the world according to fannie davis movie

She built her business by collecting folks’ bets and paying out when they hit and profiting from the difference when they didn't. So with a 500 to one payout if you played 5-9-2 for 1 dollar and it came out you got $500. That meant if you won, my mom would pay off that hit. You could bring them over on little slips of paper or call her and give her your numbers. What does that mean?ĪNSWER: As a bookie you could play your numbers with her. QUESTION: Your mom was a rarity: both a bookie and a banker. “I needed to make sure that I wasn't going to try to tell you how to feel about (my mother) but I absolutely was going to work hard to make sure you understood the context in which she lived so you understood her life.”ĭavis, who left Detroit after high school to attend Spelman College on Atlanta, chatted with the Free Press about the book. Known as “the numbers” years before the lottery became legal in 1972, the underground economy began in Harlem in the 1920s as a way for African Americans to make money and start businesses - and even seed the civil rights movement.įor Davis, now a wife and a mother of two teens, it was important to not just tell her mother’s story in an illegal profession - she was the granddaughter of slaves who migrated to Detroit with her husband from Jim Crow Tennessee in the 1950s - but put it in context of life for African Americans at that time.

And with all the cash Fannie had on hand in the home, she kept it in a safe in her closet and two guns nearby. Davis replied, “I don’t know,” hoping she didn’t mess up while feeling demeaned for having nice things.ĭavis says her mother lived under constant worry of being wiped out if one of her customers hit it big costing her a big payout. When Davis told her he could’t work, the same question was asked about her mother. Eventually the teacher demanded to know what her father's profession. More than once Davis had to openly lie about her mother’s work, like the time her first grade teacher at Winterhalter Elementary School grilled the six-year-old about her apparent abundance of pretty shoes. At the time however, secrecy was vital to the family’s ability to maintain a middle class lifestyle, including comfortable homes on Broad Street and later West Seven Mile, beautiful clothing and money for college.

For the 1978 graduate of Cass Tech High School who was the youngest of her siblings, the timing was right to shed the secret.

The world according to fannie davis movie