The Harlem Negro owns, publishes, and supports five local weekly newspapers. These papers are just beginning to influence Harlem thought and opinion. For a long time they were merely purveyors of local gossip and scandal. Now some of them actually have begun to support certain issues for the benefit of the community and to cry out for reforms in the regulation journalistic manner.
For instance, The New York Age, which is the oldest Negro weekly in New York, has I conducting a publicity campaign against numbers and saloons. These saloons are to this paper as unwelcome a Harlem institution as the numbers. Each block along the main streets has at least one saloon, maybe two or three. They are open affairs, save instead of calling themselves saloons, they call themselves cafes. To get in is an easy matter. One has only to approach the door and look at a man seated on a box behind the front window, who acknowledges your look by pulling a chain which releases a bolt on the door. Once in you order what you wish from an old fashioned bartender and stand before an old-fashioned bar with a brass rail, mirrors, pictures, spittoons, and everything. What is more, they even have ladies' rooms in the rear.
The editor of The New York Age, in the process of conducting his crusade, published
