I remember reading one article about a woman she had basically kidnapped and brought on the road. They let this woman out for an hour once to visit her family, then when the woman didn't want to leave again with Moolah and her posse they just beat the fuck out of the woman's family until she left with them. Can't seem to find it right at the moment though.
Here you go...gonna have to post it in a couple posts at least, because it's a LONG article:
--------------------------
Baby of Sweet Georgia Brown
Son of Local Wrestler Searches Mom's Past to Find His Father
By Murfee Faulk
At the age of five, Michael McCoy watched from the front porch of his familys house in Cayce, S.C., as an uncle lifted a large paper grocery bag from the trunk of a car, threw it in the front lawn and set it ablaze. As the flames rose, a second uncle launched into an equally fiery tirade about fire as the only proper treatment for such whore stuff.
As the paper bag burned away, Michael recognized its contents: a wrestling outfit, a robe with the words Sweet Georgia Brown embroidered on the back, and a large glittering belt given to the Texas state womens wrestling champion. The next day, when Michael walked past the ashes, all that remained was the belts large metallic faceplate and the stench of burned polyester.
He had played with them just a few days before. He had been proud of them. After all, they had belonged to his mother, a famous wrestler from the 1960s.
Last April, Michael talked about this memory of his mother at a coffee shop in downtown Augusta. Today he owns his own contracting business based in Edgefield, S.C., and was recently ordained as a Pentecostal minister. But all he can bring of his mothers history is a set of old wrestling magazines and a stack of promotional photographs of Sweet Georgia Brown, whose real name was Susie Mae McCoy.
When Susie Mae died of breast cancer in 1989, she left a multitude of unanswered questions about her wrestling years, and one of those questions strikes at the heart of Michaels own identity.
He holds up his arm. Do I look completely black to you? he asks, as if the answer is an obvious no. Not only was he never told the identity of his father, he cant even be certain of his own racial background. Since Michael began that search last spring, he has discovered more than the saga of his mothers wrestling career. He learned of women involved possibly unwillingly in an enterprise that dealt in sex and drugs under the cover of wrestling. The wrestling, he would learn, made some wealthy while forcing others into compliance with false promises of the good life plus an occasional beating.
When Susie Mae McCoy left wrestling in 1972, shortly before her brothers burned her wrestling clothes, she was destitute and emotionally broken. She had wrestled to make a better life for her children, but, in the end, she lost nearly all her time with them. She knew she had been robbed, in many different ways.
Because of her years on the pro-wrestling circuit, she would later avoid relationships with men and refuse contact with whites. She spent the final 17 years of her life shuttling on the Columbia city bus between low-paying jobs, devoting what remained of her day to her children and her church, while trying to mend other family relationships that were nearly destroyed during her absence.
This story, told through the eyes of Michael and his family, traces Michaels efforts to learn more about his mother and the father he never knew, and to understand the circumstances that brought him into this world.
The Fabulous Moolah
Susie Mae showed up at a little-known school for girl wrestlers in the fall of 1957, determined to be a star like the schools owner, Lillian Ellison. Ellison had been wrestling since the early 1950s as The Fabulous Moolah, a character that she readily admits in interviews grew out of her real-life preoccupation with money.
Susie Mae had been recruited a few days earlier at one of the rowdy Tuesday evening wrestling matches at Columbias Township Auditorium by a talent-spotter with an easy smile and a phone number.
As Susie Maes sister Pinky recalls, Susie Mae took the number and called the next day. An ex-wrestler by the name of Buddy Lee answered.
Lee was Ellisons common-law husband, and together they formed a troubled couple. Passionate, vindictive and ambitious, their common-law marriage was half business partnership, half love affair. They were in many ways underdogs, determined to make money in a cutthroat sport dominated by a small number of regional promoters who often tried to lock them out of the business.
Together they capitalized on Moolahs fame in the mid-1950s by opening this school in Columbia and taking in young girls. Susie Mae was their first black student. At first, they trained girls on mattresses on the kitchen floor, sending them traveling on the wrestling circuit only when Moolah felt they were ready.
Pinky tagged along during her older sisters curiosity-filled first visit to the wrestling school. By that time, Ellison and Lee had expanded the small house to include a modest free-weight gym and a regulation-size wrestling ring. Susie Mae began training daily, rushing to the school in the afternoons from her day job cleaning houses. When Pinky wasnt babysitting Susie Maes only child, 2-year-old Kenny, she came along to watch her sister in the ring.
It wasnt long, Pinky says, before Susie Mae was proving her talent as a wrestler and earning a reputation as somebody who could go all the way to the top of the sport. The year was 1958. Womens wrestling had been gaining popularity for the past five years to the point of becoming a major attraction.
And then another craze came on the scene: Negro Lady Wrestlers. Buddy Lee recognized the potential for profits and star power and gave Susie Mae the name Sweet Georgia Brown.
To say that Susie Mae was upwardly mobile in her new passion would have to be an understatement. After a mere eight months in training, Susie Mae packed her bags and received assurances from her family that Kenny would be well cared for. She said a tearful goodbye before climbing into a car full of white girl wrestlers and making a mad dash through several cities.
It looked like a promising career move for Susie Mae, says her family. She was wildly popular during her first bout in Columbias Township Auditorium, where she faced another black wrestling pioneer, The African Princess. After that first match, Susie Mae was the talk of town. How could she not do well wrestling on the road if she had made that much of an impression after one match? Besides, she was traveling with one of the most famous female wrestlers of all time, The Fabulous Moolah, and Buddy Lee, a well-respected trainer with a shrewd business sense.
Susie Mae promised to send money home for Kenny and her 11 younger brothers and sisters. A few days after Susie Mae left Cayce, the family heard the name Sweet Georgia Brown on the radio, announced against the backdrop of a roaring audience.
Michael wasnt around for the first 10 years of his mothers wrestling career. Still, he knows that those years hold the key to his identity. He was conceived around June of 1966 someplace on the road, where his mother was performing in towns big and small. A playbill shows Sweet Georgia Brown wrestling in Miami in June of 66.
Was his father a wrestler, a fan or a boyfriend she secretly kept in some faraway town? His mother always loved to go to Memphis, her family says, but she never explained why. Could that minor fact hold the key? Who was his mother with and when? Who would have records that would show? And would that even help? Veteran female wrestlers say they might wrestle nearly every night in a different city over the course of a week.
Or was his father one of the numerous regional promoters who, 60s wrestler Ida Martinez says, demanded personal services before they would hand over a lady wrestlers pay?
And it wasnt only Michael. Three of Michaels four brothers and sisters were conceived during the time when Sweet Georgia Brown was traveling the wrestling circuit. They too, Michael says, appear half-white. But unlike Michael, the youngest of the family, they are not interested in digging through the past. Some, including his sister Barbara, even warn that it could be dangerous. In his search for answers, Michael is alone.
On the Road
A number of professional wrestlers, all men, have written honest memoirs about their experiences on the wrestling circuit in the 1960s and 70s. Rodney Piper, who started wrestling in 1969, describes the massive quantities of painkillers and recreational drugs pushed by shady characters on the sidelines of the sport.
Piper reserves his most strident criticism for the regional promoters who then ran the enterprise. He called them sleazy men, snakelike and the wrestlers natural enemy. It has long been alleged that organized crime rackets were active in early professional wrestling.
As Susie Maes trainer and personal promoter, Buddy Lee had the job of dealing with the regional promoters and getting his talent on the ticket.
He praised Sweet Georgia Brown in press releases that give a glimpse into the dynamic between Susie Mae and her trainer. The bright yellow write-ups sent to newspapers and radio and television stations emphasized her rags to riches story. She was 145 lbs. of ebony beauty who left the cotton fields of South Carolina. No more pots and pans for Georgia and no more long hours in the Souths tobacco and cotton fields. She was a credit to her race who was now enjoying the pleasures and luxuries that money earned by being a girl wrestler could bring.
The undated press release concludes: Another Top Attraction from Buddy Lee Promotions.
Bulls#!t, said Michael when he saw the press release. There were no pleasures and luxuries. She was robbed.
Despite Michaels emotion, the details of these years come from Pinky and Michaels older sister Barbara. Their memories go back to before Michael was born. In those days, the family received $30 to $50 a month from Susie Maes wrestling, Barbara says, and it came in the form of cash sent directly from Moolah or Buddy Lee. One of the stipulations of Susie Maes agreement with her bosses prohibited her from having her own bank account.
There were other challenges on the road. Rita Cortez, who trained with Susie Mae at Moolahs school in Columbia and was the only Hispanic, confirms the family legend that Susie Mae was often smuggled into wrestling venues in the trunk of a car. The Ku Klux Klan was active in many of these communities, and Rita and the other wrestlers would sneak Susie Mae into hotel and motel rooms. (Rita Cortez would later become Buddy Lees wife, remaining with him until his death from respiratory failure in 1998.)
Whatever the hardships, Susie Mae could take comfort in the knowledge that she was a star, and nowhere more so than in her hometown of Cayce. In fact, Barbara says, Sweet Georgia Browns fame in and around Columbia had reached superstar proportions.
That fame was magnified by Susie Maes winning of the Texas state negro womens wrestling title in 1964, the same year she was ranked No. 4 in the world by Wrestling magazine. Good enough to be No. 4 in the world, but not permitted to wrestle the white stars who held the big titles.
The Texas title was also significant because it drew competitors from around the country and was very much a national championship hidden in name by the Texans then-curious reluctance to recognize another political sovereignty. Sweet Georgia Brown began appearing on trading cards and posters, and in conversations all over Cayce.
For Barbara, then 6 years old, the local fan base added to the mythical qualities of her mother. At that young age, she knew that this larger-than-life figure, this woman who had gone out into the world and achieved notoriety as a champion, was her mama. And even if she rarely got to see this goddess up close, she could take comfort in the fact that some day her mama would return for good. The only thing she did not understand was why certain members of the family in Cayce whispered in angry tones when her mothers name came up in conversation. If she were so great, wouldnt they all like her?
It was a minor incongruity until the day when Barbara witnessed something that was her first glimpse into the true nature of her mothers life. Susie Mae would confide in Barbara years later, answering all the questions about that day.
A large blue Cadillac pulled up in front of the McCoy house in Cayce. A rear door opened and out stepped Sweet Georgia Brown, an elegant women in the most beautiful dress that Barbara had ever seen.
The family gathered around the Cadillac as it cooled off from the highway, emanating the smell of leather and wax. Then a white couple emerged from the front seat. They seemed almost as out of place in the McCoys neighborhood as their showboat of a car.
Barbara is still visibly awestruck when she talks about her mother on that day. I can still remember how beautiful she was, Barbara recalls. I remember thinking, This is my mama. I was so happy that she was home.
Barbara sat on her mothers lap and time stood still. Everything about her mama was different. There was the smell of fine perfume and soap, and the professionally styled hair. When her mama stood up, she carried herself differently than the people of Cayce. She was like somebody from television.
Then the white woman told Susie Mae it was time to get back in the car and get to their destination, reminding her that they were only passing through Columbia on their way to another show. Susie Mae told the woman that she wanted more time with the children and insisted that there was plenty of time to get to their destination.
Barbara watched as the woman struck Susie Mae, dragging her to the car and pushing her inside. Barbara grabbed her mothers legs and was pulled along screaming until an uncle scooped her up. There was much shouting on all sides, and then Barbaras grandfather intervened, poking his finger in the white womans face and unleashing a wrath never seen before by the 6-year-old.
He told her, Youre around a bunch of black folk and the river is just down below that path. You could disappear and they would never find you.
And like a getaway car in a poorly executed abduction, the Cadillac sped away, blowing fumes and leaning heavily through a corner at the end of the street. Susie Mae was on her way back to the wrestling circuit. She wasnt seen again in Cayce for nearly a year.
Susie Mae reacted to her forcibly abbreviated visit with her family with the same stoic attitude that she reserved for many other things in her life, Barbara would later learn. The initial frustration gave way to the understanding, Thats just the way things are.
She thought thats what youve got to do to survive, Barbara says now. She knew she was being used; she knew from the beginning that she was being lied to, but she was a black woman in the 50s.
It only strengthened Susie Maes will to be the champion, Barbara says. If she could only achieve the top title, maybe she could throw off these people and negotiate her just reward. She was so close to the top that she could already sense what the accomplishment would feel like, and she knew what it would mean to her family.
She had, by that time, three children at home, two of them the product of the wrestling circuit. The money Buddy and Moolah were sending back home barely paid for their upbringing. She knew she had to take that title and the years were running out. It was a calculated risk, and at the very least it was better than cleaning houses for a living.
(Cont...)