The 411 Club and the Chicago Policy Game

Expositions Magazine

Issue 9 | Winter 2025

In August 1941, a new nightclub opened on 63rd Street, a few steps east of South Parkway (now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive). The Chicago Defender celebrated its opening, reporting that “Ed Bryant…..and Ily Kelley are accepting congratulations from thousands for having introduced to Chicago’s South Side the most elaborate and up-to-date tavern any city has seen. The spot, as you must know already, is the swanky ‘411’ Club.”¹ Its grand opening and jubilant celebrations were soon followed by major trouble for the business. Only two months after opening, a strike and picket line formed at the club by the Union of Cooks, Waiters, and Bartenders, Local 444.² The dispute revolving around the firing of union workers and their replacement with non-unionized workers was ultimately resolved with an agreement between the union and management. However, seven months later, the nightclub closed its doors again, this time for several months during an investigation into illegal gambling and the policy game.³

The 411 Club’s grand opening and immediate challenges are largely a reflection of its original owner, Ily Kelly. A man with connections to prominent South Side politicians and some of the top organized crime figures of the era. Ily Kelly was one of the South Side’s first famous “policy kings”. In an age before legalized casino gambling or state lotteries, illegal gambling rackets that operated with connections to organized crime, the police, and politicians in power were widespread across American cities, particularly in Black and immigrant neighborhoods. This phenomenon, otherwise known as the “numbers game”, is detailed in The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The hierarchical structures operated much like businesses. Wealthy ringleaders had a hierarchy of staff: at the bottom were runners who would collect and deliver lottery tickets, lookout men, guards, and employees would staff the physical gaming establishments. The business model relied on connections to politicians and police to maintain control of the market and avoid prosecution. While Harlem’s illegal “policy” game operations were all thought to ultimately be under the control of white mobsters, Chicago was unique in that black “policy barons” controlled the gambling business throughout the Black Belt.⁴

Ily Kelly rose to become the South Side “policy king” through his intimate political connections. Back in 1910s and 1920s Chicago, it was not a closely held secret that there were many links between organized crime, illegal businesses, and prominent politicians. Mayor William Hale Thompson, who served as the Republican Mayor of Chicago from 1915 to 1923 and 1927 to 1931, was openly endorsed by Al Capone in one of his mayoral campaigns and vowed to loosen the enforcement of prohibition. One of William Hale Thompson’s top allies and floor leaders on the Board of Aldermen was Oscar DePriest, Chicago’s first black alderman, who would later go on to become the United States’ first black congressman to be elected in the 20th century.⁵ A key figure in Chicago’s Republican political machine on the South Side, in an era where the black community was still staunchly Republican, DePriest was forced to resign his position as alderman in 1917 after being indicted for taking bribes from a gambling establishment.⁶ Although forced to resign by party leaders, DePriest and Mayor Thompson’s favored candidate, Louis B. Anderson, won the election to replace him in 1917.⁷ Louis B. Anderson would go on to serve as the 2nd Ward Alderman until 1933, remaining an ally of Mayor Thompson for much of his career. In 1929, Ily Kelly married Louis B. Anderson’s daughter Jessica.⁸

He went on to lead quite the lavish lifestyle throughout the 1930s, taking vacations abroad and sponsoring race horses, boxers, and sporting competitions. For most of the 1930s, Kelly was referred to in newspapers as a “well-known Chicago sportsman,” a “prominent businessman,” or someone who was “prominent in business, political, and sporting circles.”⁹ Despite having wealth, political connections, and power; Ily Kelly had to keep the source of his income obscure given the illegal nature of his business activities.

Ily Kelly was king of the “Keno” game, with his grand gambling emporium located at 51st Street and Michigan Avenue. In the front there was a cloakroom, where pistols and pocket knives were checked by request, and inside the walls were lined with roulette wheels and blackjack games.¹⁰ Side rooms had dice pavilions, Poker tables, and Keno (bingo) games, and the establishment as a whole would typically serve around 200 gamblers. Every night, Kelly would pay off police officers according to their rank. At his peak, he was a millionaire with an annual income of $100,000 in 1937 (worth over $2 million dollars in 2024).¹¹ His gambling palaces were described as “pretentious,” and police raids discovered large quantities of jewelry, expensive watches, and other valuables.¹²

Ily Kelly’s fall from grace spanned the late 1930s and early 1940s, as a series of events drew him into court battles and media limelight. In June 1937, he and his wife, Jessica Anderson, divorced.¹³ The under-the-table nature of his business complicated divorce proceedings, and at one point Kelly made a $700 alimony payment in five and 10 dollar bills.¹⁴ A series of police raids on gambling establishments across the city in 1938 put Kelly in the papers as a policy baron, but Kelly really entered the spotlight when family tragedy struck in 1939.¹⁵ Ily Kelly’s brother Walter was brutally murdered in a drive-by shooting while sitting in a parked car on Michigan Avenue waiting for a business associate.¹⁶ As Walter J. Kelly was in the process of expanding the family gambling business into Gary, Indiana, it was suspected that he was shot and killed by rival gangsters.¹⁷ The murder brought the Kelly Family’s gambling empire under intense media scrutiny. Rival gangsters sent coffins with dolls to the house of Ily Kelly and a few other “policy barons” in 1940, while the Jones brothers, fellow South Side policy barons, were indicted and ultimately charged for tax evasion.¹⁸ In November 1941, Kelly was among the policy operators sued by the victim of an auto accident who was struck by a car owned by a policy baron, a lawsuit that triggered a large-scale investigation into the policy racket and the closure of several South Side nightclubs in 1942.¹⁹ In August and September 1942, Ily Kelly was accused of witness tampering in a trial against the famous gangster and Al Capone-ally Sam “Golf-bag” Hunt, and for a while appeared to be on the run from the authorities as he was wanted for questioning in connection with charges against him.²⁰ Although Kelly didn’t end up serving any time in prison, his many legal battles marked a sharp fall from grace as South Side “policy king” in the years leading up to his death in 1944.²¹

It was in this environment of intense legal challenges and threats from rivals leading up to his downfall that Kelly opened the 411 Club in August 1941. Despite being founded with the money of an embattled “policy king” during his fall from grace, the 411 Club would go on to become one of the South Side’s top nightclubs, and a fixture of 63rd Street during the heyday of the South Side’s jazz, blues, and R+B scene in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Highly regarded for its food, drink, and music; a Chicago Defender review in 1956 called it “the most talked about wine and dine place on the stem.”²² The club hosted famous musicians such as the guitarist Lefty Bates, drummer Eddie Chappell McDonald, and pianist Kirk Stuart, alongside regular performers such as Red Cooper and Calvin Bostic. It was popular and operational even into the 1960s and ’70s after many other big music and entertainment venues along 63rd Street had closed down.²³ While the original 411 Club closed in 1972, a gay nightclub of the same name opened up at the same spot and was a hub for the South Side’s gay community in the late 1980s and early ’90s before closing after several criminal incidents. Patrons remember the original 411 Club in the 1960s as being the place you went if you wanted to hear “real jazz”, while they remember the short-lived gay nightclub successor as a place where you could listen to Prince and encounter an eclectic mix of people wearing dress clothes and jeans.²⁴ To this day, many former patrons mourn the loss of one of the South Side’s best places to enjoy a night out.

Footnotes

“Latest in Nighteries Opens,” 20.
“411 Club and Waiters’ Union to Agree,” 13.
“Law Clamps Lid on Trio of Taverns,” 23.
“Chicago Cops Swoop Down,” 7.
“Alderman in Graft Probe,” 1.
“Alderman in Graft Probe,” 1.
“Faction Battle Splits,” 12.
“Wedded,” 5.
“Ily Kelly’s Prince John,” 14; “Gorilla Jones,” 6; “Kin of Louis Anderson,” 5; “Wedded,” 5.
Brown, “Ily Kelly Parlayed,” 1; “Chicago Cops Swoop Down,” 7.
“$100,000 Income,” 16.
Brown, “Ily Kelly Parlayed,” 1; “Chicago Cops Swoop Down,” 7.
“Daughter of Former Chicago Alderman,” 2.
“Roll of Bills Handed,” 17.
“Chicagoans Resent Ballyhood,” 3.
“Police Seek Capone’s Gangsters,” 1.
“$100,000 Income,” 16; “Policy Slaying,” 11; “Who Stole That $300,” 2; “Scenes at Funeral,” 4.
“Miniature Coffins,” 1; “3 Policy Racket Brothers,” 20.
“Policy Racket Bared,” 1.
Ole Nosey, “Everybody Goes when the Wagon Comes,” 13; “Hunt Denied Bail,” 13.
“$14.50 Judgement,” 17.
“Club 411 is Among the Best,” 15.
“The Bar Fly,” 19.
“Hoist one last round,” 265; “411 Club.”

Bibliography

“Alderman in Graft Probe,” The Afro-American, January 27, 1917, 1.

Brown, Henry. “Ily Kelly Parlayed Policy and Keno to Huge Fortune,” Chicago Defender, September 6, 1952, 1.

“Chicago Cops Swoop Down on Policy Racketeers with Ax Squads of Destruction,” The Black Dispatch, September 17, 1938, 7.

“Chicagoans Resent Ballyhood of Raided Negro Policy Places,” The Dayton Forum, September 9, 1938, 3.

“Club 411 is Among the Best Eating Inns,” Chicago Defender, August 7, 1956, 15.

“Daughter of Former Chicago Alderman Wins Divorce Suit,” New PIttsburgh Courier, June 19, 1937, 2.

“Faction Battle Splits Negroes in Second Ward,” Chicago Tribune, February 16, 1917, 12.

“411 Club.” Omeka RSS. Accessed October 28, 2024. https://cbscmap.omeka.net/items/show/190

“411 Club and Waiters’ Union to Agree,” Chicago Defender, October 25, 1941, 13.

“$14.50 Judgement Entered Against Gambling King,” Chicago Tribune, March 18, 1943, 17.

“Gorilla Jones Seeking Foes in Comeback Try,” The Call, December 13, 1935, 6.

“Hoist one last round for the neighborhood tavern,” Chicago Tribune, April 9, 1972, 265.

“Hunt Denied Bail; Ily Kelly Still Eludes Bribe Charges,” Chicago Defender, September 12, 1942, 13.

“Ily Kelly’s Prince John in Triumph At Lincoln, Pay $6,” Chicago Defender, October 17, 1936, 14.

“Kin of Louis Anderson Dies After Operation,” New PIttsburgh Courier, June 20, 1936, 5.

“Latest in Nighteries Opens,” Chicago Defender, August 16, 1941, 20.

“Law Clamps Lid on Trio of Taverns: 411 Club, Jim Martin’s and Gatewood’s All Shut Down,” Chicago Defender, May 16, 1942, 23.

“Miniature Coffins Warning to Policy Kings,” California Eagle, May 2, 1940, 1.

Ole Nosey, “Everybody Goes when the Wagon Comes,” Chicago Defender, August 22, 1942, 13.

“Policy Racket Bared in Auto Death Suit,” The Phoenix Index, November 15, 1941, 1.

“Police Seek Capone’s Gangsters in Murder of Walter J Kelly: Policy Baron Lured in Trap by Phone Call,” Chicago Defender, January 14, 1939, 1.

“Policy Slaying Inquest Delayed for Police Quiz,” Chicago Tribune, January 11, 1939, 11.

“Roll of Bills Handed Judge in Divorce Pact,” Chicago Defender, February 4, 1939, 17.

“$100,000 Income of Policy King’s Brother Bared,” Chicago Tribune, January 12, 1939, 16.

“Scenes at Funeral Rites for Policy ‘King’,” Chicago Defender, January 21, 1939, 4.

“The Bar Fly,” Chicago Defender, November 25, 1972, 19.

“3 Policy Racket Brothers Get Big Tax Refunds,” Chicago Tribune, February 10, 1942, 20.

“Wedded,” Chicago Defender, October 19, 1929, 5.

“Who Stole That $300 Kelly Had When Slain?,” Chicago Defender, January 14, 1939, 2.