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4:00 PM to 4:30 PM
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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- Public Hearings - Riot (May 1935), 7, Subject Files, Box 410, Folder 7 (Roll 195), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
- R. J. McBride, "Visit to Woolworths, June 19, 1935," Harlem Survey: Part III, Chapter V, Box 131-124, Folder 17, E. Franklin Frazier Papers (Moorland Spingarn Research Center, Howard University).
- Public Hearings - Outbreak (March-April 1935), 55, Subject Files, Box 408, Folder 8 (Roll 194), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).