Part 3

An elaborate system of placement and paying off has grown around this game. Hundreds of persons known as runners make their rounds daily, collecting number slips and cash placements from their clients. These runners are the middle men between the public and the banker, who pays the runner a commission on all collections, reimburses winners, if there are any, and also gives the runner a percentage of his client’s winnings.

These bankers and runners can well afford to be and often are rogues. Since numbers is an illegal pastime, they can easily disappear when the receipts are heavy or a number of people have chosen the correct three digits and wish their winnings. The police are supposed to make some effort to enforce the law and check the game. Occasionally a runner or a banker is arrested, but this generally occurs only when some irate player notifies the police that he “aint been done right by.” Numbers can be placed in innumerable ways, the grocer, the butcher, the confectioner, the waitress at the lunch counter, the soda clerk, and the choir leader all collect slips for the number bankers.

People look everywhere for a number to play. The postman passes, some addict notes the number on his cap and puts ten cents on it for that day. A hymn is announced by the pastor in church and all the members in the congregation will note the number for future reference. People dream, each dream is a symbol for a number that can be ascertained by looking in a dream book for sale at all Harlem newsstands. Street car numbers, house numbers, street numbers, chance calculations--anything that has figures on it or connected with it will give some player a good number, and inspire him to place much money on it.

There is slight chance to win, it is a thousand to one shot, and yet this game and its possible awards have such a hold on the community that it is often the cause for divorce, murder, scanty meals, dispossess notices and other misfortunes. Some player makes a “hit” for one dollar, and receives five hundred and forty dollars. Immediately his acquaintances and neighbors are in a frenzy and begin staking large sums on any number their winning friend happens to suggest.

It is all a game of chance. There is no way to figure out scientifically or otherwise what digits will be listed in the clearing house reports. Few people placing fifty cents on No. 238 stop to realize now many other combinations of three digits are liable to win. One can become familiar with the market’s slump days and fat days, but even then the digits which determine the winning number could be almost anything.

People who are moral in every other respect, church going folk, who damn drinking, dancing, or gambling in any other form, will play the numbers. For some vague reason this game is not considered as gambling, and its illegality gives little concern to any one--even to the Harlem police, who can be seen slipping into a corner cigar store to place their number for the day with an obliging and secretive clerk.

As I write a friend of mine comes in with a big roll of money, $540. He has made a “hit.” I guess I will play fifty cents on the number I found stamped inside the band of my last year’s straw hat.

Stroll down Seventh Avenue on a spring Sunday afternoon. Everybody seems to be well dressed. The latest fashions prevail, and though there are the usual number of folk attired in outlandish color combinations and queer styles, the majority of the promenaders are dressed in good taste. In the winter, expensive fur coats swathe the women of Harlem’s Seventh Avenue as they swathe the pale face fashionplates on Fifth Avenue down town, while the men escorting them are usually sartorially perfect.

How is all this well-ordered finery possible? Most of these people are employed as menials--dish washers, elevator operators, porters, waiters, red caps, longshoremen, and factory hands. Their salaries are notoriously low, not many men picked at random on Seventh Avenue can truthfully say that they regularly earn more than $100 per month, and from this salary must come room rent, food and other of life’s necessities and luxuries. How can they dress so well?

There are, of course, the installment houses, considered by many authorities one of the main economic curses of our present day civilization, and there are numerous people who run accounts at such places just to keep up a front, but these folk have little money to jingle in their pockets. All of it must be dribbled out to the installment collectors. There was even one chap I knew, who had to pawn a suit he had bought on the installment plan in order to make the final ten dollar payment and prevent the credit house collector from garnisheeing his wages. And it will be found that the majority of the Harlemites, who must dress well on a small salary, shun the installment house leechers and patronize the “hot men.”

“Hot men” sell “hot stuff,” which when translated from Harlemese into English, means merchandise supposedly obtained illegally and sold on the q. t. far below par. “Hot men” do a big business in Harlem. Some have apartments fitted out as showrooms, but the majority peddle their goods piece by piece from person to person.

“Hot stuff” is supposedly stolen by shoplifters or by store employes or by organized gangs, who raid warehouses and freight yards. Actually, most of the “hot stuff” sold in Harlem originally comes from bankrupt stores. Some ingenious group of people make a practice of attending bankruptcy sales and by buying blocks of merchandise get a great deal for a small sum of money. This merchandise is then given in small lots to various agents in Harlem, who secretly dispose of it.

There is a certain glamour about buying stolen goods aside from their cheapness. Realizing this, “hot men” and their agents maintain that their goods are stolen whether they are or not. People like to feel that they are breaking the law and when they are getting undeniable bargains at the same time, the temptation becomes twofold. Of course, one never really knows whether what they are buying has been stolen from a neighbor next door or bought from a defunct merchant. There have been many instances when a gentleman, strolling down the avenue in a newly acquired overcoat, has had it recognized by a former owner, and found himself either beaten up or behind the bars. However, such happenings are rare, for the experienced Harlemite will buy only that “hot stuff” which is obviously not second-hand.

One evening I happened to be sitting in one of the private reception rooms of the Harlem Y. W. C. A. There was a great commotion in the adjoining room, a great coming in and going out. It seemed as if every girl in the Y. W. C. A. was trying to crowd into that little room. Finally the young lady I was visiting went to investigate. She was gone for about fifteen minutes. When she returned she had on a new hat, which she informed me, between laughs at the bewildered expressions on my face, she had obtained from a “hot man” for two dollars. This same hat, according to her, would cost $10 downtown and $12 on 125th Street.

I placed my chair near the door and watched the procession of young women entering the room bareheaded and leaving with new head gear. Finally the supply was exhausted and a perspiring little Jew emerged, his pockets filled with dollar bills. I discovered later that this man was a store keeper in Harlem, who had picked up a large supply of spring hats at a bankruptcy sale and stating that it was “hot stuff” had proceeded to sell it not openly in his store, but sub rosa in private places.

There is no limit to the “hot man’s” supply or the variety of goods he offers. One can, if one knows the ropes, buy any article of wearing apparel from him. And in addition to the professional “hot man” there are always the shoplifters and thieving store clerks, who accost you secretly and eagerly place at your disposal what they have stolen.

Hence low salaried folk in Harlem dress well, and Seventh Avenue is a fashionable street crowded with expensively dressed people, parading around in all their “hot” finery. A cartoonist in a recent issue of one of the Negro monthlies depicted the following scene: A number of people at a fashionable dance are informed that the police have come to search for some individual known to be wearing stolen goods. Immediately there is a confused and hurried exodus from the room because all of the dancers present were arrayed in “hot stuff.”

This, of course, is exaggerated. There are thousands of well-dressed people in Harlem able to be well-dressed not because they patronize a “hot man,” but because their incomes make it possible. But there are a mass of people, working for small wages, who make good use of the “hot man,” for not only can they buy their much wanted finery cheaply, but, thanks to the obliging “hot man,” can buy it on the installment plan. Under the circumstances, who cares about breaking the law?

VII. THE NEGRO AND THE CHURCH

The Negro in America has always supported his religious institutions even though he would not support his schools or business enterprises. Migrating to the city has not lessened his devotion to religious institutions even if it has lessened his religious fervor. He still donates a portion of his income to the church, and the church is still a major social center in all Negro communities.

Harlem is no exception to this rule, and its finest buildings are the churches. Their attendance is large, their prosperity amazing. Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal, Catholic, Presbyterian, Seventh Day Adventist, Spiritualist, Holy Roller and Abyssinian Jew--every sect and every creed with all their innumerable subdivisions can be found in Harlem.

The Baptist and the Methodist churches have the largest membership. There are more than a score of each. St. Phillips Episcopal Church is the most wealthy as well as one of the oldest Negro churches in New York. It owns a great deal of Harlem real estate and was one of the leading factors in urging Negroes to buy property in Harlem.

There are few new church buildings, most of them having been bought from white congregations when the Negro invaded Harlem and claimed it for his own. The most notable of the second-hand churches are the Metropolitan Baptist Church at 128th Street and Seventh Avenue, Salem M. E. Church at 129th Street and Seventh Avenue, and Mt. Olive Baptist Church at 120th Street and Lenox Avenue. This latter church has had a varied career. It was first a synagogue, then it was sold to white Seventh Day Adventists and finally fell into its present hands.

The most notable new churches are the Abyssinian Baptist Church on 138th Street, Mother Zion on 137th Street, and St. Marks. The latter church has just recently been finished. It is a dignified and colossal structure occupying a triangular block on Edgecombe and St. Nicholas Avenues between 137th and 138th Streets. It is the latest thing in churches, with many modern attachments--gymnasium, swimming pool, club rooms, Sunday school quarters, and other sub-auditoriums. When it was formally opened there was a gala dedication week to celebrate the occasion. Each night services were held by the various secret societies, the Elks, the Masons, the Knights of Pythias, the Odd Fellows, and others. The members of every local chapter of the various orders turned out to do homage to the new edifice. The collection proceeds were donated to the church.

St. Marks goes in for elaborate ceremony quite reminiscent of the Episcopal or Roman Catholic service. The choir is regaled in flowing robes and chants hymns by Handel. The pulpit is a triumph of carving and wood decoration. There is more ceremony than sermon.

The better class of Harlemites attends the larger churches. Most of the so-called “dictys” are registered as “Episcopalians” at St. Phillips, which is the religious sanctum of the socially elect and wealthy Negroes of Harlem. The congregation at St. Phillips is largely mulatto. This church has a Parish House that serves as one of the most ambitious and important social centers in Harlem. It supports a gymnasium that produces annually a first-class basket ball team, an art sketch class that is both large and promising, and other activities of interest and benefit to the community.

Every Sunday all of the churches are packed, and were they run entirely on the theatrical plan they would hang out the S. R. O. sign. No matter how large they are they do not seem to be large enough. And in addition to these large denominational churches there are many smaller ones also crowded, and a plethora of outlaw sects, ranging from Holy Rollers to Black Jews and Moslems.

The Holy Rollers collect in small groups of from twenty-five to one hundred and call themselves various things. Some are known as the Saints of God in Christ, others call themselves members of the Church of God and still others call themselves Sanctified Children of the Holy Ghost. Their meetings are primitive performances. Their songs and chants are lashing to the emotions. They also practice healing, and, during the course of their services, shout and dance as erotically and sincerely as savages around a jungle fire.

The Black Jews are a sect migrated from Abyssinia. Their services are similar to those in a Jewish Synagogue only they are of a lower order, for these people still believe in alchemy and practice polygamy when they can get away with it. Just recently a group of them were apprehended by agents from the Department of Justice for establishing a free love farm in the State of New Jersey. They were all citizens of Harlem and had induced many young Negro girls to join them.

The Mohammedans are beginning to send missionaries to work among Negroes in America. Already they have succeeded in getting enough converts in Harlem, Chicago, St. Louis and Detroit to establish mosques in these cities. There are about one hundred and twenty-five active members of the Mohammedan church in Harlem, practicing the precepts of the Koran under the leadership of an Islamic missionary.

The Spiritualist churches also thrive in Harlem. There are about twenty-five or more of their little chapels scattered about. They enjoy an enormous patronage from the more superstitious, ignorant classes. The leaders of the larger ones make most of their money from white clients, who drop in regularly for private sessions.

VIII. NEGRO JOURNALISM IN HARLEM

The Harlem Negro owns, publishes, and supports five local weekly newspapers. These papers are just beginning to influence Harlem thought and opinion. For a long time they were merely purveyors of local gossip and scandal. Now some of them actually have begun to support certain issues for the benefit of the community and to cry out for reforms in the regulation journalistic manner.

For instance, _The New York Age_, which is the oldest Negro weekly in New York, has been conducting a publicity campaign against numbers and saloons. These saloons are to this paper as unwelcome a Harlem institution as the numbers. Each block along the main streets has at least one saloon, maybe two or three. They are open affairs, save instead of calling themselves saloons, they call themselves cafes. To get in is an easy matter. One has only to approach the door and look at a man seated on a box behind the front window, who acknowledges your look by pulling a chain which releases a bolt on the door. Once in you order what you wish from an old fashioned bartender and stand before an old-fashioned bar with a brass rail, mirrors, pictures, spittoons, and everything. What is more, they even have ladies’ rooms in the rear.

The editor of _The New York Age_, in the process of conducting his crusade, published the addresses of all these saloons and urged that they be closed. The result of his campaign was that they are still open and doing more business than ever, thanks to his having informed people where they were located.

At first glance any of the Harlem newspapers give one the impression that Harlem is a hotbed of vice and crime. They smack of the tabloid in this respect and should be considered accordingly. True, there is vice and crime in Harlem as there is in any community where living conditions are chaotic and crowded.

For instance, there are 110 Negro women in Harlem for every 100 Negro men. Sixty and six-tenths percent of them are regularly employed. This, according to social service reports, makes women cheap, and conversely I suppose makes men expensive. Anyway there are a great number of youths and men who are either wholly or partially supported by single or married women. These male parasites, known as sweetbacks, dress well and spend their days standing on street corners, playing pool, gambling and looking for some other “fish” to aid in their support. This is considered by some an alarming condition inasmuch as many immigrant youths from foreign countries and rural southern American districts naturally inclined to be lazy, think that it is smart and citified to be a parasite and do almost anything in order to live without working.

The newspapers of Harlem seldom speak of this condition, but their headlines give eloquent testimony to the results, with their reports of gun play, divorce actions (and in New York State there is only one ground for divorce) and brick-throwing parties. These conditions are magnified, of course, by proximity, and really are not important at all when the whole vice and crime situation in greater New York is taken under consideration.

To return to the newspapers, _The Negro World_ is the official organ of the Garvey Movement. At one time it was one of the most forceful weeklies among Negroes. Now it has little life or power; its life-giving mentor, Marcus Garvey, being in Atlanta Federal Prison. Its only interesting feature is the weekly manifesto Garvey issues from his prison sanctum, urging his followers to remain faithful to the cause and not fight among themselves while he is kept away from them.

_The Amsterdam News_ is the largest and most progressive Negro weekly published in Harlem. It, like all of its contemporaries, is conservative in politics and policy, but it does feature the work of many of the leading Negro journalists and has the most forceful editorial page of the group, even if it does believe that most of the younger Negro artists are “bad New Negroes.”

_The New York News_ is a political sheet, affecting the tabloid form. _The Tattler_ is a scandal sheet. It specializes in personalities and theatrical and sport news.

IX. THE NEW NEGRO

Harlem has been called the center of the American Negroes’ cultural renaissance and the mecca of the New Negro. If this is so, it is so only because Harlem is a part of New York, the cultural and literary capital of America. And Harlem becomes the mecca of the so-called New Negro only because he imagines that once there he can enjoy the cultural contact and intellectual stimulation necessary for his growth.

This includes the young Negro writer who comes to Harlem in order to be near both patrons and publishers of literature, and the young Negro artist and musician who comes to Harlem in order to be near the most reputable artistic and musical institutions in the country.

These folk, along with the librarians employed at the Harlem Branch of the New York Public Library, a few of the younger, more cultured professional men and women and the school teachers, who can be found in the grammar and high schools all over the city, constitute the Negro intelligentsia. This group is sophisticated and small and more a part of New York’s life than of Harlem’s. Its members are accepted as social and intellectual equals among whites downtown, and can be found at informal and formal gatherings in any of the five boroughs that compose greater New York. Harlem to most of them is just a place of residence; they are not “fixed” there as are the majority of Harlem’s inhabitants.

Then there are the college youngsters and local intellectuals, whose prototypes can be found in any community. These people plan to attend lectures and concerts, given under the auspices of the Y. M. C. A., Y. W. C. A., churches, and public school civic centers. They are the people who form intercollegiate societies, who stage fraternity go-to-school campaigns, who attend the course of lectures presented by the Harlem Branch of the New York Public Library, during the winter months, and who frequent the many musical and literary entertainments given by local talent in Harlem auditoriums.

Harlem is crowded with such folk. The three great major educational institutions of New York, Columbia, New York University and the College of the City of New York, have a large Negro student attendance. Then there are many never-will-be-top-notch literary, artistic and intellectual strivers in Harlem as there are all over New York. Since the well advertised “literary renaissance,” it is almost a Negro Greenwich Village in this respect. Every other person one meets is writing a novel, a poem or a drama. And there is seemingly no end to artists who do oils, pianists who pound out Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C Sharp Minor, and singers, with long faces and rolling eyes, who sing spirituals.

X. HARLEM--MECCA OF THE NEW NEGRO

Harlem, the so-called citadel of Negro achievement in the New World, the alleged mecca of the New Negro and the advertised center of colored America’s cultural renaissance. Harlem, a thriving black city, pulsing with vivid passions, alive with colorful personalities, and packed with many types and classes of people.

Harlem is a dream city pregnant with wide-awake realities. It is a masterpiece of contradictory elements and surprising types. There is no end to its versatile presentation of people, personalities and institutions. It is a mad medley.

There seems to be no end to its numerical and geographical growth. It is spreading north, east, south and west. It is slowly pushing beyond the barriers imposed by white people. It is slowly uprooting them from their present homes in the near vicinity of Negro Harlem as it has uprooted them before. There must be expansion and Negro Harlem is too much a part of New York to remain sluggish and still while all around is activity and expansion. As New York grows, so will Harlem grow. As Negro America progresses, so will Negro Harlem progress.

New York is now most liberal. There is little racial conflict, and there have been no inter-racial riots since the San Juan Hill days. The question is will the relations between New York Negro and New York white man always remain as tranquil as they are today? No one knows, and once in Harlem one seldom cares, for the sight of Harlem gives any Negro a feeling of great security. It is too large and too complex to seem to be affected in any way by such a futile thing as race prejudice.

There is no typical Harlem Negro as there is no typical American Negro. There are too many different types and classes. White, yellow, brown and black and all the intervening shades. North American, South American, African and Asian; Northerner and Southerner; high and low; seer and fool--Harlem holds them all, and strives to become a homogeneous community despite its motley hodge-podge of incompatible elements, and its self-nurtured or outwardly imposed limitations.

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Transcriber’s note

Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

The table of contents was corrected to match the chapter headers and their page numbers.

Spelling has been retained as originally published except for the corrections below.