Black Players: The Secret World of Black Pimps 0718111591, 9780718111595

Citation preview

BLAEH PLAYERS

,:••-•I

Preface

It has taken almost five years to create this book. During that time our lives were enriched by contacts and friendships with a wide spectrum of people. Looking back at the parade which has passed through our lives, we see pimps and professors, millionaires and paupers, newspapermen, junkies, hustlers, graduate students, bartenders, dancers, musicians, politicos, players, lovers, anthropologists and hippies, policemen, dope dealers, yogis, linguists, acid heads, barflies, boosters, sociologists, entertainers, street cats, winos, speed freaks, artists, Black militants, suburbanites, streetwalkers, revolutionaries, call girls, writers, tough guys, homosexuals, photographers, publishers, lawyers, those going up, those going down, and those treading water. Many of these people helped us in various ways - some of them unknowingly - in the creation of chis book, and we would like to single out a few to express our appreciation. The present work is a revised and expanded version of Christina's doctoral dissertation, HBlack Pimps and Their Prostitutes; Social Organization and Value System of a Ghetto Occupational Subculture," which was accepted by the Graduate Division of the University of California at Berkeley in the winter of 1970. Our thanks to the members of the doctoral committee at Berkeley: Ors. Alan Dundes, Robert Blauner, and Gerald Berreman. They often had to V

stick their necks out to assist what was then considered a highly unorthodox project, to say the least. Special thanks to Dr. Sherwood L. Washburn and Dean Sanford Elberg of U.C. Berkely, who released Richard from his responsibilities to the Physical Anthropology program so that he could devote his full time and energies to the present work. We are also grateful to the Anthropology Department of the University of California at Berkeley for the small but crucial grant for tapes used in the interviews, and for the monumental assistance given us by the "Race, Manhood, and Culture in America" project headed by Dr. Blauner of the Sociology Department at Berkeley. The help of that project's secretarial staff in transcribing the tapes was sorely needed and greatly facilitated the progTess of the study. Thanks also to Dr. Neil Eddington, formerly of Harvard University, for his advice and encouragement, to Mr. Peter Tammony of San Francisco for his helpful criticisms of the linguistic material, and to Professor Charles Seeger, Mr. Al Sutter, Dr. Michael Rosenbaum, Mr. Steve Maurer, and Mr. Paul Shearer for helpful advice, criticism, and discussion. Special thanks to Dr. Eddington for permission to include the wonderful "pimp toast" he collected in Hunter's Point, and to Ali Akbar and Soulful Spider for their original creative contributions. We wish also to thank Mr. Billy Franklin Lee, the late Dr. Allan Coult, Dr. Michael and Barbara MacRoberts, Mr. Sidney Rudy, Dr. Jack H. Prost, Dr. Earl Count, Mr. Gary Howard, and Hendra for reasons best known to themselves and to us. We cannot omit grateful mention of our loyal and meticulous typists, Nikki Brockway Fiske, who typed many of the tape transcripts, and especially the indefatigable Mrs. Jackie Gensburer, who typed two versions of the entire manuscript. VI

Mr. Enrico Banducci, restaurateur, concert violinist, a 111ateur anthropologist, and the patron saint of all creative people in North Beach, has earned our gratitude for many favors large and small - and mainly just for being Enrico. We wish also to thank our publishers, particularly Mr. Arthur H. Thornhill Jr., who brought this book to Little, Brown when the manuscript was still in embryonic form, and our gifted ('ditors Mr. Eliot Fremont-Smith and Mr. William D. Phillips, both of whom helped breathe life into it. Of course, our gTeatest debt is to the subjects of this book, 1he Black Players and their ladies, who ·•gave up some of their g-ame" willingly in the interests of "'telling it like it is." We hope we have justified their faith and goodwill, and rcgi-ct that circumstances make it impossible to thank them by name.

In fact, we have disguised their names, as well as any details which might make them identifiable to police or to the community at large. We have also disguised the places in which the fieldwork was carried out. We do not believe, however, that these necessary fictionalizations at all detract from the true and honest depiction or cheir world we have worked to present. Non of the materials from the tapes has been lictionalized or distorted; they remain the real thoughts of real people in their own words. -Richard and Christina Milner

VII

My sou. when you get married. do make an idol of the woman you marry; do not worship her. If you worship a woman she will insist upon 1-,>Teatrr and greater worship as time goes on. This is what the old 1x~opk used to say. They always preached against those men who hearken too stronA·ly to the words of women; who arc the slaves of women. Now it may happen that a man has received many warnings as to his hehavior in this tTA11rd and that he pays no attention to them. It may go so far that when he is asked to attend a warhumlk feast he will refuse to p;o .... After a whik he will not be allowed to go to any feast; his wife will not kt him. He will listen to the voice of his wife.His relatives will scold him, his sisters will think nothing of him .... Finally when he has hccomc a real slave of his wife he will even hit his relatives if she asks him to. It is for these reasons that I warn you not to listen to women.

- Cra.r/11i1p: ll11111dn·, a Wti11u,hap:o /11dim1 (Fmm Paul Radii,.