In 1928, the Committee of Fourteen, New York City's leading private antivice organization, employed a black teacher to conduct a five-month undercover investigation of Harlem's night-life. It had been ten years since the committee had subjected the neighborhood to such intensive surveillance. Typically explained as the result of racism, that neglect also reflected white investigators' increasing inability to gather information in Harlem. This article explores the work of investigators and the racial dynamics of undercover investigations to show how those difficulties grew from the congregation of waves of new black migrants in the neighborhood and, as Prohibition drew whites to Harlem, blacks' retreat into private spaces, buffet flats, for their leisure. It uses the rich snapshot offered by the black investigator's reports to reveal how, in the 1920s, black prostitutes, rather than being successfully regulated, blended into these new black spaces.
Raymond Claymes, June 22, 1928, folder "Dance Halls 1927-30 [2]," box 37, Committee of Fourteen Papers, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, New York Public Library, New York (hereafter, COF Papers). Many of the folders in this collection share the same label or are not labeled at all, precluding precise and consistent citations.
2.
For this procedure, see "Suggestions to Investigators for Reporting, January 12, 1928," folder "Investigators," box 82, COF Papers.
3.
Raymond Claymes, June 22, 1928, folder "Dance Halls 1927-30 [2]," box 37, COF Papers. Names marked with an asterisk are pseudonyms in accordance with restrictions preventing the use of personal names in boxes 35 to 37 of the COF papers.
4.
Kevin Mumford, Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York City in the Early Twentieth Century (New York, 1997 ).
5.
Elizabeth Clement, Love for Sale: Courting, Treating, and Prostitution in New York City, 1900-1945 (Chapel Hill, 2006), 81-84. As I discuss below, there is little evidence to support this argument.
6.
Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-century New York (Philadelphia, 1986); George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World (New York, 1994); Chap Heap, "`Slumming': Sexuality, Race and Urban Commercial Leisure, 1900-1940" (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2000); and Thomas Mackey, Pursuing Johns: Criminal Law Reform, Defending Character, and New York City's Committee of Fourteen, 1920-1930 (Columbus, 2005). One exception is Jennifer Fronc's "`I Led Him On': Undercover Investigation and the Politics of Social Reform in New York City, 1900-1919" (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2005), but she does not discuss any of the COF's black investigators or the Committee of Fourteen's (COF) activities after 1920.
7.
In recognition of the diverse origins of the people of color who lived in Harlem of Harlem, I identify only those born in the United States as African American. When an individual's origins are not specified, I identify him or her as black. I also employ black when referring to the community as a whole.
8.
In 1920, black Harlem was bounded by 130th Street to the south, 145th Street to the north, Fifth Avenue to the east and Eighth Avenue to the west. By 1930, the boundaries stretched from 110th Street to 155th Street, and from Fifth Avenue to Amsterdam Avenue. Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto, 2nd ed. (New York, 1971), 123, 127, 130.
9.
In this way, the black neighborhoods emerging in northern cities replicated black communities in the segregated South. There too, Robin Kelley notes, white authorities "actively cultivated black stool pigeons to maintain tabs on the black community." Kelley, "`We Are Not What We Seem': Rethinking Black Working-class Opposition in the Jim Crow South," Journal of American History 80, no. 1 (1993): 80.
10.
"Application for Position as Investigator for the Committee of Fourteen" and flyer for "Second Song Recital by Raymond Claymes," March 11, 1928, folder "1928," box 7, COF Papers; Alumni File for Raymond Claymes, Alumni Records, RU 830, box 1020, Special Collections, Yale University (New Haven, CT).
11.
See "Application for Position as Investigator for the Committee of Fourteen," folder "1928," box 7, COF Papers.
12.
For overviews of the COF, see Mackey, Pursuing Johns, 15-34; and Timothy Gilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920 (New York, 1992), 303-6.
13.
The best discussion of this aspect of the COF's work is Mara Keire, "The Committee of Fourteen and Saloon Reform in New York City, 1905-1920 ," Business and Economic History26, no. 2 (Winter 1997): 573-82.
14.
"Form," September 23, 1909, enclosed with Whitin to Mrs William Baldwin, 10 August 1910, folder "Baldwin, Mrs," box 10, COF Papers.
15.
Du Bois to Whitin, October 29, 1912, folder "General Correspondence 1912 October 21-31," box 2, COF Papers. For discussions of this correspondence, see Jennifer Fronc, "The Horns of the Dilemma: Race Mixing and the Enforcement of Jim Crow in New York City," Journal of Urban History 33, no. 1 (November 2006): 14-18; and Clement, Love for Sale, 83-84.
16.
Clement, Love for Sale, 84.
17.
For Whitin's use of the term Booker T. Washington type, see Whitin to Baldwin, August 31, 1909, folder "General Correspondence, August 1909," box 1, COF Papers. For the formation and work of the Colored Auxiliary, see Fronc, "Horns of the Dilemma," 9-14.
Folder "1913 June-July," box 28, COF Papers. For further examples of Moore's cooperation with the COF, in the form of reports on establishments in Harlem and work as an intermediary between the COF and black proprietors, see Moore to Hooke, February 5, 1915, folder "1917" [5], box 4, COF Papers; Moore to Whitin, October 1, 1917, folder "1917" [7], box 4, COF Papers; Moore to Whitin, March 18, 1918, folder "1918" [1], box 4, COF Papers; COF Annual Report for 1916, 85-86, box 86, COF Papers; Bulletin, October 11, 1915; Bulletin, November 9, 1916, box 87, COF Papers. Chandler Owen, writing in The Messenger in 1922, complained of the continuation of those practices, noting that "certain Negro leaders" were colluding with the COF to keep the races from drinking and dancing together. Cited in Michael Lerner, Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 214-15.
20.
COF Annual Report for 1925, 11, box 86, COF Papers; Bulletin 2026, December 9, 1930, box 88, COF Papers.
21.
Whitin to Peters, November 17, 1906, folder 2, box 1, COF Papers; and Whitin to Washington Railway and Electric Co., May 6, 1918, folder "References," box 13, COF Papers.
22.
Reference for Charles H. Cooper, May 4, 1922, folder "References," box 13, COF Papers.
23.
Whitin to Philip Payton, May 29, 1916, folder "135th St to 213th Street," box 23, COF Papers.
24.
Whitin to Dr. James Pederson, March 27, 1923, folder "1923," box 5, COF Papers. The first black officer was not appointed until 1911, and there were only fifteen employed by 1916. James Lardner and Thomas Reppetto, NYPD: A City and Its Police (New York, 2000), 240-41.
25.
Whitin to Philip Payton, May 29, 1916, folder "135th St to 213th Street," box 23, COF Papers.
26.
Pogue, April 5, 1911, folder "1910-1912," box 28, COF Papers; June 14, 1913, June 21, 1913, folder "1913 June-July," box 28, COF Papers; Ford, June 17-19, 1911, August 26, 1911, folder "1910-1912," box 28, COF Papers; D. J. White, August 24-26, 1911, September 2, 1911, folder "1910-1912," box 28, COF Papers; Franklin, September 22, 1912, folder "Investigators Reports 1912," box 28, COF Papers; Lucien White, August 23, 1913, folder "1913," box 28, COF Papers; January 9, 1914, January 31, 1914, July 18, 1914, folder "1914," box 28, COF Papers. There may have been more; a number of reports on Harlem are unsigned. Another black investigator, Edward H. Woods, worked for the COF in Brooklyn in 1913 and 1914. Whitin to William Beilenberg, September 10, 1913, folder "1913," box 3, COF Papers; and Whitin to Woods, September 24, 1914, folder "Wi-Wy," box 16, COF Papers.
27.
James Curtis to Whitin, August 22, 1911, folder "June-July 1911," box 1, COF Papers.
28.
Whitin to Stewart, September 30, 1912, folder "St-Sz," box 14, COF Papers. Whitin does not identify the investigator as Franklin, but he refers to him visiting Young's on September 22, 1912. Franklin's signature appears at the bottom of that report. Franklin had at least a high school education and had enrolled a course at a "Training School" in Springfield and aspired to study at Columbia University but was compelled to work to support his mother. In 1912 he was employed as a process server and investigator for detective agencies. See Franklin to Whitin, September 26, 1912, folder "Bklyn-Inv Reports and related materials, 1913," box 29, COF Papers.
29.
Stewart to Whitin, September 28, 1912, folder "St-Sz," box 14, COF Papers.
30.
For example, see W. M. Franklin, September 22, 1912, folder "Investigators Reports 1912," box 28, COF Papers; L. H. White, "Report of Investigation, Saturday night, January 31 [1914]," folder "1914," box 28, COF Papers.
31.
Whitin to Edward Gantt, May 13, 1914, folder "1920," box 5, COF Papers; Whitin to Paul Poponoe, February 3, 1920, folder "ASHA 1920," box 9, COF Papers; P. M. Kinsie to Whitin, March 3, 1921, folder "ASHA 1921-2," box 9, COF Papers.
32.
David Oppenheim, March 4, 1916, box 31, COF Papers.
33.
David Oppenheim, December 31, 1915, box 31, COF Papers.
34.
David Oppenheim, March 5, 1916, box 31, COF Papers.
35.
David Oppenheim, March 18-19, 1916, box 31, COF Papers; and Whitin to George Kneeland, January 13, 1920, folder "1920," box 5, COF Papers. Oppenheim continued to work for the COF in other parts of New York City and in the surrounding states until 1920, when he went to work for the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA).
36.
For example, on March 18, 1916, Oppenheim, on the basis of his color, was refused service in the back rooms of half of the fourteen bars and clubs he visited.
37.
David Oppenheim, March 5, 1916, box 31, COF Papers.
38.
"Disorderly Hotels," folder "1910-1912," box 28, COF Papers; "Dan Williams Old Lavender Saloon," folder "1910-1912," box 28, COF Papers. For other examples, see PJM [Peter Mallon], October 15, 1918, box 33, COF Papers; Jackman Stockdale, April 4, 1918, box 33, COF Papers.
39.
David Oppenheim, November 1915, box 31, COF Papers; David Oppenheim, March 4, 1916, box 31, COF Papers; David Oppenheim, March 4-5, 1916, box 31, COF Papers; David Oppenheim, May 7, 1916, box 31, COF Papers.
40.
David Oppenheim, March 4-5, 1916, box 31, COF Papers.
41.
David Oppenheim, March 18, 1916, box 31, COF Papers.
42.
For examples of establishments that refused to serve unaccompanied women in their rear rooms, see David Oppenheim, March 4, 1916, box 31, COF Papers; and David Oppenheim, March 18, 1916, box 31, COF Papers. For examples of establishments that closed their cabarets, see David Oppenheim, March 4, 1916, box 31, COF Papers; David Oppenheim, March 10-11, 1916, box 31, COF Papers; and David Oppenheim, May 13-14, 1916, box 31, COF Papers. For examples of establishments that prevented patrons from changing tables, see David Oppenheim, March 10-11, 1916, box 31, COF Papers; David Oppenheim, August 27, 1916, box 31, COF Papers.
43.
David Oppenheim, March 4-5, 1916, box 31, COF Papers.
44.
L. H. White, "Report-Saturday Evening, July 18 [1914], Harlem," folder "1914," box 28, COF Papers.
45.
Bulletin, April 13, 1914, box 87, COF Papers; COF Annual Report for 1922, 16, box 86, COF Papers; COF Annual Report for 1925, 45, box 86, COF Papers; Willoughby Waterman, Prostitution and Its Repression in New York City, 1900-1931 (1932; New York, 1968), 126-27, 130.
46.
For examples, see Jackman Stockdale, April 4, 1918, box 33, COF Papers; Harry Kahan, August 16, 1918, box 33, COF Papers.
47.
Jackman Stockdale, February 5, 1918, box 33, COF Papers. A visit by Peter Mallon, the COF's assistant secretary, openly identifying himself as a COF agent, later in 1918 confirmed that most of Harlem's saloon owners continued to prevent race mixing. See PJM [Peter Mallon], October 15, 1918, box 33, COF Papers.
48.
Bulletin, August 8, 1921, box 88, COF Papers; Whitin to Dr James Pederson, March 27, 1923, folder "1923," box 5, COF Papers.
49.
Worthington to Bascom Johnson, June 26, 1928, folder "ASHA 1928-1929," box 9, COF Papers. Kahan continued to work for the COF until it shut down in 1932.
50.
Harry Kahan, March 18, 1922, folder "1922," box 34, COF Papers.
51.
Worthington to James Hubert, April 21, 1926, box 15, COF Papers. In the years after 1926, when the Kirwin and Starook joined Kahan as full-time investigators, white investigators filed only twenty-two reports on Harlem.
52.
Whitin to Dr. James Pederson, March 27, 1923, folder "1923," box 5, COF Papers. In the 1920s, black women generally constituted between 25 percent and 40 percent of the women charged with prostitution in New York City's Women's Court. See Bulletins, box 87, COF Papers.
53.
Minutes, Directors' Meeting, February, 1, 1923, 2, box 86, COF Papers; Bulletin 1809, June 18, 1923, box 88, COF Papers; J. Fladger, "Report of Investigation of Vice Conditions in Harlem," enclosed in James Hubert to Whitin, July 9, 1923, box 15, COF Papers.
54.
COF Annual Report for 1926, 31, box 86, COF Papers.
55.
William Baldwin to the New York Foundation, October 28, 1927, folder "1927," box 6, COF Papers.
56.
Bulletin 1944, July 22, 1926, box 89, COF Papers.
57.
For the addition of Dr. Alexander to the Board, see Minutes, Directors' Meeting, January 27, 1927, 3, box 86, COF Papers. For the grant from Rockefeller's Bureau of Social Hygiene, see Minutes, Directors' Meeting, January 27, 1927, 1, box 86, COF Papers; Minutes, Directors' Meeting, December 1, 1927, 1, box 86, COF Papers.
58.
Worthington to Bascom Johnson, October 6, 1928, folder "1928," box 6, COF Papers.
59.
Raymond Claymes, April 21, 1928, folder "135th-207th St," box 36, COF Papers.
60.
Of the 130 reports Claymes filed (including 4 reports filed after the completion of his five-month investigation of Harlem), 98 concerned residences; the remaining 32 reports dealt with dance halls, clubs, and cabarets.
61.
Raymond Claymes, "A Brief Summary of Conclusions of Vice Conditions in Harlem," folder "Harlem. Report on Conditions," box 82, COF Papers.
62.
Amsterdam News, October 23, 1929, cited in Allon Schoener, Harlem on My Mind (New York, 1979), 80.
63.
Amsterdam News, June 8, 1927, 16.
64.
Raymond Claymes, May 3, 1928, folder "135th-207th St," box 36, COF Papers.
65.
The arrests made by police following up Claymes's reports confirmed the prominent place of prostitutes in buffet flats. A far greater proportion of arrests in buffet flats were for prostitution or related offenses than in clubs. See note 82 below.
66.
Mackey, Pursuing Johns, 40; Clement, Love for Sale, 198-204.
67.
Raymond Claymes, May 11, 1928, folder "135th-207th St," box 36, COF Papers.
68.
Claymes, "A Brief Summary."
69.
Raymond Claymes, March 20, 1928, folder "135th-207th St," box 36, COF Papers.
70.
COF Annual Report for 1928, 33-34, box 86, COF Papers. The predominance of women among buffet flat operators reflected the way that Prohibition opened up opportunities for women to engage in commercial enterprises. Mary Murphy, "Bootlegging Mothers and Drinking Daughters: Gender and Prohibition in Butte, Montana," American Quarterly 46, no. 2 (June 1994): 174-94.
71.
Worthington made the misleading claim in his summary of Claymes's investigation that buffet flats catered for "both white and colored patronage." COF Annual Report for 1928, 34, box 86, COF Papers.
72.
Osofsky, Harlem, 130.
73.
Langston Hughes, The Big Sea (1940; New York, 1963), 228.
74.
Lerner, Dry Manhattan, 213-23.
75.
On rent parties, see Eric Garber, "A Spectacle in Color: The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem," in Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, eds., Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past (New York, 1989), 321-23; Martin Summers, Manliness and its Discontents: the Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900-1930 (Chapel Hill, 2004), 177-78.
76.
Chris Albertson, Bessie (New Haven, 2003), 140-42. For analyses of buffet flats that rely on Ruby's account, see Garber, "Spectacle in Color," 322-23; Chauncey, Gay New York, 250-51; and Victoria Wolcott, Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit (Chapel Hill, 2001), 106-8. A richer analysis of Chicago buffet flats in line with that offered here is contained in Cynthia Blair's unpublished dissertation. See Blair, "Vicious Commerce: African American Women's Sex Work and the Transformation of Urban Space in Chicago, 1850-1915," (PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1999), 369-76. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for Journal of Urban History for making me aware of Blair's work.
77.
Claude McKay, Home to Harlem (New York, 1928), 13-14, 49-53, 103-4, 106-11.
78.
COF Annual Report for 1928, 31-34, box 86, COF Papers.
79.
Minutes, Directors' Meeting, November 22, 1928, 2, box 86, COF Papers; Minutes, Directors' Meeting, December 27, 1928, 4, box 86, COF Papers; Minutes, Directors' Meeting, January 24, 1929, 2, box 86, COF Papers; Minutes, Directors' Meeting, April 26, 1929, 1-2, box 86, COF Papers; Minutes, Directors' Meeting, May 24, 1929, 2, box 86, COF Papers; Alexander to Worthington, May 17, 1929, folder "1929," box 7, COF Papers.
80.
The COF did not publish a summary of his investigation, as part of its Annual Report for 1928, until October 14, 1929, a delay resulting from Worthington falling ill. "Night Clubs Found Chief Vice Centres," New York Times, October 14, 1929, 1, 14. New York Times, May 21, 1930, 23; Minutes, Directors' Meeting, April 26, 1929, 2, box 86, COF Papers; Minutes, Directors' Meeting, May 24, 1929, 2, box 86, COF Papers.
81.
For Billie Holiday's arrest, see Julia Blackburn, With Billie (New York, 2005), 61-62. Holiday gave her name as Eleanor Fagan, which is the name that appears on a list of women charged with prostitution on a police card in the COF Papers. See box 52, COF Papers.
82.
A far greater proportion of arrests in buffet flats were for prostitution or related offenses than in clubs: 37 percent (84 of 226) compared to 6 percent (70 of 1,013). The vast majority of arrests in clubs were for violations of the Volstead Act (Prohibition) (41 percent) or disorderly conduct, usually gambling (52 percent). The sentences given to the women convicted of prostitution ranged from 10 days to 180 days, with very few placed on probation or sent to the hospital. "Police Action in Harlem, 1929," box 37, COF Papers; and "Police Cards," box 52, COF Papers.
83.
In 1932, 497 white women and 928 black women were charged with prostitution. Bulletin 2037, Women's Courts, Manhattan and Bronx, November 1931, box 89, COF Papers; Sophia Robison, An Inquiry into the Present Functioning of the Women's Court in Relation to the Problem of Prostitution (New York, 1935), 22-27. This shift also owed something to the aftermath of the Seabury investigation, which highlighted the corrupt practices of the city's police vice squads and, as Worthington put it, "stimulated a public emotionalism that is effectively discouraging the police from making arrests." March 5, 1931, box 89, COF Papers.
84.
For the collapse of the COF, see Bulletin 2038, Directors Meeting, December 2, 1931, box 89, COF Papers; New York Times, November 25, 1932, 17.
85.
Chauncey, Gay New York, 347; Frank Morn, "The Eye That Never Sleeps": A History of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (Bloomington, 1982), 185-92; Stephen Robertson, Crimes against Children: Sexual Violence and Legal Culture in New York City, 1880-1960 (Chapel Hill, 2005), 140-41, 195-97, 235.
