By Steve Flowers
There are very few Alabamians left who remember the 1950s story of Phenix City, Alabama.
After World War II, a good many of the military soldiers, enlisted men, stayed on for a while. A host of them were stationed at Ft. Benning in Columbus, Georgia. As many of you know, Columbus and Phenix City are essentially the same city. They are only separated by a bridge and the Chattahoochee River.
Phenix City figured that these soldiers needed some entertainment. Well, they got it in Phenix City. The border city became the poor man’s Las Vegas and Guadalajara, Mexico rolled into one. Phenix City became known as the most sinful place in America. It was openly run by a tough redneck mafia that made the New York Mafia look like choir boys.
At least the New York Mafia tried to subvert their illegal activities. Phenix City was wide-open.
Every public official and law enforcement officer in town was on the mafia’s payroll. The entire town, including main street had casinos and brothels. There were so many illegal slot machines in operation that they outnumbered Las Vegas. These slot machines and prostitutes lured the soldiers across the bridge to be preyed upon.
The entire state was embarrassed by the Phenix City story. One of the few local, honest attorneys in Russel-Tallapoosa counties, Albert Patterson, ran for Attorney General of Alabama with a platform to cleanup Phenix City. Patterson won the statewide race due to his stance.
Three days later the Phenix City Mafia gunned him down, openly assassinating the newly elected Attorney General.
This bold, brazen murder by the Phenix City crowd was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The governor and president declared martial law and they put a clamp down on the whole town.
They put all of the public officials in the city jail. A very few escaped to Texas and others were found floating in the Chattahoochee River. Federal officials dredged the river and found over 200 skeletons of victims who had tried to cross the Phenix City Mafia. The sheriff and a deputy sheriff named Albert Fuller were convicted of the murder of Albert Patterson.
His son John Patterson was appointed to fill the term of his father as Attorney General. Patterson served as Alabama’s attorney general from 1954 to 1958. Patterson was elected governor of Alabama in 1958, in no small part to the sympathy Alabamians had over his father’s assassination.
The man Patterson beat in that 1958 race for governor was none other than George C. Wallace. Both Wallace and Patterson were making their first race for governor, but about the time that race started a movie came out entitled “The Phenix City Story.” It told the story of Albert Patterson’s murder at the hands of the corrupt thug mafia. The sympathy for Patterson was too much for Wallace to overcome. Patterson handed Wallace his only gubernatorial defeat in 1958.
The gambling issue lay dormant in the state for decades, primarily due to church influence.
However, there were local controversies over alcohol sales.
Around the late 1990’s, Macon and Greene County voters passed upfront constitutional amendments that allowed for a new invention called electronic bingo. Gov. Bob Riley, at the behest of the Choctaw Indian casinos out of Mississippi, closed down the lucrative, prosperous Victoryland Casino in Macon County. The Choctaw Indian gambling syndicate was Riley’s largest campaign contributor. He used his gubernatorial power to do their bidding.
The legendary outlaws, Abramoff and Scanlan, went to Washington about this time and bought the rights for indian reservations to have legal gambling on their native lands. Washington hearings revealed that the satchels full of money that Scanlan and Abramoff brought to Washington to pass this privileged monopoly was filled by Las Vegas Casinos.
Abramoff and Scanlan went to jail, but the Indian casinos have their monopoly on bingo betting.
The Alabama Poarch Creek Indians have flourished for the last 15 years with a monopoly on electronic bingo. They have piled up a lot of cash and made large political contributions to Alabama legislators.
Make no doubt about it, the lottery bill that failed recently in the legislature was the Poarch Creek Casino syndicate’s bill. It was an archaic paper ballot lottery that would have prohibited any private tax paying Alabama operations from competing with the Poarch Creek monopoly on electronic bingo.
See you next week.
Steve Flowers is Alabama’s leading political columnist. His weekly column appears in over 60 Alabama newspapers. He served 16 years in the state legislature. Steve may be reached at www.steveflowers.us.
