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PHENIX CITY--A documentary on public television tells about the transformation of an Alabama city so wicked that Gen. George S. Patton threatened to roll his tanks across the river from Ft. Benning and destroy it. "Up From the Ashes: The Rebirth of Phenix City" shows how the National Guard crushed a crime syndicate here in 1954, radically changing the course of this historic river town. Located in Russell County, Phenix City is on the Chattahoochee River, opposite Columbus, Ga. Most of the area's jobs have always been in Georgia at the mills and at Ft. Benning. Since Phenix City lacked the revenue that jobs bring in, the city fathers took an unusual step. "They voted to authorize gambling to come in, illegally, of course, and they collected revenue in the form of licenses of illegal gambling operations," explains former governor John Patterson. "This was a conscious decision that the city fathers made." During WWII, many of the 100,000 soldiers who were stationed at Ft. Benning visited the clubs, gambling halls, and houses of prostitution in Phenix City. They often got into trouble with the owners of these establishments. "They would completely take advantage of these soldiers," says Margaret Anne Barnes, author of "The Tragedy and Triumph of Phenix City, Alabama." "They would get them drunk or get them to gamble and take all of a man's money, and if he objected about being ill-treated, then he was beat up and sometimes killed." But some of Phenix City's citizens, led by local merchant Hugh Bentley, were ashamed of the city's tarnished reputation and organized to bring an end to the crime. Bentley's house was bombed, which made him only more determined to root out the criminals. When Bentley ally Albert Patterson ran for attorney general on an anti-crime platform, the syndicate tried fixing the election and buying votes. Patterson, a Phenix City attorney, won the election but was gunned down on the street before he could clean up the town. "The end result of my father's murder is that the people of Alabama had had enough," says John Patterson, who followed in his father's footsteps and became attorney general and governor. "They insisted something be done about it. So they sent the National Guard in, put it under martial law, and busted up the gambling joints, burned all the equipment, and prosecuted about six or seven hundred people, and, in the course of the next year, cleaned it up." |
Phenix City Is Reborn
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