Just as knowing the Gene Fisch story helps give context to Sacred Heart basketball in the fall of 1966, to understand a bit about young men like Joe Reddick, Howie Harlow, Steve Williams, Leonard Reeder and some of the other African American players on the 1966-67 Corcoran squad, it helps to know something about the unique part of town that for decades served not only as home to the bulk of Syracuse’s black families, but as a tremendous source of pride to them.
And knowing something about that place – a vibrant and close-knit maze of homes, churches, schools and shops – will shed light on why the 1967 Syracuse All-City game meant so much so many of color. Because to comprehend even a fraction of what it was like living in Syracuse’s 15th Ward for the first half of the 20th Century, and to appreciate its rich sense of community, is to understand the anger and powerlessness many felt as a small all-white group of politicians and city officials, fueled by a tidal wave of federal funds under the umbrella name Urban Renewal, laid the Ward – the city's only black neighborhood – upon the stone-cold altar of politics and offered it up in sacrifice to the gods of progress.
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Long before diversity became a cultural buzzword, there was Syracuse, New York’s 15th Ward. The Ward was four square miles of real estate on the very southeastern tip of the city’s beating heart, located within earshot of the clang of the Salina Street trolley line. What made the Ward unique was that, in a town defined by its ethnic neighborhoods, its few dozen blocks of domestic life and street commerce represented not merely a melting pot of cultures, but a cross-section of mid-20th Century American life.
Originally home to the bulk of Syracuse’s Jews, the 15th Ward began to change in the 1920’s as the first black migration from the South with many grandsons and daughters of freed slaves in search of migrant farm work, instead found jobs in Syracuse’s rich and ever-growing supply of factories and foundries. And because it was possible to land high-paying factory work with little or no education, many of those same blacks settled down in town. When they did, and started calling the Ward home, thousands of incumbent Jews began pulling up stakes and heading east. Not all, however. Many Jews chose to stay right where they were and for decades continued to own and operate successful businesses in the 15th Ward.
But blacks and Jews were just part of the fabric of the Ward. In the first half of the century, the neighborhood also housed a small but vibrant Greek enclave near St. Sophia’s Church on Montgomery Street. There were, as well, many French immigrants who lived in the shadows of St. Joseph’s French Catholic Church on East Genesee Street. The 15th Ward also housed a fair number of Native Americans who'd moved off the Onondaga Indian Nation, south of the city. And, of course, it served as a home-away-from-home for hundreds of professors, students, clerical staffers and administrators – the vast majority of them upwardly mobile whites – from Syracuse University, whose campus bordered the Ward to the west and north.
Plus, for many years its tree-lined streets boasted hundreds of simple, almost spartan clapboard houses that were home to hundreds of poor and working-poor Irishmen, Poles, Germans, Armenians, Lebanese and Italians, most of whom felt fortunate to have discovered the Ward and its affordable housing. These many working class first- and second-generation white immigrants, along with their Jewish, African American, Native American and Greek neighbors, helped give Syracuse’s 15th Ward – despite its lack of social standing or political prominence – a sense of community and diversity unrivaled by any neighborhood in the city.
Make no mistake; the 15th Ward was a true community, especially for its African Americans. A small black boy from the Ward didn’t have one mother. He had countless mothers, any one of whom carried with her the implied and often expressed authority to impose corporeal punishment on the spot should she catch a boy back-sassing, stealing or skipping school. And word of the misdeed always somehow seemed to get back to the boy’s home even before he did. In fact, while the digital age was still decades away, in Syracuse’s 15th Ward there was a human internet, and it proved to be as fast and efficient as anything cyberspace would ever one day offer.
The Ward also had a unique relationship between its shopkeepers and patrons. In places like Meltzer’s Bicycle Shop, Ben’s Liquors, Cohen’s Linoleum and Appliance, and literally dozens of corner places of business like Doodle’s, Wilson’s and Cashdin’s, the Jewish owners did not seem to resent their African American customers, as much as they were grateful for them. Many tried to learn their names, others stayed open late during blizzards to accommodate mothers hoping to stock up on extra milk, butter or eggs, and countless others extended their regulars credit from payday to payday, or at least until the next relief check came.
At Doc & Lefty’s, a Jewish restaurant, if someone from the neighborhood was willing to show up early and peel potatoes for an hour or so, the owners would pay that person off with lunch, and perhaps dinner as well.
The commercial heart of Syracuse’s 15th Ward was a section of Harrison Street that ran east/west between Almond and State. That four block cluster of commercial enterprises, most of them legitimate, was dominated by small shops and specialty stores owned by leading Jewish families. In fact, Jews owned so many of the shops that local blacks soon began calling one particular part of their neighborhood, “Jewtown.”
For years, the Ward's African Americans and Jews maintained something of an uneasy truce, as both groups, despite their physical and cultural differences, understood their respective roles in the neighborhood economy. Even Jews who may have harbored resentment over the blacks moving in, knew full well that the bulk of their business was now being transacted with African Americans, and most did whatever they could to accommodate the wants and needs of their, now, mostly dark-skinned customer base.
Meanwhile, the majority of blacks in the Ward understood and accepted as a given that most of the shops on Harrison were still owned by Jews. So when a 15th Ward housewife used the term "Jewtown" to tell her kids where she was headed on Saturday morning, she likely used the term more as shorthand than an actual slur.
The term was not entirely accurate, though, because, while Jews did, indeed, own the lion’s share of shops up and down Harrison Street, there were also a good number of black shopkeepers making a fine living there as well. For every cluster of Jewish-owned emporiums like Volinky’s Bakery, Sables, Rothschild’s Pharmacy, Herbson’s Furniture, Meltzer’s Sandwich Shop and Miller’s Jewelers, there were likewise a handful of successful black-owned businesses, like Ben’s Kitchen, Aunt Edith’s Restaurant or the Tucker Funeral Home.
That doesn’t include the “non-tethered” entrepreneurs of color, like former St. Lucy’s star Norman Reeves and his enormously popular chili-dog cart, the handful of fruit and vegetable “hucksters” whose wagons teemed with fresh seasonal produce all growing season, and the ubiquitous “Ragman,” who constantly rode up and down the street on his horse and wagon collecting rags and other reusable items on behalf of the Ward's many prosperous and mostly Jewish junk dealers.
The small, family-owned shops that lined that bustling portion of Harrison Street, many of which featured striped canvas awnings, hand-painted windows, and welcoming bells just inside their heavy wooden doors, provided just about any product or service a person could possibly need. In fact, a 15th Ward resident could probably spend his or her entire life in the space of five or six blocks and never lack for a thing.
For live entertainment and dancing in the 1940’s there was Little Harlem, off Harrison, on the corner of Washington and Townsend, a wooden shack of an after-hours joint which, in the 1930’s and 40’s, was a regular stop on the Chitlin’ Circuit and on any night might showcase a luminary like Earl “Fatha” Hines, Red Foxx or Erskine Hawkins.
Later, the Ward saw a string of live jazz clubs open, including such popular spots as the Tippin’ Inn, the Penguin Club, the Clover Club and the most storied of them all, the Embassy Lounge, with its star-studded clientele of big name athletes, musicians and other luminaries, both black and white.
For a brief time in the 1930’s Syracuse’s 15th Ward was even home to the legendary Sammy Davis, Jr., who lived with his uncle behind a curtain that hung in the back of his Harrison Street barber shop, Mr. Bennett’s. Little Sammy, who lived in the Ward for only a year or so when he was about 9 or 10, and who apparently never went to school in Syracuse, used to earn money for his uncle and himself by shining shoes in front of the Yates Hotel on Washington Street.
Working out of a wooden box he'd built for himself, Davis would shine shoes, sing songs and dance for hours on end. Those who saw him said that no shoe-shine boy anywhere in Syracuse – and probably any other city in the country, for that matter – could pop a rag quite like little Sammy, much less do it while dancing and humming a pitch-perfect version of some popular hit song. As one might expect, the future Hollywood icon, Vegas superstar, and Rat Packer apparently made as much money from tips as he ever made from actually shining men's shoes.
During that same time, the Ward was also home to little Johnny Williams, who lived with his family above the Five & Dime on the corner of Harrison and McBride. Williams, who became a basketball star at the Dunbar Center and an excellent student at Central High, eventually enrolled at Syracuse University, whose campus lay, in part, within the confines of the Ward. Then after graduation and trying his hand at a few jobs locally, the young man moved, first to Los Angeles and then Harlem, in an attempt to become a writer. Little Johnny not only ended up a writer, and a successful one, but in time he became one of this country’s most compelling, provocative and unsparing African American voices. In fact, over the course of his long career, John A. Williams became, in the opinion of some literary critics, one of the most uncompromising and unflinchingly honest American writers – black or white – in 20th Century literature.
From the late 1940’s through the end of the century, Williams’ novels and highly personal memoirs– books like Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light, The Angry Ones and The Man Who Cried I Am – borrowed heavily from his upbringing in the Ward and brought the streets and colorful characters he knew in Syracuse to life. In fact, many believe that Williams – even in his fiction – is as close as the 15th Ward will ever have to an official historian.
For picture shows, the Ward offered a couple of small but serviceable movie houses, the Novelty and the Alcazar, as well as the more opulent Regency. All three featured not just first-run “A” Hollywood titles, but “B” movies like the Charlie Chan mysteries and the noir crime thrillers of the 1950’s. Each also offered popular black-and-white serial cliffhangers featuring comic book heroes of the day like Flash Gordon, Captain Marvel and Lash Larue, bigger than life characters who, once a week, gave boys in the Ward – black and white – a chance to imagine themselves up there on the screen, flying through outer space trying to save the galaxy, or maybe chasing down a band of cattle rustlers on the back of a trusty steed.
And during the big band era, when performers like Stan Kenton, Count Basie and Glenn Miller came to Syracuse, or when classical or operatic stars like Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Sergei Rachmanioff, Ezio Pinza and Arthur Fiedler wanted to perform in an acoustically ideal venue, they’d play at Lincoln Hall, located in the heart of songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen’s alma mater, Central High School.
Syracuse’s Central High was a 1903 educational show palace erected on the corner of Warren and Adams – the western edge of the Ward – and was so architecturally compelling that it would eventually be named an historic landmark. The school’s unique U-shaped main building was designed by Syracuse University professor Archimedes Russell (whose other local projects included the Onondaga County Courthouse, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and Crouse College on the S.U. campus) and featured such design elements as a statue in the foyer of the Roman goddess Minerva and a bronze plaque displaying the names of the Syracuse boys who'd served in the Civil War.
Central also housed a magnificent, acoustically perfect auditorium with an enormous vaulted ceiling, at the center of which was a majestic gilded eagle. In fact, Lincoln Hall and its stage were so sprawling that Central’s regulation-sized basketball court was located not on the floor of the auditorium, but on the back portion of the stage itself, behind the proscenium.
For the news of the neighborhood, the Ward boasted its own newspaper, the Progressive Herald, owned by African American entrepreneur, J. Luther Sylvahn, a unique personality and Renaissance man in every sense of the term. Sylvahn dressed in fine suits and wore a fedora tilted to one side. He sported a van dyke beard, read literary classics from his own expansive library, and whiled away the hours playing the violin in his front room, a la Sherlock Holmes. An astute investor, he made a good living solely off his real estate holdings. The newspaper was his passion, though. Through his weekly essays and editorials, which he wrote in his small, filled-to-the-rafters apartment overlooking Fayette Street, he held tremendous sway over public opinion – at least African American public opinion – on virtually every percolating moral and social issue of the day.
The Progressive Herald covered Syracuse’s black community much the same way the city’s other Herald – the often stodgy and conservative Herald-Journal – covered Central New York; although cwith a lot more spice, attitude and attention to matters in Syracuse’s poorest and blackest neighborhood. By far the most popular and widely read section of Sylvahn’s Progressive Herald was a gossip column by Emmanuel “Emo” Henderson, writing under the pen name, Blair Henderson.
Henderson was a small, wiry and bespectacled Walter Winchell-type columnist whose demeanor alternated between prickly and charming. Though blowing hot and cold, he was remarkably consistent about at least one thing: he rarely pulled punches when it came to shining his often unflattering spotlight on cheating spouses, closet gays, and duplicitous politicians.
His column – published for a time as “Up Periscope,” and then as “This and That” – would pose questions like, “Who was that fine black chick in the red dress we saw last night ‘round midnight at the Penguin?” Or he’d file titillating column items like “We were surprised as anyone to see D.B. and C.D. in a corner booth Friday night. And from the looks of things, while they may have started out just talking business, by the end of the night they weren’t talking at all…but there was still plenty of business going on.”
It didn’t matter that virtually everyone knew who D.B. and C. D. were, and it didn’t matter that they were married, and not to each other. Once Emo Henderson had some noteworthy person from the Ward in his crosshairs, they were fair game. And his readers ate it up.
Maybe that’s why, like certain reporters, Henderson was constantly looking over one shoulder – and why a popular local myth arose that one night he got, in the words of one 15th Warder, “cut a little bit” by a less-than-enthusiastic column subject who apparently wanted to impress upon him the importance of minding his own damn business.
Henderson was just one of countless Damon Runyon-like figures running around Syracuse’s 15th Ward. Given the amount of less-than-legal “cash-only” business being conducted up and down Harrison Street, that was hardly surprising.
They say Slim’s Pool Hall had one of the hottest dice games in town, and that at any time of day or night it was possible to knock on the back door of Slim Cole’s and find anything from a nickel-dime to a high-stakes craps game.
Of course, running such a successful back room affair required a delicate balancing act on the proprietor's part. Slim had to remain in front of the house to maintain appearances, while at the same time manage an often white-hot craps game in the back. He did this by employing a handful of young men he'd taught to run a game – young men who would, in turn, “cut” each pot. Overseeing the game, the young men would act as pit bosses, making sure, among other things, that tempers remained in check. Cutting each pot meant the young men would make sure that somewhere between 10 to 15% was skimmed directly off the top; a figure that went straight into Slim’s pocket.
Of course, Slim had overhead, including not just lights, heat, maintenance and a little something for the cutter, but also a little something for the Ward’s (always white) beat cops to look the other way.
Slim was something of an empire builder. He not only fronted his bustling pool hall and ran a frequent dice game in his back room, he also operated a small tavern around the corner on Townsend Street. Slim’s juke joint was noteworthy for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that it was run by his wife, who in the opinion of most, was one of the biggest, strongest and toughest people in the entire Ward, regardless of gender.
And Dorothy Cole ran one hell of a tight ship. If a couple of nice girls happened to be in her place having drinks and some guy came up and started hitting on them – even politely – it was not unusual for Cole, a large woman, to ask him to stop. And if he didn’t, it was then not unusual for her to grab the guy by the collar and physically escort him to the front door. And the more obnoxious the dime-store Casanova got, the greater the likelihood that Slim’s not-so-little lady would adopt her signature scowl, roll up her sleeves and actually throw the man out bodily, like a sack of garbage, into the street.
If Dorothy Cole, tavern keeper and occasional bouncer, had an operating philosophy, it went something like this: if a lady wants to come in here and drink, then, by God, she ought to be able to do it in peace.
And Slim’s was not the only home to illegal action in the 15th Ward. In the back room of Chocolate’s Smoke Shop there were poker games that could (and often did) run for days. The owner – Chocolate – was, ironically, not a black man at all, but a burly Jew. And much like Slim, in exchange for his nightly hospitality, the use of his place, and the tacit guarantee that the game wouldn’t be raided, Chocolate got a piece of the action.
While Chocolate never seemed to move a whole lot of magazines or tobacco, it certainly wasn’t for lack of customers. To the contrary, at any point, day or night, the front of his little smoke shop could be filled with at least a half dozen interesting-looking characters; guys with apparently a lot of time on their hands; guys who sat around doing little more in life than reading racing forms and smoking cigars; guys with names like Socko, Hank the Doughboy, and Moe the Toe.
Of all the colorful (and occasionally shady) street-level operators in Syracuse, however, none had a greater impact on life in the Ward than a transplanted middle-aged black man from Arkansas who lived and worked on the fringes of polite society, a man who would in time emerge as the Ward’s very own Robin Hood.
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There was nothing about Percy Harris that jumped out at you. He was not particularly tall; in fact he was a bit on the short side, standing only about 5’6” or 5’7”. He was slightly balding and even a bit portly, though not to the point that you’d call him fat. Plus, a number of his features, including his hands and feet, were so petite they bordered on feminine.
Yet make no mistake, there was no character in the heyday of Syracuse 15th Ward who walked any prouder, cut a more dashing figure, or cast a shadow any taller than Percy Harris, the king of the numbers racket.
For the unenlightened, during the first half of the 20th Century, the numbers racket was in simple terms, a lottery; much like the state-sanctioned lotteries of later years, only without the state and, of course, the sanction. It was an illegal game of chance hugely popular in the poorest parts of America, particularly inner cities – so much so, in fact, that in many urban stretches of the industrial north the mobsters who ran the games took to calling the numbers racket, the “nigger pool.”
How the numbers game worked was that in dozens of locations throughout town – usually a legitimate establishment like a tavern, smoke shop or corner market – the gambler would go in pay his money and make a bet with the bookie, indicating which three-digit number he wanted to play. He’d also tell the man whether or not it was a straight wager or if he wanted to “box” the number (meaning an equal percentage of the bet on each of six possible combinations).
A handwritten record of the bets the bookie had taken that day, along with the corresponding cash, was then picked up at a predetermined time at the bookie’s place of business by a runner, who would the “run” the bets and cash to the syndicate headquarters (sometimes called the “bank”), a task that earned the runner somewhere between 10 to 15% of his action.
How the actual winning numbers then got determined varied from syndicate to syndicate. Given how easily such an illegal and non-regulated game could be (and often was) rigged, most numbers kings eventually found themselves forced to use well-documented, third-party sources for determining the daily number. Many started using, for example, the last three digits of the balance in the U.S. Treasury, which was always published the following day in the business section of just about every major newspaper in the country.
Though no one can say for sure, Percy Harris apparently first got involved with the numbers in Harlem, where he owned a small nightclub and spent a great deal of time. As someone with a good head for business and who knew the value of having the odds in your favor, Harris must have known running a numbers syndicate would eventually become a money pump.
After all, how could it not? The game heavily favored the bank, and did so in three ways. First, even though the chance of hitting any three-digit combination was just 999:1, most numbers racketeers usually only paid something like 800:1. A few even paid as little as 500:1.
Secondly, those in charge of the bank always selected a handful of the most popular (and most heavily played) numbers such as 777 and 111 and designated them “cut” numbers. This meant when any one of those numbers did hit, all winners who had the winning number would make as much as 20% less than he would have made otherwise, had he won with a non-cut number.
And finally, unlike a race track or state-sanctioned lottery, which requires cash up front to play, racketeers like Percy Harris regularly gave credit – especially to those who needed it most. This meant that, unlike in casinos, where nickel and dime players have to walk away once they lose all their money, a rabid numbers player could continue to play his same number day after day, gambling money he hadn’t yet earned.
Of course, credit did not come cheaply from guys like Percy Harris, as the loan’s “vig” or “juice” – the interest charged on the money borrowed – usually ran about 10%, and was compounded daily. This meant that you could dig yourself into a hole quickly and, before you knew it, find yourself forced to either pay back the entire principle, plus the vig – which was often larger than the original loan – or face a late night visit from a couple of the bank’s “associates” schooled in the fine art of persuasion.
To appreciate how successful Harris’ numbers racket in Syracuse’s 15th Ward was, it's important to consider that his sizable empire was built using 1930’s and 40’s currency, and was built on the backs of dirt poor clientele who anted up, not dollars per bet, but nickels and often pennies, in hopes they might someday win enough to ease their chronic poverty, if only for a week or two.
The way the local numbers action often played out was that when a numbers player went into, say, Phoebe’s, a corner tavern on the northern edge of the Ward, and put down two bits for a beer, anywhere from a penny to five cents of that quarter went, not to the cash register, but to the secret box under the counter; the one with a dog-eared book to record the action. And when that patron left Phoebe’s, having bet, say, a nickel on his number, he did so hoping against hope that the next time he walked through the front door to play – perhaps even the next day – his thousand-to-one shot would have paid off and there would be waiting for him enough money to put him on Easy Street for a month: in other words, two crisp twenty dollar bills.
As for his backstory, very few in the Ward knew much about Percy Harris, except that he always seemed to have money and always seemed to know how to spend it to maximum effect. When Percy would roll into town, he’d hop off the New York Central at Washington Street and start placing folded bills in the hands of the older black men working the platform as red caps, smiling warmly at each, thanking them for their service and occasionally inquiring how things were with the family.
Then, according to local legend, he'd often excuse himself and run off to the men’s room. There – again according to legend – someone like a city councilman or perhaps some well-placed person in the mayor’s office or police department would follow him in, shake his hand warmly and receive in exchange an envelope full of even more bills; a small token of Harris’ appreciation for all that person (and/or his superior) had done to ensure the numbers king’s successful little enterprise could continue to operate openly, freely and unencumbered by all those pesky state and local laws.
Once he hit the 15th Ward, Harris would often stroll up and down the streets, waving hello to anyone he happened to meet and smiling like a politician. These weren't just random strolls through the Ward, they were systematic and calculated visits to each and every establishment that served as an outlet for his numbers operation.
At every stop Percy Harris made, he'd always drop a conspicuous amount of money, be it to buy a round of drinks for the boys at the bar or to purchase a box full of popsicles or sack of candy for the wide-eyed kids staring through the front window.
And always – always – he’d remember to surreptitiously slip a folded bill into the owner’s shirt pocket, patting the pocket gently afterwards as though he wanted to make sure it landed safely.
Those who remember Harris from back in the day said he was an impeccable dresser who always wore expensive silk and wool suits, imported shoes, and stylish brimmed hats with tiny feathers in the hatband. They also said he liked to carry canes, though doing so – at least for those who witnessed him – appeared more a matter of style than function.
And while the color palette of Percy Harris’ suits, hats, shirts, ties and pocket squares occasionally ventured into bright, flashy tones rarely seen in the more conservative and buttoned down halls-of-power in Syracuse, no one in the city – regardless of race, heritage or social standing – would ever be so bold as to say that Percy Harris wasn’t one hell of a dresser. In fact, many observers felt his wardrobe, while admittedly flashier than that of the average Syracusan, actually showed a great deal of taste and possessed a certain elegance.
No one seemed to know for certain where the numbers king lived, other than that he originally hailed from Arkansas. Some said he came north from Hot Springs; other said Little Rock. All they knew for certain is that Percy Harris showed up in Syracuse one day, got off the train dressed to the nines and strolled across the platform arm-in-arm with one of the most stunning women they'd ever seen. Her name was Alice and, as they would soon find out, much to their surprise, she was actually married to the roundish little wag.
Beyond the outward manifestations of success, Harris’ personal life and the things he did in the privacy of his rented apartment above Martin’s Meat Market on Harrison Street remained, for the most part, a mystery to residents of the Ward. Considering how he earned his living and how frequently (and delicately) he had to straddle the fine line between respectability and prison, Percy Harris most likely wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Rather than actually knowing him, Harris seemed to prefer people know about him. That’s why he spent money so conspicuously with 15th Ward merchants. And that’s why, much like a Columbian drug lord or an Italian mob boss, he regularly gave to local youth groups, schools, churches and charitable organizations like no businessman in the city, legitimate or otherwise. In fact, in the eyes of many residents of Syracuse’s 15th Ward, Percy Harris’ charitable giving elevated his reputation to something this side of sainthood.
For example, though no one could say for certain, there was a commonly held belief that it was Percy Harris who made it possible for Golden Darby to start the Dunbar Center, the 15th Ward’s be-all and end-all civic, community and recreational facility.
And when it became public knowledge that there was no Boy Scout troop in the Ward, it was Harris who not only covered all the start up costs but purchased every last boy’s new uniform.
What’s more, when it came time each summer to send the scouts to Camp Woodland to learn things like how to pitch a tent, build a campfire and make smores, the boys’ mothers never had to conduct bake sales or send their sons door-to-door selling candy bars and magazine subscriptions to those who could barely afford to buy food. Instead, Percy Harris would reach into the pocket of his finely tailored pants, pull out his legendary wad, and with a snap of two or three crisp bills, make it happen.
He even regularly bought Little League uniforms for the neighborhood (even though there was no officially sanctioned Little League in the Ward, because at least one dedicated father who tried to start one could not get enough Jewish business owners to sponsor a team).
And when a group of civic-minded African American elders in the Ward wanted to start a local chapter of the Elks Club – the "Black Elks of the 15th Ward" – and find the chapter a permanent home, some claim it was Harris who helped turn the men’s noble but cash-strapped dream into reality.
More than what he made possible, however, it was what Percy Harris often stopped from happening that ultimately might have been his greatest gift to the men and women of Syracuse's 15th Ward. Because while Percy’s payoffs allowed him to run his numbers racket by the light of day, they also gave him a measure of juice in city’s hierarchy, particularly its police department.
For years, a number of African Americans in the Ward believed that the Syracuse Police Department could care less what went on in their neighborhood, provided it didn’t bleed out into the white sections of the city. As a result, they contended that black-on-black crimes in the Ward often were either ignored or given a cursory investigation, if indeed an investigation took place at all. Meanwhile, illegal acts such as prostitution and gambling were treated with all the attention one might give littering or jaywalking.
Many residents believed strongly that the only people in the local police department who seemed to care at all about on what was happening in the Ward were the cops, but not always for the right reasons. While there were a ton of good cops who walked a beat in the Ward, there were a few real bad ones as well, corrupt cops who demanded payment for looking the other way while such things as backroom gambling or after-hours drinking were in full swing. Any businessman forced to make such payoffs, while most likely resenting being squeezed, nevertheless understood that certain payments were just part of the cost of doing business.
Some of these same cops occasionally imposed their leverage on legitimate black-owned businesses, suggesting strongly to the African American shopkeeper or tavern owner that he should pay a little something each week to ensure that, God forbid, should that merchant ever need a policeman, one would actually show up. The only difference between that kind of protection and the version conducted by mobsters like Al Capone and Dutch Schultz was how the guys doing the shakedown were dressed.
But the nastiest of the 15th Ward’s beat cops were a few racist patrolmen who seemed to make sport out of provoking black residents through confrontational behavior, using their nightsticks whenever anyone being provoked responded in kind. Such sadistic cops rarely billy-clubbed any 15th Ward resident badly enough to do any permanent harm; only enough to remind anyone watching just who was in charge.
In the late 1940’s, for example, street corner doo-wop singing had become popular. And though such singing was rarely, if ever, considered a nuisance by anyone within earshot, it provided an opportunity for the meanest of those dirty cops to flex a little muscle. Such patrolmen seemed to revel in using their authority to stop the singers from singing and move such lawbreaking “loiterers” along. The cops would tap on the sidewalk menacingly with their nightsticks and then use those sticks to motion the singers off the corner. More often than not, the doo-wop choir would simply grouse, disband and reunite a few blocks away. Once in a while, however, especially if one of them had had enough cheap wine, there’d be a confrontation, some yelling, and a good old-fashioned beat-down.
One cop in particular was known for his hair trigger temper and his frequent and extended beatings. He was one of the handful of white cops who made no bones about their disdain for the black residents of the 15th Ward. The guy would walk down the street twirling his billy club, his back straight and his nose high, almost daring someone to cross him. And this went on for years. Until one day Percy Harris heard a few men talking in the barber shop about this cop – who they believed to be a North Side German – and how badly he'd just beaten a friend of theirs with his nightstick. Harris asked a few questions, got the guy's name, which he spelled phonetically as he scribbled it down on a piece of paper. He then stuffed the paper in his inside suit pocket and left the barbershop without saying another word.
The next thing those men knew, the cop was gone from the Ward – not fired from the force – just reassigned to a new beat in another part of town.
Percy Harris might not have had any muscle at City Hall or in the highest levels of the Syracuse Police Department, but he had something just as good. He had cash. What's more, he knew people. He'd learned a long time ago that when you wanted to slay a dragon, you didn’t chop off its tail. You cut off its head.
Likewise, he knew how politics worked in American cities and how many of those in power acted and thought. In their world, there was always a quid for the quo, and favors always begat favors. That’s why Harris regularly made trips downtown when he came to Syracuse and why, despite the fact just about every black voter in the 15th Ward was a registered Democrat, he – like a majority of Onondaga County and virtually every man or woman on the city council – was a Republican.
Eventually, Harris’ political weight in town became so pronounced and so real that, unofficially, he became the de facto head of all low-end city jobs given out in the Ward, such as garbage collector and street cleaner. If a black man or woman in town, for example, wanted a job on a garbage truck or as a clerk, that person had to prove his or her loyalty or offer Percy Harris something in return – usually a willingness to volunteer on behalf of his candidates of choice before, during and immediately after an election.
Yet, for all his high-profile (and calculated) beneficence, Percy Harris was still only a part-time Syracusan. He chose to spend the bulk of his time in Harlem, tending to his night club, living the life of a successful entrepreneur, and enjoying the afterglow of that golden age of high African American culture historians now call the Harlem Renaissance.
And because he was not around to tend to the day-to-day workings of his family business (a robust and self-made numbers syndicate that included not just Syracuse, but nearby cities like Oswego, Ithaca, Fulton, Utica, Rome and Cortland), he arranged for his wife to do that for him. That meant that Alice Harris – the erstwhile trophy bride with the legs that wouldn't quit and whose beauty could (and often did) stop traffic – not only had to be smart enough and tough enough to run a syndicate, she had to reside alone in Syracuse while her husband lived the good life in Harlem, the epicenter of black culture, during that era's Golden Age.
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