Casper Holstein (1876 - 1944), was born in St. Croix and immigrated to the United States with his mother around 1895. After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the Navy during World War I. After his enlistment, he worked as a messenger for a commodities brokerage house on Wall Street. Casper’s elevation to head messenger: put in motion events that would create the modern numbers game. The numbers game had disappeared from Harlem in 1915 after the conviction of Peter Matthews. Prior to Peter’s conviction the numbers game, was losing popularity based on the way the winning number was chosen. Numbered balls were randomly selected from a jar or a modified roulette wheel was used. This made it easy for the Numbers Bank to fix numbers. Casper’s job on Wall Street, allowed him to observe the New York Stock Exchange’s daily share volume published in newspapers. Because the numbers were random, Casper reasoned, this would be a tamperproof method of determining the daily number. Hollywood has portrayed Bumpy Johnson as the patron saint of Harlem. However, Casper’s deeds may dispute this; Casper paid off the mortgage of the United Negro Improvement Association when the Marcus Garvey organization collapsed. He established a Baptist school in Liberia and was a regular contributor to articles published in the NAACP newspaper, the Crisis. Casper, donated money to artists, writers, and poets during the Harlem Renaissance, and a large portion of his fortune built dormitories at black colleges. At its peak, Casper’s income was more than $15,000 a day.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 11:14:53 +0000
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