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"1 Dead, 100 Hurt in Harlem Riot; Snipers Routed, Mobs Rove Area," World Telegraph, March 20, 1935 [clipping]
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2020-02-24T22:40:34+00:00
Assaults on police (9)
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2020-11-17T19:22:12+00:00
Nine police officers were among those reported as injured, six hit by objects thrown at them. One was attacked by an individual likely from the same crowds that threw objects at police. Another was shot attempting to apprehend a suspected looter, injuring himself with his own weapon during a struggle. (Another officer was allegedly shot by a group of men, although he was never identified and the men were acquitted in the Magistrates Court). The final assault also occurred during an arrest, of a man attempting to speak to the crowd on 125th Street at the beginning of the disorder. Assault in police making arrests also occurred at other times in 1935; police being hit by objects did not. Six of the assaults occurred around 10 pm, when police sought to disperse crowds around Kress’ store. Only two assaults occurred after 10 pm, when the crowd broke up and smaller groups spread north and south on Harlem’s avenues, suggesting that the later disorder and police response did not involve the same violence directed at police.
Most of the assaults on police occurred in the period before 10 PM, when the disorder was focused on Kress’ store and 125th Street, where large crowds gathered and police struggled to disperse them and protect the avenues on the streets. Although police several times succeeded in moving crowds away from Kress’ and off the roadway of 125th Street, there were too few officers to hold and control the crowds until after 9PM. As 125th Street and 7th and 8th Avenues were major thoroughfares accommodating buses and streetcars, they had wide roadways, with two lanes of traffic traveling in each direction, as well as wide pavements. That created significant distances between police and crowds when officers set up cordons in front of Kress’ store and at the intersections of 125th Street and the avenues. As a result much of the violence directed against police came in form of objects thrown at them. Patrolman Michael Kelly was assaulted behind Kress’ around 7 PM, where police had followed a crowd drawn there by the appearance of a hearse they assumed had come for the body of the boy rumored to have been killed in the store. Hit on the right leg by a stone, Kelly's injury was serious enough that he was taken to Harlem Hospital for an x-ray and observation. Detective Charles Foley was hit on the left shoulder, possibly suffering a fracture, a few minutes after the assault on Kelly, also at the rear of Kress’ store on 124th Street. This was the only time police and crowds clashed off a major thoroughfare, on a narrower cross street that exposed officers to objects thrown from roofs as well as the street level.
While news reports include the assault on Detective William Boyle with those on Kelly and Foley the hospital records tell a slightly different story, with Boyle treated around 9 PM, two hours later than Kelly and Foley, for injuries “received while attempting to rescue an unknown white man being assaulted at scene of riot.” Several of the whites assaulted during the riot did report being rescued by police officers, and the New York Times reported that police also broke up additional attacks on whites at this time. None of these officers suffered the head injuries that predominated among the civilians who sought medical treatment during the disorder.
Two other officers were assaulted several hours later, around 10PM, in a later stage of police efforts to control the disorder around 125th Street. At 9 PM, after additional reinforcements arrived, police tried to further extend their cordon and disperse crowds on 7th Avenue and 8th Avenue. Detective Henry Roge was hit by a rock allegedly thrown by James Hughes as he stood in front of Kress just after police had cleared 125th Street. Unusually, Roge’s partner claimed that as there were no other objects being thrown at the time he was able to see who threw the rock and apprehend the man, James Hughes. Roge himself had been hit in the head, and was bleeding profusely. The New York Evening Journal published two different photographs of a bleeding Roge being helped by a uniformed officer, the only images of injured police published. While Hughes pled guilty to misdemeanor assault the presiding judge believed his target had been the store windows not the police officer, and sentenced him to only three months in the workhouse.
Around the same time someone hit Patrolman Charles Robins over the head by an iron bar, or a brick in some accounts. Being hit by a weapon not a thrown object required being in closer proximity to your assailant. Treated at 124th St and 7th Avenue, he had likely been involved in efforts to keep crowds from 125th Street. Images of police trying to hold back crowds show officers moving into the midst of groups of people, potentially exposing themselves to attacks such as Robbins suffered – and allowing their assailants to disappear into the crowd before they could be apprehended. However, it should be noted that in both the images, it is police officers who are wielding weapons or moving against the crowd, not the other way around. The caption to one photo also indicates that objects were thrown from the crowd at such moments: a New York Daily News photographer was hit on the head soon after taking the photo.
The very first alleged assault on a police officer of the evening also involved police dealing with a crowd, but was less obviously shaped by the the circumstances of disorder. It occurred during the arrest of five members of the Young Liberators, an organization associated with the Communist Party, who picketed Kress’ store. Soon after one of the men began to speak to the crowd, someone threw a rock through one of the store windows. Police responded by moving to arrest the speaker and his companions. In the ensuing struggle, one of the men, a white student named Harry Gordon allegedly grabbed Patrolman Irwin Young’s nightstick and used it to hit the officer. Police hurried all five men into waiting cars and booked them at the station on West 123rd Street. Gordon would later charge that Young beat him on the journey to the station and again later while he was in custody. Violence during arrests was nothing out of the ordinary in 1935.
The attack on Detective Lt Frank Lenahan as he drove his car along 8th Avenue, likely also occurred around 10 PM, as it was at this time that crowds gathered on 8th Avenue, but there is no evidence of its timing. According to the New York Herald Tribune, the only report of the incident, Lenahan’s car “was badly battered by rocks and most of its glass shattered.” Apparently the officer himself was unscathed, as he does not appear in lists of the injured.
Once the crowds fragmented and spread, the police response changed and offficers do not appear to have been targets of violence to the extent they had been. While police maintained a cordon around 125th Street, and guarded some stores, their presence in other parts of the neighborhood took the form of mobile patrols in radio cars or emergency trucks. On one occasion a police vehicle was targeted in the same way that other vehicles driven by whites were, with the Daily Mirror reporting “Harry Whittington, an emergency policeman, was "sniped" off of the emergency truck he was riding at 8th Ave. and 123rd St. by a rock that felled him unconscious.” While cars driven by whites were frequent targets, this is the only reported attack on a police vehicle.
There was a second, widely reported, incident of alleged “sniping” at police at the very end of the disorder. It does not appear in the count of assaults on police as there are no reported injuries other than to one of the four purported assailants, Charles Alston, who fell from a roof fleeing police. In fact, the evidence that police were actually targets of a shooting is limited. Stories in the World Telegraph and Brooklyn Daily Eagle did report that a bullet whistled past the air of Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street, after which he saw the four men on the roof of the six-story building at 101 West 138th. Soon after police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. But in the Home News story Brennan is not the target of the shooters but one of the police who responded after hearing shots. This report provides the key detail that no guns were found on Alston and his companions, explaining both police charged them with the lesser charge of disorderly conduct and their acquittal, and giving the report some more credibility than other accounts.
More officers may have been assaulted during the disorder. The New York Evening Journal reported bandaged officers as well as prisoners in court the next day. However, while news photographs confirm the presence of bandaged prisoners, no injured officers appear in those images.As Part of Related Categories:
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2020-02-26T14:48:08+00:00
Charles Alston, Albert Yerber, Edward Loper and Ernest Johnson arrested
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2020-11-01T01:19:02+00:00
At the very end of the disorder, at 5 AM on March 20, Charles Alston, Albert Yerber, Edward Loper and Ernest Johnson allegedly opened fire on police stationed at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. Apparently their shots did not find their targets as no injured officers were reported, but Alston suffered a fractured skull as the men fled police. Trying to escape by leaping from the roof of a six-story-building to the adjoining building, Alston fell to a second-floor ledge. He was a twenty-one-year-old Black man, as was Loper, Johnson was twenty-two years of age, and Yerber twenty years of age. Alston lived northwest of the alleged shooting, on the edge of Harlem at 512 West 153rd Street. The other men also lived west of where they were arrested, within Harlem, Johnson at 206 West 140th St. Loper at 298 West 138th St., and Yerber at 106 Edgecombe Ave. Only a small proportion of those involved in the disorder lived above 135th Street.
Although all the press accounts of the incident report that the four men shot at police, there is some doubt about the incident as no guns were found on them when they were arrested. Alston did not appear in court, likely because of his injury, but on March 20 the other three men were charged only with disorderly conduct, the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book records, and then found not guilty by Magistrate Ford – hardly lending credence to their involvement in shooting at police.
The press reports contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language - for example, the World Telegraph reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” policemen. Stories in the World Telegraph and Brooklyn Daily Eagle did offer the name of the officer allegedly targeted by Alston and his companions, Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station, and the same dramatic account that a bullet whistled past his ear as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street. Taking cover, he saw the men on the roof of the six-story building at 101 West 138th. Soon after police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. One other story, in the Home News, identified Brennan, but cast him not as the target of the shooters but as one of the police who responded. In a radio car assigned to the area with his partner Patrolman McGrady, Brennan “heard the shots and sped to the scene. At the radio car's approach the four snipers [standing in the doorway] ran to the roof of the building.” This story provides the key detail that no guns were found on Alston and his companions, explaining both the charges brought against them and their acquittal, and giving it some more credibility than other accounts.
Alston’s fall attracted more attention than the shooting. Again the Home News offers the most detail, noting that the leap that Alston had attempted was a distance of seven feet (the New York Post said 6 feet), and that after he landed on the ledge he managed to crawl through the window into an apartment and hid under a bed. His escape bid failed as the occupants of the apartment called police. The Home News report also makes clear that Alston did not appear seriously injured at the time of his arrest, making sense of the photographs of him being led away by police. It was at the 135th police station that he collapsed and was found to have a fractured skull, the serious injury noted in less detailed stories and in lists of the injured. (The New York Evening Journal the only other to report these details, although it mistakenly reported that the group arrested numbered three not four. The New York Post did report that Alston hid under a bed.)
The New York Daily News photo does appear to show Alston holding his head. The caption published with the photo drew attention to the “clubbed gun” held by the uniformed officer leading Alston a patrol wagon (does this imply the belief that the officer had hit Alston with the gun butt?). It concludes starkly, “He’s dying.”
The photo credited to the International Photo agency, perhaps taken with the camera visible in the foreground of the New York Daily News photo a few seconds earlier, also clearly shows Alston clutching his head, with marks on his trousers and jacket that may be evidence of his fall. The officer’s clubbed gun is also again visible, together with the night stick of his partner.
Visible to the right of this group are three black men obscured in the New York Daily News photo, which shows only white men. Given the location of this arrest in the heart of Harlem, at 5AM, the only whites likely to be present would be police detectives in plainclothes and reporters. The photographs are some of the few taken beyond the area around 125th Street. By the time of Alston’s arrest the disorder was over, allowing white pressmen to travel more freely in Harlem than they had earlier, when crowds had attacked them.
The captions accompanying the published cropped versions of the photo in the Norfolk Journal and Gazette and World Telegraph misidentify Alston as a suspected looter.
The New York American, New York Evening Journal and New York Post include Alston in their lists of the injured, as did the New York Herald Tribune on March 21,and the Black newspapers the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Gazette several days later, all describing the nature of his injuries with no reference to the circumstances in which he suffered them.
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2020-02-25T17:59:47+00:00
James Thompson killed & Detective Nicholas Campo shot
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2020-10-13T00:47:45+00:00
03/20/1935 05:30
Around 5.30 AM James Thompson, a nineteen-year old black man, was shot and killed by Detectives Campo and Beckler.
The officers claimed that while driving on 8th Avenue they heard breaking glass in a damaged grocery store on the southwest corner of West 127th Street. Investigating, they interrupted Thompson allegedly looting the grocery store, which was across the street from his home at 301 West 127th Street. Press reports offered a variety of different accounts of what happened next. The New York American, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Post reported a gun battle between the officers and Thompson, during which he was shot in the chest and Officer Campo in the hand. The New York Evening Journal sensationally reported an even larger gunfight involving "other rioters" return the officers shots. The World Telegraph reported a struggle between Thompson and Campo, during which Thompson was shot; the officer then dropped his gun, causing it to go off and a bullet to hit his fingers. The New York Amsterdam News reported, several days later, that the officer’s gun went off accidentally, hitting Thompson.
The arrest report and police blotter make no mention of Thompson having a gun or struggling with the officers, merely colliding with Campo as he tried to flee the building, causing Campo’s gun to go off. As Thompson fled both officers fired at him, apparently hitting him in front of his home as he stumbled down the street. Campo and Beckler's shots also struck a white man, Stanley Dondoro, walking on the west side of 8th Avenue, in the leg. The Home News and New York Post added the detail that the bullet had passed through the trousers of a man with Dondoro without injuring him. Campo also appeared in lists of the injured published by the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York American. A note at the end of the hospital admission records indicate that Thompson died at Harlem Hospital at 9:30AM, four hours after the shooting, a time of death that led to him being listed as the only fatality of the disorder in newspapers published on March 20.
Police investigated the shooting after the disorder, according to threcords gathered by the MCCH. A police blotter record of Captain Mulholland’s investigation identified the detectives as responsible for shooting Dondoro, specifying that Campo had shot twice at Thompson, and his partner Detective Beckler had shot three times, as well as twice in the air, a warning to stop that was required police practice. One of the bullets struck Thompson in the chest, killing him. The blotter also recorded Captain Mulholland’s conclusion that the injuries Campo sustained his injury “in proper performance of police duty and no negligence on the part of the aforesaid detective contributed thereto. Although the World Telegraph story reported Thompson as saying at the hospital that “he was hungry, “that others were stealing, anyway,” and that he was “long out of work,” there is no record of an admission in the report of the police investigation. It does include an interview with Thompson’s aunt. She reported hearing from Thompson’s landlady that he had brought home canned goods during the disorder, with the implication that he had been looting prior to the shooting. However, she also reported that he worked at a barber’s shop, in contradiction of the admission reported in the World Telegraph. There is no record of police taking any action against the officers or of Thompson’s shooting attracting attention during the Mayor’s Commission hearings, as that of Lloyd Hobbs did.