These disparate concepts in gambling imagery – the game’s fatal and perilous consequences… and its sociological and melodramatic roles in African American life… made manifest the theme’s cultural breadth within modern Black life and its philosophical implications. Although viewed as ungodly by religious orthodoxies and considered improvident across a spectrum of society, gambling’s popularity among the masses as well as the upper classes pointed to its universal and prosaic position in many people’s minds, as well as its utility for imparting valuable life lessons and ethical exemplars, in these instances directed toward African American men, and in the competitive frameworks of chance, probability, and potential financial jeopardy.
“The Boys in the Back Room: Gambling Imagery during the Harlem Renaissance,” in Denise Murrell, ed., The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2024), 38-53.
