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Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935

"1 Dead, 100 Hurt in Harlem Riot; Snipers Routed, Mobs Rove Area," New York World-Telegram, March 20, 1935 [clipping]

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Charles Alston arrested Near the 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. No police officers were reported injured, 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.

Newspaper stories contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language - for example, the New York World Telegram reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” policemen. Stories in the New York World Telegram 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.

Alston did not appear in court, likely because of his injury, but on March 20 the other three men were charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book. That offense did not involve any violence, reflecting that no guns were found in their possession; instead it focused on the men's presence in the area. It does not appear police had any evidence that Yerber, Loper or Johnson had created any sort of disturbance, as Magistrate Ford released all three men. Given that outcome, it is possible police officers confused where the shots fired at them came from, or perhaps mistook some other noise for gunfire. Without any evidence of an assault in the sources, these events are treated here only as arrests.

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. 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 was the only other newspaper 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 published a photograph of Alston's arrest in which he is holding his head, suggesting he did appear injured at that time. The caption published with the photo drew attention to the “clubbed gun” held by the uniformed officer leading Alston a patrol wagon (seeming to suggest that the officer had used the gun butt to hit Alston). It concludes starkly, “He’s dying.” The photo published in the Norfolk Journal and Gazette and New York World-Telegram credited to the International Photo agency and likely 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. The full photograph from which the published image is cropped, part of the Bettman Collection digitized by Getty Images, provides a clearer view of those gathered around the building.
Embed from Getty Images

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 New York World Telegram 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.
Harry Gordon arrested Around 6 PM, Harry Gordon, a twenty-year-old white man was arrested in front of Kress' store on West 125th Street for assaulting Patrolman Irwin Young. Newspaper reports offer a wide variety of contradictory accounts of the circumstances of Gordon's arrest; some identified him as speaking to the crowd, others as caught up when police moved in to arrest the man who was speaking, another white man identified as Daniel Miller. Gordon was charged with grabbing Young's nightstick and hitting him with it. He denied assaulting Young, charging instead that the officer had hit him from behind with the night stick. A witness to the arrest, Louise Thompson, told the MCCH that Gordon did “nothing” while being “brutally beaten by two large Policemen.” Police arrested Miller, two other white men, Samuel Jamison and Murray Samuels, and a black man, Claudio Diabolo at the same time, charging them with inciting the crowd.

After police arrested Gordon, they threw him in a patrol car and drove him to a police station. Interviewed by a Daily Worker journalist a week after the riot, Gordon alleged he was "kicked on the legs and knocked around" before being put in a cell. Police later put four Black men in the cell with him, one who Gordon described as "very badly beaten, his whole face and head swollen terribly, and covered with blood." When police took the group upstairs for questioning, and later fingerprinting, the beatings continued, with police officers calling them "vile, unprintable names" and threatening to shoot them. At the MCCH hearing on May 4, Gordon alleged that police officers continued to beat him around the shins as was being booked. After placing Gordon in a cell, Young allegedly later returned and took him to a room upstairs for a further beating with a club. While being held, Gordon testified, he was not allowed to contact a lawyer or his family and was not fed until he had been in custody for more than twenty-four hours and had been arraigned in the Magistrate's Court. [Does the transcript record him testifying with the same details as reported in the DW?]

Gordon was among the group of around eighty-nine arrested put in a line-up and questioned by detectives in front of reporters downtown at Police Headquarters on the morning of March 20, before being loaded into patrol wagons and taken back uptown to the Harlem and Washington Heights Magistrates Courts. While Gordon stood on the "klieg-lit platform," Captain Edward Dillon questioned him about his role in the disorder, an exchange reported in three newspapers. The briefest mention appeared in the Daily Mirror, which reported the details of the setting, but only that "under the grilling conducted by Acting Capt. Edward Dillon" Gordon declared "I am a student at City College of New York" and "refused to answer further questions." The reporter described Gordon's manner as "defiant." Other reporters conveyed a similar judgment in their portrayals of Gordon. The New York Herald Tribune described him as "a tall, lanky youth [who] thrust one hand in his pocket and struck an orator's attitude" during the questioning; the New York Sun described his pose as "Napoleonic." Neither of those stories mention Gordon identifying himself as a student; they instead quote him as refusing to answer questions until he saw a lawyer; the Sun reported Gordon as saying:
"I have no comment to make until I see my lawyer. I understand that anything I might say would be used against me."

"If you are not guilty why do you want to see a lawyer?" he was asked.

"I know all that," he replied with a wave of his hand "But I won't talk until I see my lawyer."
The Daily Mirror concluded that Gordon, in responding as he did, "had practically declared himself the inciter of the night's rioting" and the leader of the four others arrested at the beginning of the disorder. Gordon himself, testifying at the MCCH hearing, set himself apart, as a passerby who had attempted to urge the crowd to go to the police for information. Inquiries by reporters from the New York Evening Journal found no evidence that Gordon was a City College Student, with the New York Herald Tribune reporting Dean Morton Gottschall did not find him in college records. The New York Evening Journal did confirm that he lived in the Bronx, at 699 Prospect Avenue.

Gordon appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, shortly after the four alleged Communists arrested at the start of the disorder. Only the Daily Mirror included the detail that Gordon said he would produce his own lawyer rather than be represented by the International Labor Defense lawyers who appeared on behalf of the other men. Although the Home News, New York Post, New York World-Telegram, New York Age, and the list published by the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Gazette, reported the charge against him as inciting a riot, the charge recorded in the Magistrates Court Docket book was assault; initially felonious assault, but the clerk struck that out and wrote "Red[uced] to Simple Assault misd[emeanor]." The charge of assault was reported by New York American, New York Evening Journal, New York Times and New York Herald Tribune. A second list in the New York Evening Journal, a later story in the New York Herald Tribune, and the New York Amsterdam News, Daily Mirror and New York Sun reported Gordon had been charged with both offenses. The inconsistent reporting may have resulted from confusion about whether Gordon was included alongside the other four alleged Communists in informations charging inciting a riot that the DA obtained from the grand jury (an information was a charge for an offense less serious than a felony, whereas an indictment charged a felony offense). According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, after being arraigned, Gordon and the three white men, Miller, Jamison and Samuels, had been "taken to the District Attorney's office for questioning on possible charges of indictment to riot." The New York Evening Journal and New York Sun announced the first grand jury charges without naming those charged; the New York Herald Tribune and New York Daily News stories distinguished "two informations charging five persons with inciting riot." The Daily Mirror named Gordon and the four other men as those charged. However, Gordon's case proceeded in a different way than those of the men charged with inciting a riot.

Magistrate Renaud remanded Gordon to reappear on the March 25, on a bond of $1000; the magistrate also remanded the other four alleged Communists, but for them set the maximum bail of $2500. Gordon returned to court, at the same time as the other four alleged Communists; while they were discharged so they could be indicted, Renaud remanded Gordon again to appear on March 27, with the New York American reporting "his case, it was said, is being investigated by the Grand Jury." (The only other newspaper to report this appearance was the New York World-Telegram). When Gordon did appear again, Renaud instead transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions, a decision only reported in the New York Amsterdam News, New York Times and New York Herald Tribune. That court had jurisdiction over misdemeanors such as the charge against Gordon. The outcome of his trial is unknown.
Assaults on police (9) 46 plain 2020-11-25T18:31:03+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 Telegram 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:
James Thompson killed & Detective Nicholas Campo shot 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, a branch of the James Butler chain at 2391 8th Avenue, 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 New York World-Telegram 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 the records 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-Telegram 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-Telegram. 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.
Albert Yerber arrested Near the end of the disorder, at 5 AM on March 20, Albert Yerber, Charles Alston, Edward Loper and Ernest Johnson allegedly opened fire on police stationed at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No police officers were reported injured, 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, Yerber was twenty years of age, and Johnson was twenty-two years of age. Yerber lived on the other side of Harlem at 106 Edgecombe Ave, as did Loper, at 298 West 138th Street and, even further west, Alston at 512 West 153rd Street, while Johnson lived close to where they were arrested, at 206 West 140th Street. Only a small proportion of those involved in the disorder lived above 135th Street.

Newspaper stories contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language - for example, the New York World Telegram reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” policemen. Stories in the New York World Telegram 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.

Alston did not appear in court, likely because of his injury, but on March 20 Yerber and the other two men were charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book. That offense did not involve any violence, reflecting that no guns were found in their possession; instead it focused on the men's presence in the area. It does not appear police had any evidence that Yerber, Loper or Johnson had created any sort of disturbance, as Magistrate Ford released all three men. Given that outcome, it is possible police officers confused where the shots fired at them came from, or perhaps mistook some other noise for gunfire. Without any evidence of an assault in the sources, these events are treated here only as arrests.
Edward Loper arrested Near the end of the disorder, at 5 AM on March 20, Edward Loper, Charles Alston, Albert Yerber and Ernest Johnson allegedly opened fire on police stationed at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No police officers were reported injured, 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, Yerber was twenty years of age, and Johnson was twenty-two years of age. Loper lived on the other side of Harlem at at 298 West 138th Street, as did Yerber, 106 Edgecombe Aveand, even further west, Alston at 512 West 153rd Street, while Johnson lived close to where they were arrested, at 206 West 140th Street. Only a small proportion of those involved in the disorder lived above 135th Street.

Newspaper stories contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language - for example, the New York World Telegram reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” policemen. Stories in the New York World Telegram 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.

Alston did not appear in court, likely because of his injury, but on March 20 Loper and the other two men were charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book. That offense did not involve any violence, reflecting that no guns were found in their possession; instead it focused on the men's presence in the area. It does not appear police had any evidence that Loper, Yerber or Johnson had created any sort of disturbance, as Magistrate Ford released all three men. Given that outcome, it is possible police officers confused where the shots fired at them came from, or perhaps mistook some other noise for gunfire. Without any evidence of an assault in the sources, these events are treated here only as arrests.
Ernest Johnson arrested Near the end of the disorder, at 5 AM on March 20, Ernest Johnson, Charles Alston, Edward Loper and Albert Yerber allegedly opened fire on police stationed at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No police officers were reported injured, 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, Yerber was twenty years of age, and Johnson was twenty-two years of age. Johnson lived close to where they were arrested, at 206 West 140th Street. Yerber lived on the other side of Harlem at 106 Edgecombe Ave, as did Loper, at 298 West 138th Street and, even further west, Alston at 512 West 153rd Street. Only a small proportion of those involved in the disorder lived above 135th Street.

Newspaper stories contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language - for example, the New York World Telegram reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” policemen. Stories in the New York World Telegram and Brooklyn Daily Eagle did offer the name of the officer allegedly targeted by Johnson 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.

Alston did not appear in court, likely because of his injury, but on March 20 Johnson and the other two men were charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book. That offense did not involve any violence, reflecting that no guns were found in their possession; instead it focused on the men's presence in the area. It does not appear police had any evidence that Johnson, Loper or Yerber had created any sort of disturbance, as Magistrate Ford released all three men. Given that outcome, it is possible police officers confused where the shots fired at them came from, or perhaps mistook some other noise for gunfire. Without any evidence of an assault in the sources, these events are treated here only as arrests.