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Forms to be Filled out for Eacn Interview
FORM
Circumstances of Interview
STATE New York
NAME OF kORKER Frank Byrd
ADDRESS 224 W. 135th St. New York City
DATE November 11, 1938
SUBJECT THE PRIVATE LIFE OF BIG BESS
1. Date and time c interview
2. Place of interview
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
3. Name and address of informant Social -Ethnic Studies: Life in Harlem
Presented by staff -writer Frank Byrd.
4. Name and address of person, if any, wno put you in
toucn with informant.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
NOTE: Present address of "Big Bess" (also known
as "Scrappy") unknown. However, she can be
contacted for further interviews at one of
the following places --a basement place in
W. 126th. St. near 7th. Avenue; at Joets
Place, 136th. Street and Seventh Avenue; or
at Harlem Haufbrau, Lenox Avenue between
119th and 120th Streets...
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each
bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material refers.)
FORM C
Text of Interview (Unedited)
STATE New York
NAME OF WORKER Frank Byrd
ADDRESS 224 W. 135th St. New York City
DATE
November 11, 1938
SUBJECT THEPRIVATE LIFE OF BIG BESS.
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
To most people, Harlemprild orgieleand prostitution are synonymous.
There is some actual 'Foundation for this fact. Many of the newspaper stories
about so called goings-on in Harlem, however, are greatly exaggerated. It is
true that Harlem probably has the greatest percentage of prostitution of all
the five boroughs but the community itself is essentially a quiet, peace
loving, law-abiding place. Prostitution, to a great extent, is segregated to
lower Lenox Avenue and that section of Harlem sometimes referred to as the
Latin Quarter that extends from 110th street and Central Park North to 116th
street, and from Fifth Avenue on the East side to Morningside Avenue on the
West.
Evidences of the "oldest profession" crop up inthe most unexpected
places, however, and almost every uptown street has known it at one time or
another.
Women of minority races and economically bankrupt groups have always
been exploited: by materially stronger groups. Negro women are no exception
to this this rule. Many of them are forced to semi or full time prostitution in
A
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order to have a place to sleep. This is nothing new to them. Many of their
mothers before them were in the sane predicament. This fact alone, makes
the subject not only living but almost legendary folk study material. For
that reason, I have undertaken the recording and reporting of some of the
impartial facts regarding the activity in the "profession" in Harlem today.
The following is the first of what I hope will be a series of
personally related experiences of Negro girls in the racket.
This is the story of Big Bess ---Lenox Avenue Bess, the cops call
her- the gal from St. Louis with a "blues" all her own. Of course, you don't
know her and it probably won't mean anything to you, but it makes all the
difference in the world to me because I've been trying to figure her out ever
since she hit this tom.
Bess came to Harlem about eight years ago: just appeared out of
nowhere, and her life, when she leaves the Avenue at damn has always been a
puzzle to everyone. That is, it was until last night. What happened to make
her break that long silence is more than I can understand. She was drunk, it's
true, but that's nothing now to Bess. She's always drunk, morelIG r less. Drinking,
with her, is like eating or sleeping. It's the most natural thing in the world.
At any rate, it never seemed to make any difference before. Usually, when she's
out on a bat, she sits at the corner table in the back of Red's place and stares
mournfully off into space.
Last night, however, she broke a precedent of long standing. She
invited nm to sit down and have a drink with her. It was a peculiar thing.
For a minute, I couldn't believe that it had actually happened. It seemed more
like a dream than a reality, yet there was no getting around the fact that the
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place was Red's Joint and that it was Bess, the hardboiled, (who walks her beat
rain or shine) inviting me, a man, to share her table and, what's more, have
a drink at her expense.
Now Bess has never been known to give away anything in her life. At
least, that part of her life that has been spent in uptown New York. She's
especially tight on men. They are, it appears, her pet hate. Yet, she makes
her living by being nice to them. In fact, hardly a day passes when she doesn't
sleep with at least a dozen.
But that's getting ahead of my story. This baby that's supposed
that
to have a heartNwould make Hard Hearted Hannah look like an angel of mercy,
breaks dawn and confesses to me that she's lonely. Lonely! Can you beat it?
Well, you could have floored me with a feather. I
sat there too d umbfounded to
utter a word: hanging on the ropes, you might say, waiting to see what would
happen next. Then she began to talk ---about herself, ard if you think you've
been through the mill boy, just get a load of this baby's memo's. Here's some
of it straight, just as she told it to me:
"You know, kid," she said after the first couple of drinks, "I'm
lonely tonight. Damn lonely! This business of mine makes you like that sooner
or later. It's a tough racket and it's got so a girl can hardly make a decent
living anymore. Too many girls. There ain't enough business to go around.
In fact, it's lousy. There was a time when a girl could go out there and pick
up a ooupla hundred a week. But that was a long time ago. You gotta do some
tall hustling to even get by nowadays. In the first place, the cops are getting
so they want almost half you make for protection. Well, I don't mind kicking
in with a few dollars now and then but this business of hustling for somebody
else is a different story. Of course, there are a lot of cops who will let you
off easy if you are willing to do them a little favor when they're off duty, but
most of them can't be trusted. I know a kid who was run-in by a cop- only
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last week and he's one of the very guys she's been paying off to for the past
coupla years. Ilnyhow, the last time she went out with him, he turned around
and pinched her for soliciting. Now she's cooling her hips in jail. The trouble
with that guy was that he was sore because he thought she was giving too much
money to her pimp instead of to him.
Speaking of pimps, they're just as bad as the cops. I've never seen
a lousier lot of bums in my life. I never got an even break from one since the
first day went into the racket. They're all alike. They put you in some
cheap, two dollar joint or send you out to pound the pavements, then take every
dime of your money ard think you oughts like it. Once in a while, they go out
and buy up a lot of hot clothes and act like they're doing you a favor by buying
you some beat -up stuff with your awn money.
I'll never forget the first pimp I had. His name was Charlie and I
met hik one night at the restaurant where my aunt had got me a job. That was
in St. Louis. I was eighteen then and I lived with my aunt. My old man and
old lady had died when I was just a kid. Anyhow, this guy Charlie looked like
a good guy. He was a big black boy with a wide smile and a lot of gold teeth
that flashed at you every time he opened his mouth. He was a swell dresser
too, and free with his money. He gave me fifty cent tip the first night he
cam in there. After that, he used to come by every niht for about two weeks.
One night he asked me to go out with him. I vent, and it wasn't long before
I found out what a swell lover he could be. After that, I was a set-up for him.
So when it finally dawned on me what his game was, I had reached the place
where it didn't make any difference to me. Iwas willing to do anything he said.
So I left home and went to live with him.
Not long afterwards, he put me in a twoA dollar joint. t didn't like
it there and told him so, but he always kissed me or petted me and said that
after awhile I wouldn't mind it at all. When he was nice and madelove to me like
that, I forgot all about everything else and the only word I knew was 'yes* He
could have made me do anything.
worked there for about seven months and one day one of the girls
got drunk and told me to wake up and get wise to myself: that I was only being
a sucker for Charlie and that he had four girls working for him in different
houses about town. When I asked him about it, he told me to go to hell and mind
my own business. Then, when I tried to leave him, he beat me up and gave me a
couple of black eyes. After that when I c ame in at night, he took all my money
and told me he'd cut my throat if I tried to hold out on him. He even used to
come to see the woman that ran the house so he could find out how much I was
making. This way, he was able to check up on me. Sometimes, though, I got a
good customer who slipped me an extra five or ten. I kept this money and hid
it until I had enough to go away. Then one day while Charlie was at the club
gambling, I got on the train and wont to Chicago.
I had never been there before and, at first, it was tough learning
the ropes. 13ut one night I went down to one of those black-and-tan joints on
the South Side and got to talking with a girl who was one of the entertainers
there and who, finally, broke me in right. She offered to introduce me to some
of the boys but i told her I was through with pimps and wanted to be on my own.
This good resolution didn't last long though and after throe or four months,
I wanted someone of my awn in the worst way. It's awfully tough going home to an
empty room night after night like that. If Charlie had came along then, I think
I would have even gone back to him.
That's when I started drinking. It was the only way I had of passing
the time. Night after night, I wandered from one cabaret to another, just
drinking or sitting and watching the dancers. It was while I was out on one of
these bats that I met Johnny. He was an awfully nice feller but it didn't take
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me long to find out that he was in the racket, too. He wore alot of flashy
clothes and spent money like it was water. I was too vise to fall for that gag,
though. They all do that at first. Making a flash, they call it. That's just
a bait to make a girl fall for them. So, when Johnny pulled this stuff on me,
I told him to nix out. I wasn't interested. I liked my new freedom too well.
But he must have seen something in my eyes that told him haw lonely I was.
Every day, after that, he used to send me flowers, candy and presents.
He treated me like I was a lady, Oice he sent me a ring and when I had it
appraised, the man told me that it was worth two hundred dollars.
The next time he came to see me, it happened. I just couldn't hold
out on him any longer. He was so nice to me. He was that way for along time
But I knew it couldn't last. His way of doing things was just a little different,
that's all. So, when he began hinting that he needed money, I told him he could
have every cent I made. There wasn't any need for him to kid me. I knew what
he wanted and was willing to give it to him. It didn't matter to me any longer,
anyhow. Having money didn't matter, I mean. All I wanted was him, but I soon
found out that that wasn't as easy as it sounded. There was too much competition
for him. Everywhere we went, the girls I knew, and some I didn't know were making
a play for him, right and left: especially some of those who made more money
than I did.
Johnny was a good-looking brown -skinned boy with dark, wavy hair and
eyes that did something to you. He was a nice boy, too. He had been to college
and knew how to talk in that smooth easy way, so different from the rest of those
roughnecks around Chicago.
It wasn't long before I knew he had another girl. Johnny was like
thatmambitious---always Inviting more than anybody else, and the best of everything
at that. I was jealous and started playing around with some of his friends just to
.7
make him sore. One day he came home mid found one of them there with me.
That night, he left. There wasn't any quarrel and he didn't beat me. Johnny
was like that; always the gentleman. He was the only man I ever had who didn't
beat me. He didn't believe in leaving enemies behind him. It was always his
policy, he said, to part friends. -"hen he left, he gave me a beautiful ring:
a lovely diamond. I've still got it. It's the only thing I've got that's
never been in the pawn -shop.
Bess held up a finger and Red came out from behind the bar and filled
them up again. It was about the tenth time he had done that. When she sipped
a little of her drink, she went on in the same low, confidential voice.
Being without Johnny was worse than I thought it could be. It finally
got so bad that I went to him and begged him to come back to ne bit it wasn't
any use. He had moved in with a little Spanish chick by the name of Consuelo.
She worked in a ritzy joint and made a lot of money. If it had been anybody else,
maybe I wouldn't have felt so bad about it but I never did like that little dame,
even before I knew she was after him. She used to hang around the cabarets once
in awhile, acting snooty and showing off her clothes.
When I thought of her with Johnny, I was almost crazy with jealousy.
Once I went on a wild spree and didn't go to work for more than a week. When I
finally showed up, another girl had taken my job. After that, I didn't try
to find work. Instead,I just lay around drinking with a lot of bum friends who
came around and sponged on me. When I got broke, none of them would lend me
a dime.
One night when I couldn't stand it any longer, I went to the club
where Johnny gambled and asked him to give me some money. He told me that taking
money was his business, not giving it. I was so mad I went crazy I guess.
same night I got lousy drunk and waited in Lulu-Mae's place where I was sure
he would meet Consuelo after she got off from work. When he showed up, I asked
That
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him once more if he would come back to me. He only laughed at me and I was so
mad that I went half crazy. I opened my pocket -book and pulled out a little
gun that I had been carrying around with me. When Johnny saw it, he dived after
me and I pulled the trigger. The next minute, he grabbed his stomach and fell
forward on his face. That's all I remember except that the cops came and took me
away with them. I didn't care. If I couldn't have Johnny, I wanted to die,
anyhow.
I told them that I didn't want a lawyer but they gave me one just
the same, and he told me a lot of things to say but I wouldn't say anything.
He was smart, though, and got the charge reduced from murder to manslaughter.
When it was all over, they sent me up for ten years. But after doing five of
them, I was paroled. Not long afterwards, I came to New York. That was
eight years ago.
Well, New York's just about the same as Chicago as far as the racket's
concerned, only it's harder to fix the cops here and especially the Health
Department M. D!se who examine you when you're picked up on the streets. I've
spent a lot of time on welfare Island 'taking the cure'. Even when I'm able
to beat a soliciting rap, these doctors slap a positive -label opposite my name
and the Health Department won't let me go until I'm 0. K. Sometimes, it takes
three, four, or even six months. In Chica,o, it was different. All you had to
do was get a smart lawyer who knew the ropes or a fixer who could put a few
dollars in the right places for you. That way, you could get a negative label
whenever you needed it.
I'm getting sick and tired of this life, but what can I do? I don't
know any other kind of work and even if I did, where would I find it? Besides,
once you get accustomed to seventy-five or a hundred dollars a meek, its pretty
hard trying to get by on fifteen or eighteen.
Christi I never did anything to deserve a life like this. God knows,
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all I did was to fall in love with a maul There is a God, ain't there?
I'm not sure that there's anything anymore except cheap women and cheating men
and hell on earth. Or maybe there's a heaven and I'll go there someday.
Gods I'd give anything to know what'll become of mei"
Well, boy, when I saw the pitiful look on that babe's face as she
sat there trying to figure things out, I almost felt like bawling, myself.
Instead, I put on the proper New York face and nodded to Red who was leaning
on the bar.
"Bring the next one on me, Red." I told him.
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