20

FROM 1949 TO 1959, BEFORE ERNEST WITHERS GOT involved with the FBI, the inspector in charge at FBI headquarters in Washington had been Frank Holloman. In 1959 Holloman left Washington to become special agent in charge (SAC) in Memphis. That gave the Memphis office an unusually strong connection to J. Edgar Hoover.

Back in Washington, Holloman had read virtually every memo and seen virtually every visitor who entered Hoover’s office. He had marveled at the Boss’s remarkable memory, extremely high intelligence, inexhaustible energy and industry. Hoover also awed Holloman with his temperament, idiosyncrasies, and wrath. The Boss struck Holloman as an emotional man, given to elation over achievement and despondence over setbacks. “As all of us, he had his own moral code by which he lived,” Holloman recalled, adding, “his might not have fitted someone else’s.” Holloman recognized one motive above all driving Hoover—“safeguarding the heritages of America.”

Running Hoover’s Washington office required Holloman to work a seven-day week of pleasing a notorious perfectionist. Over the intercom, Hoover would interrupt Holloman’s tasks to request the instantaneous delivery of some esoteric data. Holloman had to satisfy Hoover’s intense desire for an attractive lawn, a virtual impossibility considering the amount of shade over his front yard and the dogs Hoover dearly loved. Holloman would reflect, “It was a rare occasion that I ate my evening meal before 9:00 p.m.”

But Holloman trusted Hoover, and Hoover looked out for Holloman. During their last year cohabiting in the Washington office, Holloman sought Hoover’s advice on a personal matter. A relative of Holloman’s was spending an increasing amount of time in the company of a Christian youth group coordinator. The youth group leader hosted regular gatherings at his home, and Holloman became suspicious upon learning that two high school boys were living there. He checked bureau files and found a record showing that the youth group leader had been arrested in a park at three-thirty one morning along with a male who admitted being a sexual pervert.

Holloman wrote a message to Hoover asking for advice on how he might invisibly break up the relationship between his relative and this purported pervert running Christian youth meetings. He had already hatched a convoluted plot, he told Hoover, involving his personal physician. He was thinking of suggesting that the physician check the youth group coordinator’s police record and “then take any action necessary independently without my appearing in the picture.” The doctor, Holloman wrote to Hoover, “will be vitally interested in this character as [his] daughter belongs to the organization. There are a number of sons and daughters of quite reputable people . . . who belong to this organization and I believe something should be done to stop this character . . . before the boys and girls are hurt. I realize there is no direct evidence of sex perversion . . . but the circumstantial evidence is quite strong.”1

Hoover’s handwritten reply reads:

I think it is alright to do as you suggest.

H.

Determining outcomes “without appearing in the picture” was all in a day’s work at the Washington office.

The Memphis SAC job suited Holloman well. He was born in Mississippi, and his recollections suggest that he needed to lengthen the leash Hoover had on him. Having a little distance from the director, and being closer to home, would be a good thing for Frank Holloman.

But an employee could escape Hoover’s power only by leaving the bureau. In early 1960, a letter arrived for Holloman from his old Washington colleague Cartha “Deke” DeLoach, a member of Hoover’s inner circle and head of the bureau’s crime records division. DeLoach was headed down South, he wrote. Addressing Holloman by the nickname “Preacher,” he continued, “I am certainly looking forward to my visit in ‘Rebel territory’ and I know it will not take any time at all for me to be reoriented in Rebel ways with you riding the reins.”²

“Preacher” showed “Deke” around Memphis, though Holloman would apologize that it “is considered a ‘closed city’ and places of amusement and things to do here are very limited.”

The two men refreshed useful contacts, including editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper, Frank Ahlgren, whom Holloman described as “an ardent and close friend and supporter of the Director and the Bureau over the years,” while noting that the paper “has always been one of our greatest boosters.”3

In mastering public perception for the bureau, Hoover and Holloman could have had no better friend than Ahlgren. The Commercial Appeal’s area of circulation extended from the Missouri boot heel, through Arkansas to the Mississippi Delta and the city itself.

In a letter to Hoover, Holloman noted, “Getting the Bureau favorably before the public on a regular basis . . . will certainly be of inestimable value in the event that the Bureau should come under attack from whatever source.” He added, “I have found no evidence of any outward or under-current feeling of animosity whatsoever toward the Bureau in this area,” and more importantly, “the people in this area have a very deep admiration and respect for you personally.”⁴

The bureau’s only PR problem in Memphis, according to Holloman, was with regard to civil rights and election law investigations. “There is still a very deep seated segregationist viewpoint on the part of practically all white people, including the most prominent citizens,” he wrote in 1960, two months into Henry Loeb’s first mayoral term.

DeLoach’s visit had been more than social. Something was up. During Holloman’s early months as Memphis SAC, he had received an imperfect performance rating from Hoover, and the DeLoach visit may have been designed to check on him. A few months later Hoover demoted Holloman, knocking him down to the rank of special agent.

Holloman was devastated. “The mere thought of having to restrict my activities is, to say the least, the greatest shock, heartache, and disappointment of my life,” he wrote to the Boss. “I cannot quite visualize myself not being in the thick of the battle on the front lines.”

The ostensible reason for Holloman’s demotion was a health exam that had discovered a possible heart condition. The exam had taken place at a government hospital in Washington, well within Hoover’s purview. But Holloman’s personal physician would soon find him in good health and clear him to return to full duty. Holloman, at forty-five, kept right on smoking and would live another thirty-seven years.

Commercial Appeal columnist Jack Carley—“who writes all of the favorable editorials that appear in this paper concerning the FBI,” according to Holloman— wrote to Hoover to express his distress at Holloman’s demotion, but added, “We are delighted that he is going to remain in Memphis. Despite the physical handicap which has overtaken him he can be of invaluable service to the Bureau and to this area. . . . He knows the people, their mores and their problems.”5

Holloman still yearned to get back on the front lines, writing Hoover on the day of Senator John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign stop in Memphis:

The racial situation continues somewhat tense, although we have not had as much violence in this area as I had expected. I am convinced the white people . . . respect us and will continue to support us, although to them Civil Rights and Election Law investigations are a source of irritation . . . You are a symbol of integrity, honesty, and patriotism to them and they look to you as someone they can trust and have complete confidence in.⁶

Despite such persistent flattery, Hoover never restored Holloman to authority. Holloman would hang on as special agent at the Memphis office until he retired in 1964.

Thereafter Holloman settled in Memphis but never quit working. A thin man with wavy white-gray hair and sleep-deprived eyes, he still yearned to return to the front lines.

In 1968 newly reinstalled Memphis mayor Henry Loeb gave Holloman the opportunity to become the city’s director of police and fire. Holloman accepted the job, partially on condition that the mayor “would have no influence whatsoever in the police department,” he recalled. “He could not recommend anyone for hiring, firing, or for any administrative action.” Likewise, Holloman would not attempt to influence Loeb’s leadership of the city. Agreeing to stay out of each other’s official business they developed a positive relationship.

Though Holloman had clout and a sterling reputation as a lawman, many rank-and-file police resented him from day one. His predecessor, Claude Armour, had risen from the ranks, and the cops in the street had seen Armour as one of them. Armour was gruff and tough and kept his men in line. When the Memphis schools integrated in 1961, Armour had told them to put their feelings aside and make sure it went peacefully, to avoid the embarrassment that had happened over in Little Rock a couple of years before. If they fouled up, he said, he’d run them out of town. They chose not to test him. The outsider Holloman would have to earn this level of respect.

Budget cuts didn’t help Holloman in the cops’ estimation, though some of the boys dealt good-naturedly with the situation. A prankster among them circulated photos of a half-bushel of corncobs sitting beside an empty toilet paper dispenser in the headquarters’ restroom.

Holloman did little to smooth the transition. He publicly stated that the force needed more college-educated officers—which threatened the livelihoods and insulted the intellects of those currently on the books. His first day on the job, he wrote to his division chiefs, “It has come to my attention through members of the Negro race that occasionally personnel of the Division of Fire and Police address Negroes as . . . ‘Boy,’ ‘Girl,’ ‘Nigger’ and ‘Nigra.’ . . . I have publicly stated that the policy of this Division would be that there would be only one class of citizens and that all citizens would be treated alike regardless of race, creed, or economic status.”7

Despite the department’s budgetary issues and Holloman’s management trouble, the new police director updated the force’s intelligence division. He instituted Hoover-style strategies and tactics. He borrowed his old colleague, Special Agent William Lawrence, to help set things up.⁸

The revamped intelligence force would be challenged right away. Only a month into Holloman’s tenure, a note crossed his desk: the city garbage men were going on strike.