{"id":484,"date":"2010-08-01T08:15:35","date_gmt":"2010-07-31T22:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digitalharlemblog.wordpress.com\/?p=484"},"modified":"2019-03-04T19:44:17","modified_gmt":"2019-03-04T19:44:17","slug":"ice-dealers-in-harlem-in-the-1920s-and-1930s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drstephenrobertson.com\/digitalharlemblog\/maps\/ice-dealers-in-harlem-in-the-1920s-and-1930s\/","title":{"rendered":"Ice Dealers in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Boys Watching Icemen Make Delivery, 1936 (\u00a9 Lucien Aigner\/CORBIS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ice dealers were prominent among the white deliverymen, salesmen and bill collectors who ventured into the residential blocks occupied by blacks. In an era before widespread electrification, Harlem\u2019s residents and businesses relied on ice to store food as well as to cool drinks. For much of the 1920s, Italians enjoyed what the New York Age<\/em> called \u201ca practical monopoly in serving ice to the homes of Harlem.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ice Dealers (Search=Location Type=”Ice Dealer”)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They typically operated out of cellars, usually located near intersections, buying ice from wholesalers, who carted it from the Colonial Ice and Coal Company, on Eighth Avenue and 151st Street, and delivered it to residents and businesses in the surrounding blocks.\u00a0 Unlike almost all other white businessmen, at least some icemen also lived in Harlem. *Vito Passantino, an Italian ice dealer on probation between 1930 and 1935, for example, lived in a furnished room on West 132nd Street, and later with another black family, to whom he had sold ice for several years, at 21 Maccombs Place. (* This is a pseudonym as required by Municipal Archives)<\/em><\/p>\n

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Man Delivering Ice Block, 1936 (\u00a9 Lucien Aigner\/CORBIS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A business that required relatively little skill and capital, the ice trade was within reach of some of the blacks who came to Harlem in the 1920s. Italian icemen secured their trade against black competition through agreements with janitors and superintendents for exclusive access to a building\u2019s residents. However, the biggest obstacle reported by blacks seeking a share of the ice trade was \u201cthe average Harlem Negro.\u201d \u201cTime and time again,\u201d L. Baynard Whitney wrote in the Amsterdam News<\/em>, \u201cthey have been told by colored people, \u2018I don\u2019t want no nigger iceman!\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 The ice trade was the subject of a widely reported joke about the unwillingness of blacks to patronize businesses owned by members of their own race.\u00a0 As recounted by Lawrence Levine, the joke concerned a black ice dealer in a small southern community who had both black and white customers:<\/p>\n

When a white competitor came into town, one Negro lady immediately began to buy from him.\u00a0 “Now why did you stop buying from John?” her white neighbor asked, “he was so courteous and nice, and we did business with him a long time.” “Well I tell you truth Miz George, I tell you just why I changed,” the black woman replied, “that white man’s ice is just colder than that nigger’s ice.”<\/p>\n

(Black Culture, Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom<\/em> (NY, 1977), 330)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Despite such attitudes, by 1928, between twenty and forty black dealers did sell ice in Harlem. *Vito Passantino\u2019s experiences suggest that some of those gains had been achieved by force.\u00a0 When he opened a cellar on West 148th<\/sup> Street, a black dealer across the street threatened him if he did not close. Subsequently the sign in front of his cellar was stolen, and in subsequent months, his cart broken and advertising board taken, and he also lost a number of customers. Within a few months *Passantino abandoned the business.<\/p>\n

By 1931, the number of blacks dealing in ice grew to 120, and they sold more tonnage than any single white company.\u00a0 In July of that year, two Italian companies, fighting over who would control the Harlem trade, now the richest in the city thanks to the spread of electrification in other neighborhoods, began selling ice at half the usual cost.\u00a0 As black retailers saw their business evaporate, some responded with violence: one, having carried 75 pounds up five flights of stairs only to find a white dealer had taken his customer, returned to the street and assaulted the man with an ice stick.<\/p>\n

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J Raymond Jones, president of the Afro Ice Dealers Association, making an ice delivery (New York Amsterdman News, August 5, 1931, 3)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A new organization also appeared, the Afro Ice Dealers Association, initially consisting of 25 trucks and 50 cellar dealers.\u00a0 Unable to negotiate a new agreement with their supplier, the Association threw itself into the price war, undercutting the white companies.\u00a0 With the support of the Harlem Housewives League and the National Negro Business League, they took to the streets in trucks displaying placards adorned with the Association\u2019s name, and slogans such as \u2018Give Us A Break,\u201d and \u201cWe Will Stick It Out Though We Starve,\u201d and went house to house.\u00a0 Harlem\u2019s residents gave them their business, even when the Italian companies countered by staffing their trucks with black workers, and within ten days a truce had been negotiated, returning prices to their original levels. Just how many blacks returned their custom to white dealers once the discounted prices ended is not clear, but *Vito Passantino was able to find work with Italian ice dealers doing business in Harlem as late as 1935.<\/p>\n

References<\/p>\n

“Harlem’s Colored Ice Dealers Are Making Determined Fight For Share of Business Among Their Own People,” New York Age<\/em>, July 21, 1928, 1.<\/p>\n

L. Baynard Whitney, “Negro Icemen Receive Cold Shoulder From Harlem Housewives,” New York Amsterdam News<\/em>, May 30, 1928, 8.<\/p>\n

“Icemen Organize to Avert Bankruptcy,” New York Amsterdam News<\/em>, August 5, 1931, 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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