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168 |
I TOOK CALIFORNIA |
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going to fight for our rights.3* That's what Anita told him, sitting there cool with that gun in her pocketbook. She was a wonderful woman. But it didn't do any good. Nothing helped. We spent fifteen hundred dollars for an attorney who wasn't worth a dime. He told the Commissioner, "Now, Mister Commissioner, this is a nice boy and I want you to give him a chance/*
iel don't want no sympathy/" 1 said, "1 demand my rights/'
The Commissioner looked at me—"You heard what the Captain said, boy. Well close you down if you alow dancing/' I guess what worried them was that my place was black and tan—for colored and white alike.
The night prohibition came in, the police told me it was the penitentiary for me if I sold liquor. From then on the police would hang around the door of The Jupiter and annoy the patrons with uncalled-for remarks—"Why do you come here? What's your name? Don t you know this place is likely to be raided any time?"
I finally told them they would have to get on away from my premises and, I was so angry, they moved on. Then that doggone Captain made a stoolie out of one of my waiters, named Frenchy; paid him to plant a bottle of whiskey in the slop barrel, but that fool went and got drunk at a bar owned by a friend, told this friend 1 was going to be raided and the friend tipped Anita off.
Anita found the whiskey and hid it. Just about that time, in came the Police Captain and said, "You re under arrest, because you're breaking the law."
Now 1 was getting so hot that I was just about ready to shoot somebody with that left-hand-wheeler of mine and I told that Police Captain, "Who said so?w
*CI said so."9
''Well, your word's no prayer book," I said and began to feel for my gun, because I had decided to go down fighting. Just then Anita kicked me under the table.
1 hollered, **Why are you kicking me under the table?** |
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