Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones’ roles as black police officers in a white-dominated and racist New York City precinct are unique in how they are treated. Both detectives face racism dealt to them on all sides, however they also wield significant power even though it is not typical of the time. Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jonesare the officers that patrol and take care of Harlem, not just as a job but also a strong feeling of commitment to its black population. This commitment showed in how they dealt out the law; cracking skulls and taking names to ensure that the criminals were stopped and the innocent protected. Theirwhite counterparts in the precinct saw how they operated, and it earned them some respect, but more importantly power. The white officers felt that because of their brutal tactics and how they seemed to follow their own law, that they should steer clear of them, not make racial comments, and perhaps a small amount of fear has been instilled to them by Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones. This idea that a black officer could have more power or be feared by a white officer in the 1960s is a reversed idea from the conventional brutal white cop.
Sexual deception is something that prevails in multiple places throughout the novel, and by both races. Reverend Deke O’Malley uses his power as a reverend to deceive Mabel. Shortly after the death of Mabel’s husband, a man working under Deke for the Back-to-Africa movement, Deke visits Mabel at her home. Deke starts off saying how unfortunate the whole event was, and if he could help her in any way. He sees hisopportunity as she is at her most vulnerable and lonely, and pushes the envelope to get her in bed. A reverend comforting a recently widowed woman is not out of the norm, but Deke visited her to use her house as a base, but also use her body, which is described as more than inviting. Iris also usesher feminine charm to deceive a police officer. While one of the white police officers is keeping watch on Iris, she decides to “have some fun” with him. She jokes about him being ugly, working at the man’s self-image, and eventually strips down and seduces him, but requires he wear a bag over his head. While he is stark naked and bagged, she makes a quick dash out of the apartment, with him chasing after her. She loses him and he ends up locked out of the apartment, naked. Iris manipulates the cop into feeling uncomfortable about his masculinity, his looks, and his manhood. She uses her body to get what she wants; an escape, to find Deke is sexually deceiving her with Mabel. The way Iris is presented is an interesting one. A black woman surviving in a male-dominated society, but that is just it, she is surviving. Iris is strong in the sense that she fights and fights up until shecan’t fight it anymore, and even then she still tries. She gives the black detectives an extremely hard time when they are only trying to help. She is a strong, independent woman not typically seen in non-main characters, especially those that are black and female in the 1960s.
As said in the book,“Harlem is the city of the homeless,” Harlem was an all white community, until the blacks were sent here and given cheap living arrangements. In Cotton Comes to Harlem , the criminals must be made to pay for the crimes or the citizens should be able to afford better living arrangements. The poverty in the city is shown not just by the living standards of the people, but in the number and type of crimes. In the book, the people of Harlem will even steal purses out of the back of a woman’s dress to get what today is considered enough money to live off of. In the literary article, The Shape of Poverty in 1966, the author goes into specific details of what the means of living were at that time. It goes on to say that the “majority of the country” was in better standards than itwas seven years ago in 1959, but there are actually 1 out of 7 people in America were in “households with money incomes for the year lower than the poverty line”. This can be seen in the hard-boiled novel of this era when there is a distinct difference between the Colonel and his white friendsthat had enough money to easily tide over their spending to support the Back-to-South movement, while Deke and even the two main detectives had to use impromptu settings to support themselves. The crimes definitely show that drastic measures of the time were needed to fulfill the gap that is withinthe constant poverty some had, but, as seen by most of the characters, that does not stop them from fighting for what they believe in.
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