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Nigger Mike was buried yesterday in Washington Cemetery after a great deal of furor, but all the glory that once was Mike’s had departed. Just two of the legion of notables who once found it pleasant to boast of Mike’s friendship and familiarity with his notorious dive –– the Pelham – appeared at the funeral. In fact, there was but one –– Irving Berlin. The only other notable present was Kenneth Sutherland, the Democratic boss of Coney Island, and Sutherland was never one of the patrons the Pelham. Irving Berlin, the song composer whose first job in America was that of waiter in the Pelham. Berlin used to sing as he slung beer and they knew him as the “Singing Waiter.”
Mike didn’t leave money enough to pay the fees of the professional mourners; therefore, there were none. This NEW YORK HERALD reporter arrived at the Salter home, 3058 East Fourth Street yesterday, as he was ushered into a house that had no rugs nor carpets and very little furniture. On the porch, in chairs and on a couch, sprawled a dozen young men who wore olive drab shirts and caps, but who had come to the house of mourning in fine big motor cars. They spoke mysteriously of long motor trips at night without lights. They talked freely enough until they learned that the stranger was a reporter and after that they had nothing to say.
Mike’s body lay there in a bare, unheated room. He looked more than his fifty-four years. At the foot of the pine box sat his mother Rachel, 87 years old and almost hidden under a red knitted shawl and a calico apron. In a minor tone, she was chanting and keeping the rhythm by swaying to and fro. At the head of the box sat Mike’s widow. Every so often she would scream. In the bare hallway and, on the stairs leading to the second floor, twenty men slouched. The collars of their overcoats were turned up and their caps or soft hats were pulled down. It was cold in Nigger Mike’s house. There were no flowers or wreaths.
“Nigger Mike’s” Young Hopeful
Sonny, Mike’s youngest of five, was rolling a ball up and down the hallway having the time of his three-year old life. Now and then one of the boys in the hall or on the stairs would toss Sonny a nickel. Sonny would howl with delight and by way of repaying the boys he would hold up a colored comic sheet and explain the jokes. The funeral was to have taken place at a quarter to one. First, Mike’s sister had hysterics and it required the help of five of the strongest boys from the Atlantic Social Club to carry her out of the room. Then they fetched Mike’s wife in and she couldn’t stand it.
“For God’s sake, let me speak to him,” she screamed. “The father of my darlings; the father of my darlings; Let me speak to him. Mike, speak to the mother of your darlings.”