Obsessed is probably too strong of a word to describe my interest in the October 1934 turf war among two Washington, D.C. gambling entrepreneurs. But, I have had a very keen interest in the case ever since 2019 when I first read about it while working on the Talbot Avenue Bridge Historic American Engineering Records (HAER) report. It had been nearly four years since my first interviews with an aging Washington, D.C., former journalist had turned me onto the historical significance of numbers gambling. By the time that my research took me to the Takoma Park, Md., driveway where a notorious mob hitman gunned down newspaper employee Allen Wilson, I was hooked.

On July 25, I’m continuing the mini-mob-lecture circuit with a talk on racketeering in the D.C. suburbs: “The Numbers Game in the Burbs: Racketeering in Montgomery County.”

The free virtual program covers the history of racketeering and numbers gambling in the D.C. burbs, from the Black gambling entrepreneurs who ran the numbers in rural African American communities throughout the mostly rural suburban county to the white D.C. kingpins who made their homes there to complicate law enforcement efforts to rein them in. The so-called “Mistaken Identity Murder” caps the program as I connect the dots on one of the D.C. area’s most sensational gangland killings.

The alleged hitman, Tony “The Stinger” Cugino, was one of the East Coast’s most feared killers. In my “Squirrel Hill by the Numbers” walking tours, participants visit the site where Cugino allegedly dumped the body of one of the loose ends he cleaned up earlier in 1934 before killing Wilson. With Cugino, it’s always “allegedly” because he never made it to trial, for the Wilson murder or any of the others attributed to him. The official reports were that he hanged himself in 1935 in a New York City jail cell after the police finally caught up with him. By that time he had been suspected in hits all throughout the mid-Atlantic and upper South, including another infamous Montgomery County murder case (the “Chevy Chase Car Barn Murders“) just a few months after Wilson’s “Mistaken Identity Murder.”

Come for the numbers history and stay for the murder!

Beyond the Zoom room

The Silver Spring program is the second of three lectures on racketeering history I’m giving this month. Pittsburghers can drop in on “Cold Storage and Real Luck” at the Lawrenceville Historical Society July 20. There were mobsters on 1500 block of Penn Ave. in Pittsburgh and the story of the city’s giant refrigerator building and Pittsburgh’s most aptly named bar has several good rackets chapters.

On August 1, just a few days before Pittsburgh’s infamous 805 episode‘s 92nd anniversary, I’m speaking to the Moon Township Historical Society. Tony “The Stinger” and his 1934 visit to Pittsburgh may or may not be on the program but lots of Steel City vice will be.

© 2022 D.S. Rotenstein

Under every stone (or building foundation) in Pittsburgh there seems to be a mob story. It’s no different in the 1500 block of Penn Avenue in the city’s Strip District. The mob history is what caught my attention around the same time that plans became public to demolish the former Federal Cold Storage Company building popularly known as the “Wholey’s Building” for the giant illuminated fish that dominated one facade. Over the past year i have been documenting the building’s history and the lives of the people who owned it and who worked there. As I watched a demolition carefully deconstruct the walls adjacent to a historic bar, I got interested in the bar’s story, too.

Folks can learn more about the cold storage building and the Lucky’s story at a special Lawrenceville Historical Society program Wednesday July 20 at the Carnegie Library on Fisk Street. No more spoilers here. The program is free and open to the public. See you then.

Facebook friendly link: https://ivernacular.wordpress.com/2022/07/09/cold-storage-and-real-luck/.

Decatur, Ga., got a new school last week. Sort of: it’s an old city school building with a new name. The City Schools of Decatur voted May 22 to change the name of the city’s only middle school from Renfroe Middle School to Beacon Hill Middle School. The new name went into effect July 1, 2022.

A grassroots effort to change the school’s name began in 2020 after I designed a walking tour of Decatur’s erased Black community. The middle school, which is located across the railroad tracks from the former Beacon Community, was one of the stops in the tour created for the 2020 National Council on Public History annual conference (which was cancelled due to the COVID pandemic).

I conducted the tour intended for the conference virtually and then recreated it several times over the next year for various Decatur community and religious groups. Participants in one of those virtual tours began an online petition to change the school’s name: “Rename Renfroe Middle School To Reflect Decatur Values.”

The petition got more than 700 signatures and the attention of city leaders. In the first paragraph, the petition’s authors cited my walking tour, which included oral history excerpts of people talking about the school’s namesake, Carl Renfroe who was Decatur’s school superintendent between 1959 and 1975.

The petition only cited one of the examples that I used in the walking tour. It was an excerpt of an interview that I had done with a Black man who attended Decatur’s segregated schools (a federal consent decree forced Decatur into compliance years after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case).

The complete entry for the walking tour’s storymap was a lot more detailed and it included an excerpt from an interview with a former civil rights and social justice activist who lived in Decatur during Renfroe’s tenure. William Denton taught education at Agnes Scott College and Atlanta University.

Commerce and West Howard
This intersection didn’t exist before the 1960s. It was created during urban renewal when the city of Decatur extended then-Oliver street south to Howard. Visible to the south is carl g. Renfroe middle school. Intersection didn’t exist until urban renewal in 1960s.
This is Decatur’s only middle school. It is named for educator Carl G. Renfroe (1910-2004), who was Decatur’s school superintendent (1959-1975). Despite serving after the Brown v. Board of Education case (1954) Renfroe resisted desegregating city schools and is remembered by residents for racially biased decisions and language.

It was an embarrassing situation for me to be sitting during my graduation and the superintendent of the school system, Carl Renfroe, spoke and commented that evening, “we are proud of our nigras,” you know …“we are proud of our nigras” — R.L, Decatur resident and former trinity high school student, February 2018.

I just have to say that that brought to mind a sense of irony because when we were first there, the superintendent, Renfroe, was of the old school and he did everything he could to keep black and white children separated — William Denton, former Decatur resident and civil rights activist, February 2018.

The interview with Denton was one of several that I did with the former Decatur resident over ten years. Denton is one of a dwindling number of people still living who would know about the inner workings of Decatur city government and its schools. He and his wife Barbara were active in their efforts to bring equity to the city’s school system. They also were among the first generation of 1970s community activists who sought to maintain Decatur’s trajectory towards housing and social equity. For years they were among the leaders of the South Decatur Community Council, the precursor to the contemporary Oakhurst Neighborhood Association.

The Dentons agreed with the city’s decision to change the school’s name. Barbara Denton expanded on our earlier conversations about Renfroe:

Regarding the late-great “Renfroe” Middle School and Carl’s role in maintaining school segregation:  He advised the Board to gerrymander the school zones in the early 70’s in order to maintain maximum segregation.  Bill wrote to him in disagreement.  When he failed to respond, Bill informed federal E.E.O. of this action.  The Decatur distract thus joined about 80 other Georgia distracts under E.E.O. supervision. 

She added that she and her husband attended the school board meeting when the school was named for Renfroe:

We were at the Board meeting when the naming of the new middle school was announced.  Board member Scott Candler looked directly at us and smirked when he saw our jaws drop.  Fait Accompli!  I’ll never believe Renfroe deserves credit for a desegregated middle school.  Given Carl’s history we think its origin lies in the E.E.O. designation as an obstructionist system.

After the petition went live, accusations started flying about the veracity of the allegations against Renfroe, whom the Dentons said vigorously resisted desegregation.

To allay the claims that the oral history comments about Renfroe were unsupported and/or unreliable, here is the video clip played during the virtual walking tours. Perhaps they can assist Decatur residents in complying with the Facebook comment author’s suggestion to “be smart.”

© 2022 D.S. Rotenstein