Becoming Richard Pryor (70 page)

13     
A madam herself:
“Donahue Pleads Not Guilty,”
Decatur Review,
Feb. 10, 1914, p. 10;
pressed assault charges:
“Colored Woman Stabs Her ‘Hubby,’”
Decatur Review
, Mar. 23, 1916, p. 4;
“the only time” . . . Jim shot an elderly man:
“Last Escapade for Jim Carter,”
Decatur Review
, Feb. 13, 1919, p. 4;
“Why wait until they kill?”:
“Why Wait Until They Kill?,”
Decatur Review
, Feb. 14, 1919, p. 6;
filed for divorce:
Decatur Review
, Oct. 19, 1919, p. 11. More on Jim Carter’s assault and criminal record can be found at
People v. James Carter,
Case No. 9046, Circuit Court, Macon County, IL (1919).

14     
year-old baby:
“LeRoy Pryor Jr.,”
Peoria Journal Star
, Oct. 2, 1968 (Pryor’s father was born June 7, 1915);
“gathering of the colored brethren”:
“Got Affectionate with Baby,”
Daily Review
(Decatur), Nov. 19, 1916, p. 1.

14     
Marie and Roy had three more children together:
Birthdates of Marie’s children are from 1920 U.S. Federal Census (Population Schedule), Decatur Township, Macon County, IL, ED 143, Sheet 1b, Family 16, Household 18, 448 E. Orchard St., Roy Pryor household; 1930 U.S. Federal Census (Population Schedule), Precinct 31, Decatur City, Decatur Township, Macon County, IL, ED 58-33, Sheet 16b, Family 32B, Household 342, 1604 East Sangamon St., Thomas Bryan household;
But then Julia died, on May 4, 1921:
Daily Review
(Decatur), May 4, 1921, p. 14;
a sting on their home:
“Seven Colored Men Arrested,”
Decatur Review
, Jan. 5, 1919, p. 8.

14     
Marie filed for divorce:
“Asks Divorce,”
Decatur Review
, Apr. 20, 1922, p. 16;
cook at a restaurant:
“Indictment for Nick Economos,”
Decatur Review
, Oct. 18, 1925, p. 25; “Dismiss Economos Case,”
Decatur Herald
, Nov. 20, 1925, p. 3.

15     
grand larceny:
“One Prisoner of Fourteen Pleads Guilty,”
Decatur Herald
, June 6, 1928, p. 3; “Pryor and Storey Given Probation,”
Decatur Daily Review
, July 7, 1928, p. 10;
she went back to her maiden name:
“Three Are Arrested in Raid Sunday Night,”
Decatur Herald
, Oct. 14, 1929, p. 5.

15     
He had married his first wife:
“Divorcees Are Given Warning,”
Decatur Herald
, June 7, 1927, p. 2;
three months on the Vandalia prison farm:
“Police Notes,”
Decatur Daily Review
, Feb. 16, 1927, p. 13;
milked cows and grew corn:
Charles L. Clark and Earle Edward Eubank,
Lockstep and Corridor: Thirty-Five Years of Prison Life
(Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati Press, 1927), p. 130.

15     
fighting with another black woman:
“Police Notes,”
Decatur Review
, Aug. 21, 1919, p. 8;
Jazz Bone Minstrel Company:
The Mike Douglas Show
, aired Nov. 29, 1974.

16     
crushed between two train cars:
“Richard Carter Dies of Injuries,”
Daily Review
(Decatur), Sept. 20, 1925, p. 11;
family legend:
Pryor Convictions
, p. 18. Richard Carter is misidentified as Pryor’s grandfather “LeRoy Pryor” in the family legend, though the circumstances of the death fit exactly with his great-grandfather’s accident on the job.

16     
a swing city:
“Saloons Win with Record Vote Cast,”
Decatur Daily Review
, Apr. 6, 1910, p. 1; “Jail Terms End Reign of Booze,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, Jan. 24, 1915, p. 3;
“canned heat” . . . the Sterno trash mounds . . . loaf of bread:
“New Generation of Criminals, New Kind of Crime Has Developed during Last Decade, Chief Wills Has Found,”
Decatur Herald
, May 27, 1928, p. 25. On Prohibition more generally, see Daniel Okrent,
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
(New York: Scribner, 2010).

16     
It didn’t take much . . . “buffet flat”:
Okrent,
Last Call
, p. 208;
a raid on her home:
“Three Are Arrested in Raid Sunday Night,” p. 5.

17     
she pleaded not guilty:
“Boy Slapped, Woman Routs Proprietor of Confectionary”;
struck back with a countercharge of assault:
“Tit for Tat,”
Decatur Herald
, Nov. 4, 1929, p. 16; “Three Arrested on Assault Charges,”
Decatur Herald
, Nov. 5, 1929, p. 5.

17     
Marie eventually lost in court:
“Woman Fined $50 on Assault Charge,”
Decatur Herald
, Nov. 13, 1929, p. 3.

18     
factory payrolls plunging:
Richard J. Jensen,
Illinois: A History
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), pp. 124–25;
Class war broke out:
Andrew Hemingway,
Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926–1956
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 160;
blacks who held on to work:
author’s interview with Allen Pryor, Nov. 10, 2010.

18     
“Diamond Lil,” a stout black madam:
“Peoriana” binder, Peoriana collection, Peoria Public Library, pp. 2342–43; Norman V. Kelly, “Miss Diamond Lil’,”
News & Views
(Peoria), Feb. 2011, p. A18;
“largest and liveliest black and tan resort”:
“‘Diamond Lil’ Found in Cell; Keeps Silence,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, Dec. 27, 1931, p. 9; “She Refuses to Tell of Drainage Board Whoopee,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, Dec. 28, 1931, p. 26.

18     
located at
200 Eaton Street:
Legend of photograph of Eaton Street, c. 1920, in personal collection;
130 Eaton:
Polk’s Peoria City Directory (1936), p. 716;
“sinkhole of midwestern vice”:
“Peoria Vice Hit by Government,”
The Christian Century
, March 18, 1942, p. 362.

19     
the Bumboat:
John Bartlow Martin, “The Town That Reformed,”
The Saturday Evening Post
, Oct. 1, 1955, p. 27.

Chapter 2: The Backside of Life

20     
“Sweet as far-off bugle note”:
Edna Dean Proctor,
Poems
(Cambridge, MA: H. O. Houghton and Company, 1890), p. 64;
On the vaudeville circuit . . . “I spent four years there one night”:
George H. Scheetz, “Peoria,” in Edward Callary, ed.,
Place Names in the Midwestern United States
(Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellon Press), pp. 43–70;
“it rained all week”:
John M. Sumansky, “Peoria: The Growth and Development of a River Town,” in Daniel Milo Johnson and Rebecca Monroe Veach, eds.,
The Middle-Size Cities of Illinois: Their People, Politics, and Quality of Life
(Springfield, IL: Sangamon State University, 1980), p. 137.

21     
“the rube and the boob”:
Elise Morrow, “Peoria,”
The Saturday Evening Post
, Feb. 12, 1949, p. 20;
America’s most unchecked sin city:
On sin cities, see Mara Keire,
For Business and Pleasure: Red-light Districts and the Regulation of Vice in the United States, 1890–1933
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010;
“talk[ed] about corruption”:
Martin, “The Town That Reformed,” p. 27;
divorced at a rate:
Clarence Wesley Schroeder,
Divorce in a City of 100,000 Population
(Chicago: University of Chicago, 1939), pp. 7–9.

21     
“city of good spirits”:
Morrow, “Peoria,” pp. 20–21;
whiskey tax:
“Peoria Is Busier Than Ever, but It’s Much Drier,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, Sept. 8, 1926, p. 4;
half the federal government’s internal revenue:
Jerry Klein, “Made in Peoria: The Birth of Industry,”
Peoria Magazine
, Jan. 2011.

21     
city of violent contrasts:
Morrow, “Peoria,” pp. 20–21, 119.

22     
outhouses:
1950 United States Census of Housing, Peoria, Illinois Block Statistics,
1950 Housing Report, Vol. 5, Part 142 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952).

22     
“Don’t bother my racket”:
“This Was Peoria,”
Peoria Journal Star
, Apr. 15, 1956, p. A8.

22     
it had the votes:
Ed Woodruff . . . . “Peoria likes to live”:
“Illinois: By the River,”
Time
, Feb. 26, 1945, p. 17;
“bums cluttered its steps”:
Betty Friedan, “Now They’re Proud of Peoria,”
Reader’s Digest
, Aug. 1955, p. 93.

22     
“wide open as the gateway to hell” . . . the sex trade:
“Old Peoria? As Wide Open as the Gateway to Hell,”
Peoria Journal
, Apr. 14, 1956, p. 1.

23     
“When I had left Chicago”:
Anonymous with John Bartlow Martin,
My Life in Crime: The Autobiography of a Professional Criminal
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952), p. 219.

23     
Madams . . . register their girls:
“Old Peoria: Fixed Cops, Gang Murders, Wholesale Kidnappings,”
Peoria Journal
, Apr. 15, 1956;
by a doctor for venereal disease:
“This Was Peoria,” p. A8;
twenty dollars a month . . . “Special Miscellaneous”:
Wayne Slater, “Oldest Profession Amateurish Now,”
Peoria Journal Star
, Nov. 2, 1980, p. D1;
newsstands and neighborhood drugstores:
“This Was Peoria,” p. A8;
even near local schools:
“Old Peoria? As Wide Open,” p. 1.

23     
its black residents:
Romeo B. Garrett,
The Negro in Peoria
(Peoria, IL: self-published, 1973), pp. 80, 93–95.
Like many northern cities before World War II:
On segregation in the North, see Thomas Sugrue,
Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North
(New York: Random House, 2008).

24     
a city of grudging compromises:
Garrett,
The Negro in Peoria
, pp. 47–48, 93–94;
There might be black policemen:
Author’s interview with John Timmes, May 15, 2011;
could not arrest white people:
Author’s interview with Loren Cornish, May 19, 2011.

24     
“queen of Peoria’s half world”:
“Underworld—Women,” Peoriana collection, Peoria Public Library, pp. 2335–42.

25     
butcher . . . chauffeur . . . entertainer:
Polk’s Peoria Directory
(St. Louis: Polk, 1938), pp. 79, 392;
elevator operator:
Polk’s Peoria Directory
(St. Louis: Polk, 1941), p. 127;
“the backside of life”:
Maureen Orth, “The Perils of Richard Pryor,”
Newsweek
, Oct. 3, 1977, p. 62. Unlike Marie’s other children, her son William does not appear to have become involved in the businesses she ran.

25     
over
two hundred pounds:
Author’s interview with Cecil Grubbs, July 9, 2010;
Golden Gloves boxing tournament:
“LeRoy Pryor Jr.,”
Peoria Journal Star
, Oct. 2, 1968;
recruiting the girls and the johns:
Author’s interview with Allen Pryor, Nov. 10, 2010;
six feet tall . . . six foot two:
Author’s interview with Cecil Grubbs, July 9, 2010

25     
“Don’t mess with my money” . . . whites were not to be harassed:
Ibid.;
her straight razor . . . “a lot of men”:
Author’s interview with David Sprattling, July 16, 2010; author’s interview with Rob Cohen, Aug. 18, 2010;
customary 50 percent:
Anonymous,
My Life in Crime
, p. 222;
upgraded to a pistol:
Author’s interview with Sharon Wilson Pryor, Dec. 15, 2010.

26     
“I’ll put my twelves”:
Author’s interview with Barbara McGee, Dec. 14, 2010.

26     
“I was raised to hate cops”:
James McPherson, “The New Comic Style of Richard Pryor,”
New York Times Magazine
, Apr. 27, 1975, p. 34;
“all the political people”:
Felton, “This Can’t Be Happening to Me,” p. 44;
“As fast as they would come in”:
Author’s interview with Cecil Grubbs, July 9, 2010.

26     
One of Richard’s neighbors recalled:
Author’s interviews with Rosalyn Taylor, Nov. 30, 2010, and Dec. 2, 2010.

26     
background of Richard Pryor’s mother:
1930 U.S. Federal Census (Population Schedule), Pilot Township, Vermilion County, IL, Robert Thomas household;
A more attainable sort of glamour:
Edie Harris, e-mail communication with author, Nov. 11, 2010.

27     
the Thomas family relocated to Peoria:
Polk’s Peoria Directory
(St. Louis, Mo.: Polk, 1940), p. 572;
Polk’s Peoria Directory
(St. Louis, Mo.: Polk, 1941), pp. 651, 821;
Gertrude was light-skinned:
Description of Gertrude taken from photograph in author’s possession;
Peoria madams preferred:
Anonymous,
My Life in Crime
, p. 224;
the professional name of Hildegarde:
Rovin,
Richard Pryor
, p. 12.

27     
And what did Gertrude see:
Description of Buck taken from photographs in author’s possession.

28     
“If I Didn’t Care”:
Phil Doubet,
My Pryor Year: A 333 Soul Anthology
(Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2006), p. 552;
wooed another woman who would carry his child:
Author’s interview with Barbara McGee, Dec. 14, 2010.

28     
Marie took Gertrude’s side:
Rovin,
Richard Pryor
, p. 13.

28     
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor:
“Births,”
Peoria Daily Record
, Dec. 4, 1940.

28     
“I wish” . . . “made it her job”:
Pryor Convictions
, pp. 15, 20. In interviews, Pryor often referred to both Gertrude and his stepmother Ann as his “mother.” This has bred some confusion among previous biographers. Gertrude was largely out of his life after his parents’ divorce, when he was five; Ann was a presence in his life for almost twenty years, from the late 1940s until her death in 1967. Biographers have tended to conflate the two in a single portrait of a mother who worked for his grandmother as a prostitute, but Gertrude’s life as a prostitute seems to have been considerably briefer than Ann’s, and Ann appears to have worked largely for Richard’s father in the 1950s and ’60s.