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  » Volume XV
Warren Commission Hearings: Vol. XV - Page 410« Previous | Next »

(Testimony of Nancy Monnell Powell)

Mrs. Powell.
Yes.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Where were you living at that time?
Mrs. POWELL. I was living in Fort Worth then.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What did Jack pay while you worked for him? What was your salary?
Mrs. POWELL. Well, it was $110 a week, I think, or $115 he paid me.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Was Jack meeting the union scale?
Mrs. POWELL. Yes. See, in classified clubs like A, B, and C clubs.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What was Jack's classification?
Mrs. POWELL. I think it was classified as a C club, because he had connections. The C clubs don't have to pay as much as the class B, or A club would have to pay.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What about Jack's reaction to your having quit him?
Mrs. Powell.
Well, he always acted like he didn't care, like he was glad to get rid of me, and then he called me to come back.
Mr. Griffin.
Were you there when Jack turned out the lights on Jada?

Mrs. POWELL. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did you actually witness that episode?
Mrs. POWELL. The whole thing. As a matter of fact, I thought he was going to turn and jump on me about it.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Tell us what happened?
Mrs. POWELL. Let's see, she was pulling her pants down, and that is against the law. She could close him up. And he got real excited. He was real excitable and he was running back and forth, and he didn't know what to do, so he just turned the lights out on her, and she just kept on dancing. Then she came off stage, and he got this idea in his mind, that she was--she had been doing this ever since she had been there, and all of a sudden he just noticed it. He had this idea in his mind that she was going to try to get his club closed down, and she was doing it to close the club.
Mr. Griffin.
How did he get that idea?
Mrs. POWELL. How did he get any of his ideas. He just got weird ideas about them. Like me, for instance, ever since the day I went to work for him, he never trusted me. He liked me and he had a lot of respect for me, but he said I was a conniver and I was a sharpie, and he said I was always thinking, trying to figure out a way to rook somebody out of something. I don't know where he got that impression, because I am not like that at all.
I would walk up to him in the evening and say, "Helloooo Jack," on purpose, because he had this weird reaction, and he would look at me and say, "What do you want?" Because he thought I wanted something. And one day I said, "What have you got that I would be trying to beat you out of?" He couldn't think of anything, but it didn't change his mind.
Mr. GRIFFIN. I take it you sort of teased him a bit?
Mrs. POWELL. I understood Jack and we got along great. We had fights I would cuss him and he would cuss me, but he liked me for that. He never liked girls he could push around. He would much rather holier at them.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Do you think Jada was in cahoots with your competitors in any way?
Mrs. POWELL. No; I think he was getting ready to let her go anyway, because she had been there quite awhile.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What made you think that?
Mrs. POWELL. Because she had been there quite awhile and wasn't drawing much business. At first she drew a lot of business, but she was there for a long time and weren't doing much business.
Mr. GRIFFIN. You think that is the reason that she took this extra license in the middle of her act, because she hadn't been drawing much business?
Mrs. POWELL. I don't know. She really had been doing it--she came from New Orleans, and the first night she did her act, she was awful.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What did she do?
Mrs. POWELL. She was pulling up her strings, and they did things like that in New Orleans, and the girls don't work like that, so Jack had her to clean her act up about three times so he wouldn't get in any trouble. But she loved publicity and would love to have been taken to jail for it.
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