Madame st clair biography graphic organizer
Madame st clair biography graphic organizer
Scholastic biography poster report...
Stephanie St. Clair, Harlem’s ‘Numbers Queen,’ Dominated the Gambling Underground and Made Millions
On the eve of the Great Depression, with Prohibition in full swing, everyone in Harlem knew the name Stephanie St.
Clair, the “queen of numbers.” A gangster, civil rights advocate, fashionista and businesswoman, she took on one of the biggest crime bosses of the era—and lived to tell about it.
Far from hiding in a criminal underworld, St.
Clair was also outspoken, advocating in the press for immigrant rights and against police brutality. When necessary, she told suitors to “please not annoy me. I, Mme. St. Clair, am not looking for a husband or a sweetheart. If [you] do not stop annoying me, I shall publish [your] names and letters in the newspaper.”
As historian LaShawn Harris, author of Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy, puts it, St.
Clair was bold, audacious and flamboyant: “She was a risktaker, …