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Terra.Anatolia
  • 21 hours ago
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00:00New York in the early 20th century.
00:04Some of the most notorious criminals in history would start their lives of crime here.
00:09But few would rise from real poverty to power.
00:13To take on not only the law, but the entire system.
00:17And even the mafia itself.
00:21A ruthless racketeer.
00:24This is what we got here.
00:25And one of the most feared and respected bosses.
00:30Who became a legend.
00:37In her own lifetime.
00:41Who's next?
01:00In the early 1900s, crime was very much a white man's game.
01:15But in her own backyard, the Queen of Harlem didn't just play it.
01:19She ran it.
01:21Bombies.
01:23Beatings.
01:25Bodies in alleyways.
01:28Harlem bled.
01:29But she never bent.
01:32A warlord in pearls.
01:35To her allies, she was a legend.
01:37To her enemies, she was lethal.
01:40But why don't we know the name?
01:46Stephanie St. Clair.
01:47She is from Guadalupe, and she was born in the 1890s.
02:01She was the daughter of two working class people.
02:06Her dad died when she was about 10 or 11 years old.
02:09And she was raised by a single mother.
02:11She was relatively well-educated for a child growing up in the French West Indies.
02:16Her mother died at a young age, meaning that she was left alone at maybe age 12 or 13.
02:22Perhaps that's what pushed her to migrate to the Northern Hemisphere.
02:27So much of her early years are shrouded in mystery.
02:30One account has it that after her mother died of TB, she was forced to become a housegirl at a sugar plantation, but ran away at 13.
02:41After having killed the owner's son, who had repeatedly raped her over the years.
02:47Another account has it that she didn't kill him, but that while he was passed out drunk from rum, she emptied his pockets, ran to the docks and jumped on the first boat out, heading anywhere.
03:00The End
03:01Traveling virtually alone on a steamship for weeks left women or really a young girl open to theft, open to kidnapping, open to assault.
03:15It would not have been an easy journey and without a clear sense of what's waiting on the other side.
03:21All we know for certain is that she arrived in North America in 1911.
03:26There were few opportunities for immigrants, much less for a young black woman from a non-English-speaking island in the Caribbean.
03:37She migrates to New York City to work as a domestic worker.
03:45You are hired to scrub and clean and feed a white family and also care for their children.
03:52No woman wants to do domestic work just because of, you know, how abusive that job can be.
03:58Stephanie Sinclair Harley talks about that early life, and I think that's purposeful.
04:02There are differing accounts of how she would make her first entry into New York's criminal underworld.
04:13One says that she starts dating a drug dealer and is working for him until he gets shot and she flees.
04:20A pimp who tries to force her into prostitution until Sinclair buries a fork in his eye.
04:28Allegedly.
04:29So this is the world where Stephanie Sinclair finds herself.
04:37And New York is going through one of the biggest changes it's ever known.
04:40A lot of Southern African Americans had made the decision to go to the North, and specifically New York, for better business opportunities, but also to escape the racist tensions of the Jim Crow era in the South.
04:57And for a lot of these black Americans, the journey north ended in Harlem.
05:01Harlem was called the Black Mecca.
05:08African Americans from various parts of the world are bringing different customs, traditions, ways of knowing, ways of life, and bringing those things to Harlem.
05:20It's difficult to comprehend just how hard life would have been back then for Stephanie.
05:27We know all too well that black Americans were being subjected to appalling racial discrimination.
05:35Slavery is still in living memory.
05:36And sadly, attitudes hadn't changed all that much.
05:40It was almost impossible for black people to even open bank accounts or secure housing.
05:46And even when they were able to, the conditions were so poor, they were almost unlivable.
05:55We even have evidence of black folks in the early 1910s and early 1920s sleeping in shifts.
06:01So you might all be renting one bed in one room, and, you know, somebody has it for the day shift, somebody has it for the night shift, and you switch back and forth.
06:11Everybody was piled on top of each other, which made for hard times, but also a lot of community building.
06:18And then also police brutality is rampant.
06:22You would be walking down the street, and, you know, you'd be stopped by a police officer.
06:27They would start to search you if you talked back, if you happened to have anything on you.
06:31You were in for a beating and being put in jail.
06:34What's incredible is that even amongst all this hardship and discrimination, the brutal police repression and segregation, creativity found a way.
06:48When we think about Harlem during the 1920s, we tend to think about the Harlem Renaissance, that cultural expression where artists, musicians, actors, painters, sculptors are using art as a vehicle to really challenge race, gender and class discrimination, racist caricatures, racist silent movies like the film Birth of a Nation, which comes out in the 1910s.
07:16So Harlem is this incredibly vibrant cultural epicenter, a real phenomenon.
07:22It's around this time that Stephanie St. Clair made her mind up that she wants more.
07:27But those economic hardships weren't going anywhere.
07:36How is someone like Stephanie supposed to change her lot?
07:41For Harlem's poorer population, there was really only one option to strike it rich.
07:46The numbers game was like a people's lottery in a time when BlackBee weren't even allowed bank accounts.
07:55What you want?
07:55Give me 500, will you?
07:57Want 500?
07:57309.
07:58309.
07:5978.
08:0078.
08:01591.
08:02Players would write their lucky three-digit numbers on slips of paper.
08:06And runners would run these slips in the bets between the gamblers and the bankers.
08:11The winning numbers were chosen from the last three digits of the daily trading totals of the New York Stock Exchange, which, crucially, made the game impossible to tamper with or fix.
08:24So the New York Clearinghouse is a financial institution and it handles millions of dollars every day.
08:29And then they publish in the paper, like yesterday we handled, you know, $57,982,431.91.
08:38And so the 431, those three digits before the decimal point, that becomes the New York number.
08:44Hitting the number is huge for anybody.
08:47That gives you the opportunity to take care of oneself and one's family.
08:51So if you hit the number, you know, your rent is paid for for months.
08:55The numbers game was something that everyone could get involved with, and Stephanie St. Clair wanted a piece of that pie.
09:04But the question is, how is it going to change Stephanie St. Clair, the house cleaner, into Stephanie St. Clair, the mob boss?
09:18Prohibition in 1920 would change the course of the nation's history.
09:22The entire country would ban the sale and production of alcohol to try and curb his social ills.
09:31Prohibition lends itself to the creation of Harlem as a sort of vice district.
09:38The police funnel the illegal alcohol activity into this particular neighborhood.
09:44The police are willing to allow illegal activity to go on, provided that they themselves get a cut.
09:50An association emerges between Harlem and vice activity.
09:57You know, that's part of why you would see something as common as people taking bets on the street corner.
10:02The Prohibition racket was controlled by the mafia, which meant dealing with legendary mob bosses like Lucky Luciano,
10:10Joe Maciara, and Arnold Rothstein, the gangster who allegedly rigged the 1919 World Series.
10:19The black community was cut out of Prohibition entirely, so they created something of their own.
10:26So, who was Stephanie St. Clair?
10:31Well, at this point in time, she wasn't really anybody.
10:35But all that was about to change.
10:41The numbers game is an illegal game anyone could play.
10:45Which could change your life.
10:48A people's lottery, of sorts.
10:51Pretty much anybody can start taking bets, as long as they've got either the cash to pay out winners,
10:57or the moxie to chance their arm, until they build up a big enough pot.
11:01With no start-up costs, and few overheads, it's easier to see why it's so appealing to the city's working classes.
11:11Eventually, these central figures come to be called bankers, right?
11:14People with a large enough pool of money that they could pay out multiple wins on a given bet.
11:20It was a way for black people to enter the banking system, a way for money to be generated.
11:25The numbers game was something that everyone could get involved with, everyone could play, and there was the potential of winning.
11:32And Stephanie St. Clair wanted a piece of that pie.
11:39In 1922, Stephanie St. Clair's fortunes took a dramatic turn.
11:45She managed to accumulate $30,000, a huge sum for the era, and more than enough to launch her own numbers operation.
11:53Ted Poston, a journalist at the time, did offer one theory.
11:59Stephanie herself was a numbers player.
12:02According to Poston's research, St. Clair hit the number and used her winnings to set up her own policy job.
12:11It's very unique for a woman and a black person to run an illegal operation,
12:17because African-Americans at this particular time are supposed to be confined to certain stations in life.
12:25She's really stepping out of the boundaries of race.
12:30She's entering into a male-dominated space.
12:33No one is doubting that men historically outnumber women in nearly all types of crime.
12:39So people like Stephanie St. Clair, who climbed the ranks, were rare.
12:46In the numbers racket, the collection and enforcement were essential in dangerous jobs.
12:52Runners carried large amounts of cash through city streets, making them prime targets for thieves.
12:58If you were a collector, this meant knocking on doors where you might not walk away.
13:04There were no courts to turn to, only street justice.
13:10One of the things that's really interesting is that it seems like she used other people, particularly men, to keep her hands clean.
13:19She is metting out punishment.
13:21She's putting down and making sure that you don't defy her.
13:24But she's not doing these acts themselves.
13:26One of the most significant people that would work with Stephanie was Bumpy Johnson.
13:34He would later become the godfather of Harlem.
13:37But right now, he's the toughest enforcer.
13:41We can see here from civil records that he was born Ellsworth Johnson in Charleston, South Carolina, in October 1905.
13:52He'd eventually become Stephanie's right-hand man.
13:54You know not to cross her, because you hear stories of what happens when you take her money.
14:04You hear stories of what happens when you try to scam her or fudge the numbers or not pay up when it's your turn.
14:12And that includes her using her right-hand man, Bumpy, in order to be an enforcer.
14:18Men didn't work for women.
14:19But here you had Stephanie Sinclair, who had men working for her, men answering to her.
14:27Bumpy apparently said Stephanie was one woman he would never cross.
14:31Bumpy met out punishment in the form of beatings, taking people's lives.
14:41Without Stephanie Sinclair, there'd be no Bumpy Johnson.
14:45And without Bumpy Johnson, you wouldn't get legendary gangster Frank Lucas.
14:50And so the Queen of Harlem gave birth to these demigods, these secular gangster gods.
15:03By 1928, Stephanie's reputation as a woman not to be crossed had spread through New York.
15:10Stephanie Sinclair, during the late 1920s, lived at 409 Edgecombe, which is in Sugar Hill in Harlem.
15:20And this is a neighborhood and a building where some of the most prominent Black elite folks lived.
15:28On the one hand, she is respected in her community.
15:31But a lot of people don't think that she's a respectable person because she was engaged in illicit trade.
15:38She certainly was a lady in a lot of ways, but she also was a criminal.
15:46Stephanie decided to get her own voice out there, to let the people of Harlem know who she really was and for whom she was fighting.
15:54Black newspapers become this sort of venue for Black people to learn about various things happening across the country.
16:06And in New York City, the New York Amsterdam News is the paper that Sinclair turns to, to kind of air out her grievances about, you know, the state of Harlem, the state of Black New Yorkers, and also about the police.
16:19And her ad is particularly stunning because, on this ad, Stephanie Sinclair always has an image of herself.
16:28Although very few photos of her survive, we can see that image was incredibly important to Stephanie.
16:35She never allowed herself to be photographed without her hair, her makeup, her clothes, all perfectly styled.
16:44Stephanie Sinclair loves the media.
16:46She's a really flamboyant person.
16:49It's not a mystery who she is.
16:51She wants people to know.
16:53She is dressed to the nines.
16:54Her hair is done.
16:56She always has a fur coat.
16:58She has, you know, jewelry.
17:00I mean, she's just looking like, you know, a 10.
17:03She liked to be seen and seen looking well.
17:07She commanded space.
17:09She was a queen.
17:10When she stepped out in Harlem, every picture that you see of her in the newspaper, she's dressed from head to toe.
17:17She's got fine jewels on.
17:19She's walking slowly to make sure that you know who she is.
17:23It certainly is something that all people who do what she does typically engage in, which is this costume.
17:31And I think that shows status and power.
17:33And she needed to show that to people to maintain her position.
17:37She wanted to wear nice clothes and she enjoyed that.
17:39It also is very much a part, though, of that uniform, that sense of power and control.
17:45I'm in control.
17:46Take me seriously.
17:48I'm playing the same game that you guys are playing.
17:50So whereas it was mostly men playing that game, I think her costume was needed to help her have that armor to step into the arena and do what they were doing and kind of match them as well.
18:02A few miles north of Harlem, in the back streets of the Bronx, an ambitious young gangster was casting an envious eye towards Stephanie's grip on the Harlem numbers racket.
18:13And his name was Dutch Schultz.
18:18He was described by Edgar Hoover as public enemy number one.
18:22The mob couldn't even handle him.
18:24He was a loose cannon.
18:25In time, their rivalry would become one of the fiercest and bloodiest in New York gangland history.
18:32Stephanie wasn't just fighting for herself.
18:34She was fighting for her whole community.
18:38She was a boss who made a fortune but gave back.
18:41Gave back to the community.
18:43If someone needed a hospital bill paid, she would do it.
18:46She wanted to keep the money within Harlem.
18:50The public viewed Stephanie St. Clair as a very shrewd woman who had a very nasty temper.
18:55But she also had a nurturing side.
18:57She was a huge champion of her community, which is shown by the number of people that she employed into the business.
19:05She was an activist for black advancement.
19:07She educated her community about their rights.
19:09She would speak out about discrimination.
19:11And the fact that she was so loyal to her community meant that this was returned to her.
19:17So it was a sound strategy that paid dividends to her business.
19:20And I think that's largely the reason that she was able to run such a successful operation that was at the height able to bring in $200,000 a year.
19:30$200,000 a year in 1928 would be worth over $3 million today.
19:40As the money starts rolling in, so too do the corrupt cops, who all want to cut.
19:46At this particular time, the NYPD is very corrupt.
19:51You have officers who are involved in various vice rackets, the numbers rackets, the paid enforcement rackets.
20:01Police officers are involved in the sex trade.
20:05Some officers are known to assault, harass physically, sexually black New Yorkers, especially African American women.
20:15Anyone who wanted to be a criminal and had any sentence was going to pay off the police so that they could go about their business in a relatively unconspicuous fashion.
20:26St. Clair did this.
20:27However, she also spoke out about the police and especially how much they were harassing her employees and herself.
20:36And therefore, her actions were very closely followed all throughout her reign.
20:39In 1929, she was arrested for possessing policy slips, which is considered to be a very trumped-up charge.
20:50She does not hide that she is a banker.
20:53She actually testifies that she's a banker.
20:55And she only does that because she wants to expose the police.
20:58So, as early as 1929, you know, she's talking about, I'm a banker, but at the same time, I was not supposed to be arrested because I paid for protection from the NYPD.
21:10She wrote these open letters saying, I've paid my ICE.
21:15You know, ICE was the kickbacks which you gave to the police.
21:20So, for her, it's exposing herself, but she's definitely going to put it on the record that the NYPD is corrupt.
21:26In 1930, police corruption in New York was so widespread that President Roosevelt ordered Judge Samuel Seabree to lead a public investigation.
21:41During that investigation, I proved that corruption existed in many of the departments of the city government.
21:52And all of those departments were honeycombed with political appointees.
22:00Stephanie Sinclair would go before the Seabree Commission to testify about vice-rackets and the participation of the NYPD in them.
22:09Due to her testimony, over a dozen police officers, including a lieutenant, were then suspended from the NYPD.
22:18She was definitely fearless.
22:21She stood up to corrupt NYPD Blue.
22:24I mean, for anyone, let alone a black woman at that time, to literally be pointing out corrupt police officers in court, naming and shaming them.
22:35In a lifetime, a bold moose.
22:39That one might have been the boldest.
22:41Although Sinclair had managed to get the NYPD off her back, she still had the problem of an ambitious and aggressive gang from the Bronx trying to muscle in on her turf.
22:57Prohibition is repealed, leaving bootleggers like Dutch Schultz looking for new ways to make money.
23:07And what could be more appealing than muscling in on the lucrative numbers game?
23:13Dutch Schultz especially was known for making bold moves to take over the bootlegging game in the Bronx.
23:20And he was using those same tactics to take over numbers game operations in Harlem.
23:25But Stephanie Sinclair said no.
23:28And Harlem was about to become a war zone.
23:37New York, 1933.
23:42Prohibition is repealed and America celebrates.
23:45But as the liquor flowed, so too did the blood.
23:50Among the many gangsters Stephanie had to deal with,
23:53none were more vicious, more ruthless than one of the city's biggest bootleggers.
23:58Notorious for torture and murder.
24:02Dutch Schultz.
24:06Dutch Schultz was not known for his gentle ways with the opposition.
24:10He and his mob kept New York City in a constant state of violence and bloody gunplay.
24:15This was the face that struck terror in rival mobsters.
24:19His real name is Arthur Flegenheimer.
24:22He was born in the Bronx.
24:24Eventually becomes a bootlegger for several crime families in New York City.
24:29He was so successful at that that he's known as the beer baron of the Bronx.
24:34And he also made money through paid protection.
24:37Dutch Schultz was a notorious, ruthless mobster who made his fortune during Prohibition.
24:49Schultz had made a name for himself by removing obstacles in his way.
24:54And those obstacles were people.
24:57He would torture people.
24:59He'd have people killed.
25:01Dutch Schultz is estimated that at the height of his success was bringing in about 20 million.
25:07Dollars a year, which for that time is a huge, huge sum of money.
25:12So when Prohibition ended, obviously gangsters then were looking at other ventures to make up for these lost profits, which were ginormous.
25:21During the early 1930s, we see many white racketeers whose funds have dried up because Prohibition is over, look for new avenues of income.
25:33And the numbers game, at one point it was seen as the welfare clients Wall Street.
25:39It was called, you know, the N-word pool.
25:42You know, this is a game that only blacks play.
25:45This is a game that's not profitable.
25:47But once many of the black racketeers started getting arrested, and some of their revenue was printed in newspapers, white racketeers like Schultz wanted to get into that game.
25:58And many of them started to force people out of the business.
26:03Dutch Schultz had power, and he had the support of people like Jimmy Hines, who was a Tammany Hall political machine, democratic boss.
26:12He was a huge, huge threat, and that's why so many people, rather than try and fight him, just succumb to his wishes, whether that be paying him a portion of their business or handing it over entirely.
26:25And Stephanie Sinclair was one of his targets.
26:29And she was like, no.
26:34And with that, all hell broke loose.
26:38Harlem was a war.
26:40You can go anywhere in America, but you're not coming into Harlem.
26:44Harlem is ours. Harlem is for black people.
26:47Stephanie said she'd resist any attempt by Schultz to breach her borders.
26:52And she did.
26:54He was charged with a gun in prison.
26:56She saw her weapons.
26:58Shultz sent in his soldiers, armed enforcers who used intimidation, beatings, bombings and murder to muscle in on St. Clair's territory.
27:07But as well as fighting back with her own network of gangsters, she was well ahead of her time when it came to the weaponization of public opinion.
27:19The beef between those two, really on Sinclair's part, is a public beef.
27:26Both of them make this about saying things about one another in the newspaper.
27:32Stephanie Sinclair is quick to go to the New York Amsterdam News, which is a black newspaper,
27:38and talk about Schultz and other white racketeers coming into Harlem and taking over this game.
27:44And of course, wanting to project a sense of toughness and wanting to really keep what she's grown.
27:51She's like, no.
27:53Stephanie said, I'm not afraid of Dutch Schultz or any other man living.
27:57He'll never touch me. I am sane and smart and fearless.
28:02She went to the newspapers and wrote articles calling for anyone who is buying a numbers ticket to buy black.
28:11This, in many ways, is a form of economic nationalism.
28:15If whites are treating you in particular types of ways, you should not do business with these people.
28:20So challenging Schultz in the newspaper is just one of a variety of ways that Sinclair speaks out against white encroachment.
28:30The rivalry between Dutch and Stephanie would escalate.
28:37Dutch once sent an underling to intimidate her.
28:40Sinclair pushed him in the closet and told her bodyguards to, quote, get rid of him.
28:47She dramatically walks through Harlem and goes to white businesses which serve as numbers drops for white racketeers.
28:58And she goes into those businesses.
29:00She trashes the place and essentially tells the white business owners to get out of Harlem.
29:06You know, this is a black game.
29:08This really causes a spectacle in some of these stores.
29:10Legend has it that at some point she even had to go into hiding because he had put a hit out on her and she retaliated in kind, both in print and on the streets.
29:23She refused to let this man walk over her and take her business that she'd worked so hard for and that was so successful for her.
29:33She waged an all out war.
29:36It's estimated that it's responsible for about 40 murders.
29:40She fed information to the police about Schultz's operations.
29:45And due to this, they were able to infiltrate his house and seize $12 million of his money and arrest a lot of his employees.
29:55She went toe to toe.
29:57And I know so much of the violence is vilified.
30:01I think we've got to remember that we're talking gangsters.
30:05You couldn't go to small claims court.
30:07This wasn't a civil matter.
30:09People had to work out their grievances on the street.
30:13And we're talking millions of dollars.
30:15I think it's great that she stood up to him.
30:18But Dutch Schultz was soon to get his comeuppance for defying the commission, the governing body of organized crime in New York.
30:26Dutch Schultz was being prosecuted for tax evasion by District Attorney Thomas Dewey.
30:33Bracketeers succeed only so long as they can prey upon the fear or weakness of disorganized or timid victims.
30:43He'd asked the organized crime commission if he could kill Dewey.
30:47They unanimously denied the request for fear of bringing the full weight of the government down on all of them.
30:55But Schultz put the hit out on Dewey regardless.
31:00Here was the loose cannon of Dutch doing what he wanted again.
31:06So the commission hired Murder Inc. to take Schultz out.
31:15Murder Inc. or the syndicate was an organized crime group that acted as the enforcement arm of the commission.
31:22Led by Charles Lucky Luciano, Mayer Lansky, and Bugsy Siegel.
31:30Incredibly, they were responsible for between 400 and 1,000 contract killings in that period alone.
31:38It's 10.15 p.m. on October the 23rd, 1935.
31:47Dutch Schultz is in the restroom of one of his favorite restaurants,
31:51the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey.
31:55Two gunmen, Charles Workman and Mendy Weiss, burst through the door and open fire.
32:02The commission took no chances. They needed Dutch dead.
32:09The gunmen intentionally used rusty bullets to increase the chances of sepsis and infection
32:16in case the gunshots themselves were not fatal.
32:20Wanting to have the final word,
32:23Stephanie immediately sent a telegram to her enemy on his deathbed.
32:28Signed, Madam Queen of Policy.
32:31It read,
32:32As ye sow,
32:34so shall you reap.
32:37This is Galatians 6-7.
32:40All the evil that you have sowed and placed upon myself and others,
32:45you're reaping that now.
32:47I think when Stephanie sent the telegram,
32:51it shows really that she's going back to her true values.
32:57This is someone who is always fighting for the underdog.
33:00This is someone who has that strong moral sense of what is right and what is wrong.
33:05And she's just reminding that person of his wrongdoing as her final word to him,
33:11so that he is reminded of really where he's going to go after the moment he takes his last breath.
33:20As you sow, so shall you reap.
33:26It's poetic justice.
33:28And with no more battles left to fight,
33:32Stephanie St. Clair got out of the game,
33:35passing her empire on to her trusted enforcer,
33:38Bumpy Johnson.
33:41And you might think her story ended there,
33:44but she would soon cross paths with a man known on the streets as Black Hitler.
33:50And this time, things would get personal.
33:56It's 1935 and Stephanie St. Clair's main rival, Dutch Schultz, is six feet under.
34:03With the turf wars over, Stephanie would step back from the numbers game,
34:07ready to enjoy her fortune and live a quiet life.
34:11But her peace wouldn't last long.
34:14She would fall straight into the arms of Sufi Abdul Hamid,
34:18a man the press would later call Black Hitler.
34:23Sufi Hamid, whose real name is Eugene Brown.
34:26And Eugene Brown was a Chicago political activist who migrates to New York City.
34:33He was a religious leader and a union leader.
34:36And he had a preference for Nazi-style military dress.
34:40And also, he was very anti-Semitic.
34:43And thus, he earned the nickname Black Hitler.
34:48Like St. Clair, he was trying to advocate for Black advancement.
34:55So he organized a lot of boycotts of white shops, a lot of white Jewish shops.
35:00He was a very flamboyant and a very controversial figure.
35:03His persona is very larger than life.
35:06This is someone who preaches from the corner of 135th Street and Lenox Avenue with black riding boots, you know, colorful pants, a white shirt, a really long cape, a really big turban.
35:21And he has a really massive beard.
35:23This would be a person that you would stop and actually listen to, right?
35:27Just not based upon necessarily what he's saying, but just based upon the way he looks.
35:32They were a power couple.
35:34You know, they were a power couple stomping around Harlem.
35:37And I think this was really good for her mythology and her brand.
35:42Here was someone else who was speaking out as vociferously as she did.
35:47But it seems like Sufi was only with her for the money.
35:51And whilst he may have been flamboyant and eye-catching, his anti-Semitism was toxic and stirred up ill-feeling intentions with nearby Jewish districts.
36:02The marriage lasts for about two to three years.
36:07There's an alleged affair between Stephanie Sinclair's friend, Dorothy Matthews, who is a famous Harlem occult leader.
36:17So Stephanie Sinclair wants to confront him.
36:23She waited for him when he was going to meet his lawyer one day.
36:26He stood in the hallway and shot him three times.
36:31The first shot, he's hit in the mouth, cracked the tooth.
36:35The second shot goes through his coat jacket.
36:39And the third shot goes over his head.
36:42In the subsequent trial, Sinclair said that he had been treating her very poorly and that he'd been having the affair.
36:49But that also, her handling the gun, which she claimed was his, was only meant to scare him rather than actually meant to shoot him.
36:56She's arrested, she's indicted and she's prosecuted and she's given two to ten years at the Westfield State Farm in upstate New York.
37:06As Stephanie starts her second stint behind bars, Hamid, who survived the shooting, tries to make a comeback.
37:16But news of the affair did major damage to his messianic image.
37:21What a character Hamid was.
37:24He ends up trying to prove to his followers that he's not leading a life of excess.
37:29And the way he chooses to do that is to publicly fill up the fuel for his private aeroplane himself.
37:36He ends up crashing the plane and dying because he hadn't put enough fuel in it.
37:45After Stephanie Sinclair comes out of prison in the early 1940s, we really don't know a lot about her.
37:55The New York Amsterdam News suggests that she lived in seclusion and traveled to the Caribbean.
38:04There's another ad that suggests Stephanie Sinclair was hospitalized at a mental institution in central Islip, Long Island.
38:14She also appears in the late 60s, when she would have been about 77, in a court document where she accuses a van driver of knocking her down.
38:28She got $2,000, which is equivalent to about $15,000 today.
38:33And I think why I like that story is because she had also bought a house.
38:39But in terms of the records, she wasn't really able to keep up payments.
38:46And so it seems like even at 77, she'd do what it takes to get that money.
38:54When the money is issued to her lawyer, all of these creditors come after the money.
39:00This is a person who has a rags-to-riches story
39:04and seemingly towards the end of her life has a riches-to-rag story.
39:11Stephanie Sinclair is an extraordinary story.
39:16From being a maid, to a crime boss, to an activist.
39:21Stephanie was someone who really fought to see change actually happen.
39:26And not only that, but she fought for that at a time where she would have been bearing the brunt of a lot of force against her to stop her from doing that.
39:38So it wasn't something that she was able to speak really openly and freely about.
39:41She was never one to resist writing an editorial and placing it in a magazine or in the local newspaper,
39:48where she decried the police ignoring the civil rights and the legal rights of black people in the community.
39:54She talked openly and often about the ways in which black women endured assault at the hands of the police.
40:00She rallied black people. They were talking about what it meant to be black in America at a time when black people were finding their voice.
40:08And not only did she find her voice, she lived her voice.
40:12What started as a desire to grow her own empire became a way to give back.
40:20A genuine desire to see black Americans lifted up.
40:24Now that to me, that says something fascinating about human nature, about solidarity.
40:31You practice it, you know, no matter what the reason, it becomes who you are.
40:38I think one of the reasons that Stephanie St. Clair is not remembered and ensconced in history the way others are,
40:47is first and foremost because she was a woman.
40:49We often don't preserve the histories and contributions of women in general at the same rate that we do with men,
40:56and certainly not black women.
40:59Folks like Stephanie St. Clair have been marginalized or excluded from history books
41:06because there's a tendency to kind of spotlight and become really preoccupied with those who were doing the striving.
41:14Like those who were what we would call a credit to the race.
41:17But even within that, more and more scholars are looking at the complex lives of working class, ordinary black people.
41:24I think there's a tendency now to explore those people who lived more complicated and more layered lives.
41:34Perhaps the legacy that Stephanie leaves behind is that despite all of the discrimination,
41:44there's something unyielding in the human spirit, a refusal to accept the hand you've been dealt.
41:52I think part of her legacy is persevering over really tough obstacles, especially when you're kind of born into a world where you're not supposed to thrive, let alone survive.
42:07Why isn't Stephanie St. Clair better known today?
42:11Would she be more widely remembered if she'd been white or a man?
42:18Or is it because she knew when to quit?
42:22We'll never know for sure, but perhaps we should let her have the last word.
42:30Many persons have said that they're afraid for me and that I should be careful.
42:35I'm not going to be any more careful than I have been.
42:38Please have no fear for me. I have no fear of anybody.
42:43I'm going to continue to fight until the members of the race get their just and legal rights.
42:49She was the OG, the original gangster, black queen, badass.
42:59Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:13Why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why.
43:18Whoa, whoa.
43:20They've got so much things to say right now, yeah.
43:26They've got so much things to say
43:30They've got so much things to say right now
43:37They've got so much things to say
43:41I'll never forget to know where
43:46Are they crucified just as Christ?
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