Acting as judge, jury and executioner, King got from Garrett what Garrett failed to give to King of his own volition?
?Prison was the best thing that ever happened to me. I went in with a pistol and came out with an atom bomb.??Don King
It would be nice to believe that Don King was an aberration, the first and last of his kind to infiltrate the sweet science, but that is pie in the sky, wishful thinking by people whose head is where the sun don?t shine.
In a country that loves second acts even more than it loves the first, Don King?s second act served to legitimize a man whose legitimacy, even while wrapped in a flag, even while oozing success, even while having a stranglehold on boxing, is being questioned to this day.
Thanks to an article in the NY Daily News, I read that the Cleveland City Council, the city from where King hails, was in the process of repealing legislation that would have designated part of Shaker Boulevard as ?Dong King Way? [sic].
I was less surprised that King is being honored, since he has been honored repeatedly over the years, than surprised that the Daily News published a story about a man whose name it failed to correctly spell.
Spelling is relevant only insofar as literacy matters, and of course literacy no more matters than King?s crimes matter to the Cleveland City Council.
His criminal record and mob ties might be enough to dissuade local politicians from naming a street after King. But the Cleveland City Council isn?t pulling the plug on ?Dong King Way,? or Don King Way if you prefer. It?s just moving it to another part of town, an area of Cedar Avenue between East 36th Street and Stokes Boulevard, with a little more historical resonance.
In 1966, King?who was known as ?The Kid? and ran a powerful bookmaking operation?beat one of his employees, a small-time numbers operator named Sam Garrett, to death near E. 100th Street on Cedar Avenue. Acting as judge, jury and executioner, King got from Garrett what Garrett failed to give to King of his own volition, a $600 in gambling debt.
According to a Cleveland Plain Dealer article dated April 21, 1966, King kicked Garrett three times in the head. He was also ?beaten with a gun,? a .38-caliber revolver.
King was apparently so filled with rage, or so sure of himself and the powerful people he knew, that he stomped and pistol-whipped his victim in front of witnesses, including Detectives Robert Tonne and John Horvath of the Cleveland Police Department, who heard Garrett mutter to King, as he lay on the ground, ?How much do I owe you? How much do I owe you??
Sam Garrett died five days later. King claimed self-defense. The jury didn?t buy it. They deliberated four hours and returned with a verdict of second-degree murder.
The murder conviction was reduced to first-degree manslaughter when someone got to the judge and King served almost four years before being paroled by then-Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes in 1983.
Don King made the most of his freedom, often at his fighters? expense. He became a self-described ?black Horatio Alger? and went on to become one of the most recognizable presences this side of paradise.
All things being equal, maybe ?Dong King? should have an alley named after him instead of a street.
