Document text
FORM C
Text of Interview (Unedited)
STATE New York
NAVE OF WORKER Frank Byrd
ADDRESS
224 W. 135th St. New York City
DATE August 23, 1938
SUBJECT HARLPX RENT PARTIES
FOLKLOBE
NEW YORK
The history of the Harlem house.rent party dates back
as far as the World War. To understand what gave such an impetus
and community wide significance to this institution, it is necessary
to ET et a picture of living conditions as they were in Harlem at that
time.
During the early nineteen twenties it is estimated that
more than 200,000 Negroes migrated to Harlem: West Indians, Africans
and American Negroes from the cotton fields and cane brakes of the
Deep South. They were all segregated in a small section of Manhattan
about fifty blocks long and seven or eight blocks wide; an area teeming
with life and activity. Housing experts have estimated that, sometimes,
as many as five to seven thousand people have been known to live in
a single block.
Needless to say, living conditions under such circumstances
were anything but wholesome and pleasant. It was a typical slum and
tenement area little different from many others in New York except
for the fact that in Harlem rents were higher; always have been, in
fact, since the great war -time migratory influx of colored labor.
Despite these eXhorbitant rents, apartments and furnished rooms,
however dingy, were in great demand* Harlem property owners, for
the most part Jews, began to live in comparative ease on the
fantastic profits yielded by their antiquated dwellings. Before
Negroes inhabited then, they could he let for virtually a song.
Afterwards, however, they brought handsome incomes. The tenants,
by hook or crook, managed to barely scrape together the rents. In
turn they stuck their roomers for enough profit to yield themselves
a meagre living.
A four or five room apartment was (and still is) often
crowded to capacity with roomers. In many instances, two entire
families occupy space intended for only one. When bedtime comes,
there is the feverish activity of moving furniture about, making
down cots or preparing floor -space as sleeping quarters. The same
practice of overcrowding is followed by owners or lesees of private
houses. Large rooms are converted into two or three small ones by
the simple process of stragetically placing beaverboard partitions.
These same cubby holes are rented at the price of full sized rooms.
In many houses, dining and living rooms are transformed into bed
rooms soon after, if not before, midnight. Even "shift -sleeping"
is not unknown in many places. During the night, a day -worker
uses the room and soon after dawn a night -worker moves in. Seldom
does the bed have an opportunity to get cold.
In lower Harlem, sometimes referred to as the Latin
Quarter and populated mostly by Cubans, Puerto Ricans and West Indians,
accommodations are worse. The Spanish seem to require even leas
privacy than their American cousins. A three or four room apartment
often houses ten or twelve people. Parents invariably have the two
or three youngest children bedded down in the same room with themselves.
The dining room, kitchen and hallway are utilized as sleeping quarters
by relatives or friends.
Negroes constitute the bulk of the Harlem population,
however, and have (as was aforementioned) since the War. At that
time* there was a great demand for cheap industrial labor. Strong
backed, physically capable Negroes from the South were the answer to
this demand. They came North in droves, beginning what turned out
to be the greatest migration of Negroes in the history of the United
Staten. The good news about sobs spread like wildfire throughout
the Southlands. There was money, good money, to be made in the North,
especially New York. New York; the wonder, the magic city. The name
alone implied glamour and adventure, It was a picture to definitely
catch the fancy of restless, over -worked sharecroppers and farmhands.
And so, it was on to New York, the mecca of the New Negro, the modern
Promised Land.
rOt only Southern, but thousands of West Indian Negroes
heeded the call. That was the beginninc_7 of housing conditions that
have been a headache to a succession of political administrations
and a thorn in the side of community and civic organizations that
have struggled valiantly, but vainly, to improve them.
With the sudden influx of so many Negroes, who apparently
instinctively headed for Harlem, property that had been a white
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elephant on the hands of many landlors iamediately took an upward
swing. The majority of landlords were delighted but those white
property owners who made their homes in Harlem were panic-stricken.
At first, there were only rumblings of protest against this unwanted
dark invasion but as the tide of color continued to rise, threatening
to completely envelop the caucasion brethen, they quickly abandoned
their fight and fled to more remote parts; Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens
and Westchester. Ac soon as one or two Negro families moved into
a block, the whites began moving out. Then the rents were raised.
In spite of this, Negroes continued to pour in until there was a
solid mass of color in every direction.
Harlemites soon discovered that meeting these doubled,
and sometimes tripled* rents was not so easy. They began to think
of someway to meet their over increasing deficits. Someone evidently
got the idea of having a few friends in as paying party guests a
few days before the landlord's scheduled monthly visit. It was a
happy, timely thought. The guests had a good time and entered
wholeheartedly into the spirit of the party. Besides, it cost
each individual very little, probably much less than he would have
spent in some public amusement place. Besides, it was a cheap way
to help a friend in need. It was such a good, easy way out of one's
difficulties that others decided to make use of it. Thus was the
Harlem rent...party born.
Like the Charleston and Black Botton, it became an
overnight rage. Here at last, was a partial solution to the problem
of excessive rents and dreadfully subnormal incomes. Family after
family and hundreds of apartment tenants opened wide their doors,
went the originators of the idea one better, in fact, by having
a party every Saturday night instead of once a month prior to the
landlord's call. The accepted addmission price became twenty five
cents. It was also expected that the guests would partake freely
of the fried chicken, pork chops, pigs feet and potato salad (not
to mention home-made neawn") that was for sale in the kitchen or
at a makeshift bar in the hallway.
Saturday night became the gala night in Harlem. Some
partied even ran well into Sunday morning, calling a halt only
after seven or e*ght o'clock. Parties were eventually held on
other nights also. Thursday particularly became a favorite in view
of the fact that "sleep in" domestic workers had a day off and were
free to kick up their heels without restraint. Not that any other
week -day offered Saturday any serious competition. It always retained
its popularity because of its all round convenience as a party day.
To begin with, the majority of working class Negroes, maids, porters,
elevator operators and the like, were paid on Saturday and, more
important than that, were not required to report to work on Sunday.
Saturday, therefore, became the logical night to "pitch" and "carry
on", which these pleasure -hungry children did with abandon.
The Saturday night party, like any other universally
popular diversion, soon fell into the hands of the racketeers.
Many small-time pimps and madames who, up to that time, had operated
under -cover buffet flats, came out into the open and staged nightly
so-called Rent Parties. This, of course, was merely a "blind" for
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more illegitimate activities that catered primarily to the desire
of travelling salesmen, pullman porters, inter -state truck drivers
other transients, for some place to stop and amuse themselves.
Additional business could always be promoted from that large army
of single or unattatched males and females who prowled the streets
at night in search of adventure in preference to remaining in their
small, dingy rooms in some ill -ventilated flat. There were hundreds
of young men and women, fresh from the hinterlands, unknown in
New York and eager for the opportunity of meeting people. And so,
they would stroll the Avenue until they saw some flat with a red,
pink or blue light in the window, the plunk of a tin-panny piano and
sounds of half -tipsy merry making fleeting out into the night air;
then they would venture in, be greeted volubly by the hostess, in-
troduced around and eventually steered to the kitchen where refresh-
ments were for sale. Afterwards, there was probably a night full
with continuous drinking, wild, grotesque dancing and crude love-
making. But it was, at least, a temporary escape from hundrum
lonellness and boredom.
The party givers were fully aware of the conditions under
which the majority of these boys and girls lived and decided to
commercialize on it as much as possible. They began advertising
their get-togethers on little business cards that were naive attempts
at poetic jingles. The following is a typical sample:
There'll be brown skin mammas
High yellers too
And if you ain't got nothin to do
Come on up to
ROY and SADIEtS
228 West 126 St. Sat. Night, May 12th.
There'll be plenty of pig feet
An lots of gin
Jus ring the bell
An come on in.
They were careful, however, to give these cards to only
the "right" people. Prohibition was still in effect and the police
were more diligent about raiding questionable apartments than they
were about known "ginu.mills" that flourished on almost every corner.
Despite this fact, the number of personal Saturday night
responses, in answer to the undercover advertising, was amazing.
The party hostess, eager and glowing with freshly straightened hair,
would rollback the living room carpets, dim the lights, seat the
musicians, (usually drummer, piano and saxaphone player) and, with
the appearance of the first cash customer, give the signal that
would officially get the "rug -cutting" under way. Soon afterwards
she would disappear into the kitchen in order to give a final, last
minute inspection to the refreshment counter: a table piled high
with pig -feet, fried chicken, fish and potato salad.
The musicians, fortified with a drink or two of King Kong
(home made corn whiskey) begin "beating out the rhythm" on their
battered instruments while the dancers keep time with gleeful whoops,
fantastic body -gyrations and convulsions that appear to be a cross
between the itch and a primitive mating -dance.
After some John buys a couple of rounds of drinks, things
begin to hum in earnest. The musicians instinctively improvise as
they go along, finding it difficult, perhats, to express the full
intensity of their emotions through a mere arrangement, no matter
haw well written.
But the thing that makes the house.rent party (even now)
so colorful and fascinating is the unequalled picture created by the
dancers themselves. When the band gets hot, the dancers get hotter.
They stir* throw or bounce themselves about with complete abandon;
their wild, grotesque movements silhouetted in the semi -darkness like
flashes from some ancient tribal ceremony. They apparently work
themselves up into a frenzy but never lose time with the music despite
their frantic acrobatics. Theirs' is a coordination absolutely
unexcelled. It is simple, primitive, inspired. As far as dancing
is concerned, there are no conventions. You do what you like, express
what you feel, take the lid off if you happen to be in the mood. In
short, anything goes.
About one o'clock in the morning, hilarity reaches its
peak. "The Boys", most of whom are hard.working, hard.drinking
truck drivers, long.shoremen, moving men, porters or laborers*
settle down to the serious business of enjoying themselves. They
spin, tug, and fling their buxom, amiable partners in all directions.
When the music finally stops, they are soaked and steaming with
perspiration. "The Girls", the majority of whom are cooks, laundresses*
maids or hair. -dressers, set their hats at a jaunty angle and kick up
their heels with glee. Their tantalizing grins and the uniformly
wicked gleam in their eyes dare the full blooded young bucks to do
their darndest. They may have been utter strangers during the early
part of the evening but before the night is over* they are all
happily sweating and laughing together in the best of spirits.
Everything they do is free and easy; typical of that
group of hard-working Negroes who have little or no inhibitions
and the fertility of imagination so necessary to the invention
and unrestrained expression of new dance. -steps and rhythms.
The dancers organize little impromptu contests among
themselves and this competition is often responsible for the birth
of many new and original dance.steps. The house.rent party takes
credit for the innovation of the Lindy.Hop that was subsequently
improved upon at the Savoy Ballroom. For years, it has been a
great favorite with the regular rug.cutting crowd. Nothing has
been able to supplant it, not even the Boogle.Woogie that has
recently en.leyed a great wave of popularity in Uptown New York.
Such unexpected delights as these made the house -rent
party, during its infancy, a success with more than one social set.
Once in awhile a stray ofay or a small party of pseudo -artistic
young Negroes, the upper -crust, the creme-de.la.creme of Black
Manhattan society, would wander into one of these parties and gasp
or titter (with cultured restraint* of course) at the primitive,
untutored Negroes who apparently had so much fun wriggling their
bodies about to the accompaniment of such mad, riotously abandoned
music. Seldom, however, did these outsiders seem to catch the real
spirit of the party, and as far as the rug -cutters were concerned*
they simply did not belong.
With the advent of Repeal, the rent.party went out,
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became definitely a thing of the past. It was too dangerous to
try to sell whiskey after it became legal. With its passing
went one of the most colorful eras that Harlem has ever known.