Queens County Revisited: The 1970s (2)

The real estate broker and West Village landlord was a retired elderly U.S. colonel in his early 60s who had fought in World War II and--following the world war--apparently managed to both gain ownership of some West Village rental apartment building and corner the market on being able to refer scarce vacant West Village apartments to tenants who wished to live in the West Village apartments that were still then affordable to working-class and middle-class tenants.

But this West Village real estate broker and landlord was apparently also using his real estate business and apartment building to find or rent the still affordable West Village apartments he could refer people to or possessed to only surround himself with men as either his employees or his clients.

If a woman who was looking for a West Village apartment to rent walked into his real estate office, she would be told that he had no vacancy listing in his vacant apartment book for the type of West Village apartment at the rent she was willing to pay.

But if a man--especially an unmarried younger white man who was under 40--walked into his real estate office who was looking for an affordable West Village apartment to rent, the elderly, retired U.S. Army colonel-turned real estate broker and landlord would search through his vacant apartment book, hand the white male client under 40 an index card with a vacant West Village apartment address written on it and say: "Go see the Super. And after he shows you the apartment, come back here if you think you want to rent it."

Queens County Revisited: The 1970s (1)

By the 1970s finding a permanent job in New York City by just walking in from the street in response to an employer's Want-Ad in the New York Times or Village Voice classified ads section was becoming increasingly difficult.

To avoid hiring the increasing number of African-American applicants for clerical positions within Manhattan's corporate office industry, the white corporate male employers and their corporate personnel offices had apparently started to use Manhattan placement/flesh peddling employment agencies increasingly as screening/discrimination tools. And apparently these private employment agencies/flesh peddlers were under orders to generally only refer job-hunters who were white--and who dressed corporate and culturally straight--to be interviewed by the corporate personnel offices in Manhattan for whatever vacant clerical job positions still needed to be filled.

Because I was white, after I shaved off my beard, went to a barber who gave me a culturally straight-looking haircut and dressed up in a white shirt, suit and tie and culturally straight way, one of these permanent employment/flesh peddling agencies in Midtown Manhattan actually placed me in a vacant clerical-typist position at the office of a West Village real estate broker and landlord.

But by the end of the first day on the job in the West Village real estate office I realized both why the job was vacant and what the catch of the job was..