Christian Kelley-Madera Hey everyone! Some new bonus content for you today, it’s a showcase episode featuring Yhane Smith, the creator, writer, and producer of the audio drama HARLEM QUEEN. Zach chatted with Yhane for a bit, so you’re gonna hear that chat as well as an excerpt from HARLEM QUEEN. But first! I wanna tell you about Tavour (Tav - ORR) Tavour is THE app for fans of beer, craft brews, and trying new and exciting labels. Once you sign up in the app, you can choose the beers you’re interested in (including two new ones DAILY) and add them to your personalized crate. Pay for the beers as you add them, then ship whenever you’re ready. The shipping price will not change with the size of your order. Tavour works only with independent breweries around the world, and if you like trying new beers it’s much more cost-effective than buying and shipping one-offs. So download Tavour on the apple or google store to try it now. Use code TOAFN for $10 off after your first order of $25 or more, that’s Tavour on the apple or google store, discount code TOAFN. Also! Real quick, we are coming up on deadlines in a lot of places to register to vote in the US presidential election this year. If you are planning to vote, go ahead and double check that you are registered and that all your info is up to date - you can do that at vote.org if you don’t know where else to start - and make sure you have a plan to vote safely what with, you know the virus and all. If you are not currently planning to vote, I would strongly encourage you to consider it. Not gonna lecture anybody, but if you’re trying to decide whether to vote, hit me up on Twitter, I’m @Ctmadera - slide in those DMs and I will be happy to tell you why I’m choosing to vote and why I really think you should too. Ok, that’s all for now - upwards and onwards to the showcase, and I will talk to you soon! Zach Glass Hello everyone. I'm so excited that today we're joined by Yhane Smith, the creator, the writer, the producer of the Harlem Queen podcast. Yhane, welcome. Yhane Smith Thank you, thank you for having me. Zach Glass I'm so excited. I've really loved your show. Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about your show? What's Harlem Queen about? Yhane Smith Harlem queen is an audio drama. And it's based on the life and times of Madame Stephanie St. Claire, who was an actual woman who lived in Harlem during the 1920s and 30s. And into the 60s, who was a 1 Transcribed by https://otter.ai policy banker, which is basically an illegal lottery numbers game. And so she was a black woman, and she independently built this policy bank empire from the ground up. And as a result of that, not only will she be, you know, became a wealthy person, but she was also able to help her community, the Harlem community through philanthropy and activism. Zach Glass Mm hmm. It's a really fascinating story. It's incredible to listen to, to hear in your show how you convey all those parts of Madame St. Claire's life and her legacy, I guess. I was wondering, even though I grew up in New York, not in the city I had never heard Stephanie St. Claire's story. So I was wondering, how did you sort of learn about her story and decide that this is the story you want to turn into audio drama form? Yhane Smith Yeah, well, I had never heard of her myself until about two or three years ago. And I grew up in South Jersey, in Hamilton, New Jersey, which is the blueberry capital of the world. I'm always telling people, but I've always wanted to live in Harlem. And I've always been fascinated by the Harlem Renaissance, which is this time 1920s into the 1930s, in Harlem, where you had this influx of African Americans coming from the south to the north to escape, you know, besides other things, Jim Crow and looking for better opportunities and housing and jobs and whatnot. So I've always been fascinated with that era. And so when I was writing this story, I started off with writing about my favorite writers from that time, like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and I just thought, wow, this the story needs a little punch. And so I did a quick Wikipedia search and saw this name, Madame St. Claire. And I mention this to people all the time, I just assumed in my limited- in my ignorance that this madam was a brothel madam, like a whorehouse madam. I had no idea that she was like, a businesswoman. And so I ignored it, and then -- Anyway, long story short, I go back to finally click on that link. And I realized, Oh, my, this is a black woman gangster in the 1920s and 30s. I had no idea. I mean, I wish I had clicked on the link, like a year before. Just would've saved me a lot of drafts. I don't think anyone should feel bad about not knowing who she was. Because, you know, like we're all discovering nowadays, especially nowadays is that you know, whoever gets to tell the story controls the narrative, right? And gets to control what's, you know, on those Wikipedia pages or history books, and so the story that I kept coming up against was that Dutch Schultz, who was a mobster from the Bronx at that time, beat out Stephanie St. Claire and her Empire, but Stephanie St. Clair actually survived Schultz, Zach Glass Oh, wow. Yhane Smith Like so who really won, you know? Schulz was murdered in 1935 I think, and Stephanie St. Clair lived well into I believe her 60s. Yeah. Zach Glass 2 Transcribed by https://otter.ai Oh, wow. Yeah, that's incredible. And it's so interesting sometimes, like you said, who determines who gets to tell the stories. You mentioned, over the course of the podcast, you do reference a bunch of the, I want to say more famous writers and poets from that time, Langston Hughes, like you mentioned, W.E.B. Du Bois, I think you name drop, so to speak, and it's really interesting how some of those stories do get passed along. And then the story of Stephanie St. Claire, just it's such a fascinating story that just didn't get passed on the way all these other people's stories did. So it's really cool that you're able to bring this back to, back to light I guess. Yhane Smith Yeah, thank you, Thank you. Zach Glass So that's that's sort of the story of Madame St. Claire. What were some of your inspirations and influences when turning this into a podcast, specifically? Yhane Smith So I wanted to bring the world, what was interesting to me was how Stephanie, in my imagination, Stephanie would have straddled two worlds. So she would have been in this world with the "Talented 10th", which is, the "Talented 10th" is this phrase I believe it was coined by W.E.B Du Bois of like a certain percentage of the African American population being educated enough and able enough to lead the rest of the community. That was just his thought. I'm not saying I agree with that. I'm just saying that was out there, that existed. So I wanted to bridge in my mind, Stephanie bridged, both worlds, this upper echelon of artists, because she was able to support the community and artists and women's leagues and whatnot, as well as the underworld of like speakeasies, and you know, illegal gambling and things like that. So, so yeah, I just wanted to bridge both of those worlds. I wanted to talk about people like Langston Hughes, but also, eventually, if the seasons go on, if I'm able to produce more seasons to talk a little more about like Augusta Savage and Dorothy West, and Angelina Grimke -- I'm never, I never knew how to pronounce her name-- and other like Claude McKay, other writers and artists of that time, that might be less known. And I just added like Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, because those are two people I assume a lot of people are familiar with. Yeah, as the seasons go on, I would like to, to to uncover some more people that I'm just learning about, and get more into the nitty gritty of like, the economics of this whole policy banking. You know, it was, it sounds pretty interesting to me. Zach Glass Mm hmm, it's really interesting that whole time period, like you said, the interactions of the speakeasies and all of the sort of underground mobster stuff going on. It's a, it's a fascinating time period. So then May I ask as a follow up, you must have to do a lot of research and a lot of learning about these characters in order to write about them. How much research do you put into it and how much of your story is loosely based on – Yhane Smith Yeah.