for the grace of God" symbol. To wolves who still were able to catch some rabbits, it had meaning
that an old wolf who had lost his fangs was still eating.
Then there was the burglar, "Jumpsteady." In the ghettoes the white man has built for us, he has
forced us not to aspire to greater things, but to view everyday living as survival-and in that kind of
a community, survival is what is respected. In any average white neighborhood bar, you couldn't
imagine a known cat-man thief regularly exposing himself, as one of the most popular people in
there. But if Jumpsteady missed a few days running in Small's, we would begin inquiring for him.
Jumpsteady was called that because, it was said, when he worked in white residential areas
downtown, he jumped from roof to roof and was so steady that he maneuvered along window
ledges, leaning, balancing, edging with his toes. If he fell, he'd have been dead. He got into
apartments through windows. It wassaid that he was so cool that he had stolen even with people
in the next room. I later found out that Jumpsteady always keyed himself up high on dope when
he worked. He taught me some things that I was to employ in later years when hard times would
force me to have my own burglary ring.
I should stress that Small's wasn't any nest of criminals. I dwell upon the hustlers because it was
their world that fascinated me. Actually, for the night-life crowd, Small's was one of Harlem's two
or three most decorous nightspots. In fact, the New York City police department recommended
Small's to white people who would ask for a "safe" place in Harlem.
The first room I got after I left the railroad (half of Harlem roomed) was in the 800 block of St.
Nicholas Avenue. You could walk into one or another room in this house and get a hot fur coat, a
good camera, fine perfume, a gun, anything from hot women to hot cars, even hot ice. I was one
of the very few males in this rooming house. This was during the war, when you couldn't turn on
the radio and not hear about Guadalcanal or North Africa. In several of the apartments the
women tenants were prostitutes. The minority were in some other racket or hustle-boosters,
numbers runners, or dope-peddlers-and I'd guess that everyone who lived in the house used
dope of some kind. This shouldn't reflect too badly on that particular building, because almost
everyone in Harlem needed some kind of hustle to survive, and needed to stay high in some way
to forget what they had to do to survive.
It was in this house that I learned more about women than I ever did in any other single place. It
was these working prostitutes who schooled me to things that every wife and every husband
should know. Later on, it was chiefly the women who weren't prostitutes who taught me to be very
distrustful of most women; there seemed to be a higher code of ethics and sisterliness among
those prostitutes than among numerous ladies of the church who have more men for kicks than
the prostitutes have for pay. And I am talking about both black andwhite. Many of the black ones
in those wartime days were right in step with the white ones in having husbands fighting overseas
while they were laying up with other men, even giving them their husbands' money. And many
women just faked as mothers and wives, while playing the field as hand as prostitutes-with their
husbands and children right there in New York.
I got my first schooling about the cesspool morals of the white man from the best possible source,
from his own women. And then as I got deeper into my own life of evil, I saw the white man's
morals with my own eyes. I even made my living helping to guide him to the sick things he
wanted.
I was young, working in the bar, not bothering with these women. Probably I touched their kid-
brother instincts, something like that. Some would drop into my room when they weren't busy, and
we would smoke reefers and talk. It generally would be after their morning rush-but let me tell you
about that rush.
Seeing the hallways and stairs busy any hour of the night with white and black men coming and