The Rise and Fall of America's Wickedest City: Phenix City, Alabama

In 1933, Phenix City, Alabama went bankrupt. Facing $1.1 million in debt and no tax base of its own, the city government made a conscious decision: fund the municipal treasury through organized crime. For two decades, it worked. Gambling halls, lottery operations, and brothels lined Dillingham Street, drawing soldiers from nearby Fort Benning across the Chattahoochee River by the thousands. The syndicate bosses sat on the Chamber of Commerce and the hospital board. A factory on Dillingham Street manufactured loaded dice and marked cards for shipment nationwide. By the 1940s, the operation was siphoning an estimated $2 million a month from military paychecks, and the U.S. Secretary of War had given the town a name that stuck: the wickedest city in America. Then, on the night of June 18, 1954, someone murdered the one man who had promised to shut it all down — and his assassination accomplished exactly what it was meant to prevent. This is the story of how a small Southern city built its economy on vice, how an unlikely alliance of a sporting goods store owner and a conflicted lawyer tried to break the machine, and what happened when the governor of Alabama declared martial law and sent the National Guard to occupy an American city for the first and only time outside of a riot or natural disaster. Sources Encyclopedia of Alabama — "Phenix City" and "Albert L. Patterson" entries (encyclopediaofalabama.org) National Guard Association of the United States — "Last Resort," Aug. 2004 (ngaus.org) City of Phenix City official history page (phenixcityal.gov) Columbus State University Archives — Albert Patterson FBI File, Finding Aid MC 320 Edwin Strickland and Gene Wortsman, Phenix City (Vulcan Press, 1955) Margaret Anne Barnes, The Tragedy and Triumph of Phenix City, Alabama