Stephanie St. Clair

File:Stephanie St. Clair.jpg

Stephanie St. Clair

Stephanie Saint-Clair (1886–1969) was a mob boss who ran numerous criminal enterprises in Harlem, New York in the early part of the 20th century. Saint- Clair resisted the interests of the Mafia for several years after Prohibition ended; she continued to be an independent operator and never came under Mafia control. She ran a successful numbers game in Harlem and was an activist for the black community.

Early Life

Stephanie Saint-Clair was born of mixed French and African descent on Martinique, of an unknown father. Her mother, Félicienne worked hard to send her daughter to school. When Stéphanie turned 15, her mother became ill and she has to leave school. She is employed as a maid by a rich family, where she is repeatedly raped by the son. She managed to save some money and, after the death of her mother, finally leaves Martinique for France in 1912. Even though she can read and write, a rare quality for a black female at the time, she cannot find decent employment. She therefore immigrated to the United States via Marseille at 23 years old. She used the long voyage and the subsequent quarantine to learn English. Once in New York, she is employed by O'Reilly, the Irish Boss of the "forty thieves gang." As she speaks French, English, Italian and Yiddish, she learns to spy on rival gangs or act as an intermediate with the Mafia. She is a fast learner and can fight like a man. In Autumn 1915, O'Reilly wants Stéphanie to pose as a prostitute in a brothel in order to spy on the owner. She becomes enraged, knocks O'Reilly unconscious, and cuts off his scrotum with the razor she always carries strapped to her thighs. She then hid in Harlem, where she fell in love with a small time crook, Duke, who soon tries to prostitute her. Enraged, she planted a fork in his eye and promptly left New York on a bus. The following night, the bus is stopped by men on horseback, the Ku Klux Klan. Several black passengers are hanged or burnt alive in front of her, and she is repeatedly raped. She therefore goes back to New York, learning that Duke has been shot in a fight between gangs. After four months, she decides to start her own business, selling controlled drugs with the help of her new boyfriend, Ed. After a few months, she has made $30,000 and told Ed she wants to leave him and start her own business. Ed tries to strangle her and she pushes him away with such force that he cracks his skull against a table and dies. For months afterwards, Stéphanie employs her own men, bribes cops, and on April 12, 1917, invests $10,000 of her own money in a clandestine Lottery game in Harlem. She becomes known throughout Manhattan as "Queenie", but Harlem residents referred to her as "Madame Saint-Clair," running one of the leading numbers games in the city.

Numbers Game Involvement

She was involved in policy banking, a mix between investing, gambling, and playing the lottery. Many banks at this time would not accept black customers, so they were not able to invest legally. Policy banking wasn't technically legal, but it was the only way for black individuals living in Harlem to invest their money. In this way she used the underground economy in Harlem to address race politics. At this time the numbers game in Harlem was male-dominated and Saint-Clair was one of the only women in the game. Saint-Clair helped the black community in Harlem by providing many with jobs as numbers runners and other jobs within her business. Because of her success in the numbers game, Saint-Clair lived a lavish life making over $20,000 a year in the 1920s.

Police Corruption

Saint-Clair was known to put out newspaper ads in the local newspapers educating the Harlem community about their legal rights, advocating for voting rights, and calling out police brutality against the black community. Several times she complained to local authorities about harassment by the NYPD, and when they paid no heed she ran advertisements in Harlem newspapers, accusing senior police officers of corruption. The police responded by arresting her on a trumped-up charge and she spent 8 months in a workhouse. In response she testified to the Seabury Commission about the kickbacks she had paid police officers and those who had participated in the Harlem numbers game. The Commission subsequently fired more than a dozen police officers.

Mafia Involvement

After the end of Prohibition, Jewish and Italian-American crime families saw a decrease in profits and decided to move in on the Harlem gambling scene. Bronx-based mob boss known as Dutch Schultz (real name, Arthur Flagenheimer) was the first to move in, beating and killing numbers operators who would not pay him protection.

Saint- Clair and her chief enforcer Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson refused to pay protection to Schultz despite the amount of violence and intimidation by police they faced. St. Clair's revenge was to attack the storefronts of businesses that ran Dutch Schultz's betting operations, and to tip off the police about him. This resulted in the police raiding his house, arresting 14 of his employees and seizing approximately $12 million. Saint-Clair never submitted to the control of Dutch Schultz like many others in Harlem eventually did.

After Saint- Clair's struggles with Schultz, she had to keep clean and away from police, so she handed off her business to "Bumpy Johnson". Eventually "Bumpy Johnson," her former enforcer, negotiated with Lucky Luciano, and Lucky took over Schultz' spots with a percentage going to "Bumpy". The Italians then had to go to Bumpy first if they had any problems in Harlem. That's when the legend of "Bumpy" Johnson began. The book Harlem Godfather: The Rap on my Husband, Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson by Bumpy's wife, Mayme Johnson and Karen E. Quinones Miller provides a factual account of this.

Luciano realized that the struggle with the Five Families was hurting their business, so Schultz was assassinated in 1935 on the orders of The Commission. Saint- Clair sent a telegram to his hospital bed as the gangster lay dying. It read, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." The incident made headlines across the nation.

By the 1940s, "Bumpy" Johnson had become the reigning king in Harlem while Saint- Clair became less and less involved in the numbers game.

Later life

After Saint-Clair retired from the numbers game, she started a new era of her life as an advocate for political reform. In the late 1930s, Saint-Clair met her husband, Sufi Abdul Hamid, known as the "Black Hitler" for his anti-Semitic, Nazi fashion of activism. Hamid was a militant activist and was the leader of an Islamic Buddhist cult. Saint-Clair and Hamid's marriage went downhill quickly when he started cheating with a black fortune teller, Dorothy Matthews, known as "Fu Futtam". Hamid and Futtam attempted to open a business with Saint-Clair's money, and their marriage officially ended in 1938 when Hamid was shot and Saint-Clair was charged. Accounts vary on whether Saint-Clair was involved in the shooting or not, some saying that she shot at him for revenge. She was charged for shooting at him and spent 10 years in the New York State Prison for Women at Belford.

After she was released from prison, Saint-Clair continued her work in informing those in the community of their civil liberties. She continued to write columns in the local newspaper about discrimination, police brutality, illegal search raids, and other issues facing the black community.

She died quietly and still rich in Harlem in 1969 at the age of 82, one year after the death of the love of her life, Bumpy Johnson, whom she had met many years before and who came back to live with her and to write poetry.

Legacy

Writer LaShawn Harris, explained Saint-Clair as "transcending what a woman ought to be and ought to do," reshaping the notions of womanhood. Saint-Clair was known for her temper and profanities, and was not afraid to do anything to get what she wanted. Her strength and confrontational attitude helped her to be successful in the male-dominated numbers game in Harlem and to become an activist for the black community As Bumpy Johnson put it, Saint-Clair was "not afraid to kick off her expensive high-heels and go toe-to-toe with any man or woman insolent enough to insult her breeding and character."

Cinematic and theatrical portrayals

• Portrayed by Novella Nelson in the 1984 film The Cotton Club.
• By Cicely Tyson in the 1997 film Hoodlum.
• By Fulani Haynes in Katherine Butler Jones' 2007 play 409 Edgecombe Ave, The House on Sugar Hill.
• By Alexandra Afryea in the 2014 TV One series, "Celebrity Crime Files: Lady Gangster".

External links

• CourtTV's CrimeLibrary - Harlem Gangs from the 1920s and 1930s
• Harlem Godfather - The Rap on my Husband, Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson
• Hoodlum (1997) at IMDb

Preceded by Peter H. Matthews

Policy racket in New York City circa 1923–1932

Succeeded by Dutch Schultz