He offered to buy her beer in exchange for her vote. Her testimony sent him to prison
As Estella Carter approached her polling place on East Eighth Street in Kansas City, a man stopped her at the door.
Thinking he was a precinct worker, Carter, a black woman, told him her name.
“I voted you,” he told her, referring to the fact that he had already voted in her name.
Then, he tried to hand her a couple of folded dollar bills.
“Here, take this and buy yourself some beer.”
Carter refused.
Her testimony sent that man, mafia member Morris “Snag” Klein — known for gambling and later listed as a “notorious offender” — to prison. It’s not known if Carter, who died in 1988, ever knew who the man was at the polling place that day. But her courage in testifying, her granddaughter Beverly Avery said, was amazing.
“Especially as tall as my grandmother was, to know that she did something so big, that was really cool,” Avery said.
Carter was 4 foot 11.
Her story isn’t widely known. The story of what happened on Aug. 6, 1946, likely would have died with her if not for the interest of Patrick Fasl, a 66-year-old author of two historical books. His story touched on a blown up courthouse safe and stolen ballots.
‘Nothing but bad guys’
It was 1946. The country was still recovering from decades of “terror lynchings.” It was nine years before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus. Seventeen years before Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Eighteen years before the Civil Rights Act outlawed segregated public places.
While researching for his first book published in 2016, Fasl discovered a picture of two men arrested in 1936 with safe-breaking equipment, including dynamite caps and a half pint of nitroglycerin, an unstable explosive. One of the men, he learned, was John Murray Gould.
Fasl realized Gould was also a suspect in the 1947 case of stolen ballots. Through a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI, Fasl obtained reports that documented the investigation. Those documents revealed the black voters in the area were used as pawns, Fasl wrote in his book.
Gould led the ballot theft, assisted by a deputy sheriff who owed the mob a favor, several mafia characters and what Fasl said was excessive interest from President Harry S. Truman in the fifth Missouri Congressional District’s Democratic primary election.
In July 1946, Truman requested help from James Pendergast, whose family created the “Pendergast political machine,” to support a candidate for office, effectively ruining the chances of the incumbent.
“This book is about nothing but bad guys,” Fasl said. “The only good person is Estella Carter.”
A Kansas City Star investigation published in September 1946 showed Carter was one of hundreds of voters unable to vote in the primary. The Star spoke with around 1,200 voters and found three ways the fraud occurred: people were listed as having voted while saying they had not; they were listed as having not voted while claiming they did; or, as in Carter’s case, went to the polling place and learned their vote had already been cast.
She arrived at the polling place 15 minutes before polls were to close. After Klein told her that he had voted for her, she argued with him: “How could you? Nobody could vote for me as no one knew how I wanted to vote.”
Then, Klein told Carter that her apartment manager said she wouldn’t be there, even though Carter said she never discussed that with her.
“I protested I had a right to cast my own vote,” she said in the Star story. “I said no one had the authority to vote for me, and that I was being deprived of a right and a privilege.”
Klein told her that they were all Democrats so it didn’t make a difference.
The investigation
When The Star published Carter’s testimony, the newspaper also included her race, “negro,” and her work address.
The FBI interviewed The Star’s reporters and used the investigation as they examined the case. The Department of Justice later found no evidence of conspiracy to falsify ballots, “despite the reports of admittedly improper methods of counting ballots in many of the polling places.”
Fasl found that the summary initially presented to federal judges, who decided to not pursue the case, was based on a summary of The Star’s reporting, and was not a separate, thorough investigation from the FBI.
In March 1947, the Jackson County prosecutor enlisted a jury to investigate The Star’s report of fraud. Two months later, 71 people were indicted. Morris Klein was among them.
Charles Binaggio, who controlled much of Kansas City in the 1940s, wanted to protect Klein, his childhood friend. Binaggio, Fasl found, gave the order for the ballot theft.
Preparation began in March. That’s when Gould was told, documents show, that he would be paid two vehicles worth $4,600 total and $500 cash to break into the Jackson County Courthouse.
On the night of May 28, 1947, a deputy sheriff helped Gould and his accomplices sneak into the Jackson County Courthouse and Gould used nitroglycerin to blow up the safe.
It’s not known where he took the ballots. But because of the loss of the ballots — the prosecutors’ main evidence — the indictments were nullified.
No one was ever charged with stealing the ballots. In fact, no one even knew who stole the ballots until Fasl’s book, “John the Yegg,” was independently published in 2018.
“Estella Carter is a hero,” Fasl said. “And I think she needs to be elevated to that status.”
Because of Carter’s testimony, three men went to prison.
‘That’s my grandma’
Just before Fasl published his book, he tracked down Carter’s last direct descendant: her granddaughter, Beverly Avery.
Fasl brought Avery newspaper clippings, a copy of another book she was mentioned in, and he told her that her grandmother would be recognized for her courage.
Avery had no idea what her grandma had done.
When Fasl told Avery that Klein had offered beer money to Carter in exchange for her vote, she knew her grandma would have refused.
“I was like, ‘Oh no,’” Avery said. “A beer for my grandma? Anyone who knew my grandma knew that was not the case. I can see her standing up for what she believed in, especially if he was saying she tried to get a beer. ... He probably could have pulled that on someone else, but not Estella Reams Carter.”
Fasl invited Avery to the 2018 ceremony of the “Monument to Freedom, Justice & Courage,” where Carter’s name was placed on a plaque at Leon Jordan Memorial Park, honoring her contributions to civil rights. Fasl nominated Carter, whose name was honored alongside notable Kansas Citians such as Rev. Emanuel Cleaver II, the first African American mayor of Kansas City, and Bruce R. Watkins, the city’s first African American city council member.
“It was just unbelievable,” Avery said. “I just felt so proud. … It was amazing. That’s my grandma.”
The first thing she did was hold a piece of paper to the plaque and sketch it with a pencil.
No protection
Carter, one of more than 30 to testify for prosecutors, spoke out more than two decades before witness protection existed. The Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 authorized the program as a way to provide safety for government witnesses in an attempt to curb organized crime.
She had no protection.
“If a little lady can stand up for what she believes in and what is right, then all of us should be able to take a stand for what we believe in and what we know is right,” Avery said. “That’s what I think everyone should take away from this.”
Carter, who died at age 85 in 1988, loved her family, church, God and all-you-can eat restaurants, Avery said.
As a child, Avery said Carter, her paternal grandmother, would bring her to on trips to see where Martin Luther King Jr. spoke and teach her about civil rights.
She hopes her seven sons will never take their right to vote for granted.
“(My kids) think she was really the next best thing since sliced bread,” Avery said.
Her grandmother fought for their right to vote in the 1940s.
Despite Congress ratifying in 1870 the 15th Amendment that gave black people the right to vote, blacks were still turned away from the polls because of taxes, tests, intimidation and fraud. The Voting Rights Act, which prohibited literacy tests and other exclusionary methods, led to a jump in registered black voters from 23% to 61%, according to the Library of Congress.
Avery said she votes every time.
“What I’ve taken out of it now as an adult; I know how important it is to vote,” Avery said. “I know how important it is to have your voice heard. I know if you don’t vote, then you don’t really count.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2020 at 12:00 AM.
