A metamorphosis began with the organization of the American Labor party and the growth of the Communist party. These radical groups were weak and poor. They had no hope of electing anyone, and therefore could promise anything to everyone. Negroes, who had nothing to lose, began to be attracted. For the first time they found themselves wanted, courted, flattered. The Republicans suddenly woke up to find Harlem slipping away. They joined the parade, and held out new big promises of patronage. They suddenly grew conscious of social obligations, too, a new line for the G.O.P. Everyone hopped the bandwagon in this new crusade--for the Negro vote. But the Negroes had been inflamed over their grievances and preferred to nurse them, now that self-seekers had acknowledged and emphasized them. Besides, the Republican party never won local elections anyway. On the crest of this wave rose a shrewd little opportunist named Fiorello H. LaGuardia. He took over Harlem as a private preserve with a fusion of both the Republican and A.L.P. bodies of New York. After he was elected mayor, he sent to Congress, to succeed him from the fringe of Harlem, one Vito Marcantonio, a stooge who had worked in his law office. With Marcantonio the local leader (State Chairman of the A.L.P.) and LaGuardia for a round dozen years in the City Hall, the pay-off began. The unfortunate Negroes, who had been cuffed and confined so long, were suddenly silk-gloved and pampered, made virtually immune from the police and the law. In this tight little empire ruled by the LaGuardia-Marcantonio axis, everything went, short of, and sometimes including, murder in the first degree. Harlem, which had once been notoriously frustrated, now sprang into a peculiarly privileged status in reference to the city's laws. Those of the dark-skinned citizens who were eager to lead decent and normal lives for themselves and their children found the situation worse than before. Instead of emancipation from the sordid conditions in which they were confined, the political need to keep them in one district was added to their bonds. And they saw their disreputable elements abetted in lawlessness. Here were some 260,000 votes in one bag. The political sharks knew just the way to play to make them stay put. The results were disastrous, as many dismayed respectable Negroes found, especially among the growing youth. The police, who carried night sticks in the lobby of Madison Square Garden and Grand Central Palace, pounded the flagstones of Harlem empty-handed and all but handcuffed.