Walter Jones "Crack" Hanna
Walter Jones “Crack” Hanna (1901-1988) was an Alabama National Guard officer, World War II and Korean War veteran, and industrialist from Birmingham, Jefferson County. He is perhaps best known for leading the National Guard in Phenix City, Russell County, as the city was placed under martial law following the 1954 assassination of Albert Patterson. Hanna became celebrated for leading the cleanup of the city notorious for being run by organized crime. During the 1920s and 1930s, Hanna had repressed labor organizing while in the National Guard and as a secret anti-labor investigator for Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (TCI). He later served with distinction during World War II but was relieved from command during the Korean War for the outspoken combativeness for which he became known. He founded Hanna Steel Corporation, Hanna Metal Products, and National Safety Engineers.
Hanna was born in Birmingham on December 20, 1901, to Walter and Annie Rebecca Hanna, as the third of five children. The elder Walter was a salesman for Western Grain Company. Annie was a community organizer for the Wesley Chapel Methodist Church and, late in life, the leader of the Birmingham-area Women’s Republican Club.
In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, the 15-year-old Hanna was too young for service. On five occasions, his attempts to lie about his age to recruitment officers were thwarted. He briefly succeeded in enlisting with the U.S. Marines before being discovered and told to leave. He then joined the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) but was removed after refusing to salute his captain and then fighting him after school. In 1919, Hanna again lied about his age and joined the Alabama National Guard.
While enrolled at Simpson High School, a prep school on the campus of Birmingham-Southern College, he advanced in rank from private to second lieutenant of Company L, having earned a medal for best drilled soldier in 1921. Also that year, he claimed the Southern Amateur junior lightweight boxing championship and represented Alabama at a national marksmanship competition at Ohio’s Camp Perry. At Simpson, Hanna lettered in baseball and basketball and captained the track team through 1923, his senior year. In 1924, Hanna won acclaim as a “crack shot” when he earned membership in the “President’s 100,” a presidential award recognizing him as one of the nation’s best marksmen. In June 1927, Hanna was promoted to captain of Company L of the Alabama National Guard.
In the interwar period, Hanna’s National Guard service positioned him within labor conflicts of the Birmingham district, an area in central Alabama rich in the coal, iron ore, and limestone used to make steel. During the Great Railroad Strike of 1922, Hanna was assigned by the National Guard to investigate a series of dynamite explosions at the Louisville & Nashville Railroad Yard near Boyles Gap, just north of Birmingham, and at strikebreakers’ homes in Tarrant City, Jefferson County. After multiple strikers were held for questioning, labor attorney John W. Altman filed an injunction against the National Guard for unlawful arrests and false imprisonment, to which Hanna provided an affidavit in defense of his investigative tactics. The November injunction was denied, setting the stage for Hanna to arrest seven men with charges of dynamiting and whipping strikebreakers. Representatives of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers and Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America decried the National Guard as not maintaining neutrality and serving as militia for the industrialists.
Following a May 8, 1934, shootout between striking miners and TCI company men at Wenonah, a Birmingham neighborhood, Hanna and Lt. Dent Williams led the arrest of three miners charged with shooting at TCI deputies. Three days later, Hanna was sent to the DeBardeleben Coal Corporation’s Townley Mines in Walker County to put down striking miners following a series of shootings and bombings. That June, Hanna was in command of one of six National Guard encampments placed at TCI mines around the Birmingham District.
By 1935, Hanna had become increasingly critical of Alabama’s leftist organizing and civil rights activism. That May, the Jefferson County Council debated and approved a proposed civil service bill that established an ostensibly merit-based civil service system through the creation of a personnel board. Hanna, representing the League of Young Democrats, unsuccessfully voiced his opposition. Referencing the precedent set by that year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Norris v. Alabama finding the exclusion of Black jurors in the Scottsboro Trials unconstitutional, Hanna warned that a merit-based system would allow qualified Black applicants to gain public employment. In July, Hanna urged Gov. Bibb Graves to sign an anti-sedition bill authored by Tallapoosa County representative and doctor Thomas H. Street intended to increase anti-Communist measures, but Graves ultimately vetoed the bill.
After Birmingham-area communist Joseph Gelders was abducted and beaten on September 23, 1936, an Alabama Highway Patrol investigation implicated Hanna as the ringleader of the assailants. Detectives assigned to the case revealed Hanna worked for TCI in a clandestine role against leftist labor organizing. When an Alabama grand jury failed to charge Hanna or his accomplice after they were positively identified by Gelders and the vehicle involved in the abduction was traced to Hanna, the U.S. Senate’s La Follete Civil Liberties Committee, which was empaneled for several years to report on anti-union activities, gathered testimony in January 1937. Contradicting investigators’ accounts, TCI officials, including company vice president Karl Landgrebe, testified that TCI did not employ Hanna and did not know him. Witness testimony and evidence revealed Hanna used an unlisted telephone number from within TCI’s Birmingham offices to orchestrate anti-Communist and anti-labor violence on behalf of the company.
In November 1940, Third Battalion of the Alabama National Guard was mobilized for training. Serving as toastmaster of a farewell banquet at Birmingham’s Fort Persons Armory on December 16, Hanna introduced TCI vice president Landgrebe as keynote speaker and one of the National Guard’s oldest friends. On December 8, 1942, he was promoted to colonel and commanding officer of the 155th Infantry Regiment, Thirty-first "Dixie" Division. The Dixie Division saw combat in New Guinea and the Philippines in 1944 and 1945, with Hanna gaining promotion to brigadier general and receiving the Legion of Merit, Silver Star, and Bronze Star during the battles of Driniumor River, Morotai Island, and Mindanao Island. On Morotai, he was injured during a Japanese air raid on his encampment but stayed with his regiment until the unit’s deactivation on December 21, 1945.
Hanna married Vera Ungerman Lee on April 22, 1949; the couple raised two children. The eldest, Pete, would follow his father as a National Guardsman and steel executive.
The Dixie Division was again mobilized in 1950 for the Korean War with Hanna serving as assistant to commanding Maj. Gen. Alfred Gray “A.G.” Paxton. Following disagreement about the division’s combat preparedness, Hanna was relieved from the division that year and reassigned as adjutant general of the Alabama National Guard. After criminal elements assassinated attorney general candidate Albert Patterson in Phenix City, Gov. Gordon Persons declared martial law in Russell County on June 22, 1954, and sent Hanna in command of 500 guardsmen to clean up Phenix City’s criminal network. Hanna’s efforts led to the closure of illicit businesses, including brothels and gambling halls and 734 criminal indictments, which weakened organized crime’s hold on Phenix City. On January 17, 1955, martial law was lifted in Russell County and Hanna was removed from his command by Gov. James Folsom. That same year, Allied Artists Pictures released the film noir, The Phenix City Story, a dramatization of the city’s corruption and cleanup. Hanna retired from the Alabama National Guard as a lieutenant general in 1963. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Hanna spoke to civic organizations to criticize the civil rights movement and defend states’ rights. He briefly considered entering the state’s 1962 gubernatorial race but ultimately declined.
In addition to his National Guard service, Hanna was also known for his business ventures, including the Hanna Sales Agency, which he established in the 1920s and specialized in the sale of riot gear. In 1948, he started National Safety Engineers, which manufactured industrial and highway signs. Most notably, he founded Hanna Steel Corporation, which offered customized steel sheets, in 1950. The company acquired its steel from TCI. Hannah continued to grow his industrial interests. In 1963, Hanna Steel expanded with a new facility in Fairfield, Jefferson County, with TCI president Arthur Weibel attending the groundbreaking ceremony. Hanna returned the favor by serving as master of ceremonies at Weibel’s 1964 retirement party.
In 1984, Hanna retired as president of Hanna Steel, selling his shares to his son Pete. Hanna died on June 3, 1988, and was buried in Birmingham’s Elmwood Cemetery. In 2004, he was awarded the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service. The public library in Fairfield was named in his honor. In 2025, Pete Hanna died and the company was acquired by the Missouri-based Bull Moose Tube Co. in 2026.