Often in movies or TV shows that deal with gangsters/mafia back in the 20s-30s, the make reference to a racket known as “running numbers.” From the context (and from various Google searches), I’ve been able to determine that it is some kind of illegal lottery. Which aed me to the following questions:
How are the winning numbers determined? Did the Mob use ping pong balls?
Why would someone have any faith that the Mob was picking these numbers entirely at random, and not just picking numbers that no one else had picked and/or picking numbers that enriched their friends or other business associates?
Have you being watching the same movie as ticker?Posted Yesterday
Man, how’s that for a coincidence? Sorry about that. :smack:
From http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/gang/harlem_gangs/3.html?sect=25
Black crime in America was independently run and usually involved such traditional vices as thievery, gambling, prostitution and robbery. Bolito (the numbers game) and drugs became key factors in the evolvement of black organized crime during the 1920s and 1930s. According to Francis A. J. Ianni, in his book Black Mafia: Ethnic Succession in Organized Crime, “By 1925 there were thirty black policy banks in Harlem, several of them large enough to collect bets in an area of twenty city blocks and across three or four avenues.” More than 800 runners (bet collectors) spent each day hurrying back and forth between betting customers and the policy bank (clearing house). Bets could be made throughout Harlem’s beauty parlors, bars, restaurants, pool halls, barber shops, drugstores, cleaners, stores and other business establishments. Runners even went to people’s homes where they could place bets right at their doorsteps.
and
The game is played by players betting on a series of three numbers from 0 to 999. Numbers runners would collect the money from the bettors each day, leave each bettor a receipt from what was called a “policy book,” and then take the cash and policy book to the clearing house, also known as a policy bank. A player would win if his/her numbers matched a preset series of three numbers, which were found in daily newspapers as the last three digits of either the NYSE total, U.S. Treasury balance, or total bets at a selected racetrack. The numbers game seldom favored the players because the results were often “fixed.”
Interestingly…
Malcolm X, before his personal turn-a-around, was a Harlem numbers runner.
I remember seeing that in Spike Lee’s film, but it wasn’t clear to me what exactly he was doing. Thanks.