephine bothered to attend, and of their eleven grandchildren, only Benson Ford's daughter Lynn attended.

The murals were Edsel's gift to the city of Detroit, and they form what is considered one of the finest examples of industrial art in the world, worthy of both its creator and his patron. On April 23, 2014, the Detroit Industry murals were designated a National Historic Landmark.

Panoramic View of Detroit Industry Murals in Rivera Courtyard

Connie Kalitta "The Bounty Hunter" vs. Shirley "Cha-Cha" Muldowney

Baby Boomers who grew up in the Detroit area and listened to Windsor radio station CKLW were familiar with advertisements for the Detroit Dragway located at Sibley and Dix. The ads always began with "Saturday, SATURDAY NIGHT, at the DETROIT DRAGWAY." Then the card for the automotive duels would be hyped. If you don't remember or aren't old enough to know what I'm talking about, I have a link to an audio at the end of this post.

Connie Kalitta with top fuel dragster in 1967.

Two of the most popular drag racers of the 1970s and 1980s were Connie Kalitta "The Bounty Hunter" and Shirley "Cha-Cha" Muldowney. Connie was from Mount Clemens, Michigan, and Shirley was from Schenectady, New York. They shared a professional and personal relationship from 1972-1977. Connie gave Shirley a Funny Car he no longer raced, and he acted as her crew chief for many of her early races. In those days, Shirley was known as "The Huntress." 

Kalitta began drag racing when he was a sixteen-year-old student at Mount Clemens High School. He worked himself up the ranks of the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) to become one of the sport's top drivers. Known as The Bounty Hunter, Kalitta was the first driver to reach 200 mph in a sanctioned NHRA event. In 1989 at the Winter Nationals, Kalitta was the first driver to break the 290 mph barrier with a 291.54 mph qualifying run.

In all, Kalitta won ten national titles and was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1992. The NHRA compiled a list of the Top 50 Drivers for their fiftieth-anniversary in 2001. Kalitta ranked 21st on the all-time list, and in 2016, he became the first recipient of the NHRA's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Kalitta's first NHRA win came in 1964 in Bakersfield, California. In 1967, he won his first NHRA title. With the prize money, he bought his first airplane--a Cessna 310--and started his company Kalitta Air at the Willow Run Airport shipping freight for the Ford Motor Company (FoMoCo)--his racing sponsor. 

Kalitta Air and Kalitta Motorsports company photograph.

For a time, Kalitta retired from racing and directed his attention toward building up his air freight business. Now he has a fleet of about 100 planes, many of them 747s. In addition to a bread-and-butter FoMoCo parts distribution contract, Kalitta Air provides charter flights for Medical Flight Services, Air Ambulance Specialists, the Shriners' Children's Hospital and the United States Department of Defense, to name a few. It is not generally known that Kalitta Air keeps a 747 on standby to work with the military to return fallen service men and women to their homes.

Kalitta no longer races, but he is the CEO of Kalitta Motorsports in Ypsilanti, Michigan which sponsors four cars and drivers. His love of racing became a lifelong pursuit and a way of life.

***

Shirley Muldowney

Connie Katilla first met Shirley Muldowney in 1966 at Raceway Park in Illinois when she was racing a dragster with her husband as her mechanic. In 1972, Shirley divorced Jack Muldowney when she wanted to advance to top fuel funny cars, and he refused to live the life of a Gypsy to compete on the NHRA circuit. Doubtless, there were other personal issues as well no doubt.

 

Shirley moved in with Kalitta in 1972. On the track, Kalitta was The Bounty Hunter and Muldowney became The Huntress. Connie soon tagged Shirley with the nickname Cha-Cha which she never liked but became part of her NHRA branding.

After her split from Kalitta, Shirley went on to make a name for herself in this male macho sport. At first, she had trouble attracting sponsors and finding a crew that would work with a woman. But when Shirley "Cha-Cha" Muldowney showed up at the track with her hot pink car, cowboy boots, and crash helmet, she started filling the grandstands. Even her pit crew wore hot pink team shirts.

Muldowney defied traditional gender stereotypes head-on and challenged sexism in the racing culture like Billie Jean King had done for tennis in 1973's Battle of the Sexes against Bobby Riggs. Both ladies proved women can compete in a man's world.

Shirley Muldowney was the first woman to receive a NHRA license to drive top fuel dragsters. She was the first person--man or woman--to win three NHRA national events in a row. In 1980, Shirley won the World Finals by beating her rival Connie Kalitta, and in 1982, she won an unprecedented third NHRA Top Fuel Championship.

Muldowney's achievements were not lost on Hollywood. She got the big screen treatment in 1983's Heart Like a Wheel starring Bonnie Bedelia as Muldowney and Beau Bridges as Connie Kalitta. Muldowney has said the film did not capture her real life very well but was good for the sport.

On the heels of her celebrity, Muldowney was faced with her biggest challenge. In June of 1984, her dragster crashed at over 250 mph at Sanair Speedway near Montreal, Canada. A front tire shredded and got twisted up in a wheel causing the car to lose control for 600 feet before crashing. Shirley was left with broken legs, crushed hands, a shattered pelvis, and a severed thumb. Determined to race again, she undertook two years of grueling physical therapy and recovery. Her first race back was against "Big Daddy" Don Garlits--a personal friend of hers. She lost. Shirley retired from active racing in 2003.

During her career, she won eighteen NHRA National events and was ranked 5th on NHRA's 2001 list of its Top 50 Drivers earning her the title of First Lady of Drag Racing. Her memoir Shirley Muldowney: Tales from the Track was released in 2005 depicting her drag racing life. The same year, Muldowney was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame. Muldowney still makes personal appearances at racing events to raise money for her charitable organization, Shirley's Kids, which helps children in need in cities where drag racing is a part of the community. Shirley can literally be called a trailblazer for women's equality.

***

CKLW radio commercial for the Detroit Dragway from 1966: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbrdImfvFmQ

1982 U.S. Nationals Championship drag race between Kalitta and Muldowney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-Q8f6bsfI0  

Muldowney on the Johnny Carson Show in 1986 after her 1984 catastrophic car crash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FeaqiczHzI

Delray Lives on in Florida

Detroit's Village of Delray is all but a memory today, but its namesake Delray Beach is going strong on the east coast of Florida. My wife and I had the pleasure of attending a wedding there just before Christmas. Beyond its name, there is little if any resemblance.

The original Delray area was named Belgrade but known locally as Little Hungary. It was platted (subdivided) in 1836 for small businesses along West Jefferson Avenue and residental streets built off of Jefferson Avenue. The village was renamed "Del Rey" on October 4, 1851, from a suggestion by a Mexican-American War veteran, Augustus D. Burdeno, who remembered the name from a town he encountered while serving in Mexico. The Spanish name was Americanized to "Delray" when the village received its own United States post office on February 8, 1870.

Heavy industry moved into the area along the Detroit River in the late 1890s. The Village of Delray was incorporated in 1897 and annexed into the city of Detroit in 1906. The population peaked at 24,000 in 1930, dominated by Hungarian and Eastern European immigrants. A Wayne County wastewater treatment plant opened in 1940 leading to the destruction of 600 homes.

The village's population dropped by over 4,000 after World War II, due to the G.I. Bill which provided zero-down payment mortgages for veterans. Large numbers of residents moved into the growing Downriver communities of Wyandotte, Lincoln Park, Allen Park, and Taylor. In the late 1950s, the construction of Interstate 75 wiped out even more homes. Delray's master plan was rezoned as exclusively industrial in the late 1960s. The writing was on the wall: Delray's days were numbered.

The final blow to the village was in 2013 when Delray was designated the location for the Gordie Howe International Bridge, resulting in large-scale demolition of many more homes. The bridge project will ultimately revitalize the area with jobs and other commercial businesses on both sides of the Detroit River. The changing times are always toughest on those people displaced by progress or thwarted by unalterable fate.

***

The city of Delray Beach is located on the eastern shore of Florida between Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Despite a rocky beginning, it has become a gentrified, resort town on the Atlantic Ocean with a thriving artist colony. The earliest known inhabitants of the area were Joega and Tequesta Native Americans but little is known about them. In the 1840s, an American military map notes that Seminole Indians had an encampment in the area.

While central Florida was still a tropical wilderness area, the United States Life Saving Service built the Orange Grove House of Refuge in 1876 to rescue and shelter ship-wrecked sailors. There were ten House of Refuges built along the Florida coastline, most on the Atlantic Ocean. The stations were of similar design. The main floor had five rooms where the station master lived with his family. The second story attic was outfitted with twenty cots and bedding for sailors who washed up on shore alive.

Each station had a brick cistern to collect rainwater from the roof for fresh drinking water. A fully-equipped station was stocked with enough dried and salted provisions to feed twenty men for ten days. Each station provided some basic medicine and first aid supplies, and there were wooden boxes filled with books to help sailors pass the time until they could be rescued.

In 1895, William S. Linton, a Republican Congressman from Saginaw, Michigan, and his friend David Swinton, bought a large tract of land west of the Orange Grove House of Refuge as an investment opportunity. They hoped it would become a prosperous farming community. Michigan Representive Linton named the settlement after himself. He and his partner recruited eight settlers and their families from Michigan to clear the land and grow crops.

A year later in 1896, Henry Flagler extended his Florida East Coast Railroad to Miami through Linton and established a train station there. Overextended on their land purchase, Linton and Swinton sold some of their holdings to Major Nathan Smith Boynton to raise money. Two years later, the settlement was struck by a hard freeze, the crops failed, and Linton and Swinton defaulted on the land.

Creditors moved to collect money from the settlers. Some moved on while others fought to hang onto their land. In 1898, W.W. Blackmer, one of the original settlers, suggested that the settlement's name be changed to his Michigan hometown Delray because of the bad publicity Linton's default created. In 1901, the name was changed. The following year, Delray was chartered as an incorporated town.

A Florida land rush in the 1920s brought prosperity to Delray. Tourism and real estate speculation became the economic anchors for the area. Water and sewer lines were installed, and the streets and sidewalks were paved. In 1927, Delray and Delray Beach merged to become the city of Delray Beach. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Delray Beach became a seasonal artist and writers' colony and gained fame as a resort town.

By the 2000s, Delray Beach underwent large-scale renovation and gentification along Atlantic Avenue, becoming known for its beachfront, nightlife, dining, shopping, art galleries, and luxury hotels. Delray Beach began hosting international tennis events in 2004 like the Davis Cup and the 2005 Federation Cup, which attracted tennis athletes like Serena and Venus Williams, to make their homes in the area.

Delray Beach is a lovely coastal area in fair weather, but beyond the horizon line in the Southern reaches of the Atlantic Ocean, hurricanes are born. Everyplace has its hazards. Best to have an evacuation plan, fresh water, and a bugout bag ready to go.

Detroit's Ghost Town Delray and O-So Memories

One-Million and a Quarter Fornology Pageviews and Counting

Sue and I at Detroit Bookfest 2022. Come join us next July.

After a decade of writing my Fornology blog, I'm going to release my last anthology of my best posts called Michigan Time Capsule. It is a sequel to my Detroit Time Capsule that I released last year. Together, both volumes contain 130 of my 517 posts [25% of my best work]. Michigan Time Capsule will go to press in January 2023 and be available on my Amazon author site early this spring.

My original intention when I retired in 2009 was to write a semi-autobiographical memoir which culminated in Zug Island: A Detroit Riot Novel. In 2011, my publicist recommended that I start a blog. I was not enthusiastic, but she explained how blogging was a way to build an audience. Once I got the hang of it, I found I enjoyed writing the posts because of the instant gratification and interaction with my readers. 

By the time Terror In Ypsilanti was ready, I had people waiting to buy it and sold over 500 pre-release copies. That is a respectable amount for an independent title. But ten years and six books later, I am ready to ease up on the workload and pursue other interests. 

Anyone wanting to purchase any of my titles can click on my book covers in the left and right sidebars of this post, or you can check my Author Site where all of my books are listed together. Each title comes in a quality, paperback edition and all ebook formats. Terror In Ypsilanti and The Elusive Purple Gang also come in audio editions.

Thanks to all of my loyal readers for helping make my retirement productive and meaningful and to all the friends I have made along the way.

Eddie Wingate: Black Detroit's Big Daddy

Eddie Wingate

One of the economic Titans in Detroit's African American community of the 1950s through the late 1970s was Eddie Wingate. Wingate was born in Moultrie, Georgia, on February 13, 1919, the oldest of six boys. Young Eddie quit school in his adolescence to work on a nearby farm to help support his family on two dollars a day. During the Great Depression, his $10-$12 weekly earnings went a long way, but he had ambition to do better.

Eddie kept hearing the old folks talk about the economic promised land of Detroit where Blacks were making good money working in the auto plants and steel mills. In the late 1930s, Wingate scraped together all the funds he could and drove to Detroit in his rundown Model T to seek his fortune. 

At the age of nineteen, Wingate got a job with the Ford Motor Company. It is in the Ford plant that he became acquainted with the illegal numbers racket, called the Policy Racket by government prosecutors. He soon became involved with the business end of the operation.

After almost a decade of working on the assembly line and saving his money, Wingate quit his factory job and became the silent, majority owner of a restaurant named The 20 Grand Supper Club. He was also the sole owner of The 20 Grand Hotel next door where he ran his numbers empire and hosted Detroit's African American cafe society.

By 1961, Eddie Wingate was wealthy enough to pursue his passion for music. Along with his inamorata Joanne Jackson Bratton, they founded Golden World Records (GWR) that made waves in Detroit's pop music scene. Together, they established GWR, Ric-Tic Records, Wingate Records, and J&W Records, Inc. They built their own state of the art studio using the best musical equipment money could buy.

Wingate and Bratton developed their talent roster and used The Driftwood Lounge in the 20 Grand Supper Club, owned on paper by Bill Kabbus and Marty Eisner, as a performance venue for Edwin Starr, The Parliaments, the Manhattans, Laura Lee, and The Funkadelics. The popular venue was a good place to showcase their talent and build an audience to help sell records. 

Wingate's personal friend Berry Gordy also used the Driftwood Lounge to break in his growing list of future Motown headliners like The Supremes, Little Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, and The Miracles to gain experience before sending them out on the "chitlin circuit" to hone their performance skills.

In 1968, Wingate and Bratton sold their record labels, their studio and production facilities, and their artists' contracts to Berry Gordy for one million dollars. Herion and cocaine were flooding the Black community and Wingate's adopted son became a junkie. Disgusted, Wingate turned his back on the hustlers in the music industry. The record business became more trouble than it was worth to him.

The 20 Grand Hotel at 2100 W. Warren Road next to the Supper Club  was where Wingate ran his numbers empire from rooms called "The Hole." A Michigan State Police informant testified to a federal grand jury that Wingate's numbers operation included a professional sports book which took bets on football and baseball games ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 over the phone from all over the country . The undercover surveillance occured from June to November of 1976 and relied heavily on wiretapping transcripts.

Early in 1977, the FBI arrested the top operators of the massive inner city bookmaking and numbers running operation. Along with Eddie Wingate, other operators Clarence Williams, John White, Walter Simmons, and Burrell "Junior" Pace were indicted. The men pleaded nolo contendere and paid heavy fines but were never convicted.

The federal government was more interested in the organization's kingpins. In March 1977, a federal grand jury brought indictments against mafioso brothers Anthony and Vito Giacalone for tax evasion. Wingate sold his business interests and left Detroit for Florida. The weather was better there, as were his chances for survival. He left his family operation in the capable hands of his younger brothers.

As a side note, playing the numbers today survives in all fifty states as government run and controlled lotteries used as revenue producing vehicles. Government knew a good thing when it saw it. The odds of winning contemporary govenment lotto games are many thousands or millions of times higher than the classic street game which used only three numbers chosen from 000 to 999, rather than five or six numbers including double digits. It is ironic how laws and attitudes change. What people once went to jail for is now advertised on television and in every convienence and liquor store in the nation.

Modern Michigan Lotto Slip

What is lesser known about Wingate outside of Detroit's Black community is that he and other numbers associates helped many Detroiters buy their first homes despite real estate covenants enshrining racial segregation. Entire White neighborhoods were redlined and off-limits to Blacks who could otherwise afford a conventional mortgage. They were routinely denied mainstream bank loans in desirable Detroit neighborhoods. 

Wingate recognized opportunity when he saw it, so he went into the residential real estate business, financed by his gambling profits which were considerable. Authorities would say that he and his associates were loansharking and laundering money, but their clients had steady jobs and most could pay off their monthly mortgage payments on time.

Because of men like Eddie Wingate, Blacks in Detroit had a higher percentage of home ownership in the 1950s and 1960s than any other urban center in the country. To many Detroit residents, Eddie Wingate became a local folk hero despite his underworld activities and connections.

Wingate was sole owner of several commercial buildings which were essentially number and money drops where people from the community were employed as money counters and accountants to keep his game running smoothly. It has been estimated that every dollar spent on the numbers circulated as many as five times in the neighborhoods where the game was played. 

Wingate also mentored, influenced, and helped finance many Black entrepreneurs to get started in businesses providing employment and services to city residents. In many respects, Wingate was a rainmaker who brought prosperity to many people enduring hard times. 

Eddie Wingate died in Las Vegas on May 5, 2006, at the age of 86. His body was taken back to Detroit for a funeral service at New Bethel Baptist Church on Saturday, May 13th. Wingate's body was interred at Roseland Park Cemetery on Woodward Avenue in Berkley, Michigan.

Mr. Don Davis, chairman of the First Independence Bank in Detroit, wrote in Wingate's online funeral guestbook, "He was the go-to guy (in Detroit) to get anything done of any magnitude if you were Black. The guy held the community together."

Detroit's Numbers Racket 

Ann Arbor High Graduate Becomes Mr. Las Vegas

Moe Dalitz in Las Vegas publicity shot.

Morris "Moe" Dalitz was born in Boston but his family moved to Detroit where he grew up in the same Paradise Valley neighborhood with many of the original gang members who became known as the Purple Gang. In his adolescence, Moe's family moved to Ann Arbor where he completed his high school education.

 

During the Purple Gang's dominance controlling Detroit's illegal liquor business, Moe helped his father operate Campus Cleaners, a small chain of cleaners and dyers businesses in the Ann Arbor area. Moe used their fleet of laundry trucks to distribute Purple Gang liquor in Washtenaw County.

 

 

Moe became affiliated with the Little Jewish Navy--a faction of the Purples, that controlled smuggling along the Detroit Riverfront. When three of their top leaders were brutally assassinated by the Purples over an unpaid liquor debt, Moe quietly relocated to Cleveland where he continued his bootlegging operation and opened a chain of mob-protected casinos in Ohio and Kentucky. This became his life's work.

Unlike many of his associates who spent their money as soon as they made it buying fancy clothes and flashy cars, Moe maintained a low public profile by investing in legitimate businesses in Michigan. Dalitz held an executive position in the Michigan Industrial Laundry and the Colonial Laundry of Detroit where one of their illegal services was laundering gang money. Moe was also the president of Dalitz Realty Company in Wyandotte, Michigan, that specialized in selling industrial-zoned tracts of land in the Downriver area.

Dalitz served stateside in the United States Army during World War II. While still wearing the uniform, he loaned Detroit Steel $100K to save a collapsing merger with Cleveland's Reliance Steel which proved profitable. In the late 1940s, Dalitz and his underworld backers used Teamsters Union pension funds and began investing in Las Vegas. They lent front man Wilbur Clark--famous Las Vegas developer--the money to build the Desert Inn and then the Stardust casinos.

Dalitz with Bob Hope and Desi Arnez.

Moe Dalitz became a gaming pioneer and a legend of the Las Vegas Strip. His casinos were one-stop resorts catering to a new demographic changing the face of the Las Vegas Strip--working-class Midwesterners. The Desert Inn and Stardust catered to America's postwar, burgeoning middle class. Dalitz and his investors transformed Vegas from a gambling town to a vacation resort destination. Other organized crime figures took notice and began investing in Vegas opening the door to the Midwest mob's infiltration of Las Vegas, which led to skimming the casinos' gross profits "off the top."

Dalitz and other former mob figures discovered a way to sanitize their images. In the early 1950s, they formed the Paradise Development Company which built the Las Vegas Convention Center, Sunrise Hospital, the Boulevard Shopping Mall, a championship golf course, and several buildings at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Dalitz became a philanthropic civic leader earning him the name Mr. Las Vegas.

Dalitz at Kefauver crime hearing.

Dalitz came from the rough world of the Purple Gang in Detroit and the Mayfield Road Mob in Cleveland. Despite his great success as a businessman and philanthropist in Vegas, Dalitz was never able to completely shed his associations with organized crime figures. He was called to testify before the Estes Kefauver Crime Hearings on February 27, 1951.

Senator Kefauver asked Dalitz, "We have sworn testimony that you lent Detroit Steel $100,000 for $10,000 worth of company stock. You made $230,000 from that deal, didn't you?"

"Maybe more," was his unapologetic answer. "When I cast bread upon the waters, it comes back cake."

"Mr. Dalitz, didn't you make your original fortune as a rum runner?"

"I didn't inherit any money, that's for sure," Dalitz responded sidestepping the question.

Moe with only daughter Suzanne.

Fifteen years later on August 10, 1966, Dalitz was subpoenaed to testify before the Nevada Gaming Commission about the skim and payments to underworld figures. The government was closing in on organized crime organizations who controlled the casinos behind the scenes. The underworld was looking for a way out of the casino business.

Howard Hughes

Deliverance came in the guise of Texas billionaire and movie mogul Howard Hughes. Hughes moved from Boston and rented the penthouse of the Desert Inn to live in seclusion as an eccentric hermit. In 1972, Dalitz wanted Hughes out of the suites because the holiday season was approaching and "high rollers"--important to the Desert Inn's bottom line--had annual reservations for those rooms. Hughes didn't gamble. Dalitz had intense negotiations with Hughes over the eviction. 

 

Weary of Dalitz's threats, Hughes asked him how much he wanted for the Desert Inn. Dalitz said $13,250,000. Hughes had his chief of Nevada business operations Robert Maheu write out a check and told Dalitz "Get the Hell out of my casino." The penthouse floor became Hughe's private residence while the floor beneath his penthouse suite was used for his business operations. Hughes lived there for four more years until 1976 when he was rushed to Houston, Texas in a Learjet where he died on April 5, 1976. The autopsy listed the cause of Hughes' death as kidney failure.

The Desert Inn sale marked a seismic shift in the ownership of Las Vegas Strip casinos. Corporate interests and billionaire financiers like Kirk Kerkorian were the only entities with the kind of money to buy out the mob. Groups like Bally's, MGM, and Conde Nast ushered in the postmodern corporate era in Vegas that we are familiar with today.

La Costa Resort and Spa

 

Dalitz and his backers did not get out of the resort business entirely. They moved to San Diego County in 1962 and built the La Costa Resort and Hotel for $4,250,000, which catered to wealthy Americans and aging wise guys looking to escape winter weather back East. On August 31, 1989, Moe Dalitz died in Las Vegas of congestive heart failure and kidney disease at the age of eighty-nine.

Suzanne Dalitz, her Dad, and the Vegas Mob Museum