To be a Black woman hotelier, saloon keeper, and all-around fixer in early Tulsa, Sadie needed to have some heavies around. Some became her boyfriends. One such person was Walter Agnew. Agnew wanted to marry Sadie, but she eyed him with suspicion at her house. One day, she caught him pilfering a drawer in her bedroom, looking for cash or jewelry.
That was it, she said. She wanted Walter out. She told him to stay away from her saloon as well. One night, after closing, Sadie heard someone trying to break in through the roadhouse’s back door. She warned the intruder: break down the door and she would blast him. He continued until he found his way in. Sadie aimed her pistols and felled the man with a shot through the stomach. Walter Agnew was dead.
The Tulsa Democrat called her a “murderess.” When Sadie—then known as Sadie Johnson—was acquitted of murder, the Democrat called for the entire panel of jurors to be discharged. She later acquired the nickname of “The Notorious Negress Sadie James.” Her self-defense was, in the eyes of the white Tulsa establishment, a “miscarriage of justice.” Greenwood itself was in “an intolerable state of affairs.” The Democrat—later rebranded as the Tribune—would continue its race-baiting sensationalism until a full-scale invasion of Greenwood took place in 1921.
Around the same time, a patron of the Bucket of Blood solicited an 18-year-old woman for sex. The woman—likely Sadie’s daughter, Eva—sliced the man through the abdomen with a razor, nearly killing him. This, Sadie emphasized, was not a brothel. And although she hated the name “Bucket of Blood,” the saloon had now earned its nickname.
Daddy Page Meets Sadie
The Bucket of Blood was a crossroads for more than just liquor and dancing. Sadie’s role as proprietor gave her access to information, too. She later told a federal judge that virtually everyone involved in buying Indian oil leases was operating outside the law. “I know they are crooks,” she said. Indeed, Tulsa County District Judge Gubser, who considered the injunction against the Bucket, was later exposed for taking bribes from Charles Page.
The crooks, as it turned out, needed Sadie more than she needed them.
Among Sadie’s customers was the philanthropist Page, who was building a reputation as the state’s most generous man by the mid-1910s. Page gave all of his profits to the Sand Springs Home for Widows and Orphans, which attracted media attention around the country. He was known as “Daddy Page,” and many people believed he adopted hundreds of the children. (In fact, he never adopted a single one.)
