Numbers games, race, gender, power: primitive accumulation in the Black Metropolis

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article considers the emergence and decline of black-owned numbers games in inter-war Harlem. Numbers became part of the cultural capital of Harlem, a popular activity which functioned as a nodal point in the quilting of everyday life, framing the associated skills and habits of community life in all its discursive and institutional complexity. Numbers provided entertainment as well as employment opportunities, but above all it provided an illicit means for black people long excluded from the racial capitalist order to convert money into capital, a form of primitive accumulation. This ended when white gangsters muscled in on Harlem numbers operations, introducing a considerably more effective, top-down, business model. The reasons for the success of white gangsters are discussed – superior violence potential, organizational and managerial efficiencies, closer links to political elites – after which I consider the career of the most successful female banker, Stephanie St. Clair, her war with white gangsters, her race politics, and her struggle to define herself, in the context of patriarchal norms and widespread female exclusion from the formal economy, as “respectable” and a “lady.”