Harlem Shuffle

Author: Colson Whitehead
Publisher: Doubleday 2021

The story evolves from 1959 to 1964 in Harlem, New York.  These were the times when the South was still governed by Democrats (they hated the Republican party since it is the Lincoln’s party) with Jim Crow laws. This was 5 years after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against segregation in Education and Jim Crow laws.  Eight of the nine members of the Supreme Court were appointed by Northern Democratic presidents (Rosevelt and Truman) and one by president Eisenhower just 4 months before the verdict. The backlash by the incensed whites which culminated with electing President Trump was probably at an infant stage.

Ray Carney owns a furniture store on 125th street.  He married up and is trying to build his own economic status at least up to his parents in law.  His cousin Freddie occasionally drops off ill-gained jewelry which Ray converts to money through his contacts.  Ray did not consider this activity as crooked, maybe not crooked enough, since he could use the extra cash to add to his savings to buy a nice apartment in a good neighborhood.  His trouble free life is going to get turned upside down when Freddie passes Ray's name to a big-time crook as a possible connection to convert stolen merchandise to cash.

 

The following are some memorable findings.

(1) Silverstone TVs were manufactured by Sears.  Carney’s customers revered Sears from childhood, when their parents ordered from Catalogs because the white men in their Southern towns wouldn’t sell them, or jacked up the prices.  (Unfortunately, Sears administration did not embrace the Internet quickly and allowed companies like Amazon to capture the market.  The last Sears store in Illinois closed on November 14, 2021.)

(2) Before there was a Central Park in New York, there was a Seneca village, a community predominantly African Americans who owned property.  Then someone came up with the idea for a grand park in the middle of Manhattan.  Various locations were proposed, rejected, reconsidered, until the white leaders decided on a vast, rectangular patch in the heart of the Island which enclosed the Seneca village.  The colored citizens of Seneca were property owners, they voted, they had a voice.  Not enough of one.  The City of New York seized the land, razed the village, and that was that.

(3) I first heard about the “second sleep” from the novel “Second Sleep” by Robert Harris.  The second sleep was practiced in Harlem in the 60s.  It was common to sleep in two shifts.  The first started soon after the dusk, and they woke up around midnight for a few hours before the second phase of sleep which lasted through morning.  The British called this wakeful interval “watch” and French called it the “dorvay”.  

(4) The detective Munson who came to pick up the weekly “envelope” from Carney explained how it worked.

“It's like this.” Munson said.  “There is a circulation, a movement of envelopes that keeps the city running.  Mr. Jones, he operates a business, he has to spread the love, give an envelope to this person, another person, somebody at the precinct, another place, so everybody gets a taste.  Everybody’s kicking back or kicking up.  Unless you’re on top.  Low men like us, we don’t have to worry about that.”

If you believe in the holy circulation of envelopes, everything that went down happened because a man took an envelope and did not do his job.  An envelope is an envelope.  Disrespect the order and the whole system breaks down.

(5) “Mingus Ah Um” is a studio album by American Jazz musician Charles Mingus, released in October 1959. According to Wiki, the title is a corruption of an imaginary Latin declension. It is common for Latin students to memorize Latin adjectives by first saying the masculine nominative (usually ending in "us"), then the feminine nominative ("-a"), and finally the neuter nominative singular ("-um")—implying a transformation of his name, Mingus, Minga, Mingum. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2013.

I have read his previous two Pulitzer winning novels, but I think this is the best of the three.