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

4:00 PM to 4:30 PM

Returning to 125th Street, Smith, the store manager, found Patrolman Timothy Shannon. The officer arrived in the store just after 4:00 PM. Going from group to group, he told them there was no dead boy in the store. The Black women “would not listen” to him. By 4:20 PM, there were people gathered outside the front and rear entrances of the store, as well as inside. Although the crowds were not disorderly, Shannon decided he needed more help than the two mounted officers outside on 125th Street and called for radio cars.



The cars arrived within five minutes; they would have come either from the precinct police station only two blocks south on West 123rd Street, or from assignments patrolling areas of 15-20 blocks. Each car carried two officers; two or three cars were likely sent in response to Shannon’s call. It took only a few minutes for Smith to decide their arrival was not causing the groups of people inside his store to disperse and leave. Around 4:30 PM he called the West 123rd St. station to tell police they needed to “do something” as “the thing was beginning to get out of control.” It was not that the people in the store were disorderly; Smith, like Patrolman Shannon, perceived their continued presence as threatening violence. Like the manager of the neighboring Woolworths store, he clearly felt "under considerable tension" when a "commotion takes place with a [Black] customer."
 

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