Welcome to N'digo Studio.

I'm Hermene Hartman.

And have we got a show for you today?

The mantra of Indigo has been to tell stories untold, mis told and need to be retold.

And today we check all the boxes.

We tell the tale of a Chicago history.

Harriet Jones is the granddaughter of Ed Jones, and she wanted the real story of her grandfather to be known.

He was the king of kings.

And hers is a documentary that premieres at the Chicago International Film Festival.

My father, Edward Jones, he was a gentleman.

He was just a good person.

He took a nickel and dime operation.

And he built an empire.

They made about 110, $115 million, which was equivalent to about $1,000,000,000.

I would have to call them the Robin Hood of Chicago.

I would have to call them the Robin Hood of Chicago.

During the depression Cause he took care of people seeing the success of people like Ed Jones.

We were inspired.

The door was going to be opened.

Be ready to walk in.

Black people were not admitted to the Cotton Club.

But my father was well known at that moment.

And so they let him in.

My mother was part of the cast.

She was made with Josephine Baker.

people admire so much in France and in the States?

She was just another black person.

She did not like the characterization of her grandfather.

And she did something about it.

It's in the documentary that we will share with you today.

Nate Thompson.

Well, he is an author, author of a book, Kings.

It's a story of a game, a numbers game policy that is the precursor of what we recognize today as the lottery.

This is a story you've not her or you have misheard.

And I want you to go get your mom and your granddad and gather around because we're going to tell you a story about Mr. Mr Ed Jones..

Conversations drop the knowledge that's for real.

Funding for this program was provided by State of Illinois Representative LaShawn Ford, Community Trust.

The field Foundation.

Commonwealth Edison.

Broadway, Chicago and Governors State University.

Harriet, thank you for being with us all the way from Pairdee.

Thank you for having me.

Glad you came to Chicago.

And welcome.

Thank you very much.

Tell us, what is the story?

I know this has been a labor of love.

and long in the making, but you did it.

And congratulations.

It's such a beautiful film that you've done.

Why was it important for you to tell the story of Ed Jones?

It was very important for me to tell this story because it's an untold story, like you just mentioned, that the fact that even within my family, my mother never talked about it.

I mean, she did talk about her father saying what an amazing man he was.

But she never talked about his legacy, about his work.

Think about the fact that he went to jail.

He had been kidnaped.

I mean, it's such an amazing and rich story full of rollercoaster ride, things you can't even believe and everything is true.

So for me, it was very important to tell this story not only for my family but also for Chicago, because it's so Chicago story and it's an American story and it's an American story and it's a South Side.

Chicago, Story, South Side.

Michelle, Michelle, put it on the map.

It's so Nate.

Describe the game of policy.

It's a numbers game.

But how did it come about?

Where did it come from?

How did start in Chicago?

Well, it started in Chicago with a man named Sam Young, otherwise known as Policy Sam.

He came up from the south, from Alabama in 1885, landed in Chicago with his street corner hustle called Policy.

Later, he hooked up with the Benvenuti brothers and they turned it into a business.

Fast forward to Ed Jones.

He turned it into a corporate business.

An empire.

Yes.

Okay.

How does the game work?

Three numbers.

Three numbers.

Two numbers.

One number 12 numbers.

It depends.

So when you play in policy, you have what is called the one legged book.

And the two legged book, the one legged book is the one stream of numbers, two legged book, two streams of numbers.

So you can literally pick double digit combinations for your numbers.

12 16 64 would have you.

So there's about maybe 15 different ways you can win this combination.

The best is the gig.

There's the stovepipe, there's the saddle, there's lots of different bed combinations.

And what's the what's the what's the return on investment?

Well, depending on what decade and how high the police involvement was, sometimes a nickel could pay off $5.

Sometimes a nickel could pay off $100.

Okay.

Okay.

Depending.

Then it had some contingency factors.

Okay.

So the Southside was the place to be in this era.

What years are we talking about?

We.

We're talking about.

Okay, so when Policy Sam landed here, this was in 1885.

A couple of years later, he accepted the Benvenuti brothers.

Now, when we get to the Jones brothers, it was actually the baby brother Mack, who went into the policy business first, working for another guy who operated a shop across the street from their tailor shop.

This would be in the 1920s.

Now go.

Let's go back to your great grandfather, who was a Southerner, migration, a minister, and settled in Evanston.

Ed Jones, wanted to be a doctor, enrolled Northwestern University.

Racism kicks in, leaves Northwestern and goes to Howard University.

And one day, just as the hell with it, tired of the racism and came back home.

So obviously he was very, very smart.

He was, from everything I've gathered, the books I've read, I mean, it's not like there was so much information on him, but our on the interviews have done, he really seemed like a brilliant man when he actually went to jail.

They did a naked test on him.

And they've never seen such an intelligence, such a high IQ in their entire life.

He was brilliant and educated.

And he was educated.

Yes.

So the migration comes, so great migration comes.

So we got great numbers of black people coming from the South to settled in Chicago.

South Side is bustling.

Yes, it is.

Okay.

Tell me about South Side.

In those days, South side of Chicago is where most of them landed.

Chicago was offering jobs.

So we had Robert Abbott at the Chicago Defender newspaper trumpeting the call to leave the South, come to Chicago.

We got it going on.

jobs,respect, money, all that.

So the jobs are at the steel mill downtown and lots of places like steel mill, you know, there's lots of domestic jobs, there's all kinds of jobs, stockyards, stockyards, all kind of domestic work, some factories.

all kind of domestic work, some factories.

But now I understand a lot of people came to Chicago with the idea that they were going to get into the policy business.

These are the things that they heard about before they left the South.

Okay?

A lot of them knew exactly what they were going to do when they got here.

Okay.

So, Harriet, your father's in this business.

It is a business.

And he's doing very, very well.

Very, very successful.

But one of the things it's not told or you don't hear a lot about with the Jones brothers is they were a bank.

They were the lenders.

Black folks can't go to the bank.

We can't get a loan.

We can't open up beauty shop.

We came up a restaurant.

That's right.

But you could go to the Jones brothers and you could get a loan.

Talk about that aspect of it.

JONES Well, that's the thing.

My grandfather and other policy Kings actually really did win a lot of money, but they reinvested the money to the community were reinvested.

Absolutely.

And that's what's so great about it, because he allowed many student, for instance, to go to law school, to go to medical schools.

He put a lot of money.

And Chalu is the boxer into the Chicago Creatores to became the Harlem Glotrotters.

He allowed a lot of businesses legitimate businesses to open and that's why themselves Brownsville.

was such a thriving community in the thirties and forties, though not Bronzeville yet the Black Belt, the Black Belt, the South Side, the South side of Chicago.

So it's flourishing.

We got clubs, we got theaters, we got boutiques, we got haberdashery, we got jewelry, stuff, professional people.

You have doctors, you have lawyers, you have dentists on down the list.

Wherever you can find a legitimate occupation in this country, you will find that same occupation in the policy business.

Okay, Now let's fast forward.

Mr. Jones leaves Chicago, moves to Paris, 1937.

Why the 1937 is the year that they opened the Ben Franklin store.

The Ben Franklin stores are very important department store.

So African-Americans could be able to buy all the things they couldn't have access to.

And he's going to move to Paris because he wanted to put his three children in a really good school.

And of course, because of segregation, they were turned down.

So I think that was one more thing that said enough with this discrimination.

And he decided to move to Paris.

When my grandmother used to leave, she lived in Europe and mostly in Paris in the early 1920s when she was a dancer at Night club, she used to dance with Josephine Baker, so she knew Paris.

She really love the fact that they could go anywhere there, etc.

So I think she was a big part of the choice of moving to France and the racism was totally eliminated.

It's not totally eliminated because, of course, I mean, it's totally different over there.

African-Americans could go absolutely wherever they wanted.

They could go to restaurants and to clubs.

They could put the children in any schools, etc..

I can't say that discrimination didn't exist at all.

I'm sure it must have existed in that effort, but not at all like in the US.

Okay, so now you come back, your grandfather comes back to the States, to Chicago, because World War Two broke out and the Nazis took over the apartment that they lived in.

Well, that's pretty amazing.

It was one of the headquarters of the Nazis because the apartment was really beautiful apartment.

And I mean the Nazis.

The DSS had many headquarters, and that was one of them.

So that's pretty wild.

So that's why they left in 1939, of course, when World War Two broke out and they came back to Chicago.

So, Nate, here's here's a budding question.

Why was policy illegal?

It's just it's just a numbers game.

What was the illegality?

I mean, when it comes down to something like that, you're talking about the private sector generating revenue that the government is in.

That government can't have it very much like cannabis does today.

Exactly.

It's just like liquor prohibition.

Exactly.

I mean, none of that stuff is new.

It's that old, literally.

And in the case of African-Americans, there was never a time where we were going to be allowed to take the lead.

Yeah, that's what that was about.

Was it really black organized crime in the sense that it was illegal?

It becomes a crime.

All right.

Now we got politicians involved.

We got preachers involved.

Give me that connection between policy.

The preacher, not the minister, the preacher and the police and city hall Money, plain and simple.

You're talking about the Depression years and you're also talking about the fact that Chicago was a global mecca for gamblers, period.

No matter what your race was.

So people come to Chicago one way or another, had an idea in their head that they were going to get paid.

Is this is this Al Capone era?

This is pre during and post Al Capone era pre during and exist.

And Al Capone is doing no more than trying to sell liquor.

Al Capone got here working for his uncle.

They're selling liquor liquor.

And in that business in that world you can't trust anybody is the reason the guy he was working for got murdered.

But you know, on that side of the fence, it's more about the money and less about, you know, they talk about all this honor and, you know, respect.

None of that's happening in the real world now.

Also, somebody that got killed was Sir Mack, who was the mayor of the city of Chicago.

Sir Mack, is that where Chicago ain't ready for reform comes from?

It comes along a little later, but that's kind of the origin of it.

It's the thinking, the politics and the corruption.

You could not separate them.

That's just what it was about.

It was together.

You know, when you start breaking down the ethnic groups that arrived in Chicago and began to progress for themselves, the Irish, the Italians and so forth, these are the things that they left Europe with.

These are the things that they landed in America with.

And this is the practice that they continue to engage in while they were here.

Harriet, fast forward, Your grandfather goes to jail.

Tell me about the jail period and what happened and how he changed.

Well, he's going to go to jail in 1940 when he comes back from Europe.

The IRS is going to go after him and he's going to be convicted for income tax evasion.

At the beginning, it was him and his two brothers and also his mother.

But he decided that he was going to take the plea on his own and that he would go alone.

So he back and with the with the government.

So he would be the only one who would go to jail.

He spent the two years and that's where his he met Sam Johncono And now it's such a pity because that's when he's going to tell that Italian gangster.

All the money that was being made in the South side of Chicago with the policy business.

So of course the gangsters, the mob, which is called the outfit here in Chicago, were looking for new venues to make more money.

Now that prohibition was over since the 1933.

And when they heard all that money that was being turned in the South Side, they were amazed.

And that was Sam.

That was the gangster in the center and can yes, Sam Giancana is going to become a to the.

Everybody knows about Al Capone but Sam can is going to be so powerful he's going to become the boss of the outfit and eventually down the line he's going to keep a lot of money for the election of JFK.

He's going to be the one working, of course, with Joseph Kennedy.

He's going to be working with the CIA, with the people in Cuba, with the casinos, etc..

Eventually, he's going to get the shot in 1975.

But his trajectory is absolutely amazing.

And he's said in the book that was written by his son and his brother that he became who he became thanks to his encounter with Edward Jones, right.

In prison.

Wow.

So you talk in the movie about the one drop factor.

Talk about the one drop factor and how you interpret that.

Well, the went to a pool.

It's of course, it was a racist law which said at the time that anyone who had one drop of African-American blood, of sub-Saharan blood basically was considered black.

And when you if you considered black, you lose most of your rights and most of your opportunities.

So for me, that was very important Because I had two children, the Parisians, the very French, they look extremely white.

And I'm trying I was trying for them to understand that if they had grown up in the time of segregation, basically they would have not been allowed to go to restaurants, to nightclubs, because that stage, to a lot of the schools, they would have been very difficult for them to afford to get good jobs, to go to good schools, universities, etc..

So the one drop rule is really something that goes throughout the film because not only symbolizes that a lot, but it also symbolizes, of course, the blood that runs to all our vines who have a very extended family.

And so since we spread all over the world, so that's the connection with that Edward Jones the white gangster, Sam Gigante, when he takes over the policy.

Does it change?

I mean, is it a difference in the game?

The only difference is that the money is now leaving the black community and it is now lending in the coffers of the Italian mob and their families.

So are they still lending money?

No.

Okay.

All of that.

that's over.

that's over.

In the early 1950s, that's when they managed to make you Pedro.

When they killed Ted Row 1952 films, but nothing in it.

So let's talk about Ted Roe.

Okay.

So the Jones brothers, they leave Chicago.

Well, they're back and forth, their back and forth, back and forth to Mexico.

To Mexico and to Paris.

Okay.

And so now we've got operating officer.

And that is Ted Row, Okay, so then what happens?

Well, Ted Row is the last holdout in the larger story, in the overarching story.

He was the Jones brothers lieutenant.

He was the man that ran the day to day operations of business.

He was half-Italian.

Half black.

Wouldn't take nothing from nobody.

Okay, now, this is where the whole idea of the gangster comes in.

Where Jones is.

Call a gangster.

You resent that, and you don't like that.

But there was not a gangster.

He was not a gangster policy.

Let's be clear.

There were some black gangsters everywhere.

But these policy kings we're talking about, they were not gangsters.

They were racketeers.

The difference?

A gangster uses the gun to get what he wants.

The racketeer uses the gun to protect what he has.

Wow.

How much money are we talking about?

I mean, we're seeing real time empires.

What's.

What's the dollars in the real time?

At the height of the national business, you're looking at $200 million annually.

And in today's that's $200 million yesterday.

So in today's money, that translates to a billion a better.

So Quincy Jones is his Quincy Jones Chicagoan.

Born, raised till about ten, 11, 12 years old in Chicago.

And his father worked for the Jones brothers.

He was the carpenter.

And Quincy says Ed Jones was a gangster.

My father was never a gangster.

It smells like plans make him into a saint.

You know, the.

That is a gangster.

All right.

Now, react.

Respond to that.

And the way you look at it, it was just he just have jobs.

People think if you have a gun, you're a gangster having a gun.

I got a lot of gangsters made When a gangster.

Okay.

Again, what makes you a gangster?

That you use the gun to get what you want.

That's what makes you a gangster.

You walk into any joint.

I walked into this room.

I want every camera.

I want every tripod in here.

And here's my pistol in case anybody has anything to say about it, I'm leaving.

That's a gangster.

I'm taking what I want, and this is what's going to help me do it.

Okay?

I think the reason also why they were talking about gangsters, it was the fact that at that time the game was illegal when it became legal.

We're not talking about gangsters anymore.

Once the whites took it over, the whole thing of gangster shit.

I agree with Nate, and for me there were racketeers when in the film, for instance, at what point Robert Lombardo, who used to be a cop in Chicago, he said that the policy kings used to mind their own businesses.

It was just the gambling, and that was it.

If you think of the mob, the outfit, it was prostitution.

It was drugs.

They were doing bank robberies, doing a lot of horrible things, which was never the case with policy Kings, like Nathan said.

A few, I think Walt Kelly perhaps was real gangster, but actually the others minding their own business.

So fast forward policy becomes legal and it becomes what we recognize today as the lottery.

How does that happen?

First, when it was taken from us, the government allowed the mob to run it for 20 years without interference before it became the state lottery.

It is very important to point out the takeover of policy from black Americans happened in concert with local police, sheriffs, state attorneys, police, politicians, IRS.

we're talking about a law, a list of various levels of law enforcement that collectively worked in concert to bring these guys down, not just Chicago from one state to the next.

So it was policy in other city.

Yes.

Major urban cities.

You had a major black metropolis.

You had policy in numbers.

How do we get to the legalization of policy?

We get to the legalization when it becomes the lottery nationwide.

The government There is never a time when we are not under the microscope of the United States government.

Black people, black people, black people, business people, non business people.

If you are black, you are under the microscope, period.

That's it.

So when you look at the progress that these men were making, so these guys are generating millions of dollars.

They're not just buying Cadillacs and fur coats.

They are building hospitals, medical centers, they are investing in medical professionals.

They're investing in lawyers.

Don King even once said there are a whole lot.

he said there's an awful lot of doctors and lawyers, they got this start in the numbers business.

Well, one thing I was telling somebody this, one of the investments was a man named Joe Louis.

That's right.

Absolutely.

Joe Louis was heavyweight champion.

The heavyweight champion had a few others like him.

And yeah, sports, the national.

We had football, we had basketball.

We had all of the same things that we were discriminated against, discriminated from.

We went out and built Moses the Negro, Negro baseball, baseball, basketball league, Negro football league.

All of these things were in the progress of being financed.

Some of them made it.

Some of them didn't.

But all these things were happening in real time.

This is where the money was going.

So the money was really being dispersed.

The money with the black community in the black community, we were building what we needed.

We were building our own businesses.

We were providing our own jobs.

We did not have to go to white people for money when we wanted to run for political office.

We were self-contained.

That's the part that has been left out of the history books.

They just want you to think about the ropes down around our necks and the water hoses that were being blown on us and the dogs that were attacking us.

So tell me about State Representative Caldwell and what he was going of Caldwell.

You wanted to legalize policy.

This is at a time when lottery is coming on line from state to state.

But they were Cliff, Lou Caldwell, Harold Washington, that whole league of Black political professionals is is here in Washington as a fresh freshman state.

That's right.

They because they came up in this they all grew up in Bronzeville before Joe Washington's father was an attorney who represented many policy kings.

Okay.

So they introduced the bill to make policy legal.

And then the government did never move left.

But they they left.

But then they came up with a game and said, Nice try, but we're still taking this.

Okay.

And that's how we got and that's what's been happening ever since.

Wow.

You got a you got a movie on the on the, on the horizon?

Yes, I do.

And it is going to be about the policy is going to be about the policy kings, about Chicago, about the Jones brothers.

Quincy and I have been working on this for a very, very long time.

So one of the things I want to point out about both of your projects, your book, your movie, is that they were self-financed.

You didn't wait for Simon and Schuster and you didn't wait for MGM to come, but you did.

These stories was so important that you took it upon yourself to do it yourself.

Thank you so much, Nate Thompson.

Thank you, Harret jones.

Thank you for doing the story.

And I hope we've set the record straight.

You today have had a black perspective give an authentic perspective of what the game of policy was and how we got a lottery.

Thanks for watching.

I'm Hermene Hartman with N'digo Studio.

For more information about this show, follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Funding for this program was provided by State of Illinois Representative La Shawn Ford Community Trust, the Field Foundation, Commonwealth Edison, Broadway, Chicago and Governors State University N'DIGO STUDIO.