Sadie James said she could make a man swear hell was an icebox. James was a local celebrity, but much of what she said was deemed “unfit for print” in Tulsa newspapers. She had been married “six or seven times”—her estimate—and sold bootlegged whiskey to the oilmen of the Magic City. In the 1910s, she went on to expose an elaborate fraud committed by a wealthy philanthropist before vanishing from history.1
A century ago, everyone in Tulsa knew about Sadie James and her saloon, the Bucket of Blood.
But where was it? And how did the child of an enslaved woman, raised in a Kansas brothel, become the most feared and respected woman in Tulsa at a time of red-hot racial hatred?
I went downtown looking for answers, starting with a home address she provided in a courtroom testimony: 504 E. Archer St. You might recognize that as the current location of the U-Haul Building, but it was built as the headquarters of the National Supply Company in 1925. There are several plaques on the building. The most prominent reads:
The famous American songwriter Bob Wills immortalized this location with the lyrics:
Would I like to go to Tulsa, you bet your boots I would.
Just let me off at Archer, and I'll walk down to Greenwood.
Take me back to Tulsa, I'm too young to marry.