the Detroit Numbers

Fascinating podcast on this piece of detroit history - part of the informal economy African Americans participated in due to being locked out of the larger formal economy.
https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-1...bers-2-15-2019

plug for the book written by Bridgette Davis:
A singular memoir highlighting “the outstanding humanity of black America” that tells the story of one unforgettable mother, her devoted daughter, and the life they lead in the Detroit numbers of the 1960s and 1970s

Quote:

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Part bookie, part banker, mother, wife, granddaughter of slaves, Fannie became more than a numbers runner: she was a kind of Ulysses, guiding both her husbands, five children and a grandson through the decimation of a once-proud city using her wit, style, guts, and even gun. She ran her numbers business for 34 years, doing what it took to survive in a legitimate business that just happened to be illegal. She created a loving, joyful home, sent her children to the best schools, bought them the best clothes, mothered them to the highest standard, and when the tragedy of urban life struck, soldiered on with her stated belief: “Dying is easy. Living takes guts.”

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A legitimate buisness that just happened to be illegal,what exactly is that?

In most cities there were self contained African American self supporting legitimate business communities that did rather well.

Until they slammed freeways through them and in the seventies the number runners found more profit in heroin.

There are millions of African Americans that did really well in those years and made contributions that last even today, in spite of it all,the way it sounds today is like everybody was a slave until 1980 at least.

Does anybody know who first retro fitted the box cars and trucks with refrigeration that changed the country from ice blocks to interstate commence.

It was an African American that was hired as a truck washer with no education that came up with a design that directly changed the daily lives of millions of Americans,there are a lot of positive roll models out there that also deserve recognition and not just the gangsters and all of the bad that has happened.

Let me second the recommendation for the book, The World According to Fannie Davis by Bridgett M. Davis. It provides a great deal of information about the large middle class African-American that once was found in the city of Detroit. And it provides a good bit of information about the numbers business. Alas, most but not all of the African-American middel class moved to the now rather integrated suburban ring.

When I worked in rubber plants in Akron in the 1950s, the numbers business was prospering. It was illegal but seldom, if ever, was anyone arrested. You could play the numbers very easily without any fear of being stopped by the police. Alas, state officials understood that it would be
impossible to close the numbers business so they set up lotteries. Bridgett Davis' book explains how the numbers runners in Motown stayed in business for quite a few years after Michigan established a lottery.