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

3:30 PM to 4:00 PM

Inside the Kress store, the Black women who had been watching Rivera since staff grabbed him became increasingly concerned as the boy failed to return from the basement. Groups of two or three gathered throughout the store as the women shared the information that a boy had been beaten. Seeing the clusters of shoppers, Smith, the store manager, came down from his office to investigate. When he heard what was being said, he approached two groups “trying to explain to them that nothing had happened.” The women were unconvinced; years of mistreatment and discrimination at the hands of white staff would have made them see the store manager as an untrustworthy source of information.

Smith then went out on to 125th Street seeking help in calming those in the store. He did not have the option of turning to Black staff as did the manager of McCrory’s department store down the block, who several times a day called on the Black store detective to “smooth over little differences” between customers and staff. Outside the store Smith found Officer Miller, the Black patrolman who had been at the entrance since calling an ambulance for Hurley and Urban. Asked by the store manager to try to convince the people that Rivera had been released, Miller spoke to several groups inside the store. The Black women were no more persuaded by what he said than they were by Smith. They had seen or heard that a patrolman had joined with a staff member to take Rivera to the basement, implicating police in what had happened to Rivera. Some knew that Miller had not been in the store at the time Rivera had been taken away so had not himself seen what had been done to the boy. They wanted to see Rivera for themselves.

The Black patrolman left the store just before 4:00 PM, when the police shift changed. Back on 125th Street, the crowd outside was growing and becoming more agitated. Rumors about a boy beaten in the store spread beyond the area around the Kress store, carried by those shopping in the district’s businesses and the crowds of unemployed residents who occupied their time standing on street corners.
 

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