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In Memphis, once the toughest town along the Mississippi, there were no prostitutes, gamblers, policy games or gunmen. Crump had simply banished them. Beale Street Negroes could damage each other only by exercising some ingenuity. Crump's cops shook them down nightly for pistols, Arkansas toothpicks,* clubs, brass knucks, razors and ice picks. There was virtually no grafting—Crump forbade it. Officials who took money for themselves (as opposed to accepting contributions from liquor stores, business houses, jukebox and pinball operators for the Crump machine) were prosecuted.
The city was startlingly quiet. Hardly a citizen had tooted his automobile horn in the six years since Crump had banned traffic noise. Lawns were clipped and green; Crump wanted the city to be beautiful. Memphis "niggers" (40% of the population) were quiet; and whites, some of whom had Negro mistresses, could say contentedly: "No trouble here; no hifalutin' ideas."
Even Tennessee's criminals toiled for the greater glory of Crump. His judges sent many a state prisoner to the Shelby County Penal Farm, a self-supporting agricultural institution so lush, so green, so magnificently stocked with prize cattle, prize horses, prize hogs, prize mules and chickens that many a west Tennessee farmer scrubbed his eyes in disbelief at the sight of it.
Jackpot. Ed Crump holds no public or political office, but his Shelby County Democratic Organization is probably the smoothest, most efficient political mechanism in the U.S. In his 37 years of benign if iron despotism, he has given Memphis citizens almost everything but the right to vote for a candidate of their own choosing —a luxury he firmly believes that few but the maladjusted miss anyhow.
In those 37 years his machine ticked ceaselessly. It kept a card index on all voters, saw that every true believer paid a poll tax and cast a ballot, discouraged all heathen who could not be converted to the Crump gospel. If it had occasionally voted a few dead men, or juggled ballots in the sub-basement of the impressive Shelby County Courthouse, it did so piously and only as a minor emergency measure.
At its core was a drum-tight control of the Negro vote. For as Memphians reflect: "The nigger doesn't vote, he is voted." Thus, at any time, day or night, year in, year out, whenever Ed Crump pulled the lever of his political slot machine, he hit the jackpot—a clear majority of 40,000 to 60,000 votes, enough not only to inundate Memphis but to control Tennessee as well.
Tennessee's Governor, an ex-livestock auctioneer named Jim McCord, is a Crumpet; so is U.S. Senator Tom Stewart. Sick old spoilsman Senator Kenneth McKellar is beholden to Mister Crump. West Tennessee's Congressmen are his to command. He sways the state legislature. And in Memphis and Shelby County, politicians move like automatons at his bidding—running daily to his office for instructions.