Running the Numbers: Race, Police, and the History of Urban Gambling
Matthew Vaz
Abstract
This book explores conflict over everyday gambling in urban America from the 1950s through the 1980s. The popular illegal games "numbers" and "policy" thrived in African American communities in New York, Chicago and other cities for much of the twentieth century, providing an important source of both leisure and employment. Black political and civic leaders resisted police corruption and mafia incursions as they attempted to preserve these games as autonomous black economic institutions. As a series of gambling related cases led the Supreme Court to curtail police practices, and as urban refor ... More
This book explores conflict over everyday gambling in urban America from the 1950s through the 1980s. The popular illegal games "numbers" and "policy" thrived in African American communities in New York, Chicago and other cities for much of the twentieth century, providing an important source of both leisure and employment. Black political and civic leaders resisted police corruption and mafia incursions as they attempted to preserve these games as autonomous black economic institutions. As a series of gambling related cases led the Supreme Court to curtail police practices, and as urban reformers sought to curb police corruption, state governments attempted to replace these forms of gambling with state lotteries beginning in the late 1960s. Much of the black political leadership in the major northern cities insisted that if numbers gambling were to be legal, then it should be the basis for jobs and profits in black communities. This vision of legal gambling lost out to a system of government lotteries oriented towards extracting revenue from poor and working class areas. This book traces the conflict over gambling, and the path from illegal numbers to government lottery, as it plays out in the street, the courts, and in the halls of government.
Keywords:
gambling,
numbers game,
lotteries,
urban politics,
police corruption,
Fourth Amendment,
New York,
Harlem,
Chicago,
Southside
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2020 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226690445 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: September 2020 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226690582.001.0001 |
