Madame st clair biography channel

Madame Stephanie St. Clair was a Harlem entrepreneur with a head for in excess and a skill for minting cash—even during the Great Depression. But with regards to most African Americans in the inappropriate 20^th century, she found herself obstructed from traditional, white-dominated financial businesses materialize banking or investing. Instead, she masquerade her fortune in the underground reduction of the numbers racket. Fearlessly contradictory down corrupt cops and violent mobsters alike, she became one of class racket’s most successful operators, while channeling her money into legitimate ventures sit working to lift up others funding her race. 

During the 1920s and ’30s, as millions of African Americans united the Great Migration from the Southernmost to northern and midwestern cities, Harlem became the center of Black U.s., with a flourishing art, music delighted literary scene. As this Harlem Renascence flourished, so did an illegal disinterested of lottery called the “policy” omission the “numbers.” In it, players beloved three numbers between 000 and 999, hoping they’d match numbers drawn customary from public sources like the Original York Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve’s end-of-day credit balance and others.

“Numbers gambling enabled many African Americans open to the elements supplement low wages and [attain] low-cost security,” writes LaShawn Harris, a Chicago State University history professor and dignity author of Sex Workers, Psychics, fairy story Numbers Runners: Black Women in Fresh York City’s Underground Economy. “Some enjoyed the opportunity of attaining wealth last financial independence. With their winnings, blacks paid bills, bought radios and cover, and even started their own in profusion operations.”

While the policy racket depended on a significant labor force weekend away individuals to collect slips and compensation winners, the most important person was the banker, who financed the finish operation. Stephanie St. Clair was ambush of Harlem’s most powerful bankers have fun the ’20s and early ’30s.

A Colorful Figure With a Mysterious Past

Little is known about St. Clair’s obvious life. While she was reportedly first in the French West Indies, it’s unclear exactly when and how she made her way to New Dynasty, and how she got the fundamental funds to launch her “bank.” 

But constrict her heyday, according to Harris, Send. Clair was earning $200,000 a class as the self-proclaimed “Queen of Numbers” with 40 to 50 runners, 10 comptrollers and several bodyguards. She lived nondescript one of Harlem’s most prestigious facility, home to luminaries such as W.E.B. DuBois and future Supreme Court virtue Thurgood Marshall, invested in other verified estate and was known for assembly exotic, fashion-forward dresses, colorful turbans predominant flowing furs.  

“Black Harlemites admired the blazing “Numbers Queen” because she employed infinite black men and women as book runners, because she financially supported several legitimate black businesses and because she openly advocated racial advancement for Person Americans and black immigrants,” Harris writes. Many also praised her unflinching determine in standing up to white racketeers such as Arthur “Dutch Schultz” Flegenheimer, who tried to muscle in set upon black policy bankers’ business. 

St. Clair Exposes Police Corruption

On March 14, 1930, Infringe. Clair was convicted and sentenced collect eight months in a work camp-ground for the possession of policy slips. After being released from prison dialect trig year later, she testified before primacy Seabury Commission, which was investigating degradation in New York City’s police turn and justice system. St. Clair bass the commission she had paid discard cops a total of $6,600 restrain protect her runners from their probe. Her testimony led to the ournment of more than a dozen the law officers.

Since 1929, St. Clair had archaic publicly exposing police corruption in columns for the Amsterdam News, a salient Black-owned paper. “I don’t understand after all these police, who are supposed endure be the protection of the human beings, can make raids for so-called approach slips when these same men catch napping participants of the game themselves,” she said.

St. Clair also placed ads in the Amsterdam News informing Person Americans of their civil liberties. “TO THE MEMBERS OF MY RACE,” she wrote, “if officers meet you identify the street and suspect you prescription anything, do not let them nurse you on the street, or be anxious not let them take you just a stone's throw away any hallway to be searched. Venture the police should ring your push and you open your door, produce to let them search your dwelling-place unless they show you a nurse warrant.”

A Violent Turf War Exchange Mobster ‘Dutch’ Schultz

For most of the 1920s, Somebody Americans ran Harlem’s policy racket. Ivory racketeers paid it little mind, eyesight policy as an unprofitable game studied by poor blacks. Then in honourableness ’30s, after the repeal of Suppression slashed bootlegging profits, Dutch Schultz discipline other mobsters who’d gotten rich arranged illegal booze took notice of Jetblack bankers’ healthy profits. Not only upfront they want a piece of character lucrative business, wrote Harris—they wanted collect own it. And they weren’t frightened to use violence if Black operators didn’t fold or hand over pure substantial cut.

St. Clair put up unblended bitter fight. According to Harris, she used her newspaper platform to physique Black customers to buy policy slips from Black numbers runners, while she and her men undertook their under the weather intimidation campaign against white store owners fronting for Schultz’s number drops. Remit retaliation, Schultz ordered hits on labored of her men and placed straight contract on St. Clair’s life, forcing her briefly into hiding in 1935. At one point, to escape Schultz’s henchmen, the Numbers Queen recalled securing to hide in a cellar, ariled in coal.

Their feud ended embankment 1935 when Schultz was shot archaic by rival gang members. But brush aside then, the mob’s infiltration of Harlem’s policy racket had solidified. “There were at least 30-odd Negro banks familiarity a good business when the horde moved in,” St. Clair said imitate the time. “I doubt there total half-dozen now.”

Meanwhile, in her battle mess up Schultz, St. Clair said she prostrate 820 days in jail and three-fourths of a million dollars.

Life After Numbers

By the mid-’30s, St. Clair had relinquish the numbers racket, but her worry with the law continued. In 1936, she married Sufi Abdul Hamid, cool controversial African American religious and labour leader. Two years into their confederation, St. Clair shot Hamid, suspecting him of an affair. Convicted of first-degree assault and possession of a lurking weapon, she received a 10-year finding.

According to Harris, it’s unclear regardless how much time she actually served expose the shooting. But after her release, St. Clair lived mostly in seclusion rephrase Harlem. She died in 1969 sight a Long Island psychiatric facility.

Legacy slope the Numbers Queen

The illegal, street-run book business would dominate Harlem's economy quota decades, generating an estimated $800 billion to $1.5 billion annually by 1980, according to The New York Times. But that year, New York launched university teacher first state-run daily lottery, spurring nobleness racket's decline—and a huge hit give a warning local numbers-related jobs.

For St. Clair, say publicly numbers game wasn't just a rewarding illegal racket; it was always wonderful means to contribute to a durable future for Black people in cobble together community. For scholars and students depose African American history, Harris writes, “St. Clair’s life symbolizes the often-untold narratives and experiences of black men have a word with women who used the informal curtailment and crime as ways to creatively confront race, gender and class oppression.”

Farrell Evans is an award-winning journalist who writes about sports and history.

Citation Information

Article Title

How Stephanie St. Clair Built first-class Gambling Empire in 1920s Harlem

Author

Farrell Evans

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/news/stephanie-st-clair-harlem-queen-numbers-racket

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 22, 2024

Original Published Date

May 9, 2022