Stephanie St. Clair

Stephanie St. Clair (December 25, 1897 – December 1969) was a racketeer who ran several enterprises in Harlem, New York, during the early 1900s. After Prohibition ended, she held out against the Mafia for years, becoming a local legend by publicly calling out corrupt police and refusing to submit to mob control. She operated a lucrative numbers game in Harlem and also worked as an activist for the Black community. Her nicknames included Queenie, Madame Queen, Madame St. Clair, and Queen of the Policy Rackets.

Born in Guadeloupe, French West Indies, to a single mother named Félicienne, St. Clair was raised by a mother who worked hard to pay for her schooling. When St. Clair turned twelve, her mother fell seriously ill, forcing her to leave school. After her mother died, St. Clair saved some money and left Martinique for Montreal, likely as part of the 1910–1911 Caribbean Domestic Scheme that brought domestic workers to Quebec. She immigrated to the United States from Montreal, arriving in New York in 1912, and used the voyage and subsequent quarantine to learn English. In Harlem, she fell for a small-time crook named Duke, who soon tried to force her into prostitution but was shot in a gang fight. After four months, she started her own business selling controlled drugs with the help of a new boyfriend, Ed. Within a few months, she had made $30,000 and told Ed she wanted to leave him and go solo. Ed tried to strangle her; she pushed him away so hard that he cracked his skull on a table and died. For months afterward, she hired her own men, bribed police officers, and on April 12, 1917, invested $10,000 of her own money in a clandestine lottery game in Harlem. Her success running one of the city’s leading numbers games earned her the nickname Queenie across Manhattan, while Harlem residents called her Madame St. Clair.

St. Clair’s policy banking blended investing, gambling, and lottery play. Because many banks at the time refused Black customers, Black Harlem residents had few legal investment options. Policy banking was illegal but offered one of the only ways for them to invest their money. It was also a predominantly Black industry, giving bankers a sense of agency unavailable in white-dominated fields. St. Clair used Harlem’s underground economy to address racial politics. The numbers game was male-dominated, and she was one of the few women involved. She helped the Black community by providing jobs, such as numbers runners, and by financing legitimate small businesses that took players’ bets. She also donated money to programs promoting racial progress. Her success allowed her to live lavishly, earning over $20,000 per year in the 1920s.

St. Clair ran newspaper ads educating the Harlem community about their legal rights, advocating for voting rights, and calling out police brutality against Black people. She complained to local authorities about police harassment, and when they ignored her, she placed ads accusing senior police officers of corruption. The police responded by arresting her on a trumped-up charge, and she spent eight months in a workhouse. In response, she testified to the Seabury Commission about the kickbacks she had paid police officers and those involved in the Harlem numbers game. The commission subsequently fired more than a dozen officers.

After Prohibition ended, Jewish and Italian-American crime families saw their profits drop and moved into Harlem’s gambling scene. Bronx-based mob boss Dutch Schultz was the first, beating and killing numbers operators who refused to pay him protection. St. Clair and her chief enforcer, Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, refused to pay Schultz despite violence and police intimidation. St. Clair attacked storefronts running Schultz’s betting operations and tipped off the police about him. This led to a raid on his house, arresting more than a dozen employees and seizing about $12 million. St. Clair never submitted to Schultz, unlike many others in Harlem. After her struggles with Schultz, she had to go legitimate and stay away from the police, so she passed her criminal business to Johnson. Eventually, Johnson negotiated with Lucky Luciano, who took over Schultz’s spots, with a percentage going to Johnson. The mafiosi then had to go to Johnson first with any problems in Harlem. Luciano realized the war in Harlem was bad for business. Schultz was fatally wounded in a shooting ordered by The Commission in 1935; St. Clair, though uninvolved, sent him a telegram on his deathbed that read, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” The telegram reportedly made headlines nationwide. By the 1940s, Johnson had become the reigning king of Harlem, and St. Clair grew less involved in the numbers game.

After retiring from the numbers game, St. Clair began a new chapter as an advocate for political reform. In the late 1930s, she met her husband, Sufi Abdul Hamid, an African-American religious and labor leader.