Ask most any elderly Kinstonian what the name "Sugar Hill" means to them, and you will probably get a sheepish grin and the answer, "whiskey houses — prostitution in Kinston."

Sugar Hill was one of the best known red light districts in the United States, prospering through several wars and depressions. It has been whispered about locally for almost a century and world famous for more than 50 years.

To the embarrassment of many, the infamous legacy of Sugar Hill will forever be entrenched in the history of Kinston and Lenoir County.

Although the records are not clear, many local historians believe Sugar Hill prostitution first appeared in Kinston during the Civil War. "It was an unsolicited and certainly unwanted Yankee contribution to the people of Kinston," one researcher concluded.

Prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, Kinston was a thriving river town with a population of about 1,000, a steamboat port and railway station on the Atlantic North Carolina Rail Road linking Beaufort to Goldsboro.

The only document the Olde Kinston Gazette found that even implied the presence of houses of ill repute in Kinston at the time of the Civil War is in a recent thesis entitled Lenoir County During The Civil War by Clifford C. Tyndall.

In his thesis, Tyndall described pre-Civil War Kinston as a rather "sedate little town." He wrote, "With its churches and industrious people, Kinston appeared to be a model of rural American piety."

Tyndall wrote that Kinston changed rather drastically during the Civil War with the appearance of sometimes thousands of Confederate soldiers who ended up being stationed around Kinston. He said as a result, "Sedate little Kinston became full of soldiers and `rum shops'."

According to Tyndall, the Confederates sometimes got so wild with their drinking, carousing, gambling and fighting that in May of 1862, provost guards had to be placed in Kinston to enforce orders that no soldiers could enter the town unless they were on military commissary business.

Letters from Confederate soldiers quoted in Tyndall's thesis clearly demonstrate that there were a lot of transient women in Kinston during the Civil War. Most of them were refugees escaping the Union occupation of New Bern and other coastal towns. In their letters, the Confederates described the women as very pretty, ladylike and well mannered.

The only hint of the presence of prostitutes in Kinston was a description of the women that appeared in a letter written by Henry J.H. Thompson, a Union soldier occupying Kinston in April of 1865: "The wimen [sic] in general dress very nice here, but there is some bad houses."

"There is no doubt that young Thompson was describing "houses of ill repute," Tyndall noted in his thesis.

The Roots Of "Sugar Hill"

Some historians claim prostitutes ended up in Kinston because Union Major General John G. Foster left them after briefly occupying Kinston in December of 1862 during a march to attack the Confederates who had retreated to Goldsboro. The women were camp followers who Foster ordered to wait in Kinston where they would be safe. He encountered unexpectedly stiff opposition at Goldsboro and was forced to hastily retreat to New Bern, leaving the camp followers in Kinston.

Kinstonians were outraged, the historians say. Wishing to have nothing to do with "women of ill repute," especially those of the enemy, local residents quickly ostracized their unwanted guests to an area outside the town proper near the Neuse River at the end of Herritage Street.

In those days, there was no such thing as modern plumbing. The only sanitary facility available to the people was the outhouse, which was periodically cleaned by town sanitary workers known as "honey-dippers." The workers loaded the waste onto "sugar carts" and hauled it outside town to be buried in an area that became known as Sugar Hill. It was near Sugar Hill that the Yankees' prostitutes were banished. A shanty town soon developed.

Kinston Was Ravaged By The War

During March 1865, the Confederates were forced to retreat before Union General J.M. Schofield's army as it once again advanced from New Bern towards Goldsboro, this time to link forces with Union General William T. Sherman.

Union foragers known as "bummers" soon descended on Kinston and Lenoir County like a swarm of locusts. Scores of them roamed the countryside under no military supervision, intent on plunder and destruction. This "rabble fringe group of the federal army" visited the rich, the poor, the young, the old, the white and black alike.

The bummers destroyed everything they could not carry away. They left behind no live farm animals or seeds which Kinstonians needed to plant new crops and no raw materials with which to rebuild the town. The future of Kinston was grim. The people had nothing left but hunger and poverty.

The camp followers of Sugar Hill, it is said, did not fare so badly because of the presence of the federal army occupying Kinston. The Yankees had turned the river town into a major supply hub supporting Sherman's army of 90,000 advancing north through the Carolinas. Steamboats carried much needed military stores from Beaufort, Morehead City and New Bern to Kinston. From there, federal army trains hauled the supplies to Goldsboro.

Within a few months the Confederate army had been forced to surrender, and the "war of rebellion" was over.

On October 2, 1865, Richard W. King, a former Kinston town official and county sheriff, represented the defeated people of Lenoir County at a state convention where North Carolina's Ordinance of Secession was repealed, officially making North Carolina a part of the United States again.

Some historians speculate that the houses of Sugar Hill continued to operate. First, the camp followers stayed busy with the federal soldiers who were stationed in Kinston and Lenoir County as part of a permanent occupational force. Shortly thereafter, they entertained the northern "carpet baggers" who traveled through the defeated South taking advantage of the devastation.

The residents of Kinston were soon plunged into a psychological and economic depression remaining under martial law until 1877.

Conditions in Kinston were chaotic. Unscrupulous "Yankee imposed" government officials seeking to seize property raised taxes so high that Kinstonians could not pay them. For example, a tax in 1869, which was $120.25, jumped in 1870 a year later to $1,170.00. Not much was written about the camp followers of Sugar Hill between the time of military rule and the turn of the century.

Most of what historians have been able to glean about Sugar Hill during that time frame has come from Kinston's elderly citizens who as children heard stories. No one knows exactly how the Yankee contribution to Kinston survived - only that it did, bursting full bloom into a red light subculture in the early 1900s. The population of Kinston at that time had grown to more than 4,000.

Apparently by the 1920s Kinstonians had learned to deal with Sugar Hill by not talking about it publicly, at least not "in front of ladies." Respectable folks when forced to confront the subject devised special terms to deal specifically with their Sugar Hill dilemma. Prostitution in Kinston remained ostracized to the Sugar Hill area, which was referred to in public as "the vice district" or sometimes "the segregated district." The women who attended the men visiting the vice district were referred to as "inmates" of the district.

Mayor Happer Pledges To Clean Up "Vice District"

Over the years, civic groups and concerned citizens periodically complained about the goings on in Sugar Hill, mostly to no avail. They were never able to muster the strength to overcome the politics of Kinston's economy which had become intimately entangled with Sugar Hill's sinister subculture of "organized and entrenched vice."

Attempts to clean up "the vice district" by closing down its known houses of prostitution failed. One of the first serious efforts came in 1921. The population of Kinston had climbed to nearly 10,000 when newly elected Mayor Mills Marshall Happer declared in his inauguration speech that he would crack down on "certain institutions," would keep "obnoxious characters" off the streets and would see that all businesses in Kinston were closed on Sunday. He said he wanted Kinston to "officially recognize that Sunday is a day of church going and religious observance."

Mayor Happer, a native of Durham, N.C. who had taken up residence in Kinston, said he planned to strictly regulate the segregated district and that the inmates would have to stay in the district and not live anywhere else in town. He forbade the women from "joy riding with or without men" in the business or residential sections of Kinston and ordered them to stay out of public places of amusement. Violators would be given 24 hours to get out of Kinston.

Mayor Happer reorganized the police department by firing its Chief and several officers. He then issued a warning that any policeman failing to comply with his instructions would be "suspended" from the police force immediately.

Three days after the Mayor's inaugural speech, the Kinston Daily Free Press wrote in an editorial: "Mayor Happer's program for bettering the moral condition of the community is good as far as it goes. . . The Free Press cannot endorse this apparent recognition of the segregated district. In the first place, such recognition is, we believe, in violation of the State laws. The crusade against vice must not only be directed at objectionable characters who invade residential and business sections, but must extend to the so-called segregated district with a view to its elimination."

True to his word, Mayor Happer launched his crusade arresting the women of Sugar Hill and attempting to ban them from Kinston when he caught them outside the vice district.

In August, the new police chief, George A. Everington, and patrolmen Henry Hart, J.B. Kennedy and Richard Stroud, members of the "provisional vice squad," raided Sugar Hill and arrested 11 women. The women were Essie Hall, Marie Miller, Mabel Holmes, Rebecca Trice, Ruth Clark, Ida Boone, Anna Belle Clark, Clyde Jackson, Helen Smith, Helen Jones and Beulah Dail.

The following month, the vice squad arrested and charged 117 people — about one percent of the population of Kinston.

Reacting to the court's inability or unwillingness to convict those arrested and what he perceived as interference by other aldermen (city council members), Mayor Happer took control of the police department that same month and hired attorney N.J. Rouse as a special prosecutor representing the city.

Alderman and Police Commissioner Isaac B. Sparrow challenged Happer claiming that he had illegally "assumed authority as police generalissimo." Sparrow insisted that he supported enforcement of the "moral laws," but that the Mayor should make suggestions or give instructions with reference to the police department through him and not direct to the police officers.

In response, more than 200 people gathered at the Gordon Street Christian Church and passed resolutions supporting Mayor Happer and Chief Everington's crusade. Rouse addressed the meeting and characterized officials of the law who failed to carry out their duty as "perjurers" because they were "violating their oaths." He noted that jurors who ignored evidence because of their own self interest were also perjurers and advocated that "the good people of the community" point them out.

Despite Rouse's admonition to the people of Kinston, those arrested for violating the vice laws continued to slip through loopholes in the legal system. When convicted in Recorder's Court (District Court), they simply appealed their cases to Superior Court, and in many cases, juries would let them go.

By May, 1923, Mayor Happer found himself under fire for hiring Rouse as special prosecutor. Powerful political forces questioned the wisdom of his spending of city money to pay for Rouse's services.

In a May 5 statement to the Free Press, Mayor Happer complained about the difficulty he had in securing convictions once the police had made arrests.

He defended his decision to hire Rouse: "He was employed as we would have employed any other attorney to look after the city's interests . . . I presented the bill to the city council. . . They approved it. . . I considered, in view of the number of cases and the disagreeable character of the work, very reasonable. . . Mr. Rouse not only represented the city in the prosecution of the vice cases, securing convictions in every case except one, in which I believe there was a compromise judgment," Mayor Happer told the Free Press, reminding the editor that the newspaper had applauded his decision when he announced his intention of hiring Rouse.

Happersville Is Born

The "good people of Kinston" were too few to gather enough votes to save Mayor Happer. He lost his bid for reelection in 1923. The brothels of Sugar Hill were soon operating again unhindered.

Unfortunately, Kinston's self-imposed invisible wall between the segregated district and the rest of the community had cracked and the houses of prostitution began to spread over a wider area.

In an effort to avoid Kinston's Sunday laws, some industrious merchants opened retail outlets outside the city limits in houses perched sporatically along the road across the Caswell Street bridge. The new businesses began to flourish. Gambling and prostitution soon followed. Local folklore has it that in spite, the occupants of the new business and vice district named their new business district Happersville.

The Cadillac Motel

Eunice Pickett, a woman whose name is commonly referred to in association with Sugar Hill, moved outside Kinston city limits (date unclear) and purchased several low rent tenant houses in an area adjacent to Highway 70 known as Sparrowsville where the Holiday Inn is now located. There she refurbished houses and opened for business as a "motel" called Eunice Courts. She later changed the name of her establishment to Cadillac Motel, which became as infamous and well known for vice and prostitution as Sugar Hill.

Again respectable Kinstonians were left resigned to live with "the evil of organized vice" _ a cancer that had spread throughout the town's political and economic system. The good people of Kinston continued to do as they had done in the past and avoided Sugar Hill and its mutations, very seldom speaking about the subject in mixed company.

Kinston Thrived During The Depression

By the 1930s, Kinston's population had grown to more than 11,000. The town had become a bustling center of tobacco markets. Its streets were lined with movie theaters, cafes, department stores, assorted shops and alive with people. "We had the old Oasis theater that was on South Queen Street," said a Kinstonian. "It was ten cents to go there at that time, and it was five cents to go to the Paramount, I think."

Eighty four year old Halie Kelly, who allowed his name to be used, said that when he was 14 he worked delivering telegrams by bicycle for Western Union in Kinston. He said he often was called upon to deliver telegrams to Sugar Hill and that he "loved it" because of the "big tips." He said he worked only for tips which averaged $9 a week, and the women there would tip him at least a quarter.

"It [Sugar Hill] was always there," he said. "Everybody went down there. All the big shots went there. It was the custom then, and everybody knew it was here."

Kelly said a lot of people came from out of town, many by train, and that they would ask the Western Union boy for directions to Sugar Hill. "Not a ___ thing wrong with Sugar Hill," he said. "At one time down there the girls had to have a certificate to work there."

Kelly placed the location of Sugar Hill as primarily on Shine Street between Queen and Herritage Streets. He said the Sugar Hill houses wrapped around the corner onto South Street and that black people lived on the south side of South Street. Kelly admitted that when he got older he visited Sugar Hill but refused to give details. He said he knew Annie Belle Clark and that she was always nice to him. Kelly left Kinston in 1933 and moved to Pink Hill.

Farmers from all over eastern North Carolina would bring their cured tobacco to Kinston's many warehouses. One elderly eye witness described to the Olde Kinston Gazette what he saw: "The farmers would come to Kinston at that time for the opening of the tobacco market, which was one of the biggest days Kinston had. Merchants from all over downtown Kinston would put their wares out on the street for sale. I've seen Queen Street when it was so thick with people they would have to dodge to keep from running in to each other.

"After the tobacco market, some farmers wanted more than just to go shopping on Queen Street for their wives back home," the Kinstonian continued. "They would head their trucks or mules and wagons down Shine Street through Sugar Hill. It was in those days like the red light district of New Orleans. There was a lot of liquor, gambling, beautiful girls, the smell of perfume and the sound of music.

"The girls would sit out on the front porch on Sunday with their evening gowns on - as beautiful as you ever saw. They never had any trouble at Sugar Hill, and the girls were clean. If you went into the house, it would cost you a nickel for the piccolo and three dollars for the loving. We'll put it this way. The madam — the lady of the house — would give you three minutes."

One Kinstonian said her elderly mother described the Sugar Hill women as beautiful women. "They had white porcelain faces with red rouge, big pretty straw hats with bows and gloves. You did not see no suntan, no brown skin and no callused hands."

One elderly Kinstonian said most of the "girls" who worked at Sugar Hill were "as beautiful as you'd ever want to look at" college girls from other parts of the state. "Not all of them were from out of town," he added. "Some of them were local."

The girls would come here, the Kinstonian said, supposedly to work for a local merchant who owned a "five and dime" store on Queen Street. "The college girls had to have a place where they could claim they were employed. They had something they could hide behind and go in and collect their "little bit of money" working for one of the madams."

Another elderly gentleman said that as a teenager he was able to make "a little bit of money" on his bicycle delivering sheets and towels to some of the houses occupied by the Sugar Hill women. He didn't think the women were that good looking. He said some of them were "just plain fat and ugly." He said he remembered having to "high tail" out of Sugar Hill on his bicycle one time after he spotted his father there.

Another Kinstonian told the Olde Kinston Gazette that as a youngster he sold newspapers in town for three cents. He would buy them for a penny. He said that as soon as he picked up his newspapers, he would first rush off to Sugar Hill where the "pretty ladies" would give him as much as a quarter for a newspaper.

He said he remembered seeing the same girls who bought newspapers from him at Sugar Hill line up at the court house (where the health department was located) every week "to get their checkup." He said because of that he figured everything that happened at Sugar Hill must have been legal and OK with the authorities.

In the early 1940s, Sugar Hill blossomed even more as Marines from Camp Lejeune and servicemen from other surrounding military bases took liberty in Kinston. World War II was raging, and Kinston had become a favorite for the servicemen who needed somewhere to go for a break in their training. Sugar Hill with its "line of 15 to 20 houses" containing brothels and bars was the main attraction.

Another Kinstonian described his experience: "The bars, they were just run down buildings that people would go in and sell beer or maybe have a dance hall. The Dew Drop Inn is the one I remember. It had a dance hall. The girls who worked there would ask you to buy them drinks and would slow dance with you in front of the juke box. Sometimes, a boyfriend or husband would come in and slap them around. I've seen brawls in there and free for alls.

"You may visit them today, and then drive by the next day with your wife in the car, and they might wave, holler and call you by name. This would cause friction at home, and the wife would call Sheriff Sam Churchill, and he'd go down to Sugar Hill and straighten it all out. Some of the girls he'd talk to, and some he'd send out of town."

Stories About Sugar Hill

The saga of Sugar Hill has inspired a great deal of rumor and story telling, several of which Kinstonians shared with Olde Kinston Gazette.

There was a "boy" raised on a farm below Pink Hill who in the 1930s kept visiting Sugar Hill with 20-dollar bills _ more money than he made. The police knew him and couldn't understand where he was getting all that money, so they investigated. They went to visit the farmer who was raising him. The farmer, the story goes, had his son check the safe, and sure enough, the boy had been stealing 20-dollar bills. He had hid his thievery by placing envelopes on the bottom of the stack to keep the 20s built up so that if the old man went in there, he would think he still had the same amount of money. That put a stop to the boy's visits with the "ladies" of Sugar Hill. The old man forgave the boy.

One elderly woman told the Olde Kinston Gazette about working for a department store in Kinston and loading a garment cart with fine lingerie and gowns that was "pushed down to Sugar Hill for private showings." The women there would pick what they wanted, and it would be applied to an "account" they had at the store.

There is a frequently repeated rumor of a prominent merchant who punished his Sugar Hill girlfriend by sitting her on a hot stove and about a doctor who would treat such injuries and keep quiet about it.

There are whispers about a diamond ring worn by local lady today. It was given to her by her husband, who inherited it from his father's estate. The father, according to the rumor, received it from a Sugar Hill woman in lieu of repayment of a loan. The lady, according to the rumor, may not know the true origin of the ring.

One elderly Kinstonian told the Olde Kinston Gazette about a judge he said owned some interest in Sugar Hill and had an intimate relationship with one of the madams.

It's no rumor that Kinston's business establishment benefited greatly from the presence of Sugar Hill. Profits were raked in from the sale of everything from food, clothes, trinkets and souvenirs to Sugar Hill's liquor, gambling and women.

Some taxi cab drivers, shoe shine boys made extra bucks directing servicemen to particular houses and madams in Sugar Hill. Moonshine operations sprung up around Kinston and the surrounding counties to keep up with Sugar Hill's demand for hard liquor. Gambling houses flourished.

Camp Lejeune Orders Kinston "Quarantined"

In September of 1944, World War II was winding down. Allied forces were defeating the Japanese and Nazis on all fronts, and Kinston's Chamber of Commerce was making plans for a Victory Day holiday to celebrate the fall of Germany and Japan.

On September 4, one day after the Chamber had announced its intended victory celebration, the commanding officer at Camp Lejeune issued an order declaring 17 Kinston businesses off limits to military and naval personnel stationed at Camp Lejeune.

The Marine Corps said the "off limits ban" against the businesses which included "hoteleries, cafes, juke joints and other places," was issued as a result of over 500 servicemen contracting venereal disease infections in Kinston.

The Marines said venereal disease was plaguing Kinston because law enforcement and court authorities had allowed the town "to become a virtual dumping ground for prostitutes run out of other places." They said the towns of Wilson, Rocky Mount and Fayetteville had been cooperating in "pretty effective cleanups" and that many of the prostitutes driven out of those cities had turned up in Sugar Hill.

The Free Press listed the names of the businesses from which the Marines were banned: "Hotel Caswell, Hotel Kinoca, Hotel Kinston, Hotel Charles (colored), Crystal Café, Friendly Café, Steve Collins' Café, Palmer's Café, Lewis' Café (colored), Busy Bee Café, Jones' Café, Carolina Inn, Dew Drop Inn and three reportedly out of business." They were "Silver Slipper, Playhouse, Ferris Café and Service Station."

An editorial appeared in the September 6 Free Press calling for "concerted action on the part of citizens and officials of Kinston to take action." The Free Press wrote that it was a continuous source of embarrassment and chagrin to Kinston citizens that their fair city had such a record for immorality and venereal disease that military authorities had to prohibit military personnel from patronizing certain hotels and eating places. "It is disturbing that local authorities and the public generally have not risen in their might to keep these places closed," the Free Press declared.

Business Leaders Want Source Of Disease Cleaned Up

The business community of Kinston went into shock. A meeting was called on September 7, which according to the Free Press, "provoked one of the hottest discussions ever held in the Lions Club Thursday evening at Hotel Caswell and brought unanimous action to back `whatever means necessary' to clean up the alleged sources for contacting venereal disease.

"A committee comprised of Chairman J. A. Jones, Dr. T. C. Johnson, J.W. Bergthoid and Lester Gould was named by Vice-President Leo Brody to draw up a resolution urging authorities to take necessary steps to eradicate the cause for the off-limits ban and thereby purge the blot from the favorite liberty town of the Marine Corps personnel stationed in this area."

On September 12, the Free Press reported that an order from Camp Lejeune had been announced placing all of Kinston out of bounds to its personnel because of the "prevalence of venereal disease." The ban took effect on September 15.

Kinston City Council and Lenoir County Commissioners rushed into a joint meeting and unanimously voted to prosecute all known prostitutes in Kinston and Lenoir County and take "whatever other steps may be necessary to thoroughly clean up the city and make it an acceptable place for servicemen to visit."

Civic club members held an emergency meeting and drew up a resolution urging Kinston authorities to take immediate action. It was signed by members of the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club, the Lions Club, the Professional Womens Club and the Junior Chamber of Commerce.

The Free Press reported that the resolution was read and accepted at the opening of a general session of civic club leaders with authorities of the court house present. "Leo H. Harvey [Chairman of the Civics Club Committee] presided and presented the resolution…. Mayor John R. Sams stated frankly that he had done what he could to clear up the situation in the past two years, and finding sufficient cooperation of the public lacking, he had urged the military authorities to go ahead with their plans to place the city off limits."

Kinston Still Reluctant To Padlock Brothels Or Arrest Madams

On September 26, the Free Press reported that Judge Joe Dawson had sentenced "10 negroes and one white woman" to Camp 404 near Raleigh upon conviction of vagrancy and prostitution.

On the same day, the newspaper revealed that it had made a survey which "indicated little or no progress" was being made on law enforcement's promise of a general clean up of the red light district.

The Free Press said that although the police made some arrests of persons suspected of prostitution and an increasing number were being referred to the Health Department for venereal disease, "no padlock or other drastic procedures" had been used against the owners and operators of the houses of prostitution.

Three more civic organizations jumped into the fray. The Girls Committee, the Mothers Committee and the Citizens Advisory Committee demanded that local law enforcement and the courts stop dragging their feet and clean up the vice in Kinston.

On September 29, Leo Harvey reportedly appealed to the military to lift the out of bounds order. He promised a vigorous clean up program "designed to be continuous and unrelenting against known prostitutes and aiders and abetters." Harvey pointed to the numerous convictions of prostitutes in the recorder's court since the general clean up started. He added that six taxi cab licenses had been revoked and two other businesses denied access to gasoline.

What morally outraged Kinstonians could not do over a period spanning 80 years, the U.S. Marines accomplished in three short months.

Marines say "No Padlocks, No Lifting Of Ban"

The following day the newspaper printed a copy of a letter to Mayor Sams and Harvey written by Marine Colonel W. D. Harden, provost marshal of Camp Lejeune, outlining the Commanding General's position regarding the "quarantine against the city."

Col. Harden wrote: "The Commanding General expressed himself as satisfied with the program outlined. If this program is carried out vigorously and with the full cooperation of law enforcement officials and judiciary, the venereal disease situation in Kinston should be cleared up to the point where the quarantine order could be lifted . . .

"The Commanding General learned with regret that no `vice squad' has been set up within the city and county as he believed this is essential to combat vice now in existence and to provide strict vigilance in the future . . .

"It is the Commanding General's firm opinion that organized prostitution is the greatest source of venereal disease and that the very core of organized commercial prostitution rests in the restricted area in south Kinston widely and generally known as Sugar Hill. The General does not believe that commercial prostitution in your city can be effectively suppressed for the present and in the future unless the known houses are padlocked and the known madams or operators prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

Col. Harden said in the letter that the General had noted that "not a single house of prostitution has been padlocked, and only one keeper of a brawdy house has been prosecuted, and that was a negro whose sentence was suspended.

"The Commanding General directs me to inform you that until the roots of organized commercial prostitution in your city have been removed, he cannot consider that it is safe to lift the quarantine."

The Marine Corps message to Kinston was loud and clear: "get rid of those who traffic in vice including the owners and operators of the brothels" or the servicemen will not be allowed to have liberty in Kinston again.

Law enforcement and court officials finally took action. On October 4, five of seven operators of alleged houses of prostitution in Sugar Hill were put under temporary restraining orders signed by Judge J. Paul Frizzelle of Snow Hill. The legal papers were served on Mattie Butler, Annie Belle Clark, Jane Parker, Paulene Langston and Rebecca Trice. Two other operators had managed to dodge Sheriff Churchill's deputy Ned Stroud.

The Marines were not impressed. Col. Harden and other military authorities met with city and county officials and representatives of the civic clubs. He restated the Marine Corps position: "Halfway measures [temporary restraining orders] aimed solely at getting the ban lifted are not enough." The quarantine of Kinston, the Marine said, would remain until the operators of houses of prostitution are prosecuted along with the prostitutes, aiders and abettors.

Judge Signs Criminal Warrants, But Madams "Tipped Off"

On October 10, the Free Press reported that criminal warrants charging the same seven people with operating houses of prostitution had been drawn but that when the police went to serve them, all the operators had skipped town.

Police Commissioner Ed Johnson was quoted in the Free Press on October 18 saying that there still had been no arrests and denied rumors that he had "tipped the women of South Kinston off" before the raids. He said the rumors were untrue and that they had been circulated by "uninformed persons."

Around October 23, Superior Court Judge Clawson L. Williams signed orders authorizing Sheriff Churchill "to close and keep effectively closed five alleged houses of prostitution in South Kinston for one year unless bona fide sales of the property, approved by the Court, be made in the mean time."

Just before the judgments had been signed by Judge Williams, the police served criminal warrants on Mattie Butler, Jane Parker, Paulene Langston, Rebecca Trice and Annie Belle Clark, charging them with operation of houses of prostitution. Two other alleged operators, Grace Coleman and Jerry Gibson, were not located for service of the warrants.

Finally, four of the accused madams stood before Judge Joe Dawson in Superior Court to face the people's charges against them. Their attorney, Faison Thompson of Goldsboro, stated to the Court that the women did not wish to present evidence which would "air dirty linen for everyone to see."

Thompson reminded the judge that he had "sort of a gentleman's agreement" with the Court that the signing of the consent judgments would be the end of trouble for the madams.

Judge Dawson hastily accepted a plea of nolo contendere (no contest) entered by the madams. Prayer for judgment was continued on condition that the madams pay costs of court and comply with the provisions of the civil action which shut their houses down until sold.

Kinston Attorneys Thomas J. White and Jesse A. Jones appeared with Solicitor Phil Crawford on behalf of the prosecution and for the anti-vice citizens' groups. They opposed the Court's acceptance of the madams' plea of no contest, saying that the "citizens of the city, county and state were entitled to the presentation of evidence that would prove the guilt of the defendants."

Jones said the "gentleman's agreement" had no bearing on the current criminal charges, which were not in existence at the time the agreement was made.

Judge Dawson Declares Jesus Set "Precedent" To Free Madams

Judge Dawson said he had found a precedent on which to base his judgment accepting the defendants' plea.

The judge read from the Bible _ the 8^th Chapter of Saint John in which an account of Jesus' encounter with a woman accused of adultery was given. He said that after Jesus "ascertained" that none of the woman's accusers could rightfully accuse her unless they themselves were free of sin, "Our Lord told the woman to go and sin no more."

Crawford reminded Judge Dawson that only one reference to the woman can be found in the Bible and that it did not mention whether or not she was later accused of similar offenses. The madams, he said, had quite clearly been before the Court many times on similar charges.

Judge Dawson was unmoved. He rendered his decision accepting the madams' plea of no contest.

EDITOR'S NOTE - It remains unclear how the court eventually disposed of the cases of Rebecca Trice, Grace Coleman and Jerry Gibson. The Marines lifted their quarantine of Kinston on November 6, 1944. Ironically, the red light district of Sugar Hill, which was imposed on the citizens of Kinston by the swords and muskets of the Union army in 1865 was eradicated from Kinston by the power of a pen wielded by the United States Marines in 1944. The Cadillac Motel and Happersville thrived for a while but were eventually driven out of business.