Book Review: The Lords of Hell

  

Celebrating Black History Month 2026  

 

Book Review: 'The Lords of Hell' by Sara Harris and Lucy Freeman

1 / 5 Stars 

 

Here at the PorPor Books Blog we like to celebrate Black History Month by reading and reviewing a book, fiction or nonfiction, that illuminates the Black Experience here in the United States. For Black History Month 2026, we're taking a look at the luridly titled 'The Lords of Hell,' and it's quite a selection......

 

'Lords' (223 pp.) was published by Dell in 1967. Information on main author Sara Drucker Harris is a little scant; according to her German-language Wiki page, Harris specialized in publishing books dealing with the more titillating aspects of social dysfunction. For example, she wrote 'Hellhole: The Shocking Story of the Inmates and Life in the New York City House of Detention for Women'  (1967). A rather lengthy review of 'Hellhole' is available here. 'The Puritan Jungle' (1969) examined 'America's Sexual Underground.'

 

Co-author Lucy Greenbaum Freeman (1916–2004) specialized in books on psychiatry and psychopathology.

 

'Lords' purports to be a sociological study of a 'Negro' Harlem pimp, Charles 'Satinhead' Johnson, and his main girl, a white woman named Patricia Reardon. 

 

I should make clear that there is no way to confirm the veracity of the book's contents, as it is devoid of any sourcing or notes. The book's cover states that 'tape recorded interviews' conducted with '....a Negro procurer and a southern white prostitute' are the basis of the book. However, the book never discloses when those interviews were conducted (or even when the described events took place), nor whether the interviews were transcribed word-for-word, or paraphrased. Accordingly, 'The Lords of Hell' needs to be read with a healthy dose of skepticism...........  

 

The book's Preface has the sententious, self-serving attitude of those publications that winkingly exploit Trash Sociology tropes: 

 

This is believed to be the first attempt to describe the life of a Negro pimp, his relationship to the women in his stable and to his family.

 

In lower-class Negro America, it is the women who control the purse strings...Resenting the women's domination, the men keep trying to persuade themselves and everyone else of their virility by gambling and drinking and making love to enough women so they [i.e., the men] can feel they count for something. 

 

Underneath the sensational aspects of their lives, lies tremendous anguish and fear...

 

What hurts a Satinhead Johnson or a Patricia Reardon hurts all of us, not only because we have to live in a world that suffers because of their anger and frustration, but also because there is something of Satin and Patricia in all of us.   

 

The initial chapters of 'Lords' introduce us to our protagonists via the 'Sportmen's Ball' where pimps show up every year to trade girls (interestingly, Satin and the other pimps attending the Ball insist on being referred to as 'sportsmen'). 

 

Satin is smitten with the beautiful blonde Patricia and bargains with her white (!) pimp, 'Bible John,' to trade her to Satin in exchange for two girls from the Satin stable. Unhappy with the abuse she takes from Bible John, Patricia initially sees Satin as both a savior and a lover. But of course, Satin soon turns her out as one of his higher-priced hoes.

 

The book alternates first-person narratives from Satin and Patricia (Satin's narrative is rendered in Ebonics), these being interspersed with faux-scholarly, didactic overviews from the authors:

 

As Patricia enters Satin's stable, she becomes part of his family of women. She finds herself one of what is known in the life as a group of 'sisters-in-law,' somewhat of an ironic term for women who are rivals for the same sportsman (making of the sportsman, incidentally, a brotherly figure).

 

As the plot unfolds, anyone with a modicum of sense knows that the outcome of the relationship with Satin and Patricia will not end in an idyllic married life, with our protagonists running a lingerie shop in New Orleans. I won't disclose spoilers, save to say that the authors milk the book's conclusion with all manner of pontificating about social mores, and the indifference of society to the plight of the marginalized. 

 

Of course, our contemporary attitude towards the black pimp as an admirable individual, a man with 'game,' a true 'Playa,' a man valorized in hiphop and ghetto culture, is not present in the pages of 'The Lords of Hell.' Indeed, as Michael Gonzales points out, the deification of the black pimp only would arise in 1973, with the release of the movie The Mack. 

 

I finished 'The Lords of Hell' thinking it a tedious and underwhelming read; failing both as a melodrama, and as a sociological expose. Readers interested in the pimping and macking enterprises of the 1960s and 1970s are advised to investigate 'Gentleman of Leisure,' by Hall and Adelman (1972).