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

Alice Gordon assaulted

Alice Gordon, a thirty-four-year-old white woman, was "assaulted by several unknown colored men at 117th St. and 7th Ave," according to hospital admission records. Dr. Adams from the Knickerbocker Hospital on Convent Ave and West 131st Street attended Gordon at 11.45 PM, so she was likely assaulted around 11.15 PM. William Burkhard alleged he had been assaulted nearby, on West 118th Street between 7th Avenue and Lenox Ave, a few minutes earlier, and broken windows and looting to the east, on West 116th Street and on Lenox Avenue, indicate crowds moving through the area. Rocks were also thrown at the car in which Patricia O'Rourke traveled on a nearby stretch of 7th Avenue.

The hospital admission records describe Gordon's injury as "laceration of face." The injury was not serious enough for Gordon to be admitted to hospital, and after treatment she left for home, 72 Sound Rd., Rye, 20 miles north of where she had been assaulted. There is no mention of why Gordon was in Harlem.

The hospital admission records were the only source that mentioned Gordon. While those records did not include information about an individual's race, the description of her attackers as "colored men" indicate that Gordon was a white woman.

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"Hospital Admissions, 19-20 March 1935," Subject Files, Box 167, Folder 5 (Roll 76), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).