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Mme. Stephanie St. Clair, in her own words, at her own expense, and what the papers said back
Harlem, 1929 to 1938As printed in the New York Amsterdam News and papers from Seattle to AtlantaPrice: whatever the paper charged her

“I Shall Publish Their Names”

A numbers banker buys a full portrait and a warning to her suitors, then promises the paper’s readers a serial.

Advertisement in the New York Amsterdam News, 20 November 1929: a large portrait of Stephanie St. Clair in a hat and fur, above her signed notice to whom it may concern
New York Amsterdam News, 20 November 1929. Scan via Matthew F. Delmont, Black Quotidian (Stanford University Press). Published 1929: public domain in the U.S.
MME. STEPHANIE ST. CLAIR. TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: I have received letters and telephone messages from men which have annoyed me very much and I take this occasion to ask them publicly to please not annoy me. I, Mme. St. Clair, am not looking for a husband or a sweetheart. If they do not stop annoying me, I shall publish their names and letters in the newspaper. (See next week’s issue for the beginning of the story about the raid of November 24, 1928.)

TRUE STORY Read off the page, 31 October 2026.

“The only reason we know as much as we do about St. Clair,” Smithsonian wrote in 2021, “is because she made a point of telling us.” She paid the Amsterdam News to run her portrait and her words. Matthew Delmont found that she ran ads there “frequently, informing readers about legal rights, police brutality, and other issues.”

The Raid of November 24, 1928

She promised the story would begin the next week. These are the issues to find.

TO PULL27 Nov 1929: “the beginning of the story”Amsterdam News, the next issue. Schomburg Center: ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
TO PULLDec 1929: how long did the serial run?Unknown until the issues are read.
TO PULL1930 to 1935: her ads on rights and “play black”Delmont and Harris describe them; her words still to be read off the page.

What the other papers confirm: she said the police “framed” her and sent her to the workhouse, and by December 1931 a Seattle weekly reported she had “served a term on Welfare Island for the possession of number slips.” In December 1930 she carried her complaint to the inquiry into the lower courts, saying she had paid magistrates and police for protection she never got.

Works published in 1929 and 1930 are now in the U.S. public domain, so those Amsterdam News pages can be shown in full once found.

Her Words, as the Papers Printed Them

Quoted in the press of her own time, read off the Library of Congress scans.

“her head is not worth a nickel here”As reported when she fled New York. The Northwest Enterprise (Seattle), 23 April 1931. TRUE STORY
“As ye sow so shall ye reap”Her telegram to the dying Dutch Schultz, signed “Madame Queen of Policy,” as told in George Ross’s column, The Washington Daily News, 21 June 1938. SOURCES DISAGREE Smithsonian (2021) gives “so shall you reap.”
“framed her and had her sent to the work house”Her claim, as the Norfolk Journal and Guide put it, quoted in the Richmond Planet, 27 December 1930. TRUE STORY
“The policy game is my game.”On Schultz, quoted in Smithsonian (Durn, 2021). Original source not named. TO CHECK

Scratch the slip for her whole story. Or play the number in the weeks she testified.

The Press on Her, 1930–1938

Twelve clippings from the Library of Congress. Tap one to read it. The papers’ racial terms for her are left as printed.

She spoke for herself

She bought the space, wrote the copy and promised her readers a serial. When a paper printed a story she disputed, she sued it for $25,000. When she said police took her money, she went to court for it, and was still pressing the claim in 1932.

The Black press answered

Not everyone cheered. In December 1930 the Richmond Planet, a Black paper, reprinted the news of her testimony and then argued against the game itself: “no one should make such people feel that they are gloriously privileged to sin, gamble and squander their earnings.” A 1932 item put it plainly: in most cities, “the very poor are the best patrons.”