Maybe you’ve played, or only read about it in books or seen it in the movies...
but here’s the story about Running Numbers in Detroit – one of the most profitable hubs for illegal gambling in the country.
Running Numbers has made a lot of people rich, and it’s also gotten a lot of people in trouble.
Typically a big draw in working class ethnic neighborhoods like Black Bottom and Paradise Valley in Detroit, Running Numbers was and is illegal.
When the government legalized gambling (think Michigan Mega Millions, etc.), it took with it the strong demand for running numbers. But it’s not dead.
Starting in the mid-1800’s, Running Numbers gained in popularity nationwide, especially during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Detroit was notorious for the numbers game. In fact, a trial in 1941 exposed some of Detroit’s biggest operations. Joe Louis’s manager John Roxborough operated the “Big Four Mutuale”. During the trial, testimony revealed that the Big Four was said to be doing $800,000 in revenue a year with profits of $6,000 per week. That’s $17,404,028 in today’s dollars with a profit of $130,530 per week!
Roxborough was convicted along with others on conspiracy charges and received a 2-5 year sentence.
In this same decade the Treasury reported that more than 6,000 people were employed in the Detroit numbers game.*
Playing the numbers was simple, people bet on a series of numbers – up to three from zero zero zero to nine hundred ninety-nine. The odds were one in a thousand.
People had favorite numbers, lucky numbers, superstitious numbers, and they also would rely on the “dream books.”
There were two key ones, “The Three Wise Men” and “The Red Devil.” When a person who wanted to bet would have a dream about a certain thing, say a car, they could look in the book for the three digit equivalent number for that subject. In the golden age of the numbers racket, people placed their daily bets at social clubs, bars, taverns, candy shops, grocery stores or barber shops with bookies.
Any places where liquor or soft drinks were sold were known as money drops. “Runners” would then pick up the betting slips and cash and take it back to the headquarters known as the “numbers bank” where groups of accountants would collect, count and record the cash so it could be moved to a secret location.
Bettors would go back to their bookies to collect winnings. Originally winning numbers were randomly selected by spinning a wheel or drawing numbered balls.
But the “fix” was in with gamblers being routinely cheated. Still, it was a cheap way to try to make extra money.
In the 1960’s, when the economy was struggling, a robust underground economy primarily in African American communities flourished in Detroit.
Organized crime had a strong hold on the games, but so did street wise individuals.
One “runner” was a black woman who made it big enough to put her daughter through under grad and graduate school. Her name was Fannie Davis, and a book has been written about her by daughter Bridgett Davis entitled “The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life In The Detroit Numbers."
In a 2019 NPR interview, Bridgett Davis was recorded as saying,”…when my mom launched her business in 1958, she was stepping into an already thriving and robust business. It just happened to be underground. Black folks knew about it, and they called it the numbers."
"It basically existed across the country thanks to the Great Migration…So by the time my mom stepped into it in Detroit, she was able to have a ready set of customers because people were already playing the numbers. She simply went to her neighbors and friends and said, now going to be banking the numbers. That was how she expressed it. You can give your bets to me.”*
For more information on Running Numbers in Detroit, check out Felicia B. George’s book, “When Detroit Played the Numbers: Gambling's History and Cultural Impact on the Motor City”.
*https://fornology.blogspot.com/2018/12/detroits-numbers-racket.html
*https://www.npr.org/2019/02/04/691241463/daughter-of-a-numbers-runner-witnessed-an-underground-economy-in-action