| Girl #1 |
Wanders through the streets of Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward and New York’s Tenderloin, year 1900. She is young yet so old and raw. |
| Girl #2 |
Trapped in an attic studio in Philadelphia, year 1882. |
| The Window Shoppers |
Two young women stroll along South Street, late 1890s. |
| General House Worker |
Appears over the course of the book from 1896–1935. She is always on the lookout for an escape route. |
| The Rioters |
Young women imprisoned at Lowell Cottage, Bedford Hills, New York. |
| The Chorus |
All the unnamed young women of the city trying to find a way to live and in search of beauty. |
| The Paper Bag Brigade |
Women waiting in the Bronx slave market to sell their labor to white housewives for starvation wages. |
| Sapphire |
Authors a radically different text of female empowerment. |
| Mattie Jackson née Nelson |
A fifteen-year-old newly arrived in New York from Hampton, Virginia. |
| Victoria Earle Matthews |
Founder of the White Rose Mission, and member of the National League for the Protection of Colored Women and the National Association of Colored Women. |
| W. E. B. Du Bois |
A young sociologist and newly minted Harvard PhD conducting a social survey in the heart of the Negro slum, 1896–1898. |
| Katherine Davis |
Head of the College Settlement Association and first superintendent of the New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills. |
| Ida B. Wells |
Radical, feminist, antilynching activist, writer, political speaker, and troublesome woman. |
| Helen Parrish |
A wealthy philanthropist and housing reformer in a companionate marriage with Hannah Fox, also a member of the Philadelphia elite. |
| Mamie Shepherd, aka Mamie Sharp |
A nineteen-year-old beauty who rents a three-room flat in a tenement on Saint Mary Street in Philadelphia. |
| James Shepherd |
Mamie’s husband. |
| Residents of Saint Mary Street |
| Fanny Fisher |
A middle-aged woman who drinks herself to death. |
| Old Fisher |
Fanny’s husband. |
| Mary Riley |
A young mother. |
| Katy Clayton |
A pretty young woman fond of men’s company. |
| Old Clayton |
Katy’s grandmother. |
| Ike and Bella Denby |
A brawling and drinking couple. |
| May Enoch |
A recent arrival to New York. |
| Arthur Harris |
May’s husband and defender. |
| Robert Thorpe |
A white man who grabs May Enoch and strikes Arthur Harris. |
| Gladys Bentley |
Entertainer, womanizer, African sculptor, flamboyant and gender-queer stroller, and friend of Mabel Hampton. |
| Jackie Mabley |
Actor, comedian, bull dagger, female impersonator, and friend of Mabel Hampton. |
| Mary White Ovington |
Social reformer, dear friend of W. E. B. Du Bois, and a cofounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. |
| Edna Thomas |
Stage and screen actor. |
| Olivia Wyndham |
English aristocrat who falls in love with Edna Thomas. |
| Lloyd Thomas |
Edna’s husband. A handsome, cultured man fond of quoting Chinese poets and manager of a Harlem nightclub. |
| Harriet Powell |
A seventeen-year-old who loves dance halls. |
| Eleanor Fagan, aka Billie Holiday |
A fourteen-year-old arrested for prostitution in a jump raid in Harlem. |
| Esther Brown |
Chippie and rebel, who insists on being treated the same as white girls. |
| Rebecca Waters |
Esther Brown’s friend. |
| Grace Campbell |
Social worker, probation officer, and member of the African Blood Brotherhood and the Socialist Party. |
| Eva Perkins |
A nineteen-year-old factory worker, lover of street life, and wife of Kid Chocolate. |
| Aaron Perkins, aka Kid Chocolate, aka Kid Happy |
Harlem boxer, elevator operator, and dreamer. |
| Shine |
Myth, archetype, and avatar. |
| Mabel Hampton |
Chorine, lesbian, working-class intellectual, and aspiring concert singer. |
| Ella Baker |
Harlem stroller, tenant organizer, and NAACP field investigator. |
| Marvel Cooke |
Communist and journalist. |
| Hubert Harrison |
Socialist, writer, and street-corner lecturer. |