Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners
Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4958298 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Fred W Viehe (Youngstown State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 104 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 520-521 |
| Publication date | 2017-09-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jax244 |
| OpenAlex | W2748626505 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
In Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners LaShawn Harris has produced a superb work, arguing that African American women engaged in criminal activities not as victims but as conscious actors seeking social and economic advancement by carving out a distinct urban space in the nation's largest metropolis. Her extraordinarily well-balanced and well-researched work illustrates the trials and tribulations these women faced from dominant white society, the underworld, and their African American community. The thrust of this work is that African American women who pursued criminal activities rejected dominant gender and race values in a quest to devise “wage-generating strategies that stressed individual empowerment, self-sufficiency, and fiscal stability” (p. 206). They wanted to get ahead, and they were not necessarily concerned with how they did so. In an excellent chapter on the mob boss Stephanie St. Clair, Harris mentions that Harlem's “queen of policy” earned an estimated $200,000 per year during the Great Depression and resided in the fashionable Sugar Hill neighborhood. St. Clair also became an advocate for the African American community by supporting race advancement, black immigration, and political candidates, and by opposing public corruption and police brutality, illustrating that she, like other black women in the underground economy, saw herself as an equal participant in a society that rejected her occupational choice. Others appeared to agree, since, in their own quest for economic advancement, owners of nightclubs and other businesses and members of the African American clergy supported (or even worked with) the illegal feminine underworld
Criminology · Immigration · Political science · Politics · Sociology · White (mutation · European history and politics · Gender Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society
| Citations per year | 0.67 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |