Ridgeland was enveloped in a wave of gangster-like criminal activity six decades ago that rivals any of Hollywood’s best scripts.
Illegal gambling, illegal booze, unmerciful beatings and vigilante arsonists were all part of the legends of that era.
As the legend goes, good and decent residents took things into their own hands and burned the nightclubs down, but no one ever spoke a word of the unpleasantnesses in proper company.
A small town of only 500 then, Ridgeland was a peaceful little community that became infested with tawdry clubs and dark players.
Citizens stood up to the outside influence and were eventually dubbed the Ridgeland Vigilantes, but they weren’t public about their good.
They banded together in a multi-year struggle against of a string of four restaurants that openly operated as illegal gambling dens and nightclubs.
The last living member of the 14-man core group, Bill Sturdivant, died in 2017, but not before he wrote down his memories of those years. He signed the pages for the Ridgeland Historical Society and handed them down to his grandson, current Madison County Constable Brad Harbour.
Sturdivant’s memories, paired with dozens of old newspaper clippings from the 1950s, paint a pretty picture of an odd time in the city’s early history.
The small town was roughly 50 years from its founding by the Chicago-based Highland Colony Company.
In the early 20th century, Ridgeland was home to a hotel, sawmill, and a canning company. The main business section of Ridgeland was along Jackson Street along the Illinois Central Railroad.
Bill Sturdivant liked the small town feel and got a job at the iron foundry, so he bought four acres and moved in during the late 1940s.
Sturdivant, in his memoirs, wrote that the small town only featured a couple of churches and a handful of businesses.
“There were two churches, Methodist and Baptist, a car repair shop, a restaurant, a couple of gas stations, and a small iron foundry. It was a quiet, typical, small Mississippi town,” he recalled.
Sturdivant and his family immediately got involved in one of the churches and he later would serve as an alderman.
Shortly after moving to town, the first of a series of new businesses opened up shop. It was called the Steak House, which started operation in 1948, and hosted two shows and dinner seatings each evening.
Sturdivant said the two-story building received extensive renovations and was soon operating regular bingo games that would evolve into backroom gambling and nightclubs open well after legal hours of operation. Other citizens alleged that the buildings were violating liquor laws. Mississippi would not repeal prohibition until the 1960s.
Sturdivant said after the Steak House opened, more came to town — the White Kitchen, The Magnolia Club and the Pine Lake Club, all opening in succession prominently along Highway 51. Others would come, but by many accounts these were the big four.
No addresses are listed for these notorious clubs making them difficult to precisely locate, but one site of a crucial event later in this story, Henderson’s Garage, is still located on Highway 51 just south of the Natchez Trace Parkway. Local lore suggests that one night club existed around the location of the Goodwill store on Highway 51 that Harbour was always under the impression, based on his grandfather’s recollection, was the White Kitchen. Longtime Madison County resident Bettye Stewart has vivid memories of the Pine Lake Club standing where the Rite Aid was in the current School Street Crossing shopping center from when she was a little girl. Another was said to be just past Jackson Street on the left headed North toward Madison near what was the Oak Place Shopping Center across from Allegrezza Piano.
One thing is for sure, that they were relatively close together and were nearly all accessible or visible off of Highway 51 that predated I-55 leading one newspaper article to refer to the roadway as “Night Club Row.”
Newspaper clippings from the time, largely from Canton’s Madison County Herald and the now defunct State Times of Jackson, listed James E. Alexander as the owner of the Magnolia and the Steak House and identified a Simpson B. Cross as another owner of the Amvet’s Steak House.
The buildings quickly attracted crowds knowns for causing a nuisance and staying open late. Ridgeland was little more than a village, but was gaining a reputation as a “gambling Mecca.”
Concerned citizens would hold vigils and picket the clubs that stayed open late. One evening, Sturdivant remembers, someone hit it big in roulette, winning a considerable sum of money. The picketers watched the man walk to his car, quickly followed by “some thugs” who thrashed the man and then took his winnings and walked back inside.
A cohesive group began to form that was set on removing these eyesores and trouble magnets from their community.
Sources vary, but all seem to agree that there were the 14 core members and one news story lists the names R.D. Millet, Charlie Swain, Roy Cozier, Doyle Kelly, future mayor Hite B. Wolcott, J.M. Stout, Edward L. Henderson, N.L. Harvey, H.B. Ridgeway, Sturdivant, Willard Lewis, George Pentecost, A.H. Weathersby and Harold Butler as signers of a petition heard in a court proceeding against Alexander relating to the trouble to come.
These men, along with other residents, would picket the nightclubs and hold regular meetings at Town Hall. They would petition the Sheriff’s Department, the District Attorney’s Office and went all the way to Lt. Gov. Carroll Gartin’s office. Sturdivant remarked that all government bodies could have built a case if they cared to look, but for whatever reason, no one seemed motivated to act on their pleas for help.
The group started receiving threats from thugs related to the gambling operations. One reported that he wanted them to know that he had a machine gun and was not afraid to use it.
“We didn’t pay any attention to the threat,” Sturdivant wrote.
Cross, the owner of two of the clubs, would be arrested in March 1954 in Jackson after a chase down Woodrow Wilson. JPD reported at the time that he was pulled over for drunk driving. They found a pistol on his person and a sawed-off shotgun and machine gun in his vehicle.
Cross was fined $100 for carrying a concealed weapon, which he paid. Cross reportedly lost his drivers license and received a “stiff jail sentence.”
All-in-all, Cross spent one night jail and fought the charges against him.
“This should have given us a picture of things to come,” Sturdivant wrote.
Tensions continued to mount over the next month and came to a head in a clash known as the “Neon Battle” between vigilantes and Alexander and a group of thugs and nightclub employees that included Richard Head, J.T. Phillips and Jack Fontaine. Some accounts identify Cross as one of the men involved.
It was the evening of April 24, 1954, and the 14 were waiting at Billups’ Service Station on Highway 51 for a deputy sheriff to close up the Steak House.
Sturdivant, “Cozy” Cozier and M.B. “Mack” Ridgeway got in Cozier’s vehicle to check on the progress of the club closing. Cozier was 70 years old at the time.
They were in Cozy’s new vehicle when they were bumped hard from behind by one of two vehicles. Cozy pulled the car over in front of Henderson’s Garage, then owned by fellow vigilante E.L. Henderson thinking the cars would pass. Instead they pulled in behind them.
“There were two cars and each had three burly thugs that poured out and started our way. Cozy got out and shut the door behind him,” Sturdivant remembered. “This was Cozy’s new car and in the dark I could not find the door handle to get out. I was going to at least give him some moral support. Three of them started beating Cozy.”
In his account of what the papers would call a “fracas,” the three men swung at Cozy with bags that had shot in them, brass knuckles and other items. Henderson’s nephew, Jimmy Henderson, who currently owns the building, confirmed there was “an exchange of fisticuffs” during this time, his uncle told him.
But Cozy could hold his own, according to Sturdivant. He dodged and smacked one across the jaw, throwing him into the big garage door. He staggered another assailant with a blow to the head.
All this time Sturdivant looked on in horror as he fumbled with the door handle, while thugs tried to pull Ridgeway out of the car. Sturdivant briefly got the door open but was knocked back into the interior of the car.
Ridgeway bashed an assailant with a spotlight in the backseat, causing the thugs to retreat.
“The light broke as he made contact and one of the thugs evidently was sliced pretty bad because blood covered the side of Cozy’s new car. Thankfully, this caused them to retreat and they all left,” Sturdivant wrote.
While they were still taking stock of their injuries — Sturdivant was beaten badly and Cozy had a mean gash on his nose that would require stitches — they were still trying to contact local authorities back at Billups. A big black car drove up and several “hooligans exited,” including one with an automatic shotgun. He ordered several men against the wall that included Sturdivant, Doyle and Weathersby, Sturdivant’s father-in-law.
The moment was tense and while they sat with a shotgun trained to their back, one of the thugs knocked them each on the head with a pistol.
Weathersby had grabbed a tire tool he found on the ground but thought better of it and dropped it. The sound it made when it hit the ground was loud and drew all attention to Weathersby, including the muzzle of the shotgun.
As tensions continued to twist, a constable and sheriff’s deputy pulled up and convinced the men, after a minor scuffle, to go home.
The men would then go to the Justice of the Peace to swear a warrant against the threatening thugs. Sturdivant said another scuffle ensued where Stout would take a hit from a pistol, but Billy Noble, the Justice of the Peace (who went on to become Sheriff), pulled his gun and stuck it in the thug’s abdomen, telling him that would be all.
Wolcott received physical threats at his home, while his wife was there. Other families claimed they had received threats as well and Alexander brought a countersuit for defamation of character against all 14 of the vigilantes.
One clipping reports Alexander as saying he had warned his employees and customers on the evening of April 24 of “impending danger at the hands of such irresponsible, unlawful and fanatical mob.” He also accused the men of being drunk.
While this brazen act of violence concerned some citizens, some said that the owners had a right to make a living like everyone else.
Alexander evidently had big plans for the area. One article claimed he had recently invested $30,000, roughly $2.8 million in 2018, and had plans to build a motel on the property of one of the clubs.
While newspaper clippings have little to say on the club’s popularity, it would seem to be their very popularity that made them a nuisance. One article tells a story of a middle-aged widow from Louisiana who claimed she won $25 to go towards much needed medical operation.
But, the “Neon Battle” was the last straw and the authorities intervened.
Alexander’s defamation suit did not stick. Alexander and Head were charged with threatening with a deadly weapon and some eight assault charges. Phillips caught three assault charges.
Though the case would be appealed and briefs would be submitted to the state Supreme Court, it was downhill for gangland in Ridgeland. Residents hired the Ross Barnett Law Firm to represent them.
“Any time there was a case going on, all 14 of us showed up. When the first case was tried, we won,” Sturdivant said.
District Attorney Julian P. Alexander said during one of the trials, “I refuse to admit that gangsters can defy the law and nothing be done about it. I for one do not intend to tolerate the flagrant disregard of all law that has, for too long, characterized the Ridgeland area.”
In his brief to the Supreme Court, Assistant Attorney General Joe T. Patterson said, “This record clearly demonstrates the extent to which those who would violate the law will go in dealing with good citizens when those good citizens dare to interpose objections to flagrant violations in their midst. The miracle of this whole matter is that a number of good people did not get killed and the actors in this drama are not before this court charged with murder instead of a misdemeanor.”
Club owners attempted to stay open but injunctions and raids from local authorities, one of which resulted in the arrest of three men charged with gaming, made business difficult.
In his “History Bits: Volume 2”, Madison County’s unofficial historian, the now late Jim Lacey, notes in a piece dated June 23, 2005, that the White Kitchen burned down in February 1954.
Sturdivant remembered the night well.
“Some months later I was awakened in the night by a loud noise. As I looked out the window, I saw large flames from a building on Hwy 51. I got up and went to see what was on fire. It was the White Kitchen burning as the local fire department volunteers looked on.”
The Magnolia Club and a club Lacey identifies as “The Grove” burned that May. Finally, on April 10 of 1955, The Amvet’s Steak house, then shuttered, burned down. Club operator Jack Fontaine, who lived in an apartment on the premises, had been at a movie in Jackson with his wife and children.
Arson was suspected in relation to the blaze.
The headline of a Madison County Herald article referenced in Lacey’s book dated February 24, 1955 “J.E. Alexander, man of violence, comes to a violent end in a Sunday Morning brawl.” He was shot down by a Cleveland man over a dice game after Alexander had threatened eight other players over a dispute in one of the Ridgeland Clubs identified as The Clover Club.
News clippings indicate the Pine Lake Club burned around then as well, though it was after the Steak House burning. Sturdivant wrote that he remembered hearing that everything had been moved out of the Pine Lake shortly before it mysteriously caught fire.
Then-Ridgeland City Clerk Lily Mae Harvey was brought in on charges of arson in relation to the Steak House case. Alderman, church officials and Harvey herself roundly denied the charges as “silly.”
Fontaine, who levied the charges on Harvey, would later withdraw them and admit he brought them forth based only on “hearsay.”
No one else would be charged in the mysterious burnings, though some reports say that insurance monies were paid to the owners.
“To the best of my knowledge, none of our people had anything to do with the burnings,” Sturdivant wrote.
Lacey noted that vigilantes used the ambiguity to their advantage.
“The vigilantes would only smile and look at you for the next 45 years or so when one would ask about the burning,” he wrote.
Jimmy Henderson said that members of the vigilantes would only tell you enough to make you more interested, though he found Sturdivant’s writings ‘illuminating.’
“They kept it all pretty hush-hush,” he said. “But I think as they have gotten older some people have opened up.”
The only thing that is for sure is that the club owners did not come back.
“Such were the life and times of Ridgeland in the 1950s,” Sturdivant said.
