When there seems to be no hope, people turn to something that just might provide hope. With many blacks in the North that means "playing the numbers". As Wolf, the neighborhood numbers runner explains it:
It's the same thing as putting money in the bank. This way you might taker out more than you put inabut Mellon ain't gonna let you do that. The numbers give you an opportunity. If it wasn't for the numbers all these niggers would be poor (Wilson, 1992, p. 3).
The year is 1969, and the worst event that could happen to the characters at Memphis' Diner is the fact that this old diner is going to have to have to come down, in order for big new sky scrapers and modernization of Pittsburgh can go into effect. This is no longer a city of steel mills. They've long disappeared, along with coal miners and river traffic. The blacks who came up from the South to work for the war effort back in the 1940's are struggling to survive somehow. Playing the numbers may be the only way out for some of them.
This was a time of what was called "urban renewal". What it meant was the displacement of poor blacks and black neighborhoods in order to build huge sky scrapers and modern apartment complexes that the old-0time residents could not afford. Memphis' Diner is about to be one of the victims of the "modernization" of the inner city in Pittsburgh. The old neighborhood is going, going, gone.
Ain't nothing gonna be left around here. Supermarket's gone. Two drugstores. The five and ten. Doctor done moved out. Dentist done moved out. Shoe store gone. Ain't nothing gonna be left here but niggers killing one another (Wilson, 1992, p. 9).
What these characters don't realize is that 1969 is a momentous year for America- and the world. American astronauts land on the moon! That's not of great importance in the diner. They are talking about block-long queues of people lining up to see the remains of the Prophet Samuel. Kennedy ass...