Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935Main MenuREAD ME: Help Navigating This BookIntroductionOn the StreetsIn the CourtsUnder InvestigationThe Mayor's Commission on Conditions in HarlemOver TimeEventsSourcesStephen Robertsona1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bfStanford University Press
"$6,000 Barber Shop Puts a New Wrinkle in Local Hair-cutting," New York Amsterdam News, September 7, 1935, 2.
12020-03-11T21:26:43+00:00Fred Campbell assaulted twice16plain2023-08-30T03:35:55+00:00As Fred Campbell drove north on 7th Avenue at about 12:30 AM on March 20 his car was twice hit by bricks. Campbell, a thirty-one-year-old Black man who owned two barber's shops in Harlem, was on his way to pick up the day's receipts from the shops at 2213 7th Avenue and 2259 7th Avenue. Stopped at the traffic light at 121st Street, he noticed "an unusual number of patrolmen and policemen out with riot guns." Driving toward 122nd street, a brick hit and shattered the rear window of his car. Campbell heard more crashes and shots being fired, and saw store windows shattering on both sides of 7th Avenue and police trying to disperse crowds. Further up 7th Avenue, near 123rd Street, another brick hit his car. Neither attack injured Campbell. Looking around he saw other cars, driven by whites, with windows shattered, and store windows shattered on 7th Avenue as far north as 127th Street.
Campbell described his experience in a statement given at the offices of the MCCH, after being referred there by Mr Delaney. He gave that statement early in the MCCH's work as it was referred to as the "Bi-Racial Commission," the name the group went by until adopting the name the MCCH at its meeting on March 29. The statement was a summary of what he said, not a transcript, filed in the papers of the MCCH. Information about Campbell appeared in the New York Amsterdam News, which published a story on a third barber's shop he opened at 2132 7th Avenue.