Word: phenix
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...Evangelist Billy Graham, who was conducting a revival meeting in Nashville, came an urgent invitation from the Ministerial Alliance of Phenix City, Ala. Would Preacher Graham bring his crusade to Phenix City for a "sin-killing, old-time revival, reaching into every soul?" This, to many, was just what the doctor ordered, since Phenix City, once known as Sodom, was in the midst of a political upheaval following the murder of a candidate for attorney general and the revelation of a pack of other high crimes (TIME, June 28). But before Graham could reply, the answer came from a different...
Murder in Phenix City. A few days after Reformer Albert L. Patterson won the Democratic nomination (which means election) for attorney general on June 1, a Jefferson County grand jury began investigating the possibility that someone had altered vote tallies in an attempt to defeat Patterson. Nominee Patterson, who had campaigned on a promise to shut down gambling and other vice in his wicked home town of Phenix City (pop. 23,000), prepared to testify before the grand jury. Before he could do so. he was murdered by a gunman in a Phenix City parking lot (TIME, June 28). Patterson...
Even before Alabama became a state (1819), riffraff, bond jumpers, cardsharps and other fugitives from Georgia were crossing the muddy Chattahoochee River to find haven in wicked little Phenix City. As time passed, respectable families came to Phenix City, too, but gamblers, pimps and narcotics pushers still ran the town, and fattened on the trade of soldiers from Ft. Benning, just across the river near Columbus, Ga. This year Lawyer Albert L. Patterson ran for attorney general of Alabama on a pledge to shut down vice throughout the state, and especially in his home town of Phenix City...
Governor Gordon Persons ordered National Guardsmen carrying submachine guns into Phenix City, and rushed there himself. For the first time the Army put the whole town off-limits to Benning troops. (In World War II General George Patton, in command at Benning, once threatened to clean up Phenix City with tanks...
Governor Persons shut down Phenix City's bars and gambling halls, offered a reward for the arrest of Patterson's killer, and went up to the county courthouse for a showdown with Phenix City's myopic law-enforcement officers. He warned them: "This is the end of the line." Patterson's son, John, said he would "carry out the program of my father," run for attorney general, but many persons in Phenix City were badly frightened. Alton V. Foster, manager of the Chamber of Commerce, quit his job and got ready to move his family...