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

7:00 PM to 7:30 PM

Just after 7:00 PM, a woman on 8th Avenue cried out that a hearse had pulled up at the rear entrance of the Kress store on 124th Street to get the body of the dead boy. Thanks to police clearing the sidewalk in front of the store, there were groups of people on 8th Avenue to hear her call. Some responded by moving to the rear of the store. They may have been joined by residents of a Salvation Army hostel for homeless men located opposite the store. Several police officers had been stationed at the rear entrance earlier by Inspector Di Martini; additional officers followed the crowd from 8th Avenue. Stones were soon being thrown, smashing windows in the Kress store and hitting at least two police officers, Patrolman Michael Kelly, assigned to a radio car, and Detective Charles Foley. Whether the officers were targeted or caught between the crowd and store windows is unclear. Police did not arrest anyone for throwing the stones. Two mounted policemen were moving the crowd away from the rear of the store when Joe Taylor, the Black leader of the Young Liberators, arrived at 124th Street, on his way to 125th Street, having been “put out” of the West 123rd St police station together with others seeking information.

By 7:15 PM, there were no longer groups of people on 124th Street at the rear of the store; an emergency truck that arrived at 8th Avenue and 124th Street at that time as part of the reinforcements called by Inspector Di Martini found that “everything was quiet.” An ambulance from Harlem Hospital arrived at the same time to treat Patrolman Kelly. His injury was serious enough that he was taken to the hospital for an x-ray. Joe Taylor also left 124th Street around that time, moved on by police he said were shooting their guns in the air. He had heard a rumor that the boy who had been beaten lived at 410 Manhattan Avenue, so headed south to investigate.

Around the same time, 7:15 PM, Inspector Di Martini returned to 125th Street. He found that there too “everything was calm.” There were no people in front of the Kress store, small groups gathered elsewhere on the street, but no “mass demonstration.” Di Martini thought that, as “the people of this part of the city of N. Y. have been very friendly with me,” “they would take my word that no child had been injured.” However, although he “spoke to all of the groups on 125th Street until [he] was hoarse,” they were not convinced.

As Di Martini was futilely speaking with groups gathered around the Kress store, Louise Thompson walked from 7th Avenue to 8th Avenue. With police not permitting people to stand in front of the Kress store, she found “numerous people who were on the corner” and spent “a length of time” talking with them. There were white men and women among the groups Thompson encountered, but “not very many.” More Black residents joined Thompson on 125th Street as rumors spread further through the neighborhood. Charles Romney, a Black West Indian activist involved in a range of political organizations, who was returning home from the YMCA on 135th Street, had noticed crowds on West 117th Street running uptown around 7:00 PM. When he asked “what it was all about,” he was told “that a boy in Kress store was murdered.” Romney followed them “to go to 125th Street to see if I could get any information."

Additional members of the Young Liberators had also arrived on 125th Street. At 7:15 PM, a Black reporter for the Afro-American encountered “some white youngsters [who] were passing out handbills” at the corner of 7th Avenue, a leaflet based on the information brought to their office. The mimeographed page had handwritten text at the top that read, “Child Brutally Beaten. Woman attacked by Boss and Cops = Child near DEATH.” The remaining typewritten text read:

ONE HOUR AGO A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD NEGRO BOY WAS BRUTALLY BEATEN BY THE MANAGEMENT OF KRESS FIVE-AND-TEN-CENT STORE.
THE BOY IS NEAR DEATH
HE WAS MERCILESSLY BEATEN BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT HE HAD ‘STOLEN’ A FIVE CENT KNIFE.
A NEGRO WOMAN WHO SPRANG TO THE DEFENSE OF THE BOY HAD HER ARMS BROKEN BY THESE THUGS AND WAS THEN ARRESTED.
WORKERS, NEGROES AND WHITE, PROTEST AGAINST THIS LYNCH ATTACK ON INNOCENT NEGRO PEOPLE. DEMAND THE RELEASE OF THE BOY AND WOMAN.
DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE ARREST OF THE MANAGER RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS LYNCH ATTACK.
DON'T BUY AT KRESS'S. STOP POLICE BRUTALITY IN NEGRO HARLEM.
JOIN THE PICKET LINE


While small groups of people were also gathered on the corner of 7th Avenue and 125th Street, as they were at the other end of the block, the Afro-American reporter found “all was quiet.” However, as he walked along the block toward the Kress store, he found a different situation, “a large number of people between Seventh and Eighth Avenues” and Inspector Di Martini and numerous police. He joined a group asking Di Martini what had happened in the store. A boy caught shoplifting had been let go, but rumors were being spread that he had been beaten or killed, the inspector told them. He also showed them the store window that had been broken. But he would not let reporters into the store or answer their question, "Well, where is the boy?”

When Louise Thompson walked in the opposite direction to the reporter, from 8th Avenue to 7th Avenue, just before 7:30 PM, she saw windows broken in businesses on the same side of 125th Street as the Kress store. As yet, that damage had not spread the length of the block. Channing Tobias, who returned to 125th Street around the time Thompson left, found no windows broken yet east of Blumstein’s store, about halfway between the Kress store and that corner. The scene had “quieted down” from the threatening crowds Tobias had encountered an hour or so earlier. Likely that lack of activity was why Thompson decided now was the time to go to her home, a ten-minute walk from 125th Street, to “tell my people what had happened.”

At 7:30 PM an ambulance arrived in front of Blumstein’s department store on 125th Street, several buildings east of the Kress store. Police had called it to treat Detective Foley, who had an injured shoulder after being hit earlier by a stone thrown by someone in the crowd that attacked the rear of the Kress store. By that time at least some of the police officers who had dispersed that crowd had returned to 125th Street.

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