The Numbers | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

The sound of the phone ringing is uh embedded in my sort of memory of life. Growing up, the phone was always
ringing, and it wasn't just one phone. At one point, we had three lines. And uh my mom tried to keep them separate, so
to speak. One was a business line, one was a personal line, one was the children's phone line. But of course,
you know, if people couldn't get through, these are the days before call waiting. If people couldn't get through
and they were anxious, some of them had access to a personal number, and they'd start calling that one. So, yeah,
ringing phones. This is Bridgette Davis. [music] Her mother, Fannie Davis, was born in
Nashville in 1928. Fannie's grandfather had been born into slavery there, and her father owned a
successful plastering business in the early part of the 20th century. >> [music]
>> And that enabled him to buy property, and so he was both a businessman and a property owner. And so, my mom witnessed
his entrepreneurial spirit and was highly, highly influenced [music] by him. She really admired her her father's
life. [music] Fannie grew up in Nashville and married Bridgette's father when she was 18. But
like many African Americans, she decided to migrate north with her family um in the mid-50s [music] so that they could
have better opportunities and more liberties. And so, they chose Michigan and ultimately Detroit.
>> [music] >> And they hadn't prepared themselves for what was awaiting. One, the racism in
Michigan was so virulent and distinctive from the southern sort of discrimination
they'd known about that it took them off guard. They weren't prepared for that. And the way it manifested was in all the
key ways. They couldn't find decent housing. They were charged exorbitant rent. My father was unable to find steady
work. And so, these things really plunged them into poverty. So, she very early um
realized she'd have to step in and figure out something. Fannie Davis found a way to [music] take
care of her family. She started small, but built a robust and lucrative [music] operation.
A business that a lot of people knew about, but no one talked about. Which happened [music] to be illegal.
>> [snorts] >> It was called the numbers. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. What were the [music] numbers?
The numbers The numbers are [music] an underground lottery business or operation that has [music] been in place
since the early '20s. Um it moved across the country and it was [music] designed by created by a black man in
Harlem and really was a black business. It thrived. It was a >> [music] >> It was a true economy, actually.
By 1970, police estimated that one in every 15 people in Detroit played the numbers daily and that it was generating
[music] $94 million a year. Here's how you play. You get to choose a three-digit number
and if that number is the winning number, you actually win a 500 to 1 payout. So, if you bet a
dollar on that three-digit number and it came out, as we call it, then you actually would get $500.
And so, my mom knew about the numbers. Most black Americans knew or know about the numbers.
Uh and she played a bit herself. She played a few coins on numbers, but she noticed
in her community where she was living in Detroit that people were playing those numbers a lot
and she thought, "Hmm, they could they could actually give me their bets." So, she was very small scale at first,
what she called a penny business and eventually worked as a banker for a large banker. So, there were hundreds of
bookies. You are a bookie if you take other people's numbers. Maybe you just sit at your kitchen table and you have
five customers who call you and turn in their numbers to you. You're a bookie. The thing that distinguished
her, the thing she did that almost no other women in Detroit did um was she was a banker.
So, that meant she paid out hits. So, she wasn't going to the bank to collect on. She The bank was
her. Yes, ultimately. Before she could graduate from bookie to banker, Fanny needed a pool of money to pay out
winning hits. So, she asked her brother for help. And so, she entered his home, as he tells me, he she didn't even take
her coat off and she stood there and told him, >> [music] >> "John, I want to bank the numbers."
And >> [music] >> he said, "Are you sure about that?" She said, "Yes, I thought about it." And she
explained how she would do it and he [music] said, "Okay." It made sense to him. She said, "The only thing is, I
need you to loan me $100. [music] Can you do that?" And he said, "Yes, Fanny, I can do that."
>> [music] >> Being a banker wasn't something that [music] women did often. What do you think gave your mother the
confidence to do this? >> [music] >> I don't think it ever occurred to her that she couldn't.
I don't think it ever occurred to her that I'm a woman, so I can't do this. >> [music]
>> She thought, I have a I have a head for numbers. I am clear about my goals. >> [music]
>> I uh I have all the skill sets in place. I can command respect, so I'm not worried about that.
So, why not? There was something about her. Not everyone could have done it. She was
really perfect for this [music] role, and she had the qualities that made it possible
to thrive at it. And that has everything to do with her, just who she was. Tell me about [music] your mother's
schedule, how the day would go once the business picked up. What was the day's [music] schedule?
My mom was up taking numbers in the morning, early. >> [music] >> Uh some of her customers wanted to turn
their numbers in before they went to work, and so she had to accommodate them. >> [music]
>> Um I remember someone in particular, a customer who would love to go fishing on
Saturday morning, so she liked to turn her numbers in at 6:00 a.m. A lot of people turn like to call in
their numbers during lunchtime. You [music] know, there were these busier periods and then these sort of slow down
periods, and then busy again. And it got a lot more hectic [music] um as the afternoon wore on because there was a
cutoff time. So, that [music] was often the busiest time of the day, that time right before the evening.
Um so, that was really how her day went, a lot of taking people's bets. And also, there were people who liked to
come to the house and give their numbers directly to her, so there was that piece
of it. There were people who liked to come in weekly and pay her directly, you know, so
there was this mix of collecting the money and then receiving it from people who who showed up at the
house. How were the winning numbers chosen, decided? Each city came up with its own
way to determine a winning number, and many of them landed on this idea that they would get the number
um from racing forms, daily racing forms from various racetracks across the country, because those numbers also
changed all the time, and there was a calculation that was done to determine each digit of these winning three-digit
winning numbers. The calculation was made using an elaborate formula based on horse race
winnings from racetracks. Those results wouldn't be tabulated until after Fanny's bets were closed, so there was
no way to cheat. So, how would people find out if they'd won? I always say it's a little bit like a
game of telephone, but it has to be accurate. So, the numbers bosses would sign off on
these winning numbers based on these calculations, and so the word would go out that okay, it's official, these are
the three winning digits for today. And the numbers bosses' employees would then make the calls to various
bankers who would inform various bookies, and they would inform their customers. And so, the word would go out
on the street. It would go out in a telephone call. You know, it really was word of mouth.
And it was really an incredible system when you when you think about it. But that's how it was done.
Bridget remembers that when the winning numbers would come in each night, things
could get stressful in the house. If someone won big, her mother would have to pay out. That was a big part of
um sort of the business. Luckily, it wasn't daily. She didn't get hit daily. Um but there were times when she got
really people won big, and so that was a whole process, you know, gathering that
money to pay off which was her policy to pay off the next day by noon. So, that was also a big
part of the business. Do you remember being a little kid and helping out with the business? What What
were some of the tasks that you were given? So, I wanted something that I could do
to contribute, and so she decided that my job would be to call all the customers and give them that day's
numbers. And she paid me $20 a week. That seems like an important job. It was great, and
guess what? You know, the customers loved hearing from me because I was this child calling, "Hi,
this is Fanny's daughter, and I'm just letting you know today's number is 697." And they say, "Oh, thank you, baby."
>> [laughter] [gasps] >> Do you remember customers coming over? Oh, I vividly remember customers coming
over all the time. All the time. Um, one of my favorites of her customers was a woman who had been a lady of the
evening in her youth. And she had an extraordinary wardrobe of clothes from that life, and she liked to
talk to me about fashion. And she knew fashion. She knew real fashion. She knew designers, etc. So, I I really learned
all these things from my mom's customers that went above and beyond just seeing them, you know, engaged in transactions.
Do you ever remember anyone sitting around the house and kind of talking with your mother and think saying,
"Well, I I think maybe 532 this week. And what do you think about that?" Or she 478 or back and forth about the
number that they wanted to play? Yes, so much of the reason that people like to come over and turn their numbers in
directly is they wanted the social piece of it. You know, they wanted to be in conversation about the numbers. It
really generated a kind of um sort of like communal experience. So, customers are like, "What do you feeling is a good
number?" And I was thinking about this and oh, I dreamed I actually dreamed about fish.
And so, then a customer could say to my mother, "Fanny, what does fish play for?" And what does that mean? That
means that the customer's asking, "What does the dream book say the three-digit equivalent is for
fish?" And you might ask, "What are dream books?" Yeah. What is the dream book, you know? The
dream book um was a publication, a little book, that really was more like the Bible for numbers
players. And [music] it essentially was encyclopedic. It really listed every [music]
person, place, or thing you could imagine, as well as experience, that someone could dream about. [music] And I mean
just about anything. And so, again, as I was saying, these experiences or places or persons
or things all had three-digit uh sort of numbers assigned to them. And so, that's how you figured out,
again, "What [music] does fish play for?" Well, the dream book says it plays for 497. I think [music] because I
dreamed it, I'm going to play that. And there were many different versions of dream books. Dream books date back
way back into the 19th century. Um and so, the more popular ones in my household were two in particular.
>> [music] >> The Red Devil Dream Book and the Three Wise Men Dream Book. And so a customer
might have a preference for one over the other and say, "Well, Fanny, I don't know about that. I don't really know
about what the Three Wise Men says. Tell me what the Red Devil says it plays [music] for." And then the customer
might say, "Okay, I'm feeling lucky. I'm going to put that number in today." >> [music]
>> Did Did your mother also believe in the dream books and [music] use that type of mystical
numerology [music] in in her own life and around your house? My mom believed in luck and she believed
in conjuring luck. >> [music] >> And so she had these rituals that she followed. There I might add there was a
proliferation of sort of paraphernalia that you could purchase around the numbers business.
There were shops designed to sell all these things to you and one of them was candles, lucky candles. The kind that
can burn for a week, the nice tall ones. And so my mom often had these candles burning in the household in in strategic
places. The idea was that once the candle burned down, there was actually a three-digit
number at the bottom. And there were lucky oils and there there was incense that did the same
thing. Once it burned down, there would be a three-digit number at the bottom. And that's maybe a number to play.
So yes, in in many ways as a child I found our home so magical. And I felt that she was at the center of that
magic, that she herself was magical. Fanny wasn't just running the numbers. She played them and she was lucky.
In one especially large hit, she won enough money to put a down payment on a house.
She wouldn't tell anyone how much she'd actually won. Bridgette says that owning the house meant a lot.
Her mother's policy was feel free, feel welcome, be happy. And she wanted her children to feel
proud. I went to school one day and my teacher said to me, you sure do have a lot of pairs of shoes. And it was true,
I did. Um I didn't know how to answer her. I was concerned because the week before she had she had asked me, what
does your father do? And I told her he doesn't work. My father actually was disabled.
So she naturally asked, well what does your mother do? And I said, this time I wasn't lying. I said I don't know.
Because I knew she was in the numbers, but I knew I wasn't supposed to tell anyone that.
So I suspect looking back that she was already looking at me and thinking, what this little girl is really dressing
well. This little black girl. Um and I think that that prompted the questions, but I was naive. I didn't
know that. I just knew that on this day she was telling me I had a lot of pairs of shoes and I I agreed. And then she
really stunned me by saying name every pair of shoes you have. Do not sit down till you do that.
Go ahead. And I was so nervous. I thought it was a test and I didn't want to fail it and I
worked really hard nervously and named 10 pairs of shoes. I was being so diligent.
And she said to me, what that 10 pairs of shoes, that's an awful lot. And again, I didn't know how to answer her.
I sat down. The surprising thing for me was the next day she called me to her desk again. And
this time she said you did not tell me that you had a white pair, too. And I had forgotten to tell her about
the white pair I was wearing that day. And I apologized. I didn't know what else to do. She dismissed me with a flip
of her hand, but at that point I thought, "Oh boy, I'm in trouble and I need to tell my mom cuz I I've clearly
done something wrong." And I told my mother that evening and I can't even begin to describe the
look on her face. I still remember it. She was furious. I thought she was angry at me, but she
said, "That is none of her damn business. Who does she think she is?" She was so angry and she told me get in
the car now. I of course thought we were going back to the school to confront my teacher,
Ms. Miller, and I was really frightened. I did not want to do that, but that's not where we were going at all. My mom
took me to Saks Fifth Avenue. And she took me to the children's shoe department. She pointed to a gorgeous
pair of yellow patent leather shoes and she said, "Those are pretty." She pulled out a $100 bill and paid for
those shoes [music] and then told me, "Listen, you're going to wear these shoes to school tomorrow
and you're going to [music] tell your teacher that you actually have 12 pairs of shoes. You hear me?"
>> [music] >> And I did. And Ms. Miller never spoke to me again. >> [music] >> Was it Was it just accepted knowledge in
your house that you didn't talk about your mother's business? We never talked about not talking about it. It was just
understood. >> [music] >> There were no conversations around it. It was clear. It was clear.
You don't talk about what happens inside of this household. And of course we understood the
implication that we could get busted by the, you know, authorities and that's not good.
Someone could hear about it and try to rob us. Not good. So, there was no need to work in in sort of struggle with
keeping the secret. It was natural and easy to keep that secret And we all did. When did it become clear to you that
your mother's business had become very successful? I don't think I processed it that way
for years. We lived well from my memory. It was my normal. And so, I didn't think
about my mom, "Oh, she's successful." I thought, "She's doing We're doing well at this." That's how I looked at it.
Um and so that's how I always viewed it until I was an adult and began to see the toll it was taking.
>> [music] [music] >> Lots of things happened that as a little girl, Bridget Davis, didn't see.
In 1962, there was a massive raid at the Gotham Hotel, the hub of the African-American numbers operation in
Detroit. Police conducted a room-by-room search and confiscated numbers tapes, adding
machines, hundreds of boxes of bet slips, and 30 safes. And then, one night in 1970, 200 FBI
agents conducted raids all over the city of Detroit, making arrests in 58 different locations.
J. Edgar Hoover called it the largest gambling raid in history. Bridget was in elementary school. My mom never made it
known that that was going on. And that's why I always call her an incredible domestic magician, the
slight of hand she had to use to make sure none of us were constantly stressed out by the possibility of these sort of
busts happening. Now, she did do some practical things. She had a big safe that she kept combination safe that she
kept in her closet. That's where she kept the money. That's where she kept the day's business. We had an
incinerator in our baseboard and she burned her tickets and proof of the business on a weekly basis. You know,
she was in no way reckless. That was not my mom. Do you have any complicated feelings about the fact
that it it was a crime what your mother was doing? I have no complicated feelings around
that because for me it wasn't a crime. This is a country that put a lot of laws in place to keep black people down.
Let's be clear and blunt about it. It was very clear to me intuitively and now literally that
there's a difference between a a legitimate business and a criminal one. It's criminal because, you know, laws
were put in place to say it shouldn't happen. But it was legitimate and that was
proven because the state decided all these states, almost every state in this country now has a lottery. So, obviously
it was a it was a legitimate business. It just happened to be illegal. Well, there are all kinds of laws that
were put in place in this country that were not legitimate. They were not fair. But they were laws, so technically you'd
be breaking the law if you didn't do what you were supposed to. Um so that to me is never a complicated sort
of question. What is the history of the lottery? It was legal and then illegal and then
legal again? It turns out that the 13 colonies had lotteries and they used those lotteries because
they were cash poor and they needed them for capital improvements. Like a precursor to the stock market, in
fact, they proliferated these lotteries. Legal. And in fact, slaves could play these lotteries, too,
and win. And one in particular did just that, a famous slave, Denmark Vesey, who
went on to lead a slave revolt years later. But at the time, 1799, he bought his freedom
from the proceeds of a lottery he won, $1,500. Um so, that was a incredible and extraordinary. However, that and other
incidents like that really prompted the you know, new government and these state
governments to essentially ban lotteries and make them illegal. It was too egalitarian. And so, the
answer was to just outlaw it. And that's what they did. Um for like 100 years, until the mid-60s,
they decided that, you know, state officials decided that there was too much money being made in this
underground lottery business, this numbers business that black folks were running and profiting from, and that
they wanted that money. They wanted in. What was the role of the numbers in the black community? I mean, it's hard to
overestimate how important the numbers were in the black community. But the big thing, besides the social
piece, which is huge, also, it was a communal social experience, and that was important. But also, those big numbers
men were race men, and they believed that they should take their wonderful largesse and reinvest in the community.
That was just what they did. And that was vital because discrimination and segregation had made it so that black
folks had a lot of services that were not available to them. >> [music] >> And numbers men stepped in to provide
them something as important as providing a home loan for you know, a black person or family that
cannot get a traditional mortgage. Numbers men would provide the loan money for that.
Um also numbers men started [music] um insurance companies. They started newspapers. They
>> [music] >> bought and owned and and ran hotels where black folks could stay. >> [music]
>> You could not as a black American go to a Detroit hotel downtown and stay in it.
In the in much of the 20th century in this country. You couldn't do it. >> [music]
>> And so numbers men, one in particular, he basically ran a beautiful hotel in Detroit that was for African Americans.
It was incredible. In 1972, the state of Michigan legalized the state lottery. The Michigan lottery was drawn every
week rather than every day like the numbers. So [music] people played both. But in 1977, a new game was introduced,
the daily. It happened every day. You could choose your numbers. You could get paid the
next day, and the payout was 500 to 1. The same as Fanny's. She kept some of her loyal customers for
a while, but then they started to peel off. And here's why. That state-run lottery did have one
distinct advantage. It had a lot of disadvantages [music] that worked for a while for my mom. You didn't have to pay
taxes if you played with Fanny. You could play on credit and pay once a week with Fanny.
So, there were these things that were an advantage, but the big disadvantage ultimately made it impossible for her to
compete. And that is that the state lottery was able to broadcast its winning numbers on the local TV show every
evening. Local TV stations. Um and people absolutely loved to learn the winning numbers every night publicly
[music] at the same time. And so, that's when my mother really started to try to figure out what can I
do? And she came up with something. She did. She decided, "Hmm, if you can't beat
them, join them. And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take those winning numbers that
the lottery provides and make them the winning numbers for my informal lottery business."
And it worked. It worked. The state lottery kept changing. And Fanny Davis kept changing her business
right with it. It was getting tougher to compete. She started holding poker games to help
make up for lost revenue. But when Michigan introduced the lotto, the prizes were bigger than she could
keep up with. Fanny Davis ran her numbers business for 30 years. She died in 1992.
Bridgette says she can still picture her mother seated at their dining room table
working. Of course, everyone thinks that her mother's beautiful, but mine really was.
And I loved watching her work. You know, she was just there and she was doing her
thing [music] and I was just going around, you know, getting ready for school or having my sugar frosted
[music] flakes in the morning and just comforted by her presence and the sight of her doing her business.
It was like [music] all's well in the world. The money Fanny earned put Bridget through college. It allowed her to buy a
home of her own in Brooklyn. She says she plays the numbers >> [music] >> now in the form of the legal lottery
almost every day. She usually plays 313, the area code [music] for Detroit. But sometimes she plays 788,
her mother's favorite. Can you do an impression [music] of what it was like when your mother on the
phone when she would pick up the phone to take a number, what she what she would say? What was the interaction
like? Oh, I loved the sound of her taking numbers. [music] You know, she'd be on the phone and
she'd say, "Hi, Miss Queenie. I'm calling to take your numbers. Are you ready? Okay, good.
All right, I'm ready. Come on. 542 for a quarter, uh-huh. 693 straight for [music] 50 cents. Is this both races,
Miss Queenie? Detroit and Pontiac? Okay. 388 straight for a dollar, uh-huh. 475 straight for 50 cents. 110 box for a
[music] dollar. Hmm, okay. I got it. All right, Miss Queenie. Well, listen. Do you have any more numbers? No? [music]
All right. Okay, I'll take that one more. 684 for 50 cents, uh-huh. And 972 [music]
box for 20. Got it. All right, Miss Queenie. You have a good day." >> [music] [music]
>> Criminal is created by Lauren Spor and me. Nidia Wilson is our senior producer.
Audio mix by Rob Byers. Julian Alexander [music] makes original illustrations for each
episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com where you can also find information
about the book that Bridget Davis has written about her mother. It's called The World According to
Fannie Davis, My Mother's Life and the Detroit Numbers. Criminal is recorded in the studios
>> [music] >> of North Carolina Public Radio WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from
PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
Radiotopia >> [music] >> from PRX.

When Fannie Davis and her family moved to Detroit in the mid-1950s, they hadn’t prepared themselves for how hard it would be. They had trouble finding steady work. So, Fannie found a way to take care of her family. She started small, but built a robust and lucrative operation… a business that a lot of people knew about but no one talked about.

Bridgett Davis’ book is The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers (https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/bridgett-m-davis/the-world-according-to-fannie-davis/9780316558716/?lens=little-brown).

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Episode 108 originally published February 15, 2019. https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-108-the-numbers-2-15-2019

Music in this episode: “When in the West” by Blue Dot Sessions “Junca” by Blue Dot Sessions “Curio” by Blue Dot Sessions “Cirrus” by Blue Dot Sessions “Greyleaf Willow” by Blue Dot Sessions

Brief Summary

Bridgette Davis shares her mother Fannie's illegal numbers business in Detroit and its community impact.

Key points

Fannie Davis: A Businesswoman's Journey. Fannie Davis navigates the challenges of racism and poverty to build a successful underground lottery business.
The Numbers Game. An underground lottery operation that thrived in Detroit, impacting the community significantly.
A Mother's Love and Defiance. Bridgette recalls her mother's fierce protection and pride in their family's success.
The History of Lotteries. Lotteries have a complex history, shifting from legal to illegal and back again.
Denmark Vesey's Lottery Win. Denmark Vesey bought his freedom with lottery winnings, leading to a slave revolt.
Fanny Davis's Legacy. Fanny Davis ran her numbers business for 30 years, impacting her community significantly.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I don't think it ever occurred to her that she couldn't.

Bridgette reflects on her mother's confidence.

5:46WatchMay 12, 2026

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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