She was kicked out of Harlem businesses by Dutch Schultz, but as Schultz lay dying from a gunshot wound, Stephanie St. Clair had the last laugh.

Stephanie St. Clair was born in 1886, in Marseilles, an island in the Eastern Caribbean. At the age of 26, she immigrated to New York City and settled in Harlem. Almost immediately, he joined the Forty Thieves, a white gang that had been around since the 1850s. There is no record of what St. Clair did for the next ten years, but it’s safe to say that considering his ties to the Forty Ladrones, a notorious extortion gang, what he did was anything but legal.

In 1922, St. Clair used $10,000 of his own money and started Harlem’s first number rackets. St. Clair was known to have a hot temper and would often curse her subordinates in multiple languages. When people asked her about her heritage, she said that she was born in “European France” and that she spoke impeccable French, unlike the French-speaking rabble of the Caribbean. In Harlem she was called Madame St. Clair, but in the rest of the city she was known simply as “Queenie”.

In the mid-1920s, notorious rock smuggler and murderer Dutch Schultz decided he wanted to take over all the political rackets in Harlem. Schultz didn’t ask Queenie to back off too nicely, resulting in the deaths of dozens of Queenie’s number runners. Queenie enlisted the help of Bumpy Johnson, an ex-con with a trigger-happy temper, to handle the Schultz situation. Johnson went downtown and visited Italian mob boss Lucky Luciano. He asked Luciano to talk some sense into Schultz. But there wasn’t much Luciano could do, since he was one of Schultz’s partners at the time. Luciano suggests that Queenie and Johnson join Schultz, making them, in effect, a subdivision of Schultz’s numbers business. This did not sit well with Queenie, and although Johnson tried to convince her that this was her smart move, she turned down Luciano’s offer.

Then, out of the blue, Queenie started having trouble with the police, who she was paying to look the other way. This was the work of Schultz, who through his Tammany Hall connections had several politicians in his back pocket, as well as half the police force in New York City. While Schultz’s number runners were working with impunity on the streets of Harlem, Queenie’s number runners, when they weren’t being killed by Schultz’s men, were being arrested by the police.

Queenie decided to fight back with the power of the press. In December 1930, Queenie published several advertisements in Harlem newspapers, accusing the police of bribery, extortion, and corruption. This was not well received by the local people, and Queenie was immediately arrested for illegal gambling. Queenie was found guilty and sentenced to eight months hard labor on Welfare Island. Upon her release, she appeared before the Seabury Committee, which was investigating corruption in the Bronx and Manhattan magistrates’ courts. Queenie testified that between 1923 and 1926 she had paid the Harlem police $6,000 to protect the runner from her arrest, and that the police had taken the money from her and arrested the runner from her anyway. Schultz must have had a good laugh at that, since $6,000 was less than what he paid monthly to keep cops happy in New York City.

Nothing came of her testimony before the Seabury Committee, so Queenie decided to plead her case to New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker, who was almost as corrupt as Schultz. Queenie told Walker that Schultz was pressuring her to join her gang, or else. Walker, who was being investigated by the Seabury Committee itself, responded to Queenie by resigning from his job as mayor and relocating to Europe for the next few years.

Queenie then pleaded with the other black policy number bankers in Harlem to join forces with her in a battle against Schultz. Knowing that Schultz had too much influence in the government and too many shooters in her gang, she rejected her outright.

Bumpy Johnson soon found out that Schultz had gotten the word out on the streets that Queenie was going to be shot on the spot. Queenie then went into hiding, refusing even to come out to see the light of day. On one occasion, Johnson had to hide Queenie in a coal yard, under a coal mound, to save her from Schultz’s men. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Queenie. She sent a message to Schultz that she would agree to her demands. Schultz sent her a message that she could stay alive, as long as he gave Schultz a controlling interest in his numbers business. Queenie reluctantly agreed.

Schultz had his own run of bad luck when he demanded that Luciano and his friends agree to the murder of special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, who was breathing down Schultz’s neck. Schultz’s proposal was rejected, and when he said he would kill Dewey himself, he was shot in the stomach in the bathroom of a New Jersey restaurant. Schultz remained in a delirious state in a hospital for a few days before he died. As he lay there muttering nonsense, a telegram arrived saying, “As you sow, so shall you reap.”

The telegram was sent by the Queen of Harlem, Stephanie St. Clair.

Queenie finally handed over her rackets to Bumpy Johnson. She faded into darkness and died in her sleep in 1969.

In the 1997 film “Hoodlum,” Lawrence Fishburne played Bumpy Johnson, Tim Roth played Dutch Schultz, Andy Garcia played Lucky Luciano, and Cicely Tyson played Stephanie “Queenie” St. Clair.