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Harlem Undercover

Vice Investigators, Race, and Prostitution, 1910—1930

University of Sydney

In 1928, the Committee of Fourteen, New York City's leading private antivice organization, employed a black teacher to conduct a five-month undercover investigation of Harlem's night-life. It had been ten years since the committee had subjected the neighborhood to such intensive surveillance. Typically explained as the result of racism, that neglect also reflected white investigators' increasing inability to gather information in Harlem. This article explores the work of investigators and the racial dynamics of undercover investigations to show how those difficulties grew from the congregation of waves of new black migrants in the neighborhood and, as Prohibition drew whites to Harlem, blacks' retreat into private spaces, buffet flats, for their leisure. It uses the rich snapshot offered by the black investigator's reports to reveal how, in the 1920s, black prostitutes, rather than being successfully regulated, blended into these new black spaces.

Key Words: prostitution • Harlem • surveillance • race • Prohibition • Committee of Fourteen

This version was published on May 1, 2009

Journal of Urban History, Vol. 35, No. 4, 486-504 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0096144209333370


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