Along the Streets of Bronzeville: Black Chicago's Literary Landscape

Chapter 3. Policy, Creativity, and Bronzeville's Dreams

chapter 3 Policy, Creativity, and Bronzeville’s Dreams African Americans flocked to Bronzeville, the nation’s most prominent black community, between the wars. Chicago’s labor shortage lured migrants north where work seemed to be the answer to Southern race problems.This belief in the ethics of work helped some capitalize on the migrant experience by joining in the formal economies of the working and middle class, while others overcame formidable odds to gain a rare foothold among the professional classes. But when the Great Depression began and the Great Migration flooded Chicago’s South Side with waves of migrants, once-vital businesses faded as the nation’s economy went sour; migrants, as a result, turned toward informal economies of gambling—known as the “policy game”in Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods—with hard work, creativity, and artistry that challenged and reinterpreted the ethics of work. One can attribute the success of policy to the systematic discrimination that blacks faced in seeking legitimate, licit, jobs and the resulting attractiveness of those illegal or marginal paths of mobility that were open to them.1 A survey of African American employment found increasing opportunities for males during World War I in the meatpacking industry and steel mills; or as porters, janitors, and waiters; or as domestics and laundries for women.Yet a postwar recession led to widespread layoffs of Black workers. Hardship materialized quickly in this economic slowdown, when women could not find work as domestics while men found themselves shut out of employment. The frequency of layoffs and the dangerous and unsanitary working conditions coupled with racial discrimination led Blacks to move between licit and illicit economies. They recognized that they did not have the same opportunities as their white counterparts for more skilled jobs or promotions in major industries and usually were the first to lose jobs during industry layoffs.They also understood the precarious place they held within organized labor.2 Blacks’ troubled and unsuccessful efforts to attain secure Schlabach_AlongtheStreets_text.indd 50 5/6/13 1:29 PM Policy, Creativity, and Bronzeville’s Dreams 51 positions in Chicago’s labor market made alternative options for work an absolute necessity.3 Well known is the sociological literature that correlates policy to urban pathology and urban decay.This is not how the game was thought of for those who played it. Yes, the game rose in popularity due to segregation. Yes, their communities were exploited and segregated but these communities were also, as a result, partly self-sufficient. The lack of social services, of financial institutions , and of commercial investment and development, and the ubiquitous political powerlessness of segregated ghettos gave rise to informal “parallel institutions,” many of which operated in the gray areas between legitimacy and criminal behavior—but it often depended on who was asking (Fig. 3.1). In reality, playing policy was not just an escapist entertainment nor was it criminal. It afforded the player a slim hope of relief from grinding poverty. Policy was also a financial institution—one that substituted for “white” organizations that would not provide financial services in poor communities. In this imposed fiscal vacuum“licit”and“illicit”economies and leisure sites moved closer and closer together intermingling to the point of dependency;4 definitions of respectability therefore became more permeable, exploding gender stratifications but governed still by strict racial boundaries. Chicago’s policy men and women, leaders and patrons of the game, capitalized on Fig. 3.1. “Policy slips litter sidewalk.” Edwin Rosskam. 1941. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. LC-USF33-005183-M3 [P&P]. Schlabach_AlongtheStreets_text.indd 51 5/6/13 1:29 PM 52 chapter 3 this situation but not without encountering risk and, at times, great cost. This chapter introduces the many spheres of policy: as performance art, as informing black cultural production throughout Bronzeville, and then as a patron and fiscal support of the Chicago Black Renaissance. Essentially, policy gambling was a type of lottery. In policy gambling bettors placed their money on one or more numbers that they hoped would be among those picked in a drawing of twelve numbers between 1 and 78. A common play was a “gig,” a bet on three numbers. If the three numbers were among the twelve drawn, the bettor collected at odds of 100 to 1 or higher.Although the odds favored the policy seller in the long run, on any given day several bettors might select the same winning numbers...