A Hustler's Life

the world of black organized crime. These two guys were like two sides of the same coin, and just like J. D. Hudson, I knew that in order to fully understand this world, these players, and these events, I would have to find out who Chicken Man was too, who he really was, and how his life led him to be in the crosshairs. The life of the hustler with my dad was he liked nice things, he liked to dress well, he liked behind cars. So in order to have those things, he

hustled me listen then, don't hear that? And the press of made them bat We started moving a lout of marijuana. Shipments start coming in really really big. I'm talking about two tons three times. I matter one of the girls who would come by and say, I don't know his name both I think he called Chicken Man man from my Heart Radio and Doghouse Pictures. This is Fight Night. I'm Jeff Keating. In episode one, we found out that Chicken Man had been killed in a supposed gangling assassination

according to the New York Times and numerous other sources. Luckily, I was able to track down his son, Gordon Williams Jr. To help me fill in the missing pieces of his dad's story. Well, the early year is where my dad growing up. My dad was in the military, of course, but I was so young, I really don't remember his

military years. But when he came home, Dad when his hustling started, and it started as bootlegging, wound shining, and that turned into number writing, which is now a forming of Georgia Lottery, because Georgia Lottery ran a lot of the number bookies out of the business. That's right. Chicken Man's first major source of income as a hustler was the illegal lottery, also known at that time is playing

the numbers or the bug. You get the individual who plays the numbers, And they called my dad, Hey, listen, my numbers already, come pick them up, just like cash three today you go buy and you pick your numbers up. Here's the story in Dr Maurice Hopson. The lottery in the black community, often known as the bug, was a real source of income. Someone will play a number, they will be able to win three to four hundred times

the amount that they put down. It allowed for the lucky ones to actually gettin some income to do some of the things that they wanted to do. I mean whether it's to pay bills or buy a new car or whatever whatnot. So it was a real stream of income, and it was believed to be a stream of income, but it was a risky way to make a living.

And Chicken Man knew that the easiest way to get busted for running numbers was getting caught with the actual list of players names and their picks, known as the ribbon. But Chicken Man figured out an innovative way to get rid of the evidence. He printed his ribbon on flash paper and he wrote these numbers down on this piece of paper and lit it with a cigarette lighter and threw it in the air and there was no ashes. And I was like, oh my god, this is so.

I was gonna back back then, I was in school, I was gonna take it the show and tail saying you know, I was a show to people that hey, I got paper that can disappear in the air. But that became real popular because if you get caught with those not what you're going to jail. Before the Georgia Lottery essentially legitimized number running in the state and forced hustlers like Chicken Man to look for other ways to make money. The numbers were an important source of revenue

within the black community. Here's Dr Hobson. The lottery becomes not only a source of revenue, it becomes a vehicle to an aspect of prosperity in a particular kind of way, and so people embody the numbers. The number runners or men and women in the community were seen as pull as in the community because they always have money. They made sure that people, you know I had food, They buried the day, they took care of the sick, They gave little kids money. So even though it's criminal activity,

they're not seen as criminals per se. One of the biggest lottery men in Atlanta was Wesley Merit. He was known around town as a banker because not only did he finance and profit from his illegal operations. He also loaned money to members of the black community who couldn't go to an actual bank. Here's Chicken Man's son, Gordon Williams Jr. Western Mayor was like the mayor of Atlanta is one of the biggest bankers in Atlanta. You know

what I mean. Everybody to Wesley Merrit for everything. If you needed help, you needed some money, West the Merit will help you out. He would help you. You would have to pay him back, of course. But Western Merritt was a very good guy, a good friend of my dad. My dad respected him. He was not a very flamboy and a flashy kind of person. Quiet man loved where you know, a colored white shirt, starched blue overalls, and shine shoes. And so that was his trademark is you know,

to be clean but not flashy. Merritt was also known for taking care of the sick, for burying the dead, for sending children to schools, for feeding the hungry. He was considered to be the kind of person who could prop up of community. He was known for putting lights on streets that didn't have lights. He was instrumental in trying to help roads get paved in the black community. He was committed and dedicated to Black communities flourishing and was willing to step in and ways in which the

city of Atlanta had failed black communities. Even Detective J. D. Hudson, a no nonsense cop whose job it was to chase down and arrest criminals, saw the value in hustlers like chicken Men and Wesley Merrit taking care of their own community. You take a hustler and put them here, and then you take the president and hustler hustling put them over here. The two divent. It is so the best citizen in

the city. They go to church, they spend money at church, They feed the hungred, they be rent, they support the wime seated Red Cross. They send that you're in the college, but they don't hear. The hustlers and the press have made them bad people, hi criminals. Wesley Merrit also owned a pool hall on Hunter Street that was a very popular meeting place for diverse cross section of the black community. You have your ministers that would come that way. You

would have your entertainers who would come to town. They would frequent Wesley Merits pool hall. You have your politicians that would come to the spot. You have your businessmen shoot a couple of rounds of pool and have a couple of drinks, smoke a cigar or something of that nature.

But it also brought in the hustling community in Atlanta, I mean bootleggers, other number runners, you know, pimping and pandering, all aspects of the game, money, laundry, all kind of things took place in these pool halls, and all kinds of characters hung around this pool hall, hustlers we've already mentioned, like Fireball and Buddy Gloss and of course Chicken Man. J D remembers the first time he ever met Chicken Man at a restaurant across the street from the historically

black Clark Atlanta University. But it wasn't what you call a friendly encounter. That makes Chicken Man. When I was a rook at policeman, I was in a Capital restaurant, a frostrate from the school and in a Hubcami and asked me to get out of my seat. They did nothing, And I guess, look at us is because that's truly in the streets and spina who got to spend, You got spreended. And that was the first time that you met Chicken Man. Yeah, he was. He was devided god

of the Husbus. Papa Chicken Man was with Short Papa a k a. Robert Vambrose and they were actually hitting on j D's girlfriend. J D gave Short Papa quite the beating after being disrespected, which led to Chicken Man testifying against j D and court as a witness to the assault. But j D never held a grudge against him because Chicken Man told the truth and j D valued honesty. The Chicken Man's testimony led to j d's suspension. The two would eventually form a friendship. The hit on

Chicken Man was still weighing on my mind. After spending time with his son, Gordon Williams Jr. I was starting to develop a real picture of the man who hosted the infamous Fight Night after party. The robbery of this party would ultimately get him killed, according to a New York Times article. But was the hit justified? Had he organized the robbery or was he just another victim? To find out, I needed to learn more about Chicken Man's

past and his life as a hustler. My dad always was chasing a dollar from Bootleg and Moon China to write numbers to drugs and it became lucrative for him, and it helped us have a good lifestyle. Also, the lag and fall suss like that you're big on the top and you get locked up, you lose a big set, you get overhead and you go down, and you get the work back up and you go down. I think that with the life of rustle, the life of the

hustler with my dad was he liked nice things. He loved nice things, he liked to dress well, he liked jury, he liked find cars, women. So in order to have those things, he hustled, and that in turn led to him hustling more and more. There was times that I don't even think he would sleep. He would just go, go, go, go go. It was phenomenal watching him just go from doing numbers and bootleg too drugs because it was a whole different lifestyle and the money was coming so fast.

The money was coming, like extremely fast into the house. I learned from Chicken men Son that in their communities hustling was considered a business, not a criminal activity. I remember he was dating a lady one time called Ola May, and she was a shoplifter and she had three daughters and all three the door to shoplifted, and they would dress up in really fine, nice clothes and they would go to Landry Square. And I remember Ola May getting a tuxedle for me for my junior singer pram So.

My dad, he was into a lot of different aspects of hustling, but soon Chicken Man started getting into the far more risky and lucrative world of drug dealing. It all started with smuggling marijuana out of one of the country's most notorious drug mechas, Miami, Florida. My dad, he liked Miami. My dad was one of the only black members in the Jockey Club in Miami. They only had three black members Sammy Davis Junior, Muhammad Ali and my Dad. That's how powerful this guy was. The Jockey Club and

the Cricket Club. But he was one of the three black members in that era. And and liking to go to Miami, he met drug dealers. He met this one particular guy. And this guy was a record producer, real powerful guy in Miami, real powerful. He had marijuana connections, cocaine connection and he liked my dad. He loved my dad. Well, I speak Spanish fluently because I married a Cuban. I

would translate for my dad. So we were by the marijuana from him and we would bringing to Atlanta, we take it to Chattanooga, we take it up to Detroit, and doing that we started moving a lout of marijuana. They started talking about bigger shipments, and shipments started coming in really really big. I'm talking about two tons, three tons of marijuana. Chicken Men's business was booming, but it

wasn't without some close calls. Here's Gordon Williams Jr. With his car up with marijuana, and we're in Florida, because that's what most of our business all came from. And my dad had bought a condo in Inverary, which is owned by Jackie Gleasa back at the time, really exclusive neighborhood, really exclusive, and we were getting ready to leave to come to Atlanta. In Florida, you know what they're saying everywhere.

He got stuck in the sand with the marijuana and we were trying to figure out how we're gonna get out of this, and a cop came along and helped us get out of the hole without accident, not a question, and and my dad was like, oh God, man, I can't believe this. And the cop pulled us out of the sand and said, y'all have a great day. This wasn't the only example of chicken me and leading a charmed life. Well, we had got so much marijuana that there was marijuana still left in Atlanta, but we were

in Miami picking up another thousand pounds of marijuana. So we're taking the back rolls coming through Cluiston, Florida, because we didn't want to go to Turnpike. So the van smelt like marijuana because the van was full full, I mean from the back all the way to the front. So we're taking twenty nine coming through Okachobee, coming up the back rows and there's a cow in the middle of the highway and we damn smash it. And we smashed the cow. My dad said, oh, ship, what are

we gonna do? He said, well, let's go to the gas station. The water was coming out, was running hot and everything, and we parked there and we asked the guy there, could he fix the van? He said, yeah, we actually did have a car we could use. You know, sure, I got a car you can use. We transferred the marijuana right there in the back of the gas station from the van to the car, put it in the trunk and in the back seat and drove to Atlanta

with bales of marijuana in the back seat. Chicken Man's luck also seemed to extend to those closest to him. My dad had friends who got robbed, and he had friends who got killed as a result of the drug business, but not an own circle. Never an own circle. My dad never carried a gun, never carried a gun, and whenever he wanted to do business, he never had a pistol, and the people who he did business with never had guns because if there was a gun, president that deal

was off. Never used the scale, trusted that it was a thousand pounds or whatever it was. Give them money, they would never count it. That's it was that type of trust between the drug dealers and my dad. It was always trust. It was you know, I knew your family, you knew my family. I knew your kids, you knew my kids. I knew your wife, you know my wife. I was starting to get an idea of who Chicken Man was and the life he led as a hustler. But I was curious how did he get his nickname.

The way my dad got the name Chicken Man was that was Pascal Brothers. Of course it's no longer there anymore. But my dad would buy the young girls chicken sandwiches. So when the girls would come by and he saw a girl that he fancy or he was trying to get with, he is that baby he wanted chicken sandwich, and yeah, baby, give me a chicken sandwich. So he will buy him a chicken sandwich. So in turn, the girls who would come by and say, I don't know his name, but I think they called him chicken Man.

And that's how the name started. That chicken stand would grow into Pascal's Restaurants, famous for their fried chicken. Pascals became a main on Hunter Street. Here's Dr Hobson. Paschal started between two brothers whose mother taught them to cook. Both of the brothers began to cook, but one of them married and basically would cook food for the youth at the Atlantic University Center out of his kitchen at home. Well, it got to be overwhelming, particularly with this student movement

and all kind of different things. The Pascal brothers realized that they can that they can really make this into a restaurant. Their location on West Hunter Street, which is not Martin Luther King Drive was on the edge of the Atlantic University Center. So of course it's going to be overwhelming black and said the historically black part of town. So the thing about it is Paschals would allow for political folk to kind of come in and have discussions.

The one caveat was that you had to order the fried chicken and you had to tell everyone that the fried chicken was the best fried chicken in the land. Pascal's was the meeting place for black people. Anybody who was somebody would pass through Pascals. This is Bunny Jackson Ransom, the former wife of Maynard Jackson, who was the first black mayor of Atlanta. There was a kind of bar restaurant.

Then you could go sit down and have breakfast, and if you sit there long enough, anybody who was anybody who was black, we're going to pass through Pascals. Then there was a room further down the hall where you could go and have a private party. And of course there was a hotel that came later, Pastor's Hotel. I think I might have had a couple of parties there, like the ladies would have their Bridge Club parties there. Pascal's had a wide variety of clientele that would come there.

It was hustlers, it was politicians, it was businessman, it was family. It was people like Chicken Man that would come for the great fried chicken and the great conversation and sometimes business deal is in the back room. The first time that I heard the word hustler was when my dad took me to see the Hustler with Paul Newman. I'm gonna beat him, Mr. I beat him all night and I'm gonna beat him all day. But this was

something completely different. These hustlers were from a world I knew nothing about, and I was about to get a first hand education. Everything I heard about Chicken Man told me he was highly intelligent and extremely resourceful. Here's his son, Gordon Williams Jr. Whatever it was he set out to do, he did it. We were hollyday marijuana who wanted to be just like a trucking business, so we bought cars with CBS and I mean with false bottom gas tanks.

He did stuff that was way before people was thinking about it, and I was like, this guy is really smart, really really smart. When we were transporting drugs from Miami to Atlanta, he would have one car empty, which would be the league car and the next car would be full. And we had CB radios and so that way we could notify the person behind us if there's a state trooper up or anything like that. Most of the time, the people that were driving the cars with the drugs

never had a truck key. They never could open it, and a lot of times they never knew what they were they were transporting. So my dad would just say, listen, you know, you want to make five three hundred dollars to drive this car from Miami. There's such and such, you know, don't worry about the trunk. Open the trunk. I mean that he did that for many, many years. J D believed that hustlers were often underestimated. But that is a mistake he would never make. You see, please

let them think the hustles are done. But there's some response people you want to need in your life. I always recognize that that's about to catch him. I never thought they were done. When it was announced that Muhammad Ali would fight Jerry Korey in Atlanta in October of nineteen seventy, the big time hustlers in New York thought it would be a perfect time to throw an after hours party and Chicken Man's friend Fireball, asked him to

help organize and host the party. Five artists of guys lived in Atlanta in the Northeast area that and so called Terment Bottom area, and left Atlanta and went to New York and the game hustler, drug dealer um lot remains and the five all want to throw a thick party and Atlanta after the fright. So he uh present invitations and passed them out to all. It may have been Fab five has written up or printed these engraved invitation had passed them out after the Ali fight had ended. No,

they were past about trip to the fight. Prior to the fight. Yeah, mat fact, we were able to uh not on to find out who had been, but they made we learned where they were. Frank. When I spoke with Gordon Williams Jr. I asked him about some of the names involved in the party and the robbery, including his dad's friends Fireball. Fireball was, I mean, he was a hustler, and he was a friend of my dad's, and he was somebody and my dad looked up to. He got his name through I think trying to cook

cocaine or something like that. He got his name Fireball. Another name that came up in my investigation was Buddy Gloss. Buddy Gloss now I knew him well. I knew Buddy Gloss well. He was a good friend of my dad and our family. So Buddy was he was always competing with my dad. It was it was like a competition. If my dad didn't numbers, but he did numbers. If my dad did marijuana, Buddy did. My dad did cocaine Buddy,

So they were always in competition with each other. And also Frank Moten, a top guy in an organization often referred to as the Black Mafia and one of the higher level gangsters of the party. All of these names are going to be important, but especially Frank Moten, who was known as the Black Godfather. He was reportedly the leader of the Council of Twelve, a group of top level decision makers for black organized crime. Back at j D's house, we had barely gotten into the story of

the robbery itself. He had told me about some of the key players, how the party came together, and I knew where all this was heading Chicken Man's murder at the hands of the Black Mafia. So I pulled out the article again. This is from the New York Times Wednesday, October. Informed sources associated with the police department suggested today that Williams is dead as there was sold of a contract released on him Gangland Terminology for an arrangement of his murder.

But what j D told me next would change everything. Okay, so he see this article. I thinks we're going be done within two days of the robberts. Jay was right, that's wrong, Oh thin Man, Jesse May, It's a lot. Now Chicken Man was alive. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The key to understanding what really happened the night of the Ali Quarry fight was alive. Now I had to track Chicken Man down and get his side

of the story. Fight Night is a joint production from My Heart Radio, Opacker Media and Doghouse Pictures in association with Psychopia Pictures. Produced and hosted by Jeff Keating. Executive producers are Will Packer, James Lopez, Kenny Burns, Dan Bush, Lars Jacobsen, and Noel Brown. Supervising producers Taylor Shacoyne. Story editors are Noel Brown and Dan Bush. Written by Jeff Keating and Jim Roberts, edited by Matt Owen. Mixing and

sound designed by Jeremiah Kolonnie Prescott. Music written and performed by The Diamond Street Players. Additional music by Ben Lovett. Audio archives courtesy of WSB News Film and Video Tape Collection, Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia Libraries. Special thanks to Dr Maurice Hobson and David Davis