Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval

Like Chapter 5, this short chapter is written in the style of dictionary entries for the words “wayward” and “waywardness.” “Wayward” is described as improper and rebellious, and “waywardness” a state of struggling for freedom and a better life. Waywardness is characterized by movement, wandering, and unsettledness. It is also characterized by a sense of community and mutual support as a means for survival. The wayward is “a practice of possibility” and dreaming about what life could be like despite the barriers to that possibility (228).

Esther Brown wanders through New York, seeking to live free. Her tactics for freedom—idleness, casual sex, petty theft, and enjoyment—are ordinary. She hates work and manages to survive through occasional employment and the support of lovers, family, and friends. This kind of subsistence living is scrutinized by police, sociologists, and reformers. One night in 1917, Esther and her friend Rebecca plan to hook up with two men, Krause and Brady. As they head off, Brady reveals himself to be a detective and arrests all three of them. Krause is charged with trafficking women for prostitution, and the girls are charged with violating the New York State Tenement House Act. They are sentenced to three years in a reformatory. Women could be found guilty of prostitution by seeking any kind of sexual enjoyment. The charge of vagrancy is used often to force idle people to work and impose structure on subsistent ways of living.

Esther’s ex-husband writes to her, claiming he will be a better caretaker and imploring her to behave more responsibly. When Esther is released, she connects with her friends Harriet Powell and Alice, and they carry on having fun in the city. Eighteenth-century laws forbade enslaved people of color from gathering at night, and this nature of restriction continued in the 20th century. The state takes on the duty of policing Blackness by creating the conditions for crime in Black neighborhoods and targeting the people. The Tenement House Act of 1901 was intended to improve the living conditions of the impoverished but instead increased an abusive police presence in Black neighborhoods. The act was revised in 1909 and 1915 to target prostitution and the suspicion of it. “Jump raids” were used often, where police forced themselves into a home without a warrant to arrest a suspected woman.

Rising blues singer Trixie Smith and her friend Nettie Berry, an actor, are arrested in 1922 by an undercover policeman on counts of prostitution because Smith was willing to have him as a guest in her home. Because they are famous, the arrest incites outrage, and the charges are dismissed. Such corrupt accusations of prostitution and vagrancy are part of the afterlife of slavery.

On a hot New York City night, Eva Perkins goes out to get dinner for her husband Aaron, who is at work as an elevator operator. Aaron is also a boxer and goes by the name Kid Happy. When she returns home, the police follow her inside, asking about Shine, and they arrest her. Shine is a common nickname for Black men at the time; Shine is also a general representative figure of a resilient Black man. There is little place for a similarly representative Black woman role. Eva Perkins is resentful of being unreasonably arrested in the police’s search for Shine. She resolves to tell them nothing.