Read Never Been a Time for Free Online Page A

the
Star
, and the
Times
—covered East St. Louis, and were read by East St. Louisans. All five St. Louis papers had reporters assigned to East St. Louis and most had East St. Louis offices. The two most important, and most widely circulated, of the St. Louis papers were the morning
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
, which was known for solid, straightforward, sometimes tough-minded local coverage, and the evening
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, which, under the leadership of Joseph Pulitzer II, was becoming one of the best newspapers in America. It excelled in national and international as well as crusading local coverage. Editorially, the
Globe-Democrat
leaned toward the Republicans and the
Post-Dispatch
tended to favor the Democrats (although it was relatively liberal on racial issues), but both the
Post-Dispatch
and the
Globe-Democrat
were modern newspapers in that they at least gave the appearance of being independent of party politics in their news coverage.
    The
St. Louis Republic
was a struggling morning paper that was owned by a Democratic politician—David Francis, Woodrow Wilson’s ambassador to Russia during the upheavals of 1917—and was old-fashioned in that it oftenseemed to parrot the party line, racially and otherwise. The
St. Louis Star
and the
St. Louis Times
were lavishly illustrated populist afternoon papers that stressed sports, entertainment, and local human interest stories.
    For African Americans in both St. Louis and East St. Louis, the most important source of news about black affairs was the respected black-owned weekly, the
St. Louis Argus
.
    In the summer of 1916, a brilliant young reporter named Paul Y. Anderson wrote a series in the
Post-Dispatch
excoriating the administration of Mayor Fred Mollman and police chief Ransom Payne for permitting illegal gambling and prostitution all over the city, including a couple of notorious vice dens virtually across the street from the city hall-police station complex on Main Street in the heart of downtown. Anderson reported that, in 1915, after Mollman had been elected on a “reform” ticket, he placated his more moralistic supporters by issuing an order closing the red-light district, an order that, after a brief flurry of token closings, was widely ignored by police and city officials, including Mayor Mollman himself. After utterly failing to get legendary cigar-chomping
Post-Dispatch
managing editor O. K. Bovard to fire Anderson for sullying the name of his fair city, Mollman, who was in his mid-forties, spotted Anderson, who was twenty years younger, near city hall one day and took a wild swing at him. He banned Anderson from the pressoffices in city hall and the police station, which didn’t stop the tenacious young reporter from coming in and badgering recalcitrant city officials until cops shoved him out the door. 5

    Paul Y. Anderson

    Mayor Fred Mollman
    Late in the summer of 1916, after Anderson’s articles put pressure on the mayor to clean up open gambling, a member of the police vice squad named H. F. Trafton took it upon himself to close a downtown bookie joint. It happened to be owned in part by Frank Florence, the assistant chief of detectives. Florence walked in on the raid, pulled his service revolver, and told Trafton to put his hands in the air. Trafton complied, giving the assistant chief of detectives a clear shot at his vitals. Florence shot him dead. There were several witnesses who swore in court that they had seen the whole thing and that Florence was guilty of gunning down a man with his hands in the air, but after a year of legal maneuvering and backroom threats and dealing, Florence was acquitted of the charge of murder, confirming the general feeling that the police were among the last people in East St. Louis you would trust to enforce the law. 6

    In July of 1916, three dozen men were fired from National City’s three largest meatpackers—Swift, Armour, and Morris—for trying to organize a union,