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“1 Dead, 7 shot, 100 Hurt as Harlem Crowds Riot over Boy, 16, and Hearse," New York Herald Tribune, March 20, 1935, 1.
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2020-02-25T19:43:29+00:00
Looting (60)
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2020-12-07T02:09:50+00:00
The disorder resulted in damage to approximately 300 Harlem businesses, many of which also had goods stolen. Such attacks on white businesses distinguished the events in 1935 from collective racial violence earlier in the twentieth-century, although the scale was far smaller than the disorders that would follow. When racial violence broke out in Harlem in 1943, four times as many businesses were targets of violence. The press labeled the theft as looting, a term that distinguished it on the basis of the context of violence and crisis in which it took place. Such theft often involved crowds publicly stealing goods, but those circumstances were not entirely out of the ordinary. Just over one in five (15 of 67) burglaries at other times in 1935 involved smashing street-front doors and windows, to steal goods before police responded, although not crowds of participants.
Although press reports and the MCCH gave prominence to attacks on property in characterizing the disorder as “not a race riot,” they offered only general descriptions of this violence, including fewer detailed incidents than was the case with assaults and none of the quantitative information that would be collected in subsequent racial disorders. However, damaged businesses do figure prominently in press photographs, highlighting that such damage represented a spectacle (one which also drew crowds to Harlem the day after the disorder to view the damage for themselves). Only sixty looted businesses are identified in the surviving sources, thirty linked to arrests (with an additional thirty individuals charged with looting unidentified businesses). Twenty-eight of those arrested were held for the grand jury, generating legal records that provide some of the detail misssing from newspapers. An additional forty-six businesses are identified as having their windows damaged, which would have exposed them to theft.
However, newspaper reports and legal records indicate that in the initial hours of the disorder store windows were smashed without efforts to steal their contents. After police dispersed the crowd drawn to Kress’ store and set up a cordon on 125th Street protecting it, another clash at the rear of the store on 124th Street around 7.45PM saw windows broken. Around the same time, crowds smashed windows on 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue. Although the police present on this block lacked the numbers to protect the windows, in several cases they responded to damage by taking up positions in front of stores, which appears to have prevented much looting. While many of the large stores were identified as having windows smashed at this time, only the NYEJ reported that thefts also took place. Around 8.45 PM, when police succeeded in pushing the crowds from 125th St on to 7th and 8th Avenues, the smaller businesses on those streets became targets. Windows were broken, and isolated looting reported in the blocks of 7th Avenue immediately north of 125th Street (AM, AA, Hobbs investigation). The NYT and AA reported goods were thrown into the street rather than taken (NYT, AA, also mentioned by Betty Wilcox), actions more akin to efforts to damage property, to ransack, than a turn to theft, but it is not clear how often that happened. Many of these businesses were still operating and staffed, but that did little to curtail theft. In some businesses staff removed goods from windows and shelves, but most hid or fled crowds and bombardment with rocks and stones. More effective were the Black staff who put signs in their store windows identifying the business as Black-owned, which spared them from attack. Around 10PM, as crowds began to move away from the block of 125th Street containing Kress’ store, where police were concentrated, assaults and attacks on stores spread through Harlem. Further isolated looting occurred on 7th Avenue north of 125th Street, and after 10.30PM, in the area of 116th Street to the south.
Around midnight, reporters from the New York Herald Tribune, Daily Mirror and Afro-American noted a change in the tenor of the disorder reflected in arrests: violence became overshadowed by looting, particularly on Lenox Avenue in the blocks north of 125th Street, lasting until around 2 AM. This turn to looting was helped by both earlier damage to windows that offered access to displays and store interiors and the lesser police presence in this area. By that late hour most undamaged businesses had closed, some with their doors and windows protected by security barriers. However, those additional obstacles did not prevent looting, an indication of growing violence and limited police presence. At least three businesses in this area were also set on fire, although it is not entirely clear when and whether they had been looted first. Even the return of some businessowners, once they learned of the disorder, did little to prevent looting, with several reporting futile efforts to secure police assistance. The progression from violence and damage to looting also features in the later racial disorders, in Harlem and Detroit in 1943, and in Detroit in 1967. As Sydney Fine argues was the case in Detroit in 1967, that pattern locates looting as a consequence of the violence, not as the defining characteristic of the disorder, and as serving to prolong disorder.
The progression from damage to looting also reflected time for additional groups to join the crowds of men most prominent in the initial violence. In later racial disorders, women would be much larger presence among those arrested for looting, and in images of theft. However, in 1935, while three women are among the sixty individuals arrested for looting, almost as many women were arrested for other offenses: two for breaking windows and another for inciting a crowd. Several papers reported that white men also joined the looting, but only one is identified in legal records, arrested in circumstances that do not put him in the midst of the disorder: Jean Jacquelin, a thirty-three-year-old Canadian driver with a previous arrest for assault with a knife, arrested at 5.40AM, after the crowds had left the streets, in possession of clothing stolen from a tailor.
The stores identified in the sources as having stock stolen represented a cross-section of the small businesses in Harlem focused on needs more than luxuries, and on personal items rather than larger items like furniture. Businesses providing food make up the largest group (18 of 46). Clothing was also a target (13 of 46), while the remaining businesses sold a variety of goods (15 of 46). Missing from this partial list of businesses attacked during the disorder are large stores and several enterprises prominent in the neighborhood: beauty shops, barbers, and laundries. At other times in 1935 the full range of stores were targets of burglaries.
The feature of the looting that drew particular comment in the reports of newspapers and later the MCCH was the extent to which it targeted only white-owned businesses, sparing Black-owned businesses. The press reports allowed that a small number of Black-owned businesses did suffer damage, either before identifying themselves with signs (NYJ, AA), or after crowds got carried away (MCCH). However, none of the instances of looting identified in the sources involved black businesses. At the same time, Harlem’s racial landscape was more complex than these reports recognized. Among the “white-owned” businesses targeted were a number of Hispanic/Puerto Rican businesses around 116th Street, and Chinese laundries scattered throughout the neighborhood.
Police responded to looting very differently than to crowds and attacks on stores, with a greater degree of violence and more arrests. Theft warranted firing at suspects, rather than in the air, as police claimed they did in confronting crowds and assaults. Police pursuing suspected looters shot two of those killed in the disorder, Lloyd Hobbs and James Thompson. Sixty of those arrested were alleged to have been stealing from stores, far more than arrested for any other activity during the disorder (although what prompted the arrest of 30 of the 133 arrested is not known). Officers generally claimed to have seen an individual stealing goods from a business. At least some of those police arrested claimed to have simply been standing with crowds on the street when police approached. In one-third (9 of 27) of the cases where the circumstances are known, the arrest occurred away from the looted store, as police apparently stopped and questioned individuals they encountered carrying goods.
Courts also treated charges of looting more severely than other alleged offenses in the disorder. Magistrates held over half (28 of 50) of those who appeared before them for the grand jury, compared to only one third of those charged with assault. The grand jury did redirect a significant number to the Court of Special Sessions, casting them as involving goods of too little value to warrant treatment as felonies. District attorneys followed the same pattern with those individuals the grand jury did indict as at other times in 1935, negotiating guilty pleas for lesser offenses with most, so that only two prosecutions for looting went to trial.
As these criminal prosecutions made their way through the legal system, Harlem's white business-owners turned to the civil courts seeking compensation from the city for their losses on the basis of a nineteenth-century municipal law that held a city or county liable if their property was destroyed or injured by a mob or riot. One hundred and six owners brought actions, with the first heard in the Municipal Court being William Feinstein, who owned a liquor store on Lenox Ave. The jury awarded him damages, a verdict which the judge eventually decided to uphold. The city also lost seven actions in the Supreme Court, which heard cases for larger damages, although awarded significantly lower sums than they sought.
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2020-02-24T22:40:34+00:00
Assaults on police (9)
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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:
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2020-02-25T17:19:47+00:00
Lyman Quarterman shot
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2020-10-15T02:04:19+00:00
03/19/1935 22:30
At around 10.30 PM, Lyman Quarterman, a thirty-four-year-old Black man, was part of a crowd at 121st Street and 7th Avenue that police were struggling to disperse when he was shot in the abdomen. Around the same time, Anthony Cados, a thirty-four-year-old white man reported being assaulted nearby by "some unknown colored person or persons." While Cados lived approximately ten blocks to the south, Quarterman lived at the other end of Black Harlem, at 306 West 146th Street (in the same area as two of the other Black men shot, Clarence London and Wilmont Hendricks)
It is clear from the newspaper reports that police fired their guns as part of their efforts to disperse the crowd, raising the possibility that an officer shot Quarterman. White newspaper reports discounted that possibility in various ways. Hospital records of the ambulance called to attend Quarterman simply recorded he had a "gunshot wound of the abdomen received when shot by some unknown person at the scene of riot." The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, New York American, Brooklyn Citizen and Daily Mirror, and the Associated Press reported on March 20, and the Chicago Defender on March 23, that Quarterman had died, a mistake the Home News attributed to "many conflicting reports during the night," and the New York Evening News attributed more specifically to a "report having been sent out on the police teletype." By late on March 20 the New York Evening Journal, New York Post and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle listed Quarterman among the injured, as did the Atlanta World on March 27 and the Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Gazette on March 30. He was one of eight men still in hospital on March 21, the New York Herald Tribune reported, and still there as late as April 8 according to the New York Age, but there are no reports that he died.
The New York Herald Tribune, reported that no policeman in the vicinity could remember discharging his revolver, whereas the Times Union said many had, but “only into the air to frighten the mob.” The New York Evening Journal made an oblique reference to shots being fired into the crowd, as the culmination of a narrative justifying police actions as a response to escalating violence, in which officers from the 123rd Street station surrounded by a crowd, first drew their nightsticks “to save their own lives,” and when the crowd armed themselves with baseball bats and clubs, drew their guns and exchanged shots with the crowd. No other newspapers reproduced this narrative.
The New York American simply said Quarterman had been shot by an unknown assailant, the Daily Mirror by a “stray bullet,” and the New York Daily News reported his assailant had escaped, stories which all implicitly assumed the police were not responsible for his death. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle explicitly expressed such an assumption in reporting Quarterman had been shot “presumably by rioters.” The New York Times offered the more open-ended report that “police launched an investigation to determine who fired the fatal shot.” There are no records of such an investigation. Only the Brooklyn Citizen stated directly that “Whether he had been shot by police or other rioters could not be determined.”
Four of the six others shot and wounded during the disorder were Black men like Quarterman, one of unknown race, and one white police officer. As in his case, no one was arrested for any of those shootings (the man with who the police officer struggled, James Thompson, was shot and killed by police).
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2020-02-24T22:38:05+00:00
Patrolman Irwin Young assaulted
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2020-10-18T21:06:36+00:00
Around 6.00PM, Harry Gordon, three other white men and a black man arrived on 125th Street and began picketing in front of Kress’ store. The group were members of the Young Liberators, an organization with ties to the Communist Party that had offices nearby, at 262 Lenox Ave near 126th Street. They carried signs that read “Kress Brutally Beats and Seriously Injures Negro Child and Negro Women. Negro and White Don’t Buy Here” and “Kress Brutally Beats Negro Child.” At some point the men set up a stand in front of the store and a member of the group began to speak to the crowd gathered there. When someone threw a rock through the window of Kress’ store, police moved to arrest the speaker. In the ensuing struggle, Gordon allegedly grabbed Patrolman Irwin Young’s nightstick and used it to hit the officer. He and the four other men were arrested and hurried into waiting cars. Young was the first police officer allegedly assaulted in the disorder; five others would be assaulted around 125th Street before 10.30PM, by which time the crowds had moved to other parts of the neighborhood.
The New York Age, New York Herald Tribune and Home News initially identified Gordon as the member of the group speaking to the crowd, pulled off the stand by Young and other officers. The New York American, New York Evening Journal, and New York Times name another member of the group, Daniel Miller, as the speaker. Newspapers listed the five men among those arrested, charged with inciting a riot; only some reported Gordon was charged with assault. A small number of subsequent reports omitted Gordon from the group arrested in front of Kress’ store, perhaps because of the different charge against him.
When Gordon appeared in court the Assistant District Attorney downgraded the assault charge from a felony to a misdemeanor. At the hearing police alleged that Gordon was standing on a mailbox in front of the Kress store and yelling that a Negro boy had been murdered in the store at the time Young moved to arrest him. It was when Young pulled him down from that perch that Gordon allegedly assaulted him. Lists of the injured variously described the injuries Young suffered as “cuts on hands” (New York Daily News; New York Evening Journal), “lacerations of right hand” (New York Herald Tribune), and "bruised on the hand" (New York American) – not serious enough injuries to justify a felony charge. The New York Herald Tribune reported Young received medical treatment at the scene, but he does not appear in the hospital records, as the other officers injured around this time do.
Several days later, testifying on the first day of the hearings held by the MCCH, Louise Thompson contradicted Young’s account of Gordon’s arrest. She declared that Gordon did “nothing” while being “brutally beaten by two large Policemen.” Gordon himself later appeared at the hearings to not only deny that he had assaulted Young but to charge the officer had hit him from behind with the night stick, and continued to beat him during the car journey to the precinct and the booking, and again later while he was a prisoner (and in interview in the Daily Worker, he described police assaults on black prisoners). In his testimony Gordon denied being part of a protest in front of Kress’, claiming instead he was a passerby who climbed the lamppost to urge the crowd to disperse. However, other evidence contradicts that claim – including the appearance of an ILD lawyer in court to represent him and the other members of the Young Liberators. (Gordon was also interviewed in the Daily Worker, while other journalists could not locate him).
Gordon is mentioned in most coverage of the disorder, as both the Hearst newspapers and DA William Dodge focused attention on the involvement of Communists and the possibility that they had instigated the disorder – a claim that the MCCH report refuted. His alleged assault on Young does not feature prominently in that reporting, which is more concerned with his possible role instigating others.
The available sources offer conflicting information on these events, The Mayor’s Commission report describes two different speakers being arrested in front of Kress’ store without naming either, with the first speaker arrested after someone threw an object that smashed one of the store windows, and the second later dragged down from a lamppost across the street. That account is in line with the New York Times and the charges police made, but the New York Times and New York Age both report that Young was injured later in the disorder, at the rear of Kress’ store at the same time as three other officers not during the arrest of the Young Liberators – but both stories rely on elements contradicted by other sources. The New York Age reports that Gordon was charged only with inciting a riot, where other records, including court records, confirm the charge was assault. The New York Times omits him from the group arrested in front of the store whereas all the other sources confirm he was part of the group arrested earlier. The New York Herald Tribune included Young in its list of injured police in similar terms as the officers assaulted on 124th Street, including reporting that Young received medical treatment, but he does not appear in the hospital records as those other officers do. In a separate story on the same day the Herald Tribune also includes Gordon in a list of those arrested, accused of assaulting Young while speaking in front of the store. So while it is possible that Young could have arrested Gordon and returned to be part of the clashes on 124th Street, it appears more likely that the stories mistakenly lumped him in with the group of officers injured then. -
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2020-02-25T02:58:46+00:00
Timothy Murphy assaulted & Paul Boyett shot
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2020-10-27T01:08:03+00:00
Around 9 p.m, as police reinforcements tried to disperse the large crowds that had gathered on 7th and 8th Avenues around 125th Street, a few blocks northwest on West 127th Street between 8th Avenue and St Nicholas Avenue, a group of around ten Black men attacked Timothy Murphy, a twenty-nine-year-old white rock driller on his way home.
The men knocked Murphy to the ground and then hit and kicked him. The Daily Mirror reported Murphy said that men told him “they were beating me because I was a white man.” Their actual words, according to Murphy’s affidavit in the District Attorney's case file, were “You white son-of-a-bitch, take it now.” As a result of the beating Murphy suffered “lacerations, contusions [about his head, face and body], a broken nose and loss of hearing in his left ear.” Press reports simply said he received a broken nose.
The men beating Murphy attracted the attention of Patrolman George Conn and some onlookers. As Conn ran toward Murphy, he fired a shot in the air, causing the crowd to scatter. Conn then fired again, this time at the crowd, hitting Paul Boyett in the shoulder. A twenty-year-old Black garage worker, Boyett lived only a few buildings away from the scene of the beating, at 310 West 127th Street. According to one press report, Conn shot Boyett as he was about to hit Murphy. Most papers reported that Conn called on Boyett to halt before shooting him, as police practice required him to do, and only shot at him when he kept moving. At his trial on the charge of assaulting Murphy, the New York Amsterdam News reported that Boyett testified he had been “an innocent onlooker” drawn to the “disturbance,” and “struck no one at that time.” In the confusion as the crowd rushed to leave as police appeared, a bullet hit him. Boyett continued running back to his home, apparently pursued by Conn, who arrested him in the hallway of his building. Taken to the 30 Precinct, hospital records indicate that Boyett received treatment for his wound from a doctor from Knickerbocker Hospital before being placed in a cell. Both Murphy and Boyett appear in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York Daily News, New York American. Only Murphy appears in the list of injured published in the Home News, and only Boyett, in a group of those shot, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Herald Tribune.
Black groups targeted at least three other white men around this time, all east of the attack on Murphy. William Kitlitz reported being attacked by James Smithies in front of Kress’ store, Maurice Spellman at 125th St and 8th Avenue, and Morris Werner at 125th Street and 7th Avenue. All these men lived west of Harlem, relatively close to where they were attacked, so were likely regular visitors to 125th Street, to shop, seek entertainment or access public transport, on this evening caught up in the disorder. The area around 125th St and 7th Avenue would continue to be the location of assaults on white men and women for at least the next three hours, with three men and two women targeted. However, the assault on Murphy represented the western boundary of the disorder, the only event beyond 8th Avenue. That section of Harlem was still part of the Black neighborhood.
Murphy was one of four white men and women rescued from assaults by the intervention of police officers (with some press reports suggesting that this happened more frequently). Only in this case did police also make an arrest. In one of those other cases, an officer also fired shots at the crowd, but in that instance no one was reported as being hit. Police did shoot and kill two individuals, Lloyd Hobbs and James Thompson, in the later case also hitting two white bystanders.
The trial jury acquitted Boyett, the New York Amsterdam News reported, an outcome that indicates the evidence presented to them did not clearly support the press accounts of him being involved in beating Murphy (and even perhaps that witnesses did not confirm Conn called on Boyett to halt). Even in cases where groups beat individuals, the presence of crowds on Harlem’s streets could produce the same difficulty identifying and apprehending assailants faced in cases where objects hit people -
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2020-02-25T01:54:44+00:00
Detective Henry Roge assaulted
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2020-10-27T16:10:10+00:00
03/10/1935 22:00
Just before 10 pm police on 125th Street succeeded in dispersing the crowd in front of Kress’ store, moving them across the street and west on to 8th Avenue. Detective Henry Roge of the West 123rd St Precinct and his partner Raymond Gill were among the police standing in front of the store, watching the crowd, backlit by the lighted store. A rock thrown from the crowd then struck Roge in the head, causing deep cuts to his eye and face. Gill claimed he saw a man appear from behind the cars parked on the street, look around, and throw the rock that hit Roge. At that moment there were no other objects being thrown at stores or police, so Gill was certain that it was that rock that hit his partner, and he was able to keep his eyes on the man who threw it. After chasing him through the crowd, he trapped him among the parked cars. Gill frisked the man, twenty-four-year-old James Hughes, and found five stones in his pockets; Hughes insisted the stones were to defend himself, and he had not thrown the rock that struck Roge.
According to Hughes, he had been caught up in the crowd on 8th Avenue as he tried to return to his furnished room on 7th Avenue near 115th Street from 126th St and 8th Avenue. He’d begun his evening with a trip to a barber’s shop on 7th Avenue, before returning home for supper, and then heading out again at 9.30pm to go drinking. When he set out for home, and saw the broken glass and stones on the streets, and heard people calling out “Let’s break windows,” he picked up some rocks for protection. Hughes knew 125th Street well. He worked in Koch’s Department store, a block east of Kress’, as a show repairer, a trade he had learned in Atlanta. He told the Probation officer who interviewed him that he followed the crowd to 125th Street to prevent them breaking the windows in the store in which he worked.
As Hughes was being arrested, Roge was dealing with his injuries, which were bleeding profusely. A call for medical assistance brought Dr Fabian of the Joint Disease Hospital to attend to the detective. A New York Evening Journal photographer captured several images of a uniformed officer helping a bleeding Roge from the scene (the only images of an injured police officer published). According to the record of medical attendances, Roge remained on duty after being attended by the doctor, but other sources reported that his injury required two stitches, which involved Roge being taken to Harlem Hospital. Probation report records that Roge was on sick leave for 10 days after his injury, making it more likely his injury required him to leave the scene for treatment.
Hughes was tried and convicted of misdemeanor assault. The prosecutor’s notes on the trial suggest that Gill’s testimony stressed that he was certain of his identification of Hughes as the man who threw the rock, against which Hughes could offer only his denial and a series of character witnesses. In response, the prosecutor argued that Hughes “saw plenty of trouble – went right into it.” At the sentencing hearing, the judge expressed belief that Hughes had thrown the rock at the store window, not Roge, so sentenced him to term of only three months in the workhouse.
As with other assaults, the press coverage of this case was fragmented. Roge appeared on the lists of those injured published by white newspapers the New York American (on both March 20 & 21), New York Evening Journal, Home News, New York Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Post, and in stories in the Daily Mirror. Hughes appeared in lists of those arrested published in the Black newspapers the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Gazette, and the white New York Evening Journal. The two were linked in only three stories, in the New York Times, Home News and Daily Worker. Even when Hughes was tried, producing additional coverage, only two of the five stories mentioned Roge. But that legal process did generate case files in both the DA’s office and the Probation Department which provided details that are available for only a handful of the events of the disorder.
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2020-02-24T20:37:35+00:00
William Kitlitz assaulted & James Smitten injured
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2020-10-29T00:19:46+00:00
03/19/1935 20:30
Around 8.30PM, as police struggled to control crowds on 125th Street that had begun to smash store windows, William Kitlitz , a white mail clerk standing in front of Kress’ store, was allegedly “beaten on the head” by a black man named James Smitten. Attacks by individuals such as this represented a very small proportion of both the assaults reported in the riot (7/53) and the assaults on whites (3/29).
Both men lived only a few blocks from the site of the assault – Smitten on 123rd Street between 7th and Lenox, southeast of Kress, and Kitlitz on St Nicholas Ave between 125th and 124th just a block west. The proximity of their homes to 125th Street likely contributed to them being present early in the disorder. This was the first reported assault on a white, occurring as clashes between black crowds and white police and attacks by blacks on white stores began, intertwining all those forms of racial violence. Blacks targeted at least three other white men shortly after this assault. Morris Spellman reported being attacked by group of men a few buildings to the west at 125th Street and 8th Avenue at 9pm and Timothy Murphy a few blocks further west by a group of men at around the same time. Half an hour later, another group attacked Morris Werner at 125th St and 7th Avenue, the eastern end of the block on which Kress’ stood. All these men lived west of Harlem, relatively close to where they were attacked, so were likely regular visitors to 125th Street, to shop, seek entertainment or access public transport, on this evening caught up in the disorder.
With police concentrated on 125th Street, and on protecting the store, it is not surprising that Kitlitz’s alleged assailant was one of only nine men arrested for assault, with 83% (44/53) of reports not producing an arrest. Patrolman Gross of the 23rd Precinct made the arrest, and took Smitten back to the station house. At 8.45PM a doctor from Harlem Hospital attended Smitten in the precinct to treat lacerations of scalp “which he received in some unknown manner,” according to the hospital records. Those injuries could have come in a struggle with Kitlitz, or at the hands of police, as was the case with a number of those arrested during the course of the disorder. Kitlitz is listed as injured in the press but there is no record of him receiving medical treatment. A report in the New York American described him as ‘beaten on head, while the New York Daily News reported he had “bruises on face.”
Smitten’s arrest occurred early enough on March 19 that he was arraigned that evening, in the Night Court, one of only three of those arrested who appeared in court prior to March 20 (the two others were Claude Jones and Leo Smith). The New York Herald Tribune reported Magistrate Capshaw remanded him for investigation until Saturday, but there is no record of the outcome of his legal proceedings.
Only two sources connect Smitten and Kitlitz. A hospital record for a call-out to treat Smitten at the 28th Precinct identifies him as having been arrested for assaulting Kitlitz. Only one newspaper report describes the assault, but mistakenly identifies Smitten as Smith. In addition, Smitten appears in four lists of those arrested for assault during the disorder, while Kitlitz appears in four lists of the injured (New York Evening Journal; New York Daily News; New York American (March 20 only); and Home News). (Another man named James Smith was arrested during the disorder, for robbery. Smith lived at a different address than Smitten, and is younger, but is confused with Smitten in reports in the Am and NYDN, given Smitten’s address)
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2020-10-01T19:30:34+00:00
Paul Boyett arrested
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2020-11-04T19:39:03+00:00
Patrolman George Conn arrested Paul Boyett, a twenty-year-old Black garage worker, for assaulting Timothy Murphy, a twenty-nine-year-old white rock driller. Conn had come upon a crowd attacking Murphy on West 127th Street between 8th Avenue and St Nicholas Avenue around 9 PM. After firing his pistol into the air to scatter the crowd, then shooting into the crowd, hitting Boyett, Conn pursued the injured man until he caught up with him in the hallway of his home on West 127th Street.
Taken to the 30th Precinct Station, Boyett received treatment for his wound from a doctor from Knickerbocker Hospital, according to hospital records, before being placed in a cell.
Boyett appears in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York Daily News, New York American. and in in a group of those shot reported in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Herald Tribune. He also appears in lists of the arrested published in the Afro-American, Atlanta World, Norfolk Journal and Gazette, New York Daily News, New York American, and New York Evening Journal, and in the 28th Precinct Police blotter.
Boyett appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with felonious assault. The docket book indicates that he was remanded until March 22. Boyett did not appear before the grand jury until April 23, according to the District Attorney's case file records; they indicted him for first degree assault. His trial occurred on May 29. Boyett testified he had been “an innocent onlooker” drawn to the “disturbance," the New York Amsterdam News reported, and “struck no one at that time.” In the confusion as the crowd rushed to leave as police appeared, a bullet hit him. The jury acquitted Boyett, an outcome that indicates they likely found his account persuasive. -
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2020-04-09T18:04:11+00:00
De Soto Windgate shot
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2020-10-01T18:09:31+00:00
At 1. 15 AM “some unknown person” shot a twenty-four-year-old black man named De Soto Windgate as he walked along West 144th Street between Lenox and 7th Avenues. Only five other events in the disorder occurred north of 135th Street, none within six blocks of this shooting. Three of those events were also assaults, two on white men on 8th Avenue north of 145th Street before midnight, and shots fired at police at 138th Street and Lenox Avenue at 5 AM. An equally small number of events occurred off the avenues, on cross streets, as this shooting did. Aside from assaults in front and behind Kress’ store, there are only two assaults, south of 125th Street.
There is no information on the circumstances of the shooting. Windgate lived at the opposite end of Harlem at 7 East 114th Street, a section mostly occupied by Puerto Ricans and whites. He may have come north to frequent one of the theaters on West 145th Street; the Roosevelt was on the corner of 7th Avenue. Or he may have been visiting friends. There is no evidence of any disorder nearby that might have attracted his attention or brought police into the area. So while the other black men shot and wounded in the disorder seem likely to have been hit by police shooting in response to looting that does not seem to have been the case with Windgate. Given the location and limited evidence, there is some question about whether this shooting is part of the disorder.
The shot hit Windgate in the abdomen (only the New York Post located the wound elsewhere, in his right shoulder), and was serious enough for him to be admitted to Harlem Hospital – and be included in the list of those “near death” in the New York American, Afro-American, Atlanta World, and Norfolk Journal and Gazette, and the New York Evening Journal’s list of the “dying.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and New York Herald Tribune simply described his condition as “serious.” His injury is different from others shot in the disorder; only one is hit in the abdomen, with the remainder suffering injuries to the legs or hands.
Being admitted to Harlem Hospital might explain Windgate’s consistent appearance in newspaper lists. However, he does not appear in the hospital records provided to the MCCH.
Windgate does appear in another record gathered by the MCCH, information extracted from the Aided Cases book of the 32nd Precinct, based on West 135th Street. Procedures required police to record all incidents reported to them in that book. Only three other cases appear in the 32nd Precinct book for the period of the disorder, the assault on a white man, Julius Narditch, by a group pf black men at 8th Avenue and 147th Street, the assault on Thomas Suarez on 134th Street and the injury of Herbert Holderman on 132nd Street.
The police record does not identify Windgate’s race, but newspapers do. The New York American, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Home News, New York Daily News, New York Post, New York Times and New York Sun all include his race; the New York Herald Tribune and New York Evening Journal do not. Four of the six others shot and wounded in the disorder were Black men, one of unknown race, and one white police officer.
No one was arrested for shooting Windgate, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed).
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2020-03-11T21:25:32+00:00
Everett Breuer and Joseph Martin assaulted
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2020-10-14T02:17:09+00:00
Everett Breuer, a twenty-eight-year-old white photographer working for the New York Daily News, was taking images of the crowd at 7th Avenue and 125th Street when a rock hit him in the head. It was likely one of several objects thrown in Breuer’s direction as the office boy carrying his plates, Joseph Martin, was also hit on the face. Breuer’s own publication reported he was “beaten” not hit by a rock, as did the New York American, but the Daily Mirror, Home News, New York Herald Tribune and New York Times all reported him being hit by an object, while the New York Evening Journal and New York Post reported only the resulting cuts. According to all but the New York Evening Journal, Breuer’s cuts were bad enough to require a trip to the hospital. Press accounts disagree on where he received treatment, with the New York American, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York Times and Daily Mirror reporting Harlem Hospital, the Home News Sydenham Hospital on Manhattan Ave and West 124th Street, and the New York Daily News the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled on 42nd St and Lexington Ave.
James Martin attracted less attention than Breuer. Other than a mention in the story and an appearance in the list of the injured in the New York Daily News, Martin appears only in the list of injured published by the New York Evening Journal. Both sources describe him as having cuts on his face, with the later recording that an ambulance treated Martin.
The area around 7th Avenue and 125th Street saw a cluster of assaults during the disorder, with six other assaults reported there, including the beating of another reporter, Harry Johnson of the New York American. It was also at this location that Andrew Lyons was shot and killed. All those events occurred despite police emergency squads being deployed at the intersection from 9pm.
A photograph Breuer took immediately before the rock struck him became the most widely reproduced photograph of the disorder. When it initially appeared in the Daily News, the caption noted “After making this picture, The News photographer was struck down and went to hospital. He suffered lacerations to the scalp.” In later editions that information is omitted, and it does not appear in the caption of the photograph when it is reprinted by other publications. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle list of the injured did report Breuer was "hit by a rock while taking pictures of a riotous group." The scene the photographer captured shows two black men apparently trying to move away from a uniformed police officer; one man has fallen, while the officer is trying to hold the other. Neither they nor the three men and two women in the background look poised to throw anything at the photographer.
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2020-09-28T20:32:00+00:00
Douglas Cornelius arrested
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2020-11-25T18:39:49+00:00
Police arrested Douglas Cornelius, a twenty-two-year old black man, for hitting Thomas Wijstem, a thirty-year-old white carpenter with a rock in front of the W. T. Grant store on 125th Street around 10.30PM. Newspapers reported that a group of men had attacked Wijstem, but police arrested only Cornelius. As Wijstem was knocked unconscious and could not identify himself, he appears in lists of the injured as an "unidentified white man," named only in stories published by the New York Post and New York World-Telegram on March 22. (Three months later, a brief story in New York Herald Tribune reported Wijstem had died in Bellevue Hospital without regaining consciousness).
Like the man he targeted, Cornelius lived in East Harlem, at 52 East 118th Street, a mixed black and Puerto Rican section. He appears in lists of those arrested for assault in Afro-American, Atlanta World, Norfolk Journal and Gazette, but he is linked to the unidentified man with the fractured skull only in a story in the New York Times, a list of the arrested in the New York Evening Journal, and lists of the injured in the New York Herald Tribune, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Home News link him .
After being one of the last arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Cornelius is recorded in the docket book as indicted and then having had the charges against him dismissed. The 28th Precinct Police blotter simply listed the charges as "Dism[issed]." There is no case file for Cornelius in the District Attorney's records. The dismissal likely came because he could not be identified as one of Wijstem's assailants (especially given that Wijstem was still unconscious and would not have testified). -
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2020-04-09T17:59:07+00:00
Clarence London shot
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2020-10-01T18:08:10+00:00
Around 1 AM, Clarence London, a thirty-four-year-old black man was shot in the leg while walking on the street near 7th Avenue. London lived in north Harlem, at 676 St Nicholas Avenue, so was far from home when shot, likely drawn to the disorder around 125th Street at some point in the evening
The location of the shooting is recorded in hospital admission records as West 122nd Street and 7th Avenue, while reports in the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune put it three blocks north, at 125th Street and 7th Avenue. Both locations saw multiple acts of violence during the disorder, including an assault on a white man, John Eigler, at 122nd Street around the time London was shot also attended by an ambulance from Harlem Hospital. The assault is mapped at 125th Street as that is where the weight of the evidence puts it.
The New York American reported London had been “shot by an unidentified man” but offered no other details. Other papers simply listed him as “shot.” The hospital records further obscured the circumstances by describing London as “wounded.” His wound was consistently reported as in the right leg, although the Home News did report it was in the left leg.
The New York American, New York Post, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and New York Times all identified London as a Black man; only the New York Daily News and New York Evening Journal did not specify his race. Four of the six others shot and wounded in the disorder were Black men, one of unknown race, and one white police officer. Given the evidence of both looting and police responding to it at the time, and the lack of any evidence that blacks on the streets during the disorder used guns, London was likely hit by shots fired by police – as were the others reported as shot and wounded.
No one was arrested for shooting London, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed).
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2020-03-11T21:14:02+00:00
Detective Charles Foley assaulted
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2020-09-30T19:20:34+00:00
Detective Charles Foley, a thirty-two-year-old white resident of Jackson Heights in Queens, was hit on the left shoulder by a stone, possibly suffering a fracture, shortly after 7 PM, at the rear of Kress’ store on 124th Street. He was the third officer injured in the disorder, and one of six attacked during the efforts of police to control the crowds around 125th Street prior to 10PM. Like all those officers he was stationed in the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street. The second officer assaulted, Patrolman Michael Kelly, had also been hit by an object behind Kress’ store, where police had followed a crowd drawn to 124th Street by the appearance of a hearse they assumed had come for the body of the boy rumored to have been killed in the store.
Like most (6/9) of the officers assaulted, Foley was hit by a missile. However, the clash in which the assault occurred 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. So while in other cases there is some possibility police could have been hit by objects thrown at store windows they guarded, Foley was almost certainly the target of the object that injured him.
According to the hospital record of the ambulance call-out, Foley had an injured shoulder. Five newspapers listed this injury (Home News, New York Herald Tribune, New York Daily News, New York Evening Journal, New York Times). Three other papers listed instead a head injury (New York American (March 20 & 21), Daily Mirror, New York Post), the most common injury resulting from being hit by objects. According to the New York Times, Foley refused medical attention. Given that an ambulance attended him that claim is likely a misstatement of the fact that he was not taken back to Harlem Hospital, but treated at the scene.
No one was arrested for assaulting Foley, as was the case in seven of the nine assaults on police.
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1
2020-03-11T21:18:25+00:00
Detective William Boyle assaulted
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2020-09-30T20:13:24+00:00
Around 9 PM, Detective William Boyle, a twenty-nine-year-old white officer based at the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street, was hit on the left ankle by a rock. Hospital records report that an ambulance treated Boyle for injuries “received while attempting to rescue an unknown white man being assaulted at scene of riot.” Four white men reported being assaulted near 125th Street before crowds moved away from this area after 10 PM, with police intervening in two instances, echoing the scenario Boyle presented.
He appears in the New York Times alongside other officers assaulted at the front and rear of Kress’ store on West 124th Street, where police had pursued crowds from 125th Street, offering a possible location for the assault. However, ambulances treated those officers, Patrolman Michael Kelly and Detective Charles Foley, and almost two hours before Boyle was treated, although they received treatment at the scene, while Boyle was attended at the 28th Precinct.
Boyle appeared on lists of the injured published by the New York American, New York Daily News, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune and New York Evening Journal, in addition to the story in the New York Times. Unusually, they all reported his injury as cuts to the left ankle from being hit with a rock. It seems likely given that injury that the unknown white man that Boyle intervened to protect was the target of missiles rather than being beaten. According to the hospital record of the ambulance callout, Boyle remained on duty.
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2020-03-11T21:51:31+00:00
Patrolman Michael Kelly assaulted
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2020-09-30T20:16:52+00:00
Around 7 PM, Patrolman Michael Kelly was hit on the right leg by rock at the rear of Kress’ store on 124th Street. A thirty-year-old white officer from the West 123rd station assigned to a radio car, he was the second of six officers assaulted in efforts to control the crowds around the store at the beginning of the disorder. Although police had struggled with crowds earlier on 125th Street, where Patrolman Irwin Young was assaulted making an arrest at the very beginning of the disorder, more assaults did not come until the crowd moved to 124th Street in response to the appearance of a hearse they assumed had come for the body of the boy rumored to have been killed in the store. This street had a narrower roadway and pavements than 125th Street, making officers easier to target with objects thrown from roofs as well as the street level. At least one other officer, Detective Charles Foley, was hit by objects on 124th Street around this time, and three other officers would be assaulted in the area around 125th Street before 10.30 PM, all but one hit by objects.
According to the hospital report of the ambulance call-out, the injury to Kelly’s leg was serious enough that he was taken to Harlem Hospital for an x-ray and observation. The list of the injured in the New York American (March 20 & 21) and New York Herald Tribune, and the story in the New York Times followed that information, while the lists in the Home News and New York Evening Journal reported the injury as a sprain without noting that he was taken to the hospital. The Daily Mirror, and lists in the New York Daily News and New York Post replaced the injury to the leg with a more dramatic head injury. Only the hospital record specified the location of the assault, although stories in the New York Times and New York Age associated the assault with events at the rear of Kress’ store.
No one was arrested for assaulting Kelly, as was the case in seven of the nine assaults on police.
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2020-03-11T21:19:54+00:00
Edward Genest assaulted
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2020-11-13T19:19:35+00:00
Edward Genest, a thirty-two-year-old white sailor from the S.S. Virginia, was stabbed in the left arm on 7th Avenue at 123rd Street. Lists of the injured in two newspapers, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the New York Herald Tribune, added the detail that he had been stabbed by Blacks; five newspapers noted only that he had been stabbed (New York American (March 20 & 21), New York Daily News, New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and Home News).
Genest’s assault took place near a cluster of assaults on whites and other events around 7th Avenue and 125th Street. Genest was likely a visitor to Harlem seeking entertainment around 125th Street, caught up in the disorder. He could have arrived by subway, unaware of what was happening until he arrived, at an unknown time.
The use of a knife in this assault was unusual; only one other of the 54 assaults in the disorder involved a stabbing, the attack on Morris Werner distinguishing this violence from what occurred at other times. In the rest of 1935, knives were a favored weapon of those committing acts of violence, used in two thirds of felony assault cases.
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2020-09-29T20:47:10+00:00
James Smitten arrested
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2020-10-31T02:54:11+00:00
Around 8.30PM, police arrested James Smitten, a twenty-five-year-old Black man, for allegedly beating William Kitlitz, a white mail clerk, in front of Kress' store as police struggled to control crowds on 125th Street that had begun to smash store windows.
At 8.45PM a doctor from Harlem Hospital attended Smitten in the 28th Precinct station house to treat lacerations of scalp “which he received in some unknown manner,” according to the hospital records. Those injuries could have come in a struggle with Kitlitz, or at the hands of police, as was the case with a number of those arrested during the course of the disorder. Smitten remained at the precinct after treatment. Other than that hospital record, there is no other evidence of Smitten's injury; he does not appear in any newspaper's list of the injured.
Smitten’s arrest occurred early enough on March 19 that he was arraigned that evening, in the Night Court, one of only three of those arrested who appeared in court prior to March 20 (the two others were Claude Jones and Leo Smith). The New York Herald Tribune reported Magistrate Capshaw remanded him for investigation until Saturday, but there is no record of the outcome of his legal proceedings.
Only two sources connect Smitten and Kitlitz. The hospital record identifies Smitten as having been arrested for assaulting Kitlitz. Only the story in the New York Herald Tribune describes the assault, but mistakenly identifies Smitten as Smith. In addition, Smitten appears in lists of those arrested for assault in the Afro-American, Atlanta World, Norfolk Journal and Gazette, New York Evening Journal, and New York Daily News (Another man named James Smith was arrested during the disorder, for robbery. Smith lived at a different address than Smitten, and is younger, but is confused with Smitten and given Smitten’s address in reports in the New York American and New York Daily News)
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1
2020-04-09T18:55:16+00:00
John Hademan assaulted
8
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2020-09-29T23:04:04+00:00
John Hademan, a twenty-six-year-old Black man suffered a fractured skull at 126th Street and 7th Avenue. The circumstances in which he was assaulted are uncertain. The New York Herald Tribune and New York Times, the two reports that gave a location for the assault on Hademan, suggest other violence occurred at the same time: the New York Times described Hademan as being assaulted “in a melee,” while the New York Herald Tribune described the context as “rioting.” Neither gave a time for the assault on Hademan, but this intersection saw clashes between crowds and police around 10PM that seem likely to have been when he was assaulted. In that case, it seems likely that police assaulted Hademan, but he could have been assaulted by an individual, a group or hit by an object.
After being assaulted, an ambulance attended Hademan, and took him to Harlem Hospital, according to the report in the New York Times and the lists of the injured in the New York Evening Journal, New York Herald Tribune, and New York American However, he does not appear in the hospital records. Those lists, and that in the New York Post, noted that no address was given for Hademan. The New York Daily News identified him as a resident of Castle Point in the Bronx (but did not identify his race, was alone in recording his injury not as a fractured skull but as lacerations of his face and head, and spelling his name differently). As with all the Black men assaulted during the disorder, no one was arrested or charged for assaulting Hademan.
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2020-03-11T21:36:29+00:00
Julius Narditch assaulted
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2020-09-25T19:30:40+00:00
At 11.30pm, as he walked on 8th Avenue at 147th Street, Julius Narditch was “jumped” by three black men. The struggle with the men left him with head injuries and lacerations to his face and hands. A doctor from Knickerbocker Hospital attended Narditch, who was then taken to Harlem Hospital (although he does not appear in the hospital records obtained by the MCCH).
The alleged assault on Narditch is one of only two events north of 145th Street, the other an assault on Max Newman across the street at 2774 8th Avenue an hour earlier. Given that there are only four other events north of 135th Street (including a shooting), there is some question about whether the assaults on Narditch and Newman are actually part of the disorder, in the sense that their assailants were part of crowds moving up from 125th Street or brought out on to the street by the disorder.
Narditch appears in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York Daily News, New York American and New York Herald Tribune. Only the Herald Tribune mentions that he was assaulted by a group of men. The New York American attributes the cuts on his face to stabbing, but there is no mention of weapons in the police report. Only two of the fifty-three assaults in the disorder involved knives, a striking contrast with the extensive use of knives in violence at other times in 1935. The New York American report seems likely to reflect assumptions from those larger patterns.
Narditch also appeared in a record gathered by the MCCH, information extracted from the Aided Cases book of the 32nd Precinct, based on West 135th Street. Procedures required police to record all incidents reported to them in that book. The entry makes no mention of stabbing. Only three other cases appear in the 32nd Precinct book for the period of the disorder, the shooting of De Soto Windgate on West 144th Street between 7th and Lenox Avenues, the assault on Thomas Suarez on 134th Street and the injury of Herbert Holderman on 132nd Street.
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2020-03-11T21:46:38+00:00
Patrolman Charles Robins assaulted
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2020-09-30T20:21:14+00:00
Around 10PM, Patrolman Charles Robbins was assaulted “by some unknown person.” He was one of nine officers assaulted during the disorder; like all but three, he was attacked during the efforts of police to control the crowds on 125th Street prior to 10PM. At 9 PM, after additional reinforcements arrived, police tried to further extend their cordon around 125th Street and disperse crowds on 7th Avenue and 8th Avenue. At least one other officer was injured in these efforts. Robins was treated at 124th Street and 7th Avenue at 10.15PM, likely once the crowd had begun to break up and spread along the avenues.
Robbins was of only two officers assaulted by an individual, in his case either struck over the head with an iron bar or hit over the head with a brick. He appears only in lists of the injured, four of which provide details of the circumstances. The New York Herald Tribune and Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which listed the injured policemen separately, included the detail that he had been hit by a brick in their listing. The Home News, New York American on March 20, and the hospital record referenced the iron bar. An iron bar was not a typical weapon during the disorder; bricks were frequently used as weapons. Although injured by a blow by an individual, the hospital record locates the attack “at scene of riot,” suggesting the assault occurred in an encounter between a group of police and a crowd rather than two isolated individuals.
The New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York American (on March 21),and New York Daily News all listed Robbins among the injured without details of the circumstances. His injury was listed as a “possible fractured skull,” but the hospital record of Robbins treatment at the scene by a doctor from Harlem Hospital recorded only a lacerated scalp.
Robbins was not based in one of Harlem’s two police precincts, but had come to the neighborhood from the 43rd precinct as part of the 6th Emergency Squad, a riot squad.
No one was arrested for assaulting Robins, as was the case in seven of the nine assaults on police. -
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2020-03-11T21:42:31+00:00
Max Newman assaulted
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2020-09-29T21:24:12+00:00
At 10.30pm, as Max Newman, a thirty-six-year-old white man, closed his grocer’s store, a group of black men attached him. They beat him around the head, leaving him with cuts and bruises on his forehead. An ambulance was called, and a doctor treated Newman’s injuries at the scene.
Newman is one of three white storeowners attacked by groups of blacks. Joseph Sarnelli was also closing his store, and his assailants tried to steal razors. Herman Young was hit by a rock thrown from a crowd during a period of looting. As reported, Newman’s assailants targeted him not his store.
Just where Newman was attacked is not clear. The New York Herald Tribune locates his store at 2774 8th Avenue, “near 138th St", but that address is near 148th not 138th Street. As that is the most detailed account, the assault has been mapped at that location. However, the Am has the store at 2274 8th Avenue, which is near 122nd not 138th Street. The business survey identifies both addresses as white-owned grocer’s stores. The northern most address is an outlier, with only other event in the disorder nearby, and as crowds only having left 125th Street 30 minutes or so earlier, the disorder seems unlikely to have spread here so quickly. The other event nearby does not occur until 11.30pm. The other address, 2274 8th Avenue, is on the edge of a cluster of events, and at the time Newman was assaulted crowds moving away from 125th and 8th Ave could have been in the area.
Newman appears only in lists of the injured. Two lists included some details of the circumstances. The New York Herald Tribune provided the most information, that he was beaten by a group of 8 black men, the timing and the ambulance. The New York American described a smaller group of five men, and did not mention the timing or ambulance. The reports in the Home News, New York Evening Journal and New York Post only listed Newman’s injuries, but the Home News and New York Evening Journal did add his home address, 3200 Rochambeau Avenue in the Bronx.
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2020-03-11T21:50:13+00:00
Patrolman Harry Whittington assaulted
7
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2020-10-15T15:06:16+00:00
Just after midnight, Patrolman Harry Whittington, a thirty-five-year-old white member of Emergency Squad 9 (a riot squad) was hit by a rock on 8th Avenue. The Daily Mirror provided the most details of the assault, reporting that the attack came as he rode on an emergency truck at 123rd Street. Only Whittington and one other officer are reported as being assaulted after crowds moved away from 125th Street around 10PM; the other seven assaults in the initial disorder around Kress’ store.
After 10 PM, when the crowd moved away from 125th Street, police used radio cars and emergency trucks to respond to violence and to try to control crowds. Cars and buses driven by whites were also targets of rocks thrown by black crowds throughout the disorder, but those attacks took place on 7th Avenue, the major route to the Bronx and northern neighborhoods, not the less travelled 8th Avenue. The one other police vehicle reported as being hit by rocks, a car driven by Detective Frank Lenahan, was also attacked on “a riotous section of Eighth Avenue,” at an unspecified time. The windows of the car were smashed but Lenahan was not injured. Whittington did not have windows to shield him from missiles. Most of the members of an emergency squad travelled on the outside of the vehicle.
As well as the detail that Whittington was assaulted while riding on an emergency truck, the Daily Mirror described the attack as a “sniping.”
Whittington appeared in lists of the injured published by the New York American (March 20 & 21), Home News, New York Herald Tribune, New York Daily News, New York Evening Journal and New York Post, as well as the story published in the Daily Mirror. Although the American and the New York Herald Tribune reported he was treated at Harlem Hospital, he does not appear in either the list of admissions or ambulance call-outs. The Home News and New York Evening Journal describe his injuries simply as lacerations; the other lists specify a head injury.
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2020-03-11T21:55:53+00:00
William Burkhard assaulted
6
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2020-09-26T01:10:20+00:00
At around 11.30pm, William Burkhard, a forty-three-year-old white man was assaulted by a group of black men on West 118th Street between Lenox and 7th Avenues. This block likely still had white residents in 1935, and perhaps Puerto Rican residents, rather than the African Americans and West Indians who lived on the blocks further north. An ambulance from Bellevue Hospital arrived at 11.45pm, and Dr. Solomon proceeded to treat cuts and bruises on his right cheek. Burkhard then left for his home, 533 East 12th Street, at the opposite end of Manhattan.
The assault on Burkhard was the first in a cluster of attacks on or near 7th Avenue north of 116th Street and later up around 125th Street by 1am, suggesting the presence of crowds in this area in the hours immediately after the disorder spread from 125th Street. He was one of only two individuals assaulted off the avenues, although it seems likely the attack originated on 7th Avenue.
Burkhard appears in the record of hospital attendances, and in lists of the injured in four papers. The New York Herald Tribune unusually provided the same details as the hospital records, that Burkhard had been “assaulted by some unknown colored persons.” The New York Daily News, New York Evening Journal and New York Post listed only his injuries to his cheek.
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2020-03-11T21:16:24+00:00
Detective Frank Lenahan assaulted
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2020-10-14T02:09:19+00:00
As Detective Frank Lenahan drove “through a riotous section of Eighth Avenue,” his car was bombarded by rocks, shattering most of its windows. Accounts of the disorder suggest that crowds occupied 8th Avenue only in the early hours of the disorder, pushed there by police seeking to clear 125th Street, but the report of the attack on Lenahan does not include a time. Lenahan was the one of two officers attacked in a vehicle rather than on the street. Several hours later Patrolman Harry Whittington would be hit by a rock while riding on the back of an emergency truck.
After 10 PM, when the crowd moved away from 125th Street, police used radio cars and emergency trucks to respond to violence and to try to control crowds. As a plainclothes officer, Lenahan may not have been driving a marked police vehicle. Cars and buses driven by whites were also targets of rocks thrown by black crowds throughout the disorder, but those attacks took place on 7th Avenue, the major route to the Bronx and northern neighborhoods, not the less traveled 8th Avenue. In at least two cases, flying glass from smashed windows injured occupants of those vehicles.
Only the New York Herald Tribune reported this event, in a single sentence at the very end of its story from March 20: “The automobile of Detective Lieutenant Frank Lenahan was badly battered by rocks and most of its glass shattered when Lenahan drive through a riotous section of Eighth Avenue.” There is no mention of an injury to Lenahan, so it is not surprising that he does not apply in hospital records or the lists of the injured published by other newspapers.
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2020-03-11T21:31:45+00:00
Harry Johnson assaulted
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2020-10-14T02:32:19+00:00
Harry Johnson, a white reporter for the New York American, was walking on 125th Street at 7th Avenue, when a group of three blacks allegedly attacked him. The Daily Mirror published the most dramatic account, describing a cry ringing out, “There’s a reporter. Get Him!” Where the New York American reported that the group then “severely” beat Johnson, the Daily Mirror had then “badly” kick him, implying he had been knocked to the ground. (The New York Herald Tribune and Brooklyn Daily Eagle listed Johnson as the victim of a different form of assault, hit by a bottle, while the New York Evening Journal in listing him among the injured described him only as having "bruises of face;" given the lack of details in those reports, Johnson is categorized as assaulted by a group).
Despite both reports emphasizing the violence of the assault on Johnson, his injuries are recorded as cuts to his lips. The Daily Mirror continued the drama of its description by reporting that “he refused to go off duty and stuck to his job.” Johnson’s own paper contradicted that account and reported he received treatment at Harlem Hospital, although he does not appear in their records. The New York Evening Journal more ambiguously reported that he was treated by an ambulance surgeon, after which Johnson could have been taken to the hospital or returned to work.
The area around 125th Street and 7th Avenue saw a cluster of assaults throughout the disorder, and a fatal shooting, including the other reported attacks on a member of the press, the New York Daily News photographer Everett Breuer and his assistant Joseph Martin. Reporters likely gathered in this area as police established their headquarters at the intersection and it was accessible by the subway at 125th St and Lenox Avenue, and near to Kress’ store, the starting point for the riot and gathering information on what was happening. No time is given for the assault on Johnson, or on Breuer and Martin. -
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2020-04-09T18:33:56+00:00
William Brook assaulted
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2020-09-23T21:19:35+00:00
William Brook a twenty-five-year-old resident of 157 West 130th Street, appeared only in lists of the injured published by five papers. The New York Herald Tribune, New York American and New York Post included that he was Black; the New York Evening Journal and New York Daily News did not. The reports all described Brook as having cuts to his head, with the Herald Tribune adding the detail that he had been “hit by rock.” None of the lists specified the location at which Brook was assaulted. The Herald Tribune and American listed him as having been treated at Harlem Hospital, but his name does not appear on the lists of those attended and treated.