Only “coordinated” Negroes may work in Harlem stores. That’s the latest edict of “black Hitler,” Sufi Abdul Hamid.
To be a “coordinated” Negro means to pay dues to Hamid’s Negro Industrial Clerical Alliance.
Three young Negroes, Norman Blye, James Frazer and Oscar Reading, employes of the Stier Brothers and Greif grocery store at 2462 Eighth avenue, resisted coordination.
Accordingly, Herr Hamid last Friday sent seven “storm troopers” to purge the grocery store of their presence.
The “storm troopers” blustered into the store and demanded that the three employes join the N.I.C.A. The three Negroes yesterday told the Jewish Daily Bulletin that a dollar initiation fee and twenty-five cents weekly were demanded of each of them.
DEMAND DISCHARGE
When they remained adamant in their refusal to cough up in support of Hamid’s “Negro Nationalism,” the agents demanded from Louis Grief, manager of the store, that they be discharged. The demand was suffixed with the usual “or else …”
Mr. Grief refused; the “or else” turned out to be mass picketing. For three days the store was picketed by Hamid’s “representatives,” who bore signs reading: “An appeal; this store is unfair to Negro labor. Do not patronize.”
One of the Stier brothers yesterday told a Bulletin reporter that it always has been his policy to employ Negroes but that he refuses to accept Hamid’s dictation as to which Negroes he should hire.
“This is not Germany yet,” he said.
Hamid has been conducting an intensive drive against Harlem Jewish merchants for the last few months. Recently he blossomed out in a military uniform consisting of a green shirt, black breeches and puttees and a Sam Browne belt. It is expected that all his followers will be equipped as “green shirts” in the near future.
In several interviews with the Bulletin, Hamid declared that the sole reason for his drive against Jewish merchants is to secure employment of Negroes. He denied that he is conducting a “racket” and said he retained for himself none of the dues collected.
WHAT ARE DUES?
A reporter who attempted to learn what dues members of the N.I.C.A. pay met with conflicting reports. Hamid told the reporter that members pay only twenty-five cents a month. Blye, Frazer and Reading reported that one dollar initiation fee and a quarter a week were demanded of them. A member of the N.I.C.A. said he pays two dollars a month.
Recently Hamid charged that the Merchants’ Association of Harlem, formed to combat his coercive activities in forcing merchants to hire his followers, is a “racket” because members were asked to pay an initial fee of five dollars when the organization was formed.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
