This tag was created by Anonymous. The last update was by Stephen Robertson.
9:30 PM to 10:00 PM
People had begun to move away from the 125th Street and 8th Avenue by around 9:30 PM and started to break store windows along 8th Avenue. James Hughes, a twenty-four-year-old Black shoe repairer who had arrived in Harlem from Atlanta just over a year earlier, described broken glass and rocks in the street on the block between 126th and 125th Streets at this time. People saying “Let’s break windows” were on the street as he walked south toward his home on 115th Street. The Liggett’s drug store on the northeast corner of 8th Avenue and 125th Street had windows broken as did the Danbury Hat store and a seafood restaurant next to the drug store on 8th Avenue, although there is no evidence of when that damage was done. Hughes asserted that the stores whose windows were being broken around him were those "where no colored were employed." He knew the area well enough to make such an assessment; for seven months he had worked in the Koch department store on 125th Street between 7th Avenue and Lenox Avenue to the east. South of 125th Street, a florist and vacant storefronts at 2324, 2320, and 2314 8th Avenue and the Arrow Sales store in the same block had windows broken, some likely around this time
Hughes followed those on 8th Avenue going to 125th Street. By the time he arrived, there was only a small group at the intersection and on 125th Street opposite the Kress store. The sidewalk in front of the store was once again cleared of people. Half a dozen police officers were outside the store, including Captain Conrad Rothengast, who had arrived an hour earlier, and two detectives from the local precinct, Henry Roge and Raymond Gill. While Hughes was among those at the intersection, a rock thrown from across the street hit Detective Roge in the head, causing deep cuts to his eye and face. Gill, his partner, claimed that as nothing else was being thrown at the store at the time, he was able to see a man appear from behind parked cars, look around, and throw the rock. Keeping his eyes on that man, Gill chased him through the crowd until he trapped him among the parked cars. The man Gill caught was James Hughes. Frisking him, the detective found five stones in his pockets. Hughes insisted that he had picked them up to defend himself after seeing the damage on 8th Avenue, and he had not thrown the rock that injured Roge. While Gill and officers who had been in front of the Kress store would later convince a jury that Hughes had thrown the rock, the trial judge decided that his target had been the windows of the Kress store, not the detective. That judgment was likely influenced by the assessment of a clergyman, several character witnesses and a physician from the court’s psychiatric clinic that attacking a police officer was out of character for Hughes.
Meanwhile, a uniformed patrolman assisted Roge into the alcove at the entrance of the Kress store, a scene captured by a photographer working for the ACME agency. At 10:00 PM, an ambulance from the Joint Disease Hospital arrived to treat the detective’s injuries. He needed two stitches and would spend ten days on sick leave after the disorder, but the ambulance physician recorded that Roge remained on duty.
While no windows were broken in the Kress store at this time, more shattered glass fell on the blocks of 7th Avenue north of 125th Street. Windows in a truss shop at 2136 7th Avenue, in the block to the south between 126th and 127th Streets, likely were broken at this time. Arthur Killen, a forty-three-year-old Black man, allegedly threw a brick through those windows before being arrested by Officer Platt. Police were only just beginning to be deployed on 7th Avenue, so if the arrest happened around this time, it would be one of the first made away from 125th Street. Killen lived on the block of 127th Street west of 7th Avenue, so would have been well placed to have joined the crowds around 125th Street, or may have been one of those drawn by the noise as groups moved up 7th Avenue breaking windows. Police moving up 7th Avenue were attempting to move people off the street without regard for whether they were spectators or participants in the violence. Such efforts at the intersection with 126th Street likely involved swinging clubs, as officers had been doing on 125th Street, with one result that John Hademan, a twenty-six-year-old Black man, had his skull fractured. The injury was severe enough that the ambulance called to treat him took Hademan back to Harlem Hospital.
Police do not yet appear to have got as far the next block. The grocery store on the corner of 127th Street, first damaged at 8:45 PM, had two more windows broken by 10:00 PM. The nearby auto equipment store, whose owner and staff had fled earlier, had four additional windows broken during the disorder, some likely around this time. Lazar’s cigar store at the other end of the block, next to the corner of 128th Street, had its first window broken around 9:30 PM. The white owners and staff of those businesses still appeared to have been present at this time. As these white-owned businesses suffered repeated attacks, the restaurant next to the cigar shop, identified as having Black owners by a sign written on the window, remained undamaged.
Attacks on store windows on the block between 127th and 128th Streets occurred on the other side of 7th Avenue as well around this time. Far fewer white-owned businesses were found on the eastern side of the street; around two-thirds of the stores had Black owners. Police did arrive on this side of the block. At 9:45 PM, Patrolman Edward Doran found a group in front of Sam Lefkowtiz’s store. He allegedly saw Leroy Brown, a twenty-two-year-old Black bootblack, throw a tailor’s dummy through the store’s window, and heard him say to those with him, "Go right along and get the other windows." The unclaimed laundry store in the building to the south of Lefkowitz’s business also had windows broken, likely by this same group. Broken windows in a white tailor’s store in the same building could also have been their work; although there is no evidence that it was damaged, the dummy thrown at Lefkowitz’s store was not something that could usually have been picked up on the street.
The arrest made by Doran was the first evidence of a police presence on this block of 7th Avenue, the result of officers beginning to be deployed beyond 125th Street as the crowds there dispersed. However, their arrival did not stop attacks on businesses. As he took Brown into custody, Doran watched as the group of which the man had been part continued up 7th Avenue and "heard the crash of glass and later observed other windows broken." There were at least two more white-owned businesses in that section of the block, but some Black-owned businesses like Williams' Drug Store at the northern end of the block may have been attacked. Its front windows were broken before someone painted “Colored Store, Nix Jack” in each of the two window panes that faced 128th Street. Those windows were not damaged.