Kateřina Prajznerová
AJ34210
11 May 2010
Speakeasies
A number of scholarly books on the Harlem Renaissance and also on the Jazz Age and the
Roaring Twenties mention the word speakeasy or its plural version of speakeasies; these
places are common in numerous novels of the Harlem Renaissance era. For example Claude
McKay’s novel Home to Harlem is dedicated to depiction of Harlem night clubs, cabarets,
and speakeasies. The word itself seems to have infiltrated from Ireland (Vandersee 268).
While cabarets and clubs were more or less public, speakeasies were more private. David L.
Lewis describes speakeasies as “small, dark places, with the sounds and smells of hard-living,
and the oblivion of bathtub gin or abundant cocaine” (242). The speakeasies were places
where black and whites – more blacks than in public clubs and cabarets, which were usually
white-owned, while speakeasies often had black owners – could drink, dance, sniff, play, and
enjoy everything that was forbidden during the Prohibition era. A direct result of Prohibition
policies, speakeasies represented one of byproducts of ban on alcoholic drinks, prostitution,
drugs, and interracial relationships.
Speakeasies proliferated because they targeted wealthy clients, those who could afford
illegal alcohol and could not get it at places where they had usually received it before
Prohibition: “Speakeasies, which often had first-rate entertainment and full dining options,
proliferated, putting fine hotels and restaurants across the country out of business. In New
York, unable to compete with places that sold alcohol, the Holland House, the Knickerbocker,
the Manhattan, the Marlborough, the Buckingham, and, later, Delmonico’s and the WaldorfAstoria, fell victim to Prohibition” (Sismondo 220). That is why Harlem speakeasies were
frequented by major intellectuals, and artists, as their patrons were frequent visitors there.
That is also why they became one of the symbols of Harlem Renaissance and play a role in a
number of literary works and works of visual art of that era. Moreover, jazz bands – and often
prominent ones – played in these establishments, putting African American music on the map
as well. In fact, as Christine Sismondo claims, the word jazz was actually first coined in a
predecessor brothel in New Orleans in the late 1890s (268).
During the Prohibition era, though they existed long before that, “the speakeasies were
almost always portrayed as the most immoral and degenerate of leisure institutions”
(Mumford 403). This was due to two reasons: their location in African American
neighborhoods in New York and Chicago, and the fact that male and female homosexuals
were welcome to these places and were among the most popular visitors. Homosexual
behavior was frequent in speakeasies and at rent parties, private soirees with alcohol served
(Mumford 403-4). Speakeasies were thus not only a haven for those seeking liquor and exotic
music, but also for those seeking same-sex and interracial intercourse. Such a combination
gave speakeasies their stigma, yet also made them more attractive, mysterious, and alluring
for artists and their white patrons – hence their popularity in the works of art of that period.
The club, cabaret, and speakeasy scene of Harlem also had its own language, glossary
of which was printed in New York Sunday News in 1929 (C.P.Mason 158). Some of this
language of the speakeasies found its way to poems, short stories, and novels by Harlem
Renaissance authors (e.g. Robert Bruce Nugent’s “Smoke, Jade, Lilies” or Wallace
Thurman’s “Cordelia the Crude”).
Works Cited
Lewis, David L. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Penguin, 1997. Print.
Mason, C.P. “Language of the Speakeasy.” American Speech 6.2 (1930): 158-9. Web. 11 May
2012.
Sismondo, Christine. American Walks Into A Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons,
Speakeasies and Grog Shops. New York: OUP, 2011. Print.
Vandersee, Charles. “Speakeasy.” American Speech 59.3 (1984): 268-9. Web. 11 May 2012.