"POLICY"--FAILED PROMISE AND PERIL

"POLICY"--FAILED PROMISE & PERIL It is cruel and unusual to bar groups of descendants of former American slaves' least attempts to get ahead economically, financially, corporately, outside of church. Yet it happens. One may recount one failed attempt by reflection. There was "policy." By it, common black folks in Harlem, Detroit , St. Louis, elsewhere, could play a penny and make $6.00 if their 3-digit number "hit." This remarkably simple lottery system was devised, was invented in the 1920's by Caspar Holstein, a black elevator operator from the Danish West Indies, while he was working in New York, reading the newspapers' stock reports each day. "Policy" created hundreds of jobs internally for its runners , bankers, collectors, distributors, and others. "Policy" created capital for loans, mortgages and businesses. Policy created opportunity and hope in the midst of "Jim Crow" segregation in the North and South for colored folks. Unfortunately, financial security among black folks made politicians uneasy and made the mafia greedy. So, the criminals moved in with their "black hand," murdering, bombing, setting fires, and of course getting away, while politicians passed laws and prosecutors prosecuted. In this two-fold attack the bloom of policy that was a boon to so many in the black community was destroyed. "When Harlem Was in Bloom," with money, it became, predictably, a vast, dangerous desert of dry bones with no money, as their money went away! Meanwhile, "policy" was taken over by the state governments' as another form of regulated, indirect taxation , called the "lottery," helping individual persons discretely, but never whole communities as formerly in "policy."