How the Racist Killer of Billie Holiday Spearheaded the American War on Drugs
When Harry Anslinger was first appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, he appeared to be enthusiastically jumping onto a sinking ship. He had just spent over a decade waging a failed war on alcohol, and his department’s budget was slashed before he had barely begun. His goal to eradicate all drugs, everywhere, appeared to be little more than a futile daydream.
He knew something had to change- he had to find a cause strong enough to rally the American people around a full-fledged War on Drugs. He found what he was looking for in a substance he had previously claimed was a non-addictive nuisance- a mere distraction from the substances he wanted to fight.
Almost overnight, Anslinger went from declaring there was “probably no more absurd fallacy” than the claim that cannabis caused violent crime to declaring it would “make a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man”.
Where did this sudden opposition come from? What made him change his mind so utterly?
Simply, Harry realized that he could weaponize the nation’s hatred and fear of people of color by creating a narrative in which cannabis was being used by Mexican immigrants and African-Americans to commit violent and sexually predatory acts on the white population. He knew he could revive his dying agency while simultaneously enforcing his own twisted, racist beliefs.
He began writing articles detailing how the substance was influencing racial minorities to “think they’re as good as white men”- something Harry feared even more than drug legalization. He spread colorful tales of black students partying with white female students at universities, “getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution” and impregnating them. He started referring to the plant as “marijuana”, a coinage unheard of at the time, to further the associations between the drug and the Mexican population.
When concerned doctors and scientists brought legitimate evidence and concern against his prohibitionist ideas, he declared he would never fund independent science. When this didn’t work, he sent his agents to threaten them, accusing the individuals of being associated with criminal organizations, essentially silencing them with the fear of false imprisonment.
Harry was excellent at silencing those who disagreed with him, including Billie Holiday, a black female jazz musician who represented everything he sought to destroy.
Anslinger believed “there are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use”. It is no surprise then, that after taking the stage in 1939 to sing “Strange Fruit”, which spoke out against lynching, Billie was warned by Harry’s agents to stop singing the song. She was a heroin addict who had been chronically raped as a child, becoming a prostitute before she had turned fourteen. She was openly resisting white supremacy. In the eyes of the Harry and his men, she clearly had to be stopped.
George White was the man for the job. Like his boss, he hated what Billie stood for, and especially despised her for not knowing her place as a black woman in society. Unsurprisingly, he was no angel- the personality tests he was given at the Bureau found he was a sadist, and he was quoted as saying “Where else but in the Bureau of Narcotics could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?”. He was known for planting drugs on women, often drugging them at parties just to see what would happen. He used his old past-time against Billie when he and his fellow agents raided her hotel room unexpectedly.
They claimed they found opium hidden in a wastebasket, as well as a heroin kit. When the details of the bust were reviewed, things seemed out of place. The kit had never been entered into evidence by the police, who said they had left it at the scene for unknown reasons. A wastebasket seemed to be a weird place to stash opium, many contended, but the drug charge remained. Billie insisted she had been framed by White and even checked herself into a clinic to prove she was clean. After hearing the evidence, the jury found her not guilty, but the event struck fear into the hearts of other musicians, who refused to perform “Strange Fruit”.
Anslinger and White were pleased, but not yet satisfied. When Billie was later hospitalized for a number of health conditions, including cirrhosis of the liver and leg ulcers caused from heroin injection, he sent narcotics agents to her room. They said they found less than an eighth of an ounce of heroin nailed to the wall, six feet from the bottom of her bed- a spot impossible for her to reach. Her friend told the agents it was against the law to arrest someone on the critical list. The agents explained they knew this, and had solved the problem by simply having the hospital take her off the list. Not allowed to speak with a lawyer, Billie was fingerprinted and questioned. She died in the same bed where her mugshot was taken.
One might think his history of outspoken racism, refusal to acknowledge legitimate scientific evidence, drug planting, and conspiracy would blacklist Harry from American politics. Instead, he was re-appointed to his position in 1960 by President John F. Kennedy. When he resigned in 1962, he became the United States representative of the United Nations Narcotics Commission.
The failed prohibitionist had become the most influential anti-drug activist in American history. Under his authority, the Bureau succeeded in getting Congress to pass the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which essentially criminalized the plant. In his congressional statement, Harry claimed that during the Crusades, Muslims hired those who used the drug for “secret murders”. He painted the substance as having “vicious qualities… which destroy the will, cause one to lose the power of connected thought, producing imaginary delectable situations and gradually weakening the physical powers… use frequently leads to insanity”. Years later, he successfully influenced the passage of the Boggs Act of 1951 and the Narcotics Control Act of 1956, which introduced severe mandatory minimum punishments following drug convictions. In his conversations with legislators, he spoke about “coloreds with big lips” luring white women with jazz music and marijuana.
A child of the temperance movement, Anslinger argued against education and science. When his career as an alcohol prohibitionist failed, he manufactured a drug war, tapping into deeply-rooted cultural anxieties and race rhetoric to convince the white population in America that marijuana was being used by racial minorities to not only hypnotize and impregnate their women, but to become superhuman monsters that couldn’t be stopped by a bullet, let alone compassionate rehabilitation. Not only this, it was turning their children into violent slaves of addiction, with the only solution being an unmitigated attack on drug users and suppliers.
Harry died in 1975, but his influence is alive and well even now, when public support for marijuana law reform is at its highest ever, with thirty-three states having legalized the substance in some form. Yet these effects only seem to be enjoyed by the wealthy white Americans who are able to control and profit off of the “Green Rush”. In fact, in 2017 81% of cannabis executives were white. Black Americans are still four times more likely than whites to be charged with drug possession, despite roughly equivalent usage (the reader should keep in mind this is an average, and in some areas the number increases to thirty times). While black and brown communities disproportionately bear the costs of the drug war, it is the white community that reaps the benefits.
If marijuana legalization fails to right the wrongs of past enforcement measures through expungement and the elimination of discriminatory policing practices, we will be reinforcing the decades of unimaginable harm that people of color have endured under Anslinger-influenced draconian policy and culture.
What side of history will we choose?
All quotes are linked directly. For more research and reading concerning this story, see Johann Hari’s New York Times Bestseller Chasing the Scream: The Opposite of Addiction is Connection.
