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

Arrested for looting & Unknown outcome (10)

For ten individuals recorded as having been arrested and charged with petit larceny or burglary no evidence was found indicating that those arrests resulted in prosecutions. Leo Cash and Loyola Williams appeared in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide and the list in the New York Evening Journal. Archie Niles and Albert Allen appeared only in the list in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide. None of the four appeared in any police or court records.

The other six men, who also appeared only in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, were in the 32nd Precinct "Police Reports" gathered by the MCCH. Those index cards appeared to be transcribed from the Police Blotter. The outcome recorded on the cards was "Final Disposition ?."

Historians Dominic J. Capeci and Martha Wilkerson explained the larger proportion of those arrested in the later racial disorder in Detroit in 1943 who were not prosecuted (711 of 1893) as "revealing police strategy to disperse crowds by apprehending lawbreakers and spectators alike." That explanation seems likely to apply to these arrests in Harlem given that the charge reported in the press was petit larceny, indicating an allegation of participating in looting, which attracted crowds on the street. The reduced charge of disorderly conduct recorded in the Police Reports of six of those arrested suggests a lack of evidence of looting, likely not having any stolen merchandise on their possession. In those circumstances, which left no evidence that the the arrested men and women were participants in the disorder rather than spectators, police appear to have opted to release them - likely having held them overnight and thereby kept them off the streets.

Three additional men may also have been arrested and released without prosecution. They also appear in published lists of those arrested, charged with riot, and in the transcription of the 28th Precinct Police blotter, recorded as discharged. They do not, however, appear in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, as they would had the Magistrate released them.


 

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