Cute white chick outwits GIANT NEGRO!!

Since I launched this blog last December, one post has drawn more attention from across the internets than any other: “Attack of the GIANT NEGROES!!”

All summer, the giant Negroes have been discovered and pointed to by fans of American weirdness. My post was cited last week by the law-professor clique at BlackProf.com. And yesterday, a MetaFilter commenter linked to it, sending hundreds of new eyeballs here.

Nobody doesn’t like the giant Negroes.

All of which reminds me: there’s one giant-Negro story I never got around to writing about. So here it is now.

It’s about Sallie Kline, a 21-year-old “flapper” and Smith College graduate who, having fallen asleep on a sofa in her father’s Manhattan apartment, woke up to discover a burglar creeping around in the darkness.

She didn’t realize at first, but this wasn’t any old burglar. This was a “huge negro burglar.”

The New York Times reported Sallie Kline’s story on April 30, 1922. And much of the tale was told in Miss Kline’s own voice. Here’s what she said happened, after she saw the beam of the burglar’s flashlight moving around her father’s library and settling upon a desk:

SALLIE KLINE: It would have been stupid for me to yell, wouldn’t it, with father and mother and my brother Edward away back in the apartment. They probably would not have heard me. First I thought whether I looked nice. I really thought I’d vamp him.

So I said: “What are you doing there? I know you’re a burglar, but why don’t you try some of the rich families. We are poor – really we are.”

The light then was turned upon me. The burglar could see me plainly. I heard his voice. “I want your ‘vallables,’ ” he said. I especially noticed that word. Then I knew the burglar was a foreigner. He repeated he wanted our “vallables.”

“We have only a few here,” I said, “you are wasting your time.” Again – “why don’t you go to some rich people?” It seemed at first as if the man was going to do something rash, but I thought I could manage him.

“How did you get in here?” I asked.

“I came in through that window,” he said, and he pointed with the light to the open library window, which is about ten or twelve feet above the street. I had left this window open when I went to sleep. He said he had scaled the wall.

The conversation really was becoming interesting. I reasoned with him, and bargained with him, too. I told him that if he would go quietly out he probably would find some persons who did not need their “vallables,” and besides that I would scream if he did not go.

“My father is a large man and if I scream he will surely come, and my brother is there, too, and besides, you wouldn’t hurt me if I screamed, would you?” He said, no he wouldn’t.

“If you’ll go quietly I won’t squeal on you or tell the police – or anything,” I told him.

He seemed to agree with me that to go out quietly would be better all around, and with a few more words I had convinced him that this would be the best course. But before he went I decided to see whether or not he had taken anything from the desk.

So I said: “Come over here.” And, what do you think, he came right over near the sofa. “Are you sure you haven’t taken anything?” I asked.

“No, ma’am, I swear I haven’t.”

“Turn out your pockets.” And he turned out his coat pockets and his trousers pockets and turned the flashlight on them. He kept the light away from his face all the time, though.

“All right,” I said, “now you can go if you promise me one thing. Don’t take anything.”

“I promise,” he said.

“All right, then, shake!” The hand that was thrust into mine was large and black. I realized then for the first time that I had been talking to a huge negro burglar; but let me say right here that he was the nicest burglar I could have met. Do you think I would tell the police on him – anyway, I wouldn’t recognize him, because I didn’t see his face. ...

He climbed out the same way he got in – he literally hung for a few seconds and then dropped to the street. Just as soon as he had left the window I went to it and saw him walking, unhurriedly, mind you, toward Riverside Drive. There he turned the corner and disappeared.

Then I thought a minute to make sure it had not been a terrible dream, and then I ran back in the apartment and wakened my brother Edward. I realized that if I waited until the morning to tell the family they would say I had had a dream. ...

But really I’d like to do something for that burglar. I told him to be a sport, and he was a sport. I’m a sport, too, and so I wouldn’t yell. ...

Presidential assassin vs. GIANT NEGRO!

I made a mistake in my first “giant negroes” post last week. I wrote that a giant Negro had saved the life of a U.S. president.

What actually happened, way back in 1901, was this: James Benjamin Parker – who reportedly stood 6-foot-6 – helped subdue the gunman who shot President McKinley twice at very close range. McKinley died of his wounds a week later.

The assassin was a Polish-American anarchist named Leon Czolgosz. The shooting occurred on September 6, 1901, at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y.

On September 8, the New York Times published a brief “Story of an Eyewitness.” The man, identified only as a “prominent Exposition official,” said this:

“Quick as was Czolgosz he was not quick enough to fire a third shot. He was seized by a Secret Service man, who stood directly opposite the President, and hurled to the floor. A huge negro leaped upon him as he fell and they rolled over the floor. ...”

The Atlanta Constitution on September 8 made a much bigger deal over Jim Parker’s involvement. The headline read: “Assassin Was Caught By an Atlanta Man. Jim Parker, Negro of This City, Overpowers Anarchist Czolgosz.”

“If I had not grabbed that crazy loon he would have shot again,” Parker said. “I got a strangle hold on his neck that I learned down south.”

Parker had been standing in line, like many others, to shake William McKinley’s hand.

“Just think,” he said, “old father Abe freed me, and now I saved his successor from death, provided that bullet that he fired into the president don’t kill him.”

The Atlanta paper described Parker as “a man of probably 6 feet 3 or 4 inches in stature and... Herculean physique. It is little wonder the president’s assailant was prevented from further violence once the hands of the Atlanta giant were placed upon him.”

Within weeks, however, the Atlanta Constitution was singing a different song.

During the assassin’s hasty trial, a Secret Service agent testified that “I never saw no colored man in the whole fracas.” (Jim Parker was not called to testify.) This led an editorial writer to wonder whether everyone had been “slickly duped” by the smooth-talking colored man “Jim.”

In December of 1901, Mr. Parker received what the Washington Post called “the first official recognition of his brave act” – in the form of a J-O-B.

As the Post reported on December 22: “James B. Parker, the giant negro whose trusty right hand felled the assassin Czolgosz in Buffalo... has been summoned to take a government position.” This was at the behest of presidential assistant George B. Cortelyou and two U.S. senators, among others.

Of course, the only civil-service job black folks could get 100 years ago was as “messengers.” So Mr. Parker became a messenger in Senate.

“My only regret,” Parker said on his way to D.C., “is that when I knocked Czolgosz down I did not bite off an ear or disfigure him in such a way as to furnish facial evidence that could not be questioned.”

According to the Post, Parker had been offered “large sums” to appear at museums or with traveling theatrical companies. But the big man refused.

“It would be against my sense of decency,” Parker is quoted as saying. “There are in this country ten millions of colored citizens, who regard it as an honor that one of their race should be the first to spring to the aid of the stricken President. Many of them have written me, telling me they were proud of me, and I could not after that turn myself into a dime museum freak.”

Way to go, Giant Negro!

GIANT NEGRO to the rescue!

As I mentioned before, not every giant Negro in the news was a wrongdoer... snatching white ladies’ purses and tossing cops around like rag dolls.

Once in a while, a giant Negro turned out to be a genuine hero. The Associated Press wrote about one such man on February 19, 1952. The next day’s Washington Post headline read: “Giant Rips Open Jammed Cab, Frees Truckman.”

I’m presenting the full AP article here, because it builds to a classic Hollywood ending. (“Who was that giant Negro?”)

HOUSTON, Tex., Feb. 19 (AP). – A giant Negro walked out of the night on the highway about 10 miles northwest of here early today, saw a man trapped in the cab of his smouldering truck-trailer and ripped the cab apart to save the driver.

The unconscious driver fell free into the arms of waiting and astonished deputy sheriffs, and the Negro disappeared as quietly as he appeared.

“No one knows his name,” said Deputy Sheriff Don Henry, “but he did a job I couldn’t do with six trucks and a wrecker. It was a terrific display of human strength.”

The trapped truck driver was Roy Gaby, jr., 26, Houston.

Forced off the road by an apparently drunk driver, Gaby was trapped inside his telescoped truck. Flames appeared. A passing motorist notified the sheriff’s office. Officers, trucks and a wrecker congregated. But the men couldn’t budge the crushed metal with cables. A call went out for cutting torches.

The giant Negro appeared.

“Can I be of help?” he asked.

Then he walked up to the cab, placed his hands on the door and wrenched it off. He climbed into the cab, planted his feet on the floor and his neck and shoulders against the top.

“You could hear the metal give,” said Henry. “The top bowed out, the seat buckled down and the dash broke under the pressure.

“I saw his shirt sleeves rip open as his muscles bulged.”

In the excitement of the rescue no one thought to ask the Negro his name.

He walked off into the night.

Kevin Smith knows the deal...

This was in “Chasing Amy”:

How safe are you?

Scarier than Hitler... it’s a GIANT NEGRO!!

The bizarre exploits of “giant negroes” (as documented in the New York Times, the Washington Post and other major newspapers in the early 20th Century) are so numerous – and so intriguing in their details – I plan to stretch this thing out for a while.

I’ll relate two such tales today, saving many more for later. Y’all gon’ be like, “Tell us another one, Uncle Dave!” Because these stories never get tired.

Take the case of Edwin Dennis, a.k.a. “Stonewall Jackson – the Black Phantom.” The New York Times wrote about him on June 8, 1942, under the headline “ ‘Black Phantom’ Caught in Bronx.”

Here’s the lead:

“The capture early yesterday morning of a giant Negro” – (the Times was using the capital N by this point) – “grotesquely costumed as the ‘Black Phantom,’ ended a wave of terrorism in the wooded sections of Bronx Park where there has been a series of holdups in the past two weeks.”

Initially, the Times put this robber’s height at 6-foot-4. A follow-up story downsized him to 6-foot-2.

Anyway, here’s how this “giant” was caught: Three police detectives were driving through Bronx Park around 1 a.m. when they got flagged down by a Jewish couple. The couple said they’d just been robbed of $9 by “an apparition that ‘was enough to frighten Hitler himself.’ ”

The couple got in the car with the detectives, and the search was on.

Soon, they came upon another robbery in progress... another couple, hands in the air. Their assailant was dressed in black, wearing a mask and a black metal helmet... plus “3-inch wooden blocks attached to his shoes.” (To “add to his stature,” the Times later reported).

This was 22-year-old Edwin Dennis.

Armed with a club and a homemade pipe gun, Dennis dropped to the ground as the detectives approached him. He shouted, “I always said they’d never take me alive,” and then shot himself in the chest.

But the .22 caliber bullet didn’t penetrate his costume.

The policemen “leaped upon him,” arrested him, and shipped him off to Bellevue Hospital for observation.

(In fact, Edwin Dennis was still in Bellevue when the cops brought robbery victims to police headquarters to identify him; detectives showed them a rag-stuffed dummy wearing Dennis’s mask and helmet.)

Within days, young Mr. Dennis was indicted for first-degree robbery.

Now, it’s worth pointing out that not all giant Negroes who made the papers were evil-doers. The phrase “giant negro” was also applied to certain athletes. Including one college football hero by the name of Paul Robeson!

In 1919, at the end of Robeson’s collegiate career – which also included varsity letters in basketball, baseball and track and field – the New York Times ran this headline: “Rutgers Loses Robeson; Giant Negro Was One of Greatest College Stars.”

Robeson was 6-foot-3.

Then there were the boxers. Such as (of course) Jack Johnson (“...the giant negro bowed and scraped to the mention of his name”).

Johnson wasn’t quite 6-foot-2.

When it came to athletics, some white men were also described in the New York Times as giants. Such as wrestler Paul Sampson (“the German giant”), boxer Harry Persson (“Swedish giant”), wrestler Leon Pinetzki (“the Polish giant”), and, going back to the 1800s, boxer Ned O’Baldwin (“the Irish giant”).

But in the realm of crime, all the giants seemed to be Negro.

Which brings us to Raymond Dodds, subject of this Chicago Tribune headline on January 23, 1916: “Wife of Hotel Proprietor and a Giant Negro Sought; Black Said to Have Forced San Diego Woman to Flee With Him Under Death Threat.”

This one is unique for a couple of reasons. First, the article specifies that Raymond Dodds was, in actuality, “a giant mulatto.” (Yo, represent!)

Second, there’s much more to this story than meets the eye. As if you didn’t have an inkling. I decided to search the Los Angeles Times archives for more detailed information.

Sure enough, the L.A. Times covered this unfolding drama day by day over the course of a week.

The Times in its first article (01/23/16) reported that Van Lee Hood, “a well-known San Diego business man,” had just arrived in L.A. “in hot pursuit of his beautiful young wife and a negro, who he believes is holding her a captive.”

Several months earlier, Mr. Hood had fired Raymond Dodds from his job as a porter in Hood’s La Vista Hotel. (On suspicion of theft, said Hood.)

The L.A. Times described Dodds as “a giant negro and former prize fighter.” And it reported this:

“According to Mr. Hood the negro is a ‘lone wolf,’ associating only with white people, and had been infatuated with his wife for many months. He declared that the negro had threatened to kill Mrs. Hood, her parents and himself if she ever disclosed that he desired to woo her.”

After his wife’s disappearance, Van Lee Hood received this telegram from her: “I have taken the only course to keep my family from death and destruction. ... Will write again soon. ... Brace up. You cannot suffer any more than I have been and am. Tell the people we had trouble and I left. Goodby. Viola.”

Mr. Hood told the L.A. Times: “I know that the negro has her in his power, and that she is in fear of her life.”

Yet, in that very first article, the newspaper reported some “perplexing” details of this “remarkable mystery.” A woman matching Viola Hood’s description was seen two nights earlier in a San Diego bus terminal, buying a ticket for Los Angeles. Five minutes later, a “gigantic mulatto” appeared and also purchased a ticket.

When the L.A.-bound passengers had to switch busses because of a road problem, “the negro carried the woman’s two suit cases, acting, other passengers said, as though he were a servant.”

In the next day’s paper, the headline now described Raymond Dodds as an “Alleged Negro Abductor.” (Interestingly, he was never again referred to as a “giant.”)

Police believed the missing two were on their way to Salt Lake City by rail. A train employee told detectives:

“A negro and a white woman, answering the description of Mrs. Hood and Dodds... insisted on riding all night in the chair car. I noticed them particularly and during the ride my attention was called to the couple by the other passengers, who asked that they be ejected from the car.

“They did nothing that called for such action on my part. They were extremely affectionate but as they were well-behaved otherwise, I did not even caution them. They left the train at Salt Lake and were hissed by the other passengers.”

When told this story, according to the L.A. Times, Van Lee Hood “shook his head” and said it couldn’t have been his wife. Because she intensely disliked colored people.

The following day came this headline: “Negro and Mrs. Hood Surrender in Salt Lake. Woman Tells the Police She Left San Diego Voluntarily and Paid All Expenses of the Trip...”

Raymond Dodds, aware of the heavy news coverage, turned himself in to police, explaining that Viola Hood “had urged him at intervals for a year to run away with her....”

A little later, Mrs. Hood also turned herself in. She confirmed Dodds’ story, adding that their plan was to get married in Utah under assumed names, then go to Chicago to live.

Informed of this, Van Lee Hood still refused to believe it. He issued the following statement:

“I positively will not condone any willful, guilty overt act on the part of my wife, but I will yet stake my life on her virtue, honor and innocence. And I will spend all the remainder of my life and all the means I have and that I can obtain in proving up her character and honor and in punishing her assailant. ...”

Viola Hood’s parents were of a similar frame of mind. Her mother said: “Despite reports from Salt Lake City attributed to my daughter to the effect that she loves this negro, I believe she has been misquoted.” And her father proclaimed: “I will leave nothing undone to bring Dodds to justice.”

But prosecutors had no intention of charging Raymond Dodds with any crime.

Believe it or not, the story doesn’t end there. Once Van Lee Hood got his wife back to California, she sang yet a different tune, saying that Dodds was merely her “hired servant” – not her lover – and that she’d run away from her husband because she was “wildly jealous” over the attention he received from other women.

On January 29, 1916, Mrs. Hood declared in a sworn statement: “I... do of my own free will and accord hereby solemnly declare and affirm to my husband, my father and my mother, and the world at large, that I have never had any immoral or illicit conduct with any man, that I have led a straight, clean and moral life.”

Yeah, right. Tell it to the giant Negro.

Attack of the GIANT NEGROES!!

Gather round, dear readers, and you will hear of a time when “giant negroes” roamed the earth. These giants committed shocking crimes. Newspapers from sea to shining sea documented their foul deeds.

Especially the New York Times.

The Times first acknowledged the existence of these fearsome creatures on August 5, 1897. The headline was “Insane Negro Giant in Newark.”

Over the next four decades, the New York Times provided all the news that was fit to print about “giant negroes.” Articles with headlines such as these:

“Giant Negro Attacks Police.” [Sept. 24, 1900]

“Negro Giant Guilty.” [July 28, 1905]

“Armed Negro Giant Goes Mad on Liner.” [May 15, 1916]

“Giant Negro Disables 4 Policemen in Fight.” [June 12, 1927]

“Posse in Gun Battle Ends Giant Negro’s Reign of Terror...” [March 6, 1932]

And it wasn’t just the New York Times. Rampaging black giants were a nationwide phenomenon. Naturally, headline-writers at major newspapers were all over this:

“Officer Is Hurt By Giant Negro.” [Atlanta Constitution, April 2, 1906]

“Giant Negro, a Walking Arsenal, Believed He Was To Be Burned Alive.” [Los Angeles Times, October 15, 1908]

“Giant Negro, Trapped, Seizes and Throws Officer.” [Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1911]

“Wife of Hotel Proprietor and a Giant Negro Sought.” [Chicago Tribune, January 23, 1916]

“Giant Negro Gambler Flees After Shooting Two on Windsor Street.” [Hartford Courant, December 11, 1922]

And who could forget this all-time classic:

“Capture Giant Negro Moron at Gary...” [Chicago Tribune, November 21, 1926]

The Washington Post, for some reason, avoided the term “Giant Negro” in its headlines. But not in its news copy. For decades, the Post, too, alerted its readership to the violent doings of gigantic black men.

On October 10, 1902, the Post reported on a preacher who went berserk after a revival meeting. “For ten hours..., Rev. Lewis Roy, a giant negro, of Little Washington, Rappahannock Country, Va., terrorized the whole southern section of the county, and had a posse of armed men searching for him.”

On September 6, 1909, it was the tale of William Stockett – “the giant negro who attempted suicide Friday night by shooting himself in the head, but subsequently attacked the physicians, attendants, and nurses on two occasions and freed himself from a strait-jacket...”

This report, published on April 10, 1912, was datelined Louisville, Ky.: “Cooped up in a room with a giant negro, two policemen battled for their lives here tonight, and when the negro finally fell dead with five bullets in his body both officers were covered with blood and nearly prostrated.”

On December 31, 1928, the Post ran an Associated Press account of a cop-killer in New Jersey. “David Ware, giant negro, was arrested tonight for the slaying of State Trooper Peter Gladyes, while one of the most extensive man hunts in which aircraft, bloodhounds and troops participated, was in progress.”

As late as December 17, 1944, there was the story of a young “Government girl” who fended off a street robber. “Suffering from a possible skull fracture as the result of the attack, Miss Gladys Lavender, 17, a Navy Yard clerk, told police ‘a giant negro’ attempted to snatch her purse....”

(I apologize if some of you will have trouble sleeping tonight.)

I am fascinated by all these giant Negroes. But I want to focus on the New York Times coverage, for several reasons.

First, based on my electronic searches through six newspaper databases, the New York Times used the phrase “giant negro” more than all the others.

Second, publisher Adolph S. Ochs – the man who transformed the Times into a world-class news organization – disdained the sensationalistic tone of the more successful New York papers (owned by Pulitzer and Hearst) during the heyday of “yellow journalism.” Upon taking over the Times in 1896, Ochs promised “to conduct a high-standard newspaper, clean, dignified and trustworthy.”

Clean. Dignified. Trustworthy. Like this report from New Orleans, published on September 24, 1900:

“A terrific fight occurred this morning between the police and a crazy negro whom they were attempting to arrest. A negro of gigantic build named Edward Gurley, laboring under the hallucination that he had been called to heaven, cut the throat of his nephew, Oscar Montgomery, in order that he might take him along with him.”

(Gurley was killed after he attacked two police officers “with savage ferocity.”)

The third reason I’m concentrating on the New York Times is because of an irony. Adolph Ochs also happened to have a leadership role in the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. According to the ADL’s website:

“Early on, ADL took significant steps to eradicate the negative images of Jews in print.... The League was still in its infancy when Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of The New York Times and an ADL executive committee member, wrote a memo to newspaper editors nationwide discouraging the use of ‘objectionable and vulgar’ references to Jews in the media. ... By 1920, the practice had virtually stopped.”

Yet here’s how the Times described armed robber David Mitchell on September 27, 1927 (in “Chain Store Thugs Trapped At Last; ‘Black and White’ Team, Giant Negro and White Youth, Staged 100 to 200 Hold-Ups”):

“Tall, stocky, powerfully built and with a huge chest and arms, he impressed every one who saw him as thoroughly ‘hardboiled’ yet primitive.”

(Not sure what “primitive” means. Perhaps he went around barefoot, wearing animal skins.)

Upon discovering the NYT’s long-lost tales of giant Negroes, the first thing I wondered was... just how gigantic were they actually? Alas, the suspects’ height and weight were not always reported in these stories.

But in “Giant Negro in Prison,” published on June 21, 1903, we get this: “ ‘Big’ Scott, alias Charles Scott... who for years has terrorized negroes, was arrested Friday night by Detective Boyle of the West Thirty-seventh Street Station as a suspicious person. Scott is a negro and stands 6 feet 4 inches.”

Then there was Livingstone Drummond, the focus of a 1922 Times article (“Seize Giant Negro, Hide Him for Safety”). Arrested for “highway robbery, atrocious assault and attempted murder,” Drummond also measured 6-foot-4. He weighed 215 pounds.

Six-foot-4. That’s big. But giant big?

Apparently the definition had grown looser since this 1897 story (“Insane Negro Giant in Newark”): “Lemuel Footz, a giant negro, went insane to-day, and after attempting to kill his wife roamed the streets for half an hour clad only in an undergarment. He was finally captured, and committed for an examination. ... Footz is nearly seven feet tall.”

Now that’s a giant Negro.

In the coming days, I will share more stories of giant Negroes from the pages of the New York Times (and elsewhere). And I’ll tell you right now, not all “giant negroes” were bad.


UPDATE (07/11/07): This post was picked up today by Racialicious, Carmen Van Kerckhove’s cooltastic pop-cult blog.

I want to share part of a comment by Racialicious reader “Stef,” a self-identified “little white girl” (5-foot-4) married to a bona fide giant Negro (6-foot-4):

“I think his size totally plays into people’s perceptions of him. People are always marveling over how calm and laid-back he is. This is true, but would it stand out to people as much if he were a smaller guy? It’s like they expected him to be aggressive or something, and it seems like this expectation is linked to his size. Then, once people get to know him, they often remark that he is a ‘teddy bear’ (read: he’s a big guy, but, hey! he’s actually pretty nice!).”

Coming soon: GIANT NEGROES!!

UPDATE (07/10/07): The above headline was published in the Los Angeles Times on March 20, 1913. Kinda makes you wonder... where have all the giant Negroes gone?

Oh, right...