SEQUELS: Found Guilty

On the sidewalk outside Manhattan’s general sessions court, Hulan Jack dazedly spoke to newsmen: “I say to all of you that I am fully convinced of my innocence.” A few moments earlier, an all-white jury had reported itself as totally unconvinced of Jack’s innocence. Hulan Jack, borough president of Manhattan for seven years, faced a possible three years in prison, $1,500 in fines—and the end of a remarkable political career.

Specifically, the jury found Hulan Jack guilty of 1) permitting one Sidney J. Ungar, a tenement tycoon and real estate speculator, to foot the $4,400 bill for decorating Jack’s Harlem apartment at a time when Ungar was eagerly seeking a $30 million slum-clearance contract from the city, and 2) later conspiring with Sydney Ungar to conceal the facts from the law. An earlier trial had resulted in a hung jury.

Last week’s verdict presumably marked the end of a long and tortuous trail for Hulan Jack. A teen-aged immigrant from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, he began his career at the end of a mop handle, as janitor for the Peerless Paper

Box Co., Inc. But politics was his real interest, and Jack soon earned a reputation as a loyal if lackluster satrap of Tammany Hall. When the Manhattan borough presidency became available in 1953. Jack was available. He was proud to point out that he was the highest-paid ($25,000 per year) Negro to hold elective office in the U.S.