Number Running and Illegal Gambling and Fannie Davis

[get these nets]

In 1941, the fifty-eight-year-old phrenologist was arrested for and convicted of first-degree grand larceny. According to the NYAN, Minott, one of Harlem’s most successful spiritual advisors, was found guilty of “flimflamming” Manhattan white caterer Lucy Terrell out of $1,220.
During Minott’s two-day trial, Terrell testified that she, having faith in Minott’s abilities, willingly gave Minott money
she received from an auto accident. Minott insisted that the well-known cook safeguard her money. “Don’t let it get away. Put it here in my safe, a vibrational projector-scope safe, and let it make more money for you. All metaphysicians use it. We keep our money in it and the magnetic attraction involved causes the safe’s contents to increase several times after nine days. It will make your money double in nine days, providing you don’t tell anyone. If you tell, that makes it negative and the safe won’t open. You must believe in me and don’t tell, if you want the money to grow.” The famed spiritual adviser failed to increase Terrell’s money after nearly two weeks. While Minott paid Terrell $750 back in five installments, she refused to pay the balance of $450 and was subsequently apprehended by local police. Because of Minott’s age, noncriminal background, and community ties to prominent black New Yorkers, she avoided the expected ten-year prison sentence; instead, she received a suspended sentence and was ordered to make full restitution to Terrell.

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Miss Cleo's grandmother was straight working people !

===================================
Story is from the book that xoxodede recommended
"Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners"

 

[get these nets]

Every Sunday, my girl’s Aunty will tell us to come on over for some supper after she goes to the number man and plays her numbers. This happens every Sunday, lol.

For the super bowl, we was playing squares. $400 a square, me, my girl, her aunty and her mama took part in. Ended up losing $200 that night (I paid for both mine and my girls portion). Scared money don’t make no money, though, and for all the football games, I’ll ask aunty to hit her numbers man up for me to put down some money.

Has her Aunty ever hit a number ? Have you?

 

[GoAggieGo.]

Has her Aunty ever hit a number ? Have you?

She’s never hit it big, but she’s made 1000’s of dollars. Only thing I’ve ever won on is the squares. I don’t do the numbers a lot.

Being as I’m the only one that gambles with her, she’s always trying to get me down to Watumpka AL or Cherokee NC to the casinos with her. I went once, and broke even.

 

[xoxodede]

In 1941, the fifty-eight-year-old phrenologist was arrested for and convicted of first-degree grand larceny. According to the NYAN, Minott, one of Harlem’s most successful spiritual advisors, was found guilty of “flimflamming” Manhattan white caterer Lucy Terrell out of $1,220.
During Minott’s two-day trial, Terrell testified that she, having faith in Minott’s abilities, willingly gave Minott money
she received from an auto accident. Minott insisted that the well-known cook safeguard her money. “Don’t let it get away. Put it here in my safe, a vibrational projector-scope safe, and let it make more money for you. All metaphysicians use it. We keep our money in it and the magnetic attraction involved causes the safe’s contents to increase several times after nine days. It will make your money double in nine days, providing you don’t tell anyone. If you tell, that makes it negative and the safe won’t open. You must believe in me and don’t tell, if you want the money to grow.” The famed spiritual adviser failed to increase Terrell’s money after nearly two weeks. While Minott paid Terrell $750 back in five installments, she refused to pay the balance of $450 and was subsequently apprehended by local police. Because of Minott’s age, noncriminal background, and community ties to prominent black New Yorkers, she avoided the expected ten-year prison sentence; instead, she received a suspended sentence and was ordered to make full restitution to Terrell.

==================================================================

Miss Cleo's grandmother was straight working people !

===================================
Story is from the book that xoxodede recommended
"Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners"

Rootworkers and Hoodoo practitioners were trolling hard back then -- especially with White folks.

https://www.thecoli.com/threads/hoo...day-other-vintage-newspaper-clippings.685407/

That story brought me so much joy though!

 

[xoxodede]

She’s never hit it big, but she’s made 1000’s of dollars. Only thing I’ve ever won on is the squares. I don’t do the numbers a lot.

Being as I’m the only one that gambles with her, she’s always trying to get me down to Watumpka AL or Cherokee NC to the casinos with her. I went once, and broke even.

I'm the child of expert number players -- and I aint never heard someone say "squares" --- I feel out the loop and disconnected!

Is squares - even numbers? Fill me in!

My mom uses dreams, people mentioning things to her, birthdays, events, and go back to prior years to see what hit on that day from different years -- plus more tricks.... for her numbers. But, she also does this "rundown" she writes out numbers and I don't know the formula -- but she does it daily.

My momma hit weekly -- but she "box" her numbers more than anything -- so she hits for like $40.

All the Arabs stores in my hometown know my mom's handwriting -- so when I come in to play her numbers -- they all be like WOW - that's your mom - how is she!? Is she OK? LOL

It's embarrassing to me -- cause rain, sleet, hail or snow -- we sliding our ass in INCHES of snow to play her damn numbers.

 

[GoAggieGo.]

I'm the child of expert number players -- and I aint never heard someone say "squares" --- I feel out the loop and disconnected!

Is squares - even numbers? Fill me in!

My mom uses dreams, people mentioning things to her, birthdays, events, and go back to prior years to see what hit on that day from different years -- plus more tricks.... for her numbers. But, she also does this "rundown" she writes out numbers and I don't know the formula -- but she does it daily.

My momma hit weekly -- but she "box" her numbers more than anything -- so she hits for like $40.

All the Arabs stores in my hometown know my mom's handwriting -- so when I come in to play her numbers -- they all be like WOW - that's your mom - how is she!? Is she OK? LOL

It's embarrassing to me -- cause rain, sleet, hail or snow -- we sliding our ass in INCHES of snow to play her damn numbers.

I want to make sure I explain this right, as I’ve never been good at explaining things lol.

Squares is a game where you are assigned a set of numbers. Let’s take the super bowl...I was assigned 6 for Kansas’s City and 8 for San Francisco. At the end of a quarter, the ending score has an 6 or an 8, id win. Let’s say at the end of the 2nd qtr, if KC had 26 and SF had 18, I would’ve won for that qtr and won some money. My aunt’s Barber is her numbers man. He set all this up.

 

[xoxodede]

I want to make sure I explain this right, as I’ve never been good at explaining things lol.

Squares is a game where you are assigned a set of numbers. Let’s take the super bowl...I was assigned 6 for Kansas’s City and 8 for San Francisco. At the end of a quarter, the ending score has an 6 or an 8, id win. Let’s say at the end of the 2nd qtr, if KC had 26 and SF had 18, I would’ve won for that qtr and won some money. My aunt’s Barber is her numbers man. He set all this up.

I need to play that!

 

[get these nets]

Reading the chapter about the Spiritualists again. The mentioned a mainstream media newsreel series that ran a story about that industry, and the Black press' reaction to the piece.
page





excerpt of the newsreel


audio cuts out towards the end. I'm looking for the full 20 minute segment
===================================

 

[get these nets]

Sunday March 22, 2020
7:30pm

FACEBOOK LIVE @edgecombeavenue


Madame Stephanie St. Clair Rediscovered? A FACEBOOK Live Interview with LaShawn Harris and Joy James


Despite her burgeoning popularity as a historic figure, there is still relatively little that we know about Madame Stephanie St. Clair, Harlem Renaissance-era numbers-racket genius and race woman. Joy James will interview LaShawn Harris to shed additional light on St. Clair through the sharing of new information.


LaShawn Harris is a native New Yorker. She is an associate professor of History at Michigan State University and assistant editor for The Journal of African American History. Her area of expertise includes twentieth century United States and African American histories. Dr. Harris’s scholarly articles have appeared in The Journal of African American History, Journal of Social History, Journal of Urban History, and the Journal for the Study of Radicalism. Her first monograph Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy, which explores how a diverse group of African American women carved out unique niches for themselves within New York City's expansive underground economy. In 2017, Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners won the Organization of American Historians’ Darlene Clark Hine Book Award for the best book in African American women's history, and the Philip Taft Labor Prize in Labor and Working-Class History for the best book in labor history.


Her recent publication, which appears in SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, examines the less familiar life of 1984 police shooting victim and Bronx resident Eleanor Bumpurs.


Joy James, professor of the Humanities and professor of Political Science, at Williams College, is author of: Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics; Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals; Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender and Race in U.S. Culture. Her edited books include: Warfare in the American Homeland; The New Abolitionists: (Neo) Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings; Imprisoned Intellectuals; States of Confinement; The Black Feminist Reader (co-edited with TD Sharpley-Whiting); and The Angela Y. Davis Reader. James is completing a book on the prosecution of 20th-century interracial rape cases, tentatively titled Memory, Shame & Rage. She has contributed articles and book chapters to journals and anthologies addressing feminist and critical race theory, democracy, and social justice.


James is a senior research fellow at the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, where she is co-curator of digital repositories for the Warfield Center and the Harriet Tubman Literary Circle, an educational nonprofit organization.

 

[xoxodede]

Sunday March 22, 2020
7:30pm

FACEBOOK LIVE @edgecombeavenue


Madame Stephanie St. Clair Rediscovered? A FACEBOOK Live Interview with LaShawn Harris and Joy James


Despite her burgeoning popularity as a historic figure, there is still relatively little that we know about Madame Stephanie St. Clair, Harlem Renaissance-era numbers-racket genius and race woman. Joy James will interview LaShawn Harris to shed additional light on St. Clair through the sharing of new information.


LaShawn Harris is a native New Yorker. She is an associate professor of History at Michigan State University and assistant editor for The Journal of African American History. Her area of expertise includes twentieth century United States and African American histories. Dr. Harris’s scholarly articles have appeared in The Journal of African American History, Journal of Social History, Journal of Urban History, and the Journal for the Study of Radicalism. Her first monograph Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy, which explores how a diverse group of African American women carved out unique niches for themselves within New York City's expansive underground economy. In 2017, Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners won the Organization of American Historians’ Darlene Clark Hine Book Award for the best book in African American women's history, and the Philip Taft Labor Prize in Labor and Working-Class History for the best book in labor history.


Her recent publication, which appears in SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, examines the less familiar life of 1984 police shooting victim and Bronx resident Eleanor Bumpurs.


Joy James, professor of the Humanities and professor of Political Science, at Williams College, is author of: Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics; Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals; Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender and Race in U.S. Culture. Her edited books include: Warfare in the American Homeland; The New Abolitionists: (Neo) Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings; Imprisoned Intellectuals; States of Confinement; The Black Feminist Reader (co-edited with TD Sharpley-Whiting); and The Angela Y. Davis Reader. James is completing a book on the prosecution of 20th-century interracial rape cases, tentatively titled Memory, Shame & Rage. She has contributed articles and book chapters to journals and anthologies addressing feminist and critical race theory, democracy, and social justice.


James is a senior research fellow at the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, where she is co-curator of digital repositories for the Warfield Center and the Harriet Tubman Literary Circle, an educational nonprofit organization.

I'm there. Mrs. Harris is one of the faves now.

BTW, do you have the link to read journals for free? I can't find it anymore - or maybe I am missing it in the old threads.

I am trying to read Mrs. Harris piece:

Dream Books, Crystal Balls, and “Lucky Numbers”: African American Female Spiritual Mediums in Harlem, 1900-1945.” Journal of Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, Vol. 35, Issue 1, (January 2011): 1-30

 

[get these nets]

glitchy, but you can hear the audio

 

[get these nets]

STILL RUNNING THE SPIRITUALIST game in the Big Apple in 2020

 

[get these nets]

A Harlem old timer talks about the Numbers Game.

 

[get these nets]

*Author is interviewed by Dr. Lashawn Harris, both of their books are put out by U. of Illinois Press

Ubiquitous illegal lotteries known as policy flourished in Chicago’s Black community during the overlapping waves of the Great Migration. Policy “queens” owned stakes in lucrative operations while women writers and clerks canvased the neighborhood, passed out winnings, and kept the books.
Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach examines the complexities of Black women’s work in policy gambling. Policy provided Black women with a livelihood for themselves and their families. At the same time, navigating gender expectations, aggressive policing, and other hazards of the informal economy led them to refashion ideas about Black womanhood and respectability. Policy earnings also funded above-board enterprises ranging from neighborhood businesses to philanthropic institutions, and Schlabach delves into the various ways Black women straddled the illegal policy business and reputable community involvement.

Vivid and revealing, Dream Books and Gamblers tells the stories of Black women in the underground economy and how they used their work to balance the demands of living and laboring in Black Chicago.

 

[get these nets]

The Numbers Racket: One Woman's Story of the Illegal Street Lottery in Detroit​

The Mob Museum​

2022, Jul 14
Novelist and professor Bridgett Davis will share the story of her mother, who ran an illegal street lottery in Detroit for more than thirty years. Fannie Davis’s numbers operation provided a middle-class lifestyle for her family, but it was built on a risky foundation: an illegal gambling racket she managed to keep going despite constant law enforcement scrutiny and challenges from rivals