Queenpin

It's women's history month and that means we get to dive into the lives of women who were so good they were too bad to make it into our history books. Here's to being a phenomenal woman. (Part 2/4)

Harlem, New York.

Early 20th century.

Illegal gambling.

Mobsters.

The Great Migration.

Immigrant struggles.

Community activism.

Stephanie St.Clair (1897-1969) – better known as Madame Queenie, or just Queenie – was a crime boss. She carved out a significant portion of the New York numbers racket for herself and fearlessly battled mobsters Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano, as well as corrupt and honest police for control of gambling in Harlem – forbidding them to step into her territory.

Numbers rackets were essentially "policy banking" – a mix of investing, gambling and playing the lottery – and Queenie ran the town making upwards of $20,000 a year in the 1920s and 30s. That's more than a quarter million dollars today. During her reign she was ruthless, revered and bowed to no man. When the Great Depression saw the crime businesses of white mobsters like Dutch Schultz begin to crumble, they tried to encroach on her business on many occasions and like the Queen she was she handled him the way revenge is best served – cold.

Legend has it Schultz sent men to intimidate her, and she in turn pushed them into a closet and ordered her own men to "take care of them". She then sent her crew to destroy the storefronts of many Schultz own businesses, tipped off the police on his operations (leading him to get raided) and then bragged about it in the press taking out multiple newspaper ads. When Schultz was finally taken out (not by Queenie), and she caught wind of it, she got herself up up from her neighbourhood of zero-fucks-to-give and took the opportunity to send a telegram to his hospital death bed inscribed "So you sow – so shall ye reap". Signed "Madame Queenie of Policy".

Cold. Blooded.

It is easy to turn our nose up to those who colour outside the lines of the law, but in a space of deepening our understanding of others humanity we should and will get curious as to how she arrived at the place of the baddest woman in Harlem's organized crime history.

Born on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, Queenie immigrated to New York in 1911. She would have been 13 at the time, however she was notoriously vague about her history, age and past life. Some accounts put her date of birth as a decade earlier making her 23 when she set foot in America. Either way, she was a Black foreign speaking immigrant girl. She was highly educated coming from the French Caribbean, and as it was the usual plight of Caribbean immigrants during this time period, whether they go to the US or the UK, that once they arrive, they are no longer the professional they were back home and can only get work in physical labour as maids, gardeners, factory workers and jobs alike.

Queenie's arrival coincides with the Great Migration when 6 million Black Americans relocated from the rural south to the northern cities of the country in attempt to escape harsh segregationist laws and poor economic opportunity. And in the midst of that very real struggle, Queenie is having her own coming of age and my guess is she wasn't having it.

Enter numbers rackets. Very few banks would accept Black customers at the time, and Madame Queenie set out to ensure that her people would have a way to invest their money and create their own wealth. Although illegal, the practice provided a lot of jobs and wealth for the community. She was in fact very community oriented, spending a large amount of her earnings on community needs and newspaper ads where she would publicly educate the disenfranchised on their political, economic and voting rights while calling out police brutality.

Evidently somewhere on her journey, she decided not to settle for less than she knew she was worth. She decided to be the authority of her own life. She was always impeccably dressed, commanded respect and treated everyone else the same.

Queenie was indelible, and perhaps of all the newspaper ads she published I find these two to be quite encapsulating of her legendary story. It's the embodiment of self-possession that keeps her tale living on.

This week I want you to deconstruct your relationship to authority.

Authority comes in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes authority is mystical, sometimes it is political. Sometimes we seek redemption from authority, and other times we are engulfed by its eroticism. Authority doesn't always equal power even though it is often perceived as such. Authority isn't always in alignment with the law, and the law isn't always righteous.

Authority figures are just people, and often we have given power over to them when we decide they possess something more than we do. Authority changes, it morphs, it collapses, it folds, it passes the baton. Imperial nations have a long tradition of performing anti-authoritarianism without actually challenging oppression.

So this week is an invitation to get curious about where you reject your own selfhood.

Questions to ask yourself...

(1) When are you fully in your power?
(2) Where are you embodying your principles and where are you outsourcing your responsibility?
(3) Where do you blur the lines of justice and community care.

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'til next Sunday!
Z.