American Gangsters Footnotes: Stephanie St Clair; the Black lady gangster

 Gang leaders of the Prohibition era are ususally seen as being White males, mostly Sicilian; which is perhaps why Stephanie St. Clair, the Black female gangster of Harlem, has been largely forgotten. But in her time she was able to rank with some of the most notorious organised crime leaders of New York.

  Details of Stephanie St. Clair's early life are obscure: she seems to have been born in 1897 in Guadaloupe, a French-speaking island in the West Indies, and to have come to Harlem, the Black district of Manhatten, around 1911. She first became noticed in the Prohibition era after the First World War, when organised crime flourished throughout New York and other cities.

 The "Numbers" racket, a kind of illegal lottery, was especially popular in the New York Black community. But even when honestly conducted it was a very dangerous game, involving collecting and distributing money under constant threat from thieves, while the immense profits to be made inevitably attracted both of the men of violence and the deeply corrupt New York police. 

By the late 1920s, St. Clair had acquired sufficient money and power to set up her own "policy shop": that is, her own Numbers operation, and emerged as a major force in Harlem. She used Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson as her enforcer and right-hand man, and they built up a team that was prepared to take on any challengers on their home turf. She was described as "arrogant, educated, sophisticated, with a fiery temper", and she was also completely without fear; but she knew that more than the threat of violence was needed. She understood the importance of "image", so she always appeared in public dressed in the height of elegance, with expensive furs and jewellery, as she paraded with her bodyguards round the streets of Harlem. She was nicknamed "Madam Stephanie" or even "Queen Stephanie". She also used local newspapers to boost her role as a spokesperson for the Black community, denouncing police corruption and racism. When in 1929 she was arrested, she complained about the unfairness of the proceedings, saying that she had always been careful to pay off the police!

After the ending of Prohibition in 1933, the gangsters looked around for alternative sources of income, and St.Clair's success in Harlem, making around a quarter of a million dollars a year, attracted the attention of Dutch Schultz. "The beer baron of the Bronx", as he was styled, was exceptionally violent even by New York crime standards, and headed a much-feared gang of Jewish gunmen. Schultz had his own Numbers racket, and now tried to muscle in on St. Clair's territory. Soon all-out war erupted on the streets of Harlem, with shootings and firebombings in which over 40 people were killed. Stephanie St. Clair stood her ground. "What kind of man would desert a lady in a fight?" she challenged her friends. She spread the slogan "Buy Black!" in the Harlem press and launched attacks on White-owned stores that traded with Schultz. The war only ended when the leaders of the New York crime combine (Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Lepke Buchalter and others) decided that Schultz was a dangerous loose cannon who must be eliminated. In October 1935 Schultz and his gang were gunned down in a Newark restaurant by two Jewish hitmen. As Schultz lay dying in hospital, St. Clair sent him a telegram reading, "As you sow, so shall you reap." But soon after this, St. Clair handed her operation over to Bumpy Johnson and retired from the rackets.

The rest of her life was less successful. She had a disastrous marriage with Eugene Brown, a flamboyant but unreliable Black activist who called himself "Sufi Abdul Hamid" and was nicknamed "the Black Hitler" for his violent antisemitic rants. After three years of marriage, St. Clair was so enraged by his infidelities that she shot and wounded him, for which she was convicted and imprisoned. 

After the war she lived in obscurity, and was thought to be seriously short of money. She was reunited with Bumpy Johnson, who lived with her until his death in 1968, and she herself died next year, aged 72. So, as with most leading gangsters, Stephanie St. Clair's career at the top was brief, but, unlike most of them, she died peacefully of old age at home. 

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Footnote: Most of these details are taken from "The world of Stephanie St. Clair", by Shirley Stewart.

The aged Black madwoman in the film "Come back, Charleston Blue" is loosely based on Stephanie St. Clair after the  Second World War

Security, and how to get past it

Tight security is a very serious matter nowadays, guards are everywhere, and sporting events, which are my chief interest, can be hard to penetrate. Nevertheless, I have had a few successes, mostly dating from the time when I followed gymnastics events.

The key to walking past security guards is an air of self-confidence, as if you had every right to be there. You might give the guards a friendly nod, as if you had already met them. Wearing a lanyard round your neck always helps, especially if it bears your photograph. I have a useful one that simply says, "Volunteer", and could mean anything. If the lanyard has no revelance to the situation in question, turn it back to front so that it displays the blank side. I remember an ingenious lady at a gymnastics tournament in France, who found that the official lanyard hung from a multicoloured piece of string. She bought an identical piece of string and stuck the ends of it down inside her blouse. She was never challenged to display it. At another tournament, a Belgian friend had a sort of tabard which admitted him to the press photographers' area. He lent it to me for the events that didn't interest him.

I once met a young RAF man who discovered that a pass at the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall bore a passing resemblance to an Embassy cigarette packet. He proceeded to employ this to get past several checkpoints at the Ministry, and then said to the officer in charge, "I've got this far on an Embassy packet. What are you going to do about it?" He cannot have been popular. 

The choice of clothing is important (also, see later). It is best to dress respectably, conservatively, if in doubt. A blazer with an official-looking badge would serve well. An old colleague of mine possessed an M.C.C. tie with the distictive stripes, which he had bought in a jumble sale. To my mind, he did not not make sufficient use of the opportunities it offered.

Rather than wait to be challenged by a guard, ask him for help. If you happen to know the name of some official who will be there, ask where to find him. It would help if you carry a bundle of  bundle of papers and look harrassed. As an alternative strategy, I once gained admission the the teams' hotel by asking to see a journalist who was staying there, and whom I hoped would remember me; which he did.   

But never argue with security guards. If challenged, apologise: say that you've never been there before and don't know your way around. At my time of life, I can plead old age and incompetence - or, for that matter, incontinence: begging the need to find a toilet sometimes works. I once gained early admission to the old Wembley Pool when several eminent press photographers had been turned away, by pleading the urgent need for a lavatory.

My father, who was a civil engineer, reckoned he could gain admission anywhere that building work or repairs were taking place if he carried a rolled-up blueprint. These days, wearing a high-viz jacket would probably work, especially if also wearing a safety helmet. A schoolfriend who became an accountant suggested that announcing, "I'm from Peat Marwick and I've come to audit the VAT." would admit him anywhere. Indeed, he said, early in his career he and another young accountant had spent an enire morning examining the books of a company in Birmingham before it dawned on them that they'd come to the wrong firm!

So, bluff you way in! You've nothing to lose, and it may work!