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11:00 PM to 11:30 PM
The multiple windows broken by repeated attacks on the stores around the intersection of 7th Avenue and 125th Street by 11:00 PM provided an opportunity for looting. Officers in the area, particularly the plainclothes detectives among the crowds, were watching for anyone tempted by that chance. At 11:00 PM, Detective Peter Naton, only recently returned after arresting John King, allegedly saw John Vivien, a twenty-seven-year-old Black laborer, reach through the smashed windows of Regal Shoes and take a pair of shoes. With a previous arrest for robbery, Vivien may have been more willing to take merchandise than many of the other residents on the streets. He was some distance from his home, so had ventured into the disorder rather than remained a spectator on its margins. Individuals may also have begun to take merchandise from at least one other damaged business near the intersection that would also be reported as having been looted, Maurice Gilden’s optician’s shop.
Looting, however, was not yet the goal of most of those in the blocks of 7th Avenue below 125th Street. Fifteen minutes after Vivien’s arrest, a crowd of twenty-five to thirty people, the typical size of the groups observed during the disorder, gathered two blocks to the south at the intersection with 123rd Street. Already back on the street, Detective Naton was close enough to allegedly hear James Pringle, a twenty-eight-year-old Black laborer, call out to the group, “Let's go cross the way and scale rocks at the cops, they are coming down our side of the street.” As the group moved away, Naton arrested Pringle. He might have singled out him out as a leader or Pringle might have been the only member of the group the detective could apprehend. Either way, Naton claimed to have found a rock concealed in the right hip pocket of Pringle’s trousers that he treated as evidence of his involvement in the violence on the streets.
As with the appeals to attack police reported by the officers who had arrested William Ford and Claude Jones on 125th Street around thirty minutes earlier, what Naton claimed was the crowd’s target was by his own account not what they actually went on to attack. They “smashed windows” and attacked several people. Among the businesses damaged at that time was likely Ben Salcfas’ grocery store on the northeast corner of 7th Avenue and 123rd Street. Patrolman Leahy arrested one of those who allegedly threw a rock that broke one of the store’s windows, David Bragg, a thirty-three-year-old Black man. A resident of West 135th Street, he may have come to 125th Street earlier in the evening and moved south on 7th Avenue as the disorder intensified. Other members of the group eluded police. Among the targets of their rocks would have been windows in nearby businesses looted later in the evening: the Lafayette Market at 2044 7th Avenue; Nicholas Peet's tailors store at 2063 7th Avenue; Sarah Refkin's delicatessen at 2067 7th Avenue; and the shoe repair store directly across 7th Avenue from the grocery store.
As they attacked white businesses, groups on the street continued to attack white men and women they encountered on the streets. After Michael Krim-Shamhal, a fifty-four-year-old white man, arrived on 7th Avenue from West 122nd Street around 11:00 PM he reported being assaulted by a group of people. Several blocks further south, around 11:15 PM, a thirty-four-year-old white woman named Alice Gordon alleged she had been attacked by several Black men. Shamhal and Gordon reflected the variety of white men and women still in Harlem. He lived close to where the alleged assault took place, on West 119th between 7th Avenue and Lenox Avenue. She lived well outside Harlem, in Rye, so either worked or was visiting the neighborhood, and may have going to the subway or elevated railroad stations on 116th Street to return home. It was staff of the ambulances called to help Gordon and Krim Shamhal who recorded their accounts and treated the lacerations to the head each had suffered. Although police had been as far south as 121st Street about thirty minutes earlier shooting at groups of people, they were not in the vicinity of the assaults. The alleged assault on Alice Gordon was the first reported violence below 120th Street.
Crowds remained on 7th Avenue north of 125th Street, but there were few reported incidents at this time. Police patrols may have reduced the intensity of the violence, but they did not protect businesses whose windows had been repeatedly damaged earlier in the night from being looted. Sam Lefkowitz’s store windows had been broken since 9:45 PM, when a group of people went up the block between 127th and 128th Streets; some of the substantial amount of merchandise he would report losing was likely being taken at this time. Businesses a block to the south owned by Abe Mohr and Joseph Cohen that lost merchandise could also have been targeted. So too could Max Greenwald’s tailor’s store. There were certainly people at the intersection between those two blocks as some threw rocks at a Fifth Avenue Coach Company bus passing at 11:00 PM. The bus route ran the length of 7th Avenue from Central Park to 155th Street. Despite traveling through the heart of Harlem, the buses had only white drivers and conductors. The company refused to employ Black staff, a sore point with the neighborhood’s residents that might have led some of those on the street to extend their attacks on white businesses to the bus. As the bus was almost certainly carrying Black passengers, it was unlikely that it was targeted as a substitute for the white men and women whom groups had encountered and attacked earlier. The same could not be said of the cars that would soon have rocks thrown at them south of 125th Street.
Violence may have continued to spread further north on 7th Avenue. There would be looting near 131st Street around an hour later, so the attacks on windows in at least two white-owned businesses north of West 135th Street could have happened around this time. Most of the businesses in the area had Black owners. Nonetheless, enough windows were broken for the owners of one of Harlem’s best-known Black-owned businesses, the Monterey Luncheonette, to write “This is a Store Owned by Colored” on their windows to spare them from attack. Residents from the area rather than groups who had come from 125th Street could have been responsible. It was around 11:00 PM that groups began to come down Lenox Avenue from area around 135th Street. Police were nearby when at least some of the windows were broken as they arrested two men allegedly responsible. Robert Porter was charged with throwing an ashcan through the window of a shoe repair store at 2360 7th Avenue, the northernmost business reporting damaged during the disorder. Julius Hightower allegedly threw a brick that broke windows in Moskowitz's tailor shop at 2310 7th Avenue. However, both men appeared to simply have been nearby when those attacks took place as the charges were later reduced to disorderly conduct. Police may have mistakenly grabbed them from among a crowd around the businesses, or they could have begun to arrest whomever they could apprehend around outbreaks of violence to get people off the street. Footwear and clothing were particular needs of residents suffering the effects of the depression, so those businesses may have been targeted as part of a shift toward looting later in the disorder when more police were deployed.
On 8th Avenue too, violence seemingly was spreading further north. A meat market on the block between 130th and 131st Streets had a bottle thrown through its window, the furthest north damage was reported on this street. Officer Libman of the 32nd Precinct arrested Henry Stewart, a thirty-three-year-old Black man, for throwing the bottle. The same officer had arrested Rose Murrell and perhaps Warren Johnson and Louise Brown at 127th Street, but he was unlikely to have been as far north as the meat market earlier in the evening. He may have remained in the area to attempt to control the crowds and protect the damaged businesses. Like Murrell, Stewart lived near 8th Avenue, so likely had come to the street in response to the rumors and noise of the disorder. However, he, like Hightower and Porter, was only nearby when those attacks took place, not responsible for them, as the charge was later dismissed. If Libman arrested Warren Johnson and Louise Brown around this time, charging them with breaking windows when they proved to simply have been in the crowds in the vicinity of an attack, the similar outcome of the concurrent arrests on 7th Avenue makes it more likely that police had begun ti arrest crowd members to get them off the streets. Stewart, Johnson, and Brown all lived on blocks adjacent to 8th Avenue so likely were among the residents who had come to the avenue in response to the news and noise of the disorder.
With most businesses now closed and many having suffered attacks for several hours, the lack of staff and the access available through broken windows provided the opportunity for those on 8th Avenue to take merchandise. While observers did not notice extensive looting for another hour, some of the businesses in these blocks may have begun to be targeted at this time. Just how extensive the thefts were is not clear as the only reported incidents involved arrests. However, the businesses involved in those arrests were spread over the three blocks north of 125th Street: the Danbury Hat store on the block above 125th Street; Frendel’s meat market on the block between 126th and 127th Streets; and the Thomas Cut Rate Drug store on the block between 127th and 128th Streets.
As violence continued on 8th and 7th Avenues, the disorder and the police response spread to Lenox Avenue for the first time. While many businesses on the avenue were closed by 11:00 PM, William Feinstein’s liquor store at 452 Lenox Avenue was open. David Schmoockler, the manager, watched as a crowd of around thirty people gathered near Lenox Avenue and 132nd Street. In the next hour, they proceeded to attack white-owned businesses, throwing objects, breaking windows, taking merchandise from some, and setting fire to others. Herbert Canter observed the same group on the block south of 132nd Street. He had arrived back at the pharmacy he owned on the northwest corner of West 131st Street at 11:00 PM to try to protect his business. Where white crowds had converged on Black neighborhoods in response to reports of racial violence in the race riots earlier in the twentieth century, in 1935 the only whites who came to Harlem when they learned of the disorder were business owners like Cantor. He described the group as breaking windows as they proceeded down the street and as chanting "Down with the whites! Let's get what we can." Those shouts signaled that this group differed from those who had called out around 125th Street. They had urged windows be broken, and perhaps attacks on police. It was “whites” that those arriving on Lenox Avenue targeted, with threats against the power and property they had in Harlem — not to kill them, as a sensationalized account the New York Evening Journal would later claim. Setting fire to stores, which would happen only in this area, fitted with those threats, going beyond breaking windows in protest at the behavior of white store staff. Taking merchandise was also the expressed aim of the group, a departure from the attacks on businesses that had occupied most of those on the streets up until now. Gathering around West 132nd Street, north of where any violence had been reported up to this time, the members of the group likely came from the surrounding residences, not from the crowds initially drawn to 125th Street. The streets east of Lenox Avenue were the most densely populated in Harlem, their residents among the hardest hit by the economic depression.
Several businesses on Lenox Avenue between 132nd and 131st Streets with broken windows were likely attacked around this time. A Black staff member in Estelle Cohen’s clothing store at 437 Lenox Avenue did not prevent objects from being throw at the windows. He telephoned Cohen at her home in Washington Heights to tell her of the attack. She then called the police precinct and police headquarters, later writing to Mayor La Guardia with clear frustration that "all the satisfaction I got was that all the men were out and that all windows were being smashed." She must also have sent someone, likely her sons, to board up the damaged and emptied windows in an effort to secure the merchandise inside the store. It would prove to be a wasted effort. No one was in the hardware store at 431 Lenox Avenue, Anna Rosenberg’s notion store at 429 Lenox Avenue, and the Gonzales jewelry store at 427 Lenox Avenue when their windows were broken. Nor were there yet police in the area.
Two blocks to the south, white businesses were not yet being attacked and their owners were closing with no sign they felt threatened. Louis Levy closed his dry goods store at 374 Lenox, between 128th and 129th Streets, and left for home. So too did Harry Lash fifteen minutes later after closing his 5c & 10c store at 400 Lenox Avenue on the corner of 130th Street.
Further south, however, attacks on businesses had started where at least some of those on the street would have come from breaking windows on the block of 125th Street between 7th and Lenox Avenues. By 11:20 PM, when Patrolman Nador Herrman arrived at William Gindin’s shoe store between on the block between 126th and 127th Streets, windows had already been broken and merchandise taken from the display. Gindin had closed his store around 9:45 PM, so those attacks would have come as crowds from 125th Street began to make their way up Lenox Avenue around 10:30 PM. Patrolman Herrman made the first arrest on Lenox Avenue after allegedly seeing Julian Rogers, a thirty-seven-year-old Black auto washer, kick in an undamaged display window and take three odd women's shoes worth $1 each and put them under his jacket. He caught up with Rogers about 100 feet from the store. Given the damage to Gindin’s store, some other businesses between it and 125th Street likely also suffered some damage at this time. Harry Piskin was still in his laundry just off Lenox Avenue at 100 West 126th Street when stones were thrown at its windows. They were the first of escalating attacks that would later cause Piskin to leave and fruitlessly seek help from police. George’s Lunch, a restaurant at 319 Lenox Avenue, on the southwest corner of West 126th Street, was also open when crowds appeared on the street. The three staff responded differently to the disorder. Two Black workers left the restaurant when the attacks began. The white worker called the police station for help and then locked himself in a washroom at the rear of the business. No police responded. Attacks on the Radio City Meat Market in the block between 125th and 126th Street and the Sav-on Drug Store two buildings south of Gindin’s shoe store likely also began about this time. The arriving disorder would also have drawn the attention of Leo and Winifred Richards, the Black owners of Winnette’s Dresses on the corner of West 127th Street. The store may have still been open for business or the couple could have rushed from their home just a block east at 1 West 126th Street when they learned of the disorder. As crowds appeared, they hung at least seven signs reading “Colored Store” on the inside and outside of their windows. While neighboring white-owned stores suffered significant damage and looting, Winnette’s Dresses remained untouched.
Some of those arriving on Lenox Avenue went south of 125th Street rather than north. Windows were broken in the branch of the Liggett’s Pharmacy on the southeast corner of 125th Street, in the Empire Grill and Victoria Pharmacy on the block between 125th and 124th Streets and in the Eleanor Laundry in the block between 124th and 123rd Streets. Mrs. Salefas described a sustained attack on her delicatessen at West 123rd Street and Lenox Avenue. A series of bricks hit the window, sending glass flying into the store and Salefas to take shelter in the rear storeroom. “It broke my heart to abandon my store,” she would tell a journalist the next day, “but what could I do all alone? Every time I peeked out from in back a shower of bricks greeted me.” Over time $100 worth of food and some dishes were taken from the damaged store. That was as far south as groups appear to have gone. There were no reported incidents in the disorder in the blocks below 123rd Street until 119th Streets, where there were few businesses. Violence in the blocks around West 116th Street would come later in the evening, from groups moving along 116th Street not coming from 125th Street.
The arrival of crowds at Lenox Avenue and 125th Street also saw some groups continue to attack white men they encountered on the street. An alleged assault by a group of Black men on an unnamed white man at the intersection occurred sometime after 11:00 PM, when police arrived in the area. Detective Doyle of the 5th Division intervened, arresting Rivers Wright, a twenty-one-year-old Black man. However, Wright proved not to have been involved in the assault as the charge against him when he later appeared in court was disorderly conduct. As other officers had on 8th and 7th Avenues, Doyle either mistook Wright for one of the assailants or could only apprehend him among those on the street around the assault. The men who actually committed the assault remained on the streets and may have been involved in other assaults that would occur on Lenox Avenue in the coming hours.