FAQ
AN INTERVIEW WITH RON CHEPESIUK,
AUTHOR OF GANGSTERS OF HARLEM :
"THE GRITTY UNDERWORLD OF NEW
YORK CITY’S MOST FAMOUS NEIGHBORHOOD”
Q) What is your book, “Gangsters of Harlem,” about?
A) It’s the first book that chronicles the true story of the
underside of the Big Apple’s most famous neighborhood and is
told through profiles of prominent gangs, gangsters and
gangster rivalries. The story begins at the turn of the 20th
century when Harlem was largely white and extends to the
present day and the rise of the street gangs. My book shows
that the Harlem crime scene has spawned gangsters every bit
as colorful and fascinating as their Italian, Irish and
Jewish counterparts.
Q) How did you come to write the book?
A) Shaft, Hoodlum, Harlem Nights, the Cotton Club, New Jack
City are some of the many entertaining movies Hollywood
about the Harlem gangster. I’ve always been a big fan of
that genre, but when I started to do some research into the
Harlem’s gangster’s history, I soon learned that Tinsel
Town’s depiction is largely fictional—good viewing, yes, but
inaccurate history. I also discovered that there was no book
chronicling the history of Harlem organized crime. In fact,
historians have written very little about African American
organized crime. As a true crime writer, I’m also looking
for an interesting subject that could be turned into a book.
And I went for it.
Q) Could you give an example of how your book sets the
historical record straight?
A) One of the characters profiled in my book is Stephanie
St. Clair, who was nicknamed Queenie because she was known
as the Queen of Harlem’s policy or numbers racket, an
illegal lottery game that is still played in Harlem. In the
late 1920s, Queenie made $250,000 from the racket in year
alone. She is one of the most remarkable women in the annals
of American organized crime. But that’s not how Hollywood
has portrayed this larger than life personality. Queenie
appears as a character in the 1997 movie, “Hoodlum,” which
starred Laurence Fishburne, Andy Garcia and Cicely Tyson as
St Clair and provided a fictional account of white organized
crime’s attempt to take over the Harlem’s numbers racket in
the early 1930s. In the movie, St. Clair is portrayed as
weak and submissive to Bumpy Johnson, the movie’s main Black
character, the hero who must take on the white mob. The St
Clair character effectively disappears early in the movie.
In real life, Queenie was no shrinking violet. In fact, she
was the only person in Harlem to challenge Dutch Schultz
when he moved to take over Harlem’s numbers racket. My book
chronicles their battle.
Q) When we think of organized crime in New York City, we
think of La Cosa Nostra? What has been the relationship
between the Italian American mafia and Harlem organized
crime?
A) It has been a long and interesting relationship. In fact,
in the early 20th century, one of the Italian American mob’s
first crime major crime families—the Terranova-Morello gang,
was based on 107th Street in East Harlem. Harlem did not
begin to be a predominantly African American community until
the 1910s. In the late 1920s, La Cosa Nostra saw the
potential of Harlem’s numbers racket to make big profits,
and by the mid 1930s, it had taken it over under the
leadership of the powerful Genovese crime family. As my book
shows, La Cosa Nostra was a major force on the Harlem
organized crime scene until the early 1970s, when Harlem
gangsters began to assert their independence.
Q) Who are some of the Harlem gangsters depicted in your
book?
A) For starters, readers can learn about Ciro Terranova, the
Italian American mobsters who cornered the artichoke market
in New York City and was major crime figure in the Italian
American mob’s early history; Caspar Holstein, the Policy
King who became famous as a philanthropist and helped
support the famous Harlem Rennaissance; Frank Matthews; the
heroin kingpin who the disappeared with $20 million; Leroy,
“Nicky” Barnes, “Mr. Untouchable,” who was Harlem’s mirror
image of John Gotti, the Teflon Don. Fact can be more
riveting than fiction, as my book shows.
Q) What impact did organized crime have on the Harlem
neighborhood?
A) In the neighborhood’s early history, when America was
largely segregated and blatantly racist, the numbers racket
actually had positive economic impact providing a lot of
jobs and even opportunity for Blacks. Drug trafficking and
the heroin and crack epidemics it spawned in the
neighborhood had a devastating impact, even though many of
the gangsters tried to portray themselves as Robin Hoods. I
also have a chapter titled “Gangsters in Blue,” which
investigates the corruption spawned by the organized crime
scene. Today, Gangsta Rap is mesmerized by several of the
gangsters who appear my book and many references have been
made to them in its songs and several articles have appeared
in Hip Hop magazines.
Q) How would you describe the Harlem organized crime scene
today?
A) Harlem is changing, and the change has been phenomenal.
Deep pockets of poverty still exist in Harlem, but the
neighborhood can no longer be described simply as a
struggling ghetto, especially when Bill Clinton, our former
president, decides to establish an office on 125th Street.
Many people have hailed Bill Clinton’s’ arrival in Harlem
and view it as a symbol of what they see as the
“renaissance” underway in Harlem’s unofficial Black capitol,
although, unlike the first African American renaissance of
the 1920s and ‘30s, this time around, it is largely
economic, not cultural in nature.
Harlem’s so called economic renaissance has led to a drop in
crime in the neighborhood. For instance, while violent crime
has decreased 67% citywide since 1993, it has dropped 72% in
Central Harlem. Meanwhile, burglary, down 73% citywide, has
fallen 82% in Central Harlem. Police who work the streets of
Harlem confirm that, crime wise, Harlem is changing. For
instance, no longer are we seeing the open air narcotic
super markets that blighted the neighborhood, Drug peddlers
now go inside buildings and apartments to sell their drugs,
while the flashy crime lord are rarely seen today.
If Harlem’s economic revival continues, it is a good bet
that the type of crime that ravaged large parts of Harlem in
the 1970s and 1980s during the heroin and crack epidemics
will be history. But many Black activists complain that
while the crime rates are going down, gentrification—that
is, the process by which physically deteriorated sections of
Harlem are experiencing physical renovation and an increase
in property values-- is continuing to push poor Blacks and
Black businesses out of Harlem. So a big question will have
to be answered: Will the future of Harlem serve as an
epicenter of Black culture as it did in the past, or will it
take on another identity?
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