Odessa Madre: The 'Al Capone' of DC

Odessa Madre, one of the richest, most flamboyant, big-hearted hustlers who ever worked the shadier side of the Nation's Capitol, died penniless on March 6, 1990 at age 83.

"She was the Al Capone of Washington," said Paul Kenney, 65, one of a few old friends who attended her burial at the Harmony Memorial Park in Landover, Maryland. Kenny said that when he got out of jail in 1958 after serving more than 13 years for a robbery conviction, it was Madre who gave him a room and bought him new suits until he got on his feet. "She was always helping out people."

In the 1930s and '40s, she built an empire of joints that served liquor by the shot and bawdy houses. Her headquarters was Club Madre, 2204 14th St. NW. In those days, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and more black celebrities would appear.

A madame with a half-dozen bawdy houses and 20 ladies in her employ, she became so rich that her shopping sprees made headlines. She was also generous.

"She loaned a lot of needy people money, as well as provided contacts for gambling and drugs," Robert Lee, a former vice squad detective, told The Washington Post in 1980. "She knew practically every big-time gangster nationwide. She was what they call a counselor in the mob. She mediated disputes between blacks and whites, a referee. She kept a lot of people from getting hurt."

She had started at age 17, first swearing off men and calling herself a "black widow," then spinning a web of jill joints, bawdy houses and numbers banks that eventually passed for "organized crime," albeit in a down-home sort of way. She became the self-described Queen of Washington's Underworld.

Many police in Washington today who know the lowdown on the low-life in this town recall her. Perhaps no other person has seen so much of the District's narcotics, numbers and "tenderloin" trade and is still alive to tell about it.

According to one police affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in 1975, "She practices a resourceful and shrewd form of circumspection that has enabled her to survive and thrive in her illegal activities over the past 40 years."

The land where John Hechinger built his store in Northwest Washington had been named Madre Park after her grandfather, Moses Madre, Sr., a Civil War veteran. Only two local families had been so honored. Now she is the last of the Madres. Born in 1907, she was the only child of Annie T. Madre a seamstress, who kept her spiffily dressed, and Lindsay Montgomery Madre, a barber, who let her raid his till.

Her father's shop was located on 7th Street NW, next door to Uncle Madre's pool hall. She would inherit property and prosper as this strip blossomed to cultural significance during the 1940s and 1950s.

Madre attended Dunbar High School and graduated with honors in 1925. In those days, prominent black families around the country -- the "E-lites," as Madre called them -- tried to send their children away to Dunbar as though it were a college. Indeed, with more Ph.D.s on its faculty than any other U.S. high school, it was something of that. From Madre, a spectacular career, perhaps as a teacher, was expected.

Madre's aunt Marie Madre Marshall, was an educator and attorney --- who graduated from the old M Street High School, the forerunner to Dunbar. Her aunt had arranged for Odessa to attend Dunbar and for her to move into the fashionable LeDroit Park area with the aunt and her husband, a preacher. He helped tutor Madre in oratory and mathematics.

Her expertise at mathematics came in handy. She started out buying two five-gallon tins of whiskey a day and sold the liquor at 25 cents a jill (or shot). Within a matter of weeks, she was up to four five-gallon tins a day. In time the word was out that she was "in" with the cops.

"All the big shots were looking to do business with me," Odessa said proudly. "My protection would automatically be theirs, too. I said to myself, 'Let the good times roll.'"

By 1946, court records show, Madre was operating at least six bawdy houses scattered about Northeast and Northwest Washington. She recalled employing about 20 women at one time. She opened two jill joints in Shaw, and rented a room at 16th and U streets for a large bookmaking operation.

Her headquarters were located at 2204 14th St. NW, the Club Madre. The club offered liquor by the shot, numbers by the book and girls by the hour. The late comedienne Jackie "Moms" Mabley performed there free, spending her days in Washington as Odessa's guest. The two became like sisters.

On those special nights, say when Mabley and Count Basie would appear on the same bill and Joe Louis and Nat King Cole would be in the audience, Odessa would make her grand entrance into her club -- mink from ear to ankle. That was a lot of mink, because she weighed about 260 pounds back then. Reserved, in the center of the club, was a table vacant except for a dozen, long-stemmed roses. Odessa would lead an entourage -- a trail of about six or seven beautiful "yella gals," mostly all for sale, followed by a train of lusty, well-heeled "E-lite" gents.

Her shopping sprees were so extravagant they made newspaper headlines. One account, in the Washington Afro-American, reported that Madre had entered a store where blacks were not supposed to go. The salesgirl summoned the manager, then promptly fainted when Madre began pulling roll upon roll of hundred dollar bills from her purse, demanding to see the finest fur coat in the store.

At her peak, Madre's net income was estimated at more than $100,000. But she never really left the area, remaining within the protection of the policemen she had grown up with, and their sons.

"I never had any big trouble," she remembered. "Some guys would have their jill joints raided or muggers would break in and rob them, but people knew better than to mess with me."

Whenever she left her house, she usually traveled with a couple of bodyguards. They were often young men whom she had befriended on the street. "I would see somebody on the street that I liked and I'd give them a little something. They would usually be right friendly with me for a while."

She was also friendly with the destitute of the Shaw neighborhood. Small kids playing on the street near her house often would be rewarded with cash for "being good children." When the "boosters" -- shoplifters -- stopped by her house to sell their booty, she would sometimes put in a special order for children's clothes. When the boosters returned, she had the clothes wrapped and sent out as gifts.

"Odessa was basically forced into a life of crime," said Metropolitan Police Det. Robert Lee, who worked as an undercover vice squad officer during the 1960s. "There weren't hardly any jobs for black people like her when she was coming along . . . and once you got an arrest record, you could hang it up.

During World War II, horse racing -- on which the daily numbers games were based -- slowed down, partly because horses were in short supply (they were being eaten). So from her small upstairs office at 16th and U streets NW, Madre and Billy "Whitetop" Simpkins started a numbers bank, which became known as "The Night Number," complete with telephones and charts and a revolving cage.

She was throwing money about town for lavish clothes, trips and cars. She kept some money in the bank, but most was stashed in her house for wedding and divorce celebrations, bail bonds, gambling and for "ice," the term used for police protection.

"You say was it worth it? Child, you wonder does crime pay? I'll tell you, yes. It pays a helluva lot of money. And money is something. I don't care who you are, when you got money you can get a lot of doors open because there's always some larcenous heart who's gonna listen to you.

"And when you show 'em that money ...." her sagging face grew taut and her eyes shone bright ...."if you got a wad, honey, they'll suck up to ya like you was a Tootsie Roll."

When she died, they waited eight days for a family member to claim her body. Her best friends were able to raise only $51 for her funeral before W.H. Bacon of the Bacon Funeral Home on 14th Street NW said he decided to make sure she wouldn't be buried in a cheap welfare casket.

"She helped a lot of people. She deserved better. She gave me money to bury folks through the years," Bacon said.

At Madre's funeral, one of her friends, Flethelle Carnegie, sang a rendition of Frank Sinatra's "My Way" because "that was her. She did everything her way, what ever she did."

Sam Courtney, a photographer who said he had known Madre since 1939, said people looked up to her because she was rich and she had power. "She was a legend, she was."

Sources: Courtland Milloy, Washington Post Staff Writer (Sept. 28, 1980); Thomas Bell, Washington Post (March 8, 1990)

Painting by Dana Ellyn Odessa and her Yella Gals
www.danaellyn.com/12_14/odessa.jpg