Those of the dark-skinned citizens who were eager to lead decent and normal lives for themselves and their children found the situation worse than before. Instead of emancipation from the sordid conditions in which they were confined, the political need to keep them in one district was added to their bonds. And they saw their disreputable elements abetted in lawlessness.
Here were some 260,000 votes in one bag. The political sharks knew just the way to play to make them stay put.
The results were disastrous, as many dismayed respectable Negroes found, especially among the growing youth. The police, who carried night sticks in the lobby of Madison Square Garden and Grand Central Palace, pounded the flagstones of Harlem empty-handed and all but handcuffed.
The meekness and silent suffering which had marked the Negroes in a city of a hostile majority went with the new wind. They got practically nothing tangible from their new protectors. The bad physical conditions remained, the conspiracy of prejudice which imprisoned them remained. But their emotional release and mounting anger against their wrongs grew. That crime and immorality under these bizarre conditions should increase was inevitable.
This metamorphosis was taking place during the later years of Prohibition, when lawlessness was smart, sin a laugh, and decency a joke. In their landlocked area of poverty and congestion, when gangsters, flappers and gigolos were symbolic and many college boys were getting out of hand throughout the country, young Harlem threw away the book.
Decent Negroes, seeking only a normal existence, were appalled. But the tough elements had the support of the dominant political power; and Harlem was a trap from which few could escape.
An occasional Negro was appointed to public office; a few got into civil service; a dribble made the professions. But by and large the wretched economic and social conditions of the race remained, and remain today, not greatly changed over the plight of the race a generation ago.
Today, Harlem is a politician's stronghold. The ward heelers, their bosses and their friends rate high political favoritism. Harlem has this kind of equality, but no other.
The result has been sad.
As this chapter proceeds, the authors will not attempt to review in connection with each incident or observation the abnormal and unique circumstances which have corrupted much of the life of this gigantic Negro concentration camp. They will proceed to tell of Harlem as they know it and have seen it. In Harlem, of course, are many thousands of God-fearing Negro families thoroughly dismayed by the violence, vice and excesses which now exist there, and which will probably continue to exist as long as Harlem remains the exploited landlocked island that it is. Many who could took their families to the Sugar Hill district, where live the more prosperous Negroes, or to the several tree-shaded streets where life continues to flow by rather quietly and respectably.