NUMBERS ARRESTS

(Almost all of these arrests occurred in 1925, the only year in our sample in which those playing the numbers were charged with a felony and appear in the DA’s files).
(Uncheck the box in the legend marked "Residences" to see only the location of arrests)

Numbers was a form of illegal gambling in which individuals wagered on which number between 0 and 999 would turn up as the day’s number. The chance of any number “hitting” was one in one thousand, but anyone who managed to overcome these odds and win, was paid off on their bets, which usually ranged from pennies to a few dollars, at the rate of six hundred to one. Learn more about numbers gambling.

In the 1920s, Numbers was a black-owned and black-run business—one of very few in Harlem—that turned over tens of millions of dollars every year, as roughly one in two of the district's residents bet with some regularity. It was also illegal, and undercover police officers, including some black officers, regularly arrested those operating or playing the game.

If you zoom the map in on Harlem, it is clear numbers was played everywhere in the district. The racket was not concentrated in any particular area; indeed evidence of numbers was present and obvious on virtually every street and avenue in Harlem. Many arrests occurred in stores, particularly cigar and stationary stores, and hence along Lenox and 7th Avenues, and West 135th Street between Fifth and Lenox Avenues, Harlem’s retail strips. Other arrests, more typically of blacks, took place on the streets: many runners stationed themselves on the city’s streets and avenues, particularly in the morning, as Harlemites traveled to work, accepting business from passing pedestrian traffic. Learn more about where bets were placed.

Those arrested for playing the numbers were runners and collectors and a few unlucky players. Numbers “runners” collected bets from individual gamblers. They passed the day’s bets and takings on to their “banker.” Only very rarely did the police net a banker. Those arrested were an ethnic mélange, a collection of mostly recent migrants from Europe, the Caribbean or the American South trying to get ahead in the big city. Learn more about arrests.

When the box in the legend marked "Residences" is checked, the location of each arrest is linked to the residence of the individual arrested. Those links highlight that almost all those in the racket lived in Harlem.

For more discussion of this map, see the blog post on Arrests for Numbers