8. Working for Harlem’s Crime Queen
In Harlem, Bumpy Johnson joined a protection racket that shook down stores. He got his big break when he was hired as a leg breaker by Madam Saint Clair, Harlem’s biggest bookmaker and reigning crime queen. He eventually became a numbers runner, then a bookmaker. When mobster Dutch Schultz attempted to take over Saint Clair’s bookmaking in the early 1930s, Bumpy Johnson was her point man in a gang war that lasted until Schultz’s assassination on mob boss Lucky Luciano’s orders in 1935.
After Schultz’s demise, Bumpy negotiated a deal with Lucky Luciano in the 1930s, by which Harlem bookmakers retained their independence in exchange for a cut to the mafia. It was the first time a black man had cut such a deal with the Italian mob. It made Bumpy a respected and somewhat heroic figure in the neighborhood. Thereafter, he was the main associate of the Luciano (later Genovese) mafia crime family in Harlem.
