Cover Story

By Kevin Lee Associate Editor

Sleepy little Mobile wasn’t Atlanta, but it had just enough to suit Henry Ewald. The weather was balmy, the winters mild and the indiscretions easily concealed.

In 1929, 28-year-old Ewald was the Associated Press’ feature editor in Atlanta. It was a good job in the New South’s fastest-growing urban center, and his star was ascending.

That same year brought a change for newspaperman Ralph Chandler. The Cincinnati native had established the Birmingham Post a few years before and sought to do the same in Mobile with a new endeavor to challenge the Southern port’s existing paper, the morning Mobile Register. He christened his new afternoon paper the Mobile Press and set to work staffing the Jackson and St. Michael Street office with the best talent available.

Chandler courted Ewald with an offer to be his executive editor. Henry packed up the wife and headed to the Gulf.

Downtown was bustling then, shops and residences mixed near the banks and offices, with architecture that hinted at the city’s Creole past.

Like all port towns, Mobile maintained a tawdry side. Henry heard inland Baptists blame it on the huge presence of the Catholic Church, “with their drinking and carrying on. Why they even have that Mardi Gras, just like those sinners in New Orleans.”

Shipbuilding was increasing somewhat and the import of goods from around the Caribbean and across the Gulf was building.

Strapping and handsome, Ewald found a haven. He gathered notice as one of the city’s new hotshots, an exotic stranger in a town on the cusp of change.

That sinful Mardi Gras, more innocuous than portrayed to Henry upstream, added an afternoon event with a floral and juvenile theme in 1929.

Local civic boosters launched a fishing rodeo that same summer, attempting to promote the region’s angling capacity. Those prospects would soon dim, though.

October erased hopes of boosted tourism as the stock market plummeted and the dominoes of the Great Depression began to fall. Vacations became rare along with many of the norms from the previously booming decade.

But not all was at a standstill. A new campaign to promote the city, the Azalea Trail, began in the spring of 1930 and the botanical efforts would forever transform the city’s image.

The new paper flourished and in 1932 Chandler bought the Register. He was the latest kingpin of Mobile journalism and used that pulpit to enforce the status quo. Occasionally, he set his sights on favored social ills.

The paper advocated reform on officials’ salaries and better voting machine access, not to mention a stance against bootlegging. It moved copies.

Throughout the Depression, business waxed and waned but the Press Register was stable. There was nowhere else to get the news.

And Mobile was spared the worst of the period in various ways. Mardi Gras festivities continued at the lavish Battle House Hotel. Particular areas of commerce managed to weather the national economic tempest without floundering badly.

Even the darkening news from abroad, widespread war in Europe and Asia was oceans away. Distance turned to denial and then comfort.

Before long, a tremendous WPA project was announced – an engineering feat that would bring jobs and, when finished, would revolutionize the city. Ground was broken on the Bankhead Tunnel in 1938.

Access to the city was about to increase and Chandler wanted to make sure the Mobile that greeted visitors was worthy of his standard. If it was going to be a new day, then it would be his day.

Chandler kept tabs on the Mobile underworld. It fascinated him and drove his sense of purpose in his crusades. Ewald shared that captivation.

However, Chandler was unaware Ewald’s passions drove him deeper into that realm with regular abandon.

Both men knew the city had a thriving numbers racket, an underground lottery so widespread that runners carrying bets operated in the open. Kids on bikes traded with everyone on the street, the cops in on the game. It was an open-air stock market of buyers and sellers in an illegal exchange and Chandler wanted to send it crashing.

The paper launched into an aggressive campaign with editorials, stories and photos splattering the pages. Yet few arrests were made. Only a handful of small fines were passed down.

In January 1939, the Press Register heightened interest in a trial concerning runners and cops. Talk of bribes came forth under testimony.

In one editorial Ewald wrote, “The only apparent reason nothing is done against the gamblers is that the gamblers have a great deal of political power.”

Amidst the literary posturing, Ewald took aim at Bart Chamberlain, the equivalent of today’s assistant district attorney. Chamberlain came from a family of means and influence and enjoyed access to avenues of power. For him to be a target was notable and certainly not the product of anyone native to Mobile.

Ewald struck closer than he realized, but was in no position to point out such. His flaws were known.

Despite his respectable veneer, Henry liked houses of ill repute on the western end of downtown. Chamberlain mulled these proclivities and hatched a blackmail scheme to silence the uppity out-of-towner.

The public counsel enlisted the aid of John and Sam Powe, a pair of fraternal gangsters, and others like saloon owner and ward heeler Peter Crolich, a hooker and her husband.

Valentine’s Day 1939 found Henry in a bouyant mood. He had the newspapers humming about the numbers gangs. His stock was rising. His wife and son had a good home. He was going to treat himself to a hooker to celebrate.

After work that evening Ewald headed west from the office and popped into a house on Warren Street. He climbed the stairs humming to himself, anxious for the special gift ahead.

Henry entered a bedroom with a man and woman, the services of both engaged for the night.

Things heated up until a group led by Sam Powe burst into the room. A camera flashed.

Ewald jumped up, panicked at what was now on celluloid. The former Golden Gloves boxer launched into the band of intruders, knocking three to the ground and throwing another out a window. He was trying for the camera.

Finally, Ewald was pistol-whipped into submission.

The paper didn’t mention the incident, but you couldn’t shut Mobile mouths. Photos circulated in the police department.

Henry explained his side of things to Chandler. The old man was skeptical but wanted to know the truth.

Chandler brought in Pinkerton’s agents from New Orleans to investigate, men with no ties to the local rackets, no scores to settle or debts to pay. After a day, the agents advised dropping the case due to local police corruption and collusion.

Chandler wouldn’t take that answer. They completed the investigation.

Eventually, Ewald walked into Chandler’s office at the publisher’s behest. He was greeted by his boss and his attorney plus a pair of Pinkerton’s agents. The agents spelled out the case, let Ewald know they knew the truth.

Henry confessed. Chandler was openly shocked this time.

Henry Ewald and his family left town before the month was out.

The agents also had information on Sam Powe, on his numbers connections and a lucrative sideline of race result wires. He was a major player in Mobile.

This last incident, the attempt to silence the paper, only steeled Chandler’s resolve to nail the numbers players. He would have to use other channels.

The publisher pulled strings with Gov. Frank Dixon until finally a state trooper confiscated wire machines that received the race results. But they could replace machines.

Chandler went through a series of channels to get the cooperation from Moses Annenberg, owner of the nationwide race wire. Annenberg was looking to boost his public prestige and agreed to help the Mobile publisher.

Chandler asked him to “jerk the race wire and tell all the local characters that I had it done.” It happened within days.

That wasn’t the end. Chandler called the FBI and tried to nudge them to investigate Ewald’s case. Finally U.S. Attorney Francis Harrison Inge was notified and he passed it on to a federal grand jury.

The federal body indicted solicitor Chamberlain, the Powes, bar owner Crolich and the sexual accomplices for conspiring to violate Ewald’s rights. At the trial in mid-May 1939, they offered a unique defense, a claim that they were gathering evidence in an investigation into possible criminal libel committed by Ewald against Chamberlain.

The trial set historical precedent. Title 18, Section 51 of the U. S. Code, passed in 1870 as a weapon against the Ku Klux Klan, is directed against persons who “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate any citizen in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution. . . .” Section 51 had been used in cases involving intimidation of witnesses or voters, but never in 69 years had it been used to defend the actual press. That changed in Mobile.

The jury acquitted Chamberlain, but the rest were guilty.

Powe was saddled with seven years’ time. The rest received from 18 months to five- year sentences.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans eventually reversed their sentences.

Chandler remained in power and earned a reputation for philanthropy. His belief in police corruption was validated in 1940 when half of the department was indicted for taking bribes and enforcing violent coercion. A house cleaning ensued; a new city commission and police chief saw to it.

The publisher continued to harass Powe and Crolich in print.

The paper grew powerful tentacles into radio and television. Chandler sold it to the Newhouse syndicate in 1966.

When Chandler died in 1970, William Hearin was made president and publisher.

Chamberlain resigned from public office following the trial. He would go on to serve honorably in World War II before delving into the oil business and other ventures. His immense wealth allowed him to absorb expatriate status for his last decades while federal forces sought $19 million from the former public servant on self-imposed exile in Europe.

Chamberlain would also become a close brother-in-law to the man who succeeded Chandler. Bart believed things would always turn around for him.

And the young buck from Atlanta with hotshot ideas was all but forgotten. Ewald seemed to just evaporate, wafting away like a firecracker’s fumes on the Gulf breeze.

Kevin Lee is Lagniappe associate editor. Contact him at klee@lagniappemobile.com.

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