A 1930’s people’s bandit or a bank robbing gangster? There are two sides to every story especially the tale of Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd. Countless Oklahoma locals during the late 1920s and early 1930s believed that Floyd was a hero due to accounts of him burning bank mortgages thus freeing native farmers of their debt. While he did generous things, his immorality outweighed his kindness, forcing officials and the criminal justice department to see him as “Public Enemy No.1”. Although many would debate whether or not Charles Arthur Floyd reflected that of a vigilante or hoodlum, his short life was carried out as a mischievous, farm boy from Sallisaw, Oklahoma who did not want to pick cotton for the rest of his life; began to exhibit a life of crime throughout the middle region of America; and referred to as Public Enemy No.1.
Charlie’s life began in a rural farming town in Georgia in 1904. When Floyd was around the age of 5, his family decided that the grass was greener in Oklahoma. …show more content…
For example, when Charlie was around the age of 10, he and his friends during the sermon at a Baptist church revival switched out all the infants lying in the wagons so when mothers went to check on their baby, it was not their child. It took the families almost a day to figure out where each baby belonged. He also committed his first documented crime at this stage in his life which was stealing cookies from a local store. But it didn’t stop there, Charlie began to illegally bootleg whiskey during the Probation Era, when alcohol was illegal in the U.S. A couple years later on May 16, 1922, a group of friends and himself robbed Akins’, a town outside of Sallisaw, post office of 350 pennies, nickels, and dimes, but authorities never caught them. Even then, these acts of rebellion still did not satisfy this restless dirt farmer from Cookson
Charlie’s life began in a rural farming town in Georgia in 1904. When Floyd was around the age of 5, his family decided that the grass was greener in Oklahoma. …show more content…
For example, when Charlie was around the age of 10, he and his friends during the sermon at a Baptist church revival switched out all the infants lying in the wagons so when mothers went to check on their baby, it was not their child. It took the families almost a day to figure out where each baby belonged. He also committed his first documented crime at this stage in his life which was stealing cookies from a local store. But it didn’t stop there, Charlie began to illegally bootleg whiskey during the Probation Era, when alcohol was illegal in the U.S. A couple years later on May 16, 1922, a group of friends and himself robbed Akins’, a town outside of Sallisaw, post office of 350 pennies, nickels, and dimes, but authorities never caught them. Even then, these acts of rebellion still did not satisfy this restless dirt farmer from Cookson