The Numbers vs. the Lottery

For much of US history, gambling was an illicit business that frequently brought jobs and revenue to marginalized communities. As historian Matthew Vaz writes, starting in the 1960s, politicians established lotteries that they hoped would replace these games. Looking particularly at the case of New York, Vaz examines how this led to a political fight between lottery supporters and Black leaders in Harlem.

In the 1920s, he writes, the gambling game known as the numbers was the biggest Black-run business in Harlem, and the biggest employer. Numbers bankers were almost all supporters of Black institutions like businesses, music, newspapers, and political groups.

Over the decades, white-run organized crime operations—often tacitly supported by corrupt police—chipped away at local control of the numbers. But the game continued to employ many Black New Yorkers who had few other options, particularly at the street level. By some estimates, in the 1960s and ’70s, around 20,000 New Yorkers worked in the numbers business.

Vaz writes that when state politicians began considering the establishment of a state lottery in the 1960s, the main purpose was to increase revenue without raising taxes. But some also promoted it as an anti-crime measure that could undercut illegal gaming.

When the lottery was actually established in 1967, it initially disappointed supporters. Many gamblers preferred to stick with the street games they knew, which not only offered better payouts but also allowed people to place wagers on numbers of their own choosing rather than just buying a ticket.

While lottery advocates worked to change state law and create a more attractive game, Black politicians instead called for the legalization of private numbers games run by and for Black communities. Harlem civil rights activist James R. Lawson told the state legislature in 1971 that if a numbers-like game became legal, “we intend to run it, come hell or high water.”

Vaz writes that the debate played out over the next decade, with the tide gradually moving in the favor of lottery supporters. In 1980, Lawson organized a last-ditch protest march, drawing about 1,500 numbers workers who boldly identified themselves as employees of the illegal industry in front of police and news cameras. One sign read “Give me money to eat, give me a better home, or give me my numbers job and leave us alone.”

But by this time, the new law had already passed. The state lottery began numbers sales that fall. Within four years, the lottery’s sales rose 300 percent, finally making it the successful revenue source for which supporters had always hoped.

The illegal numbers game didn’t disappear, but operators struggled to compete with the legal state-run game, especially as the law-and-order administration of Mayor Ed Koch increasingly clamped down on them.

“After several decades of conflict and debate the question was settled,” Vaz writes. “The urban poor would be taxed through their gambling practices, rather than have access to profits and jobs from taxed gambling.”

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