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
Arrests of white men (8)
12022-07-08T19:47:23+00:00Anonymous118plain2023-10-06T02:15:10+00:00AnonymousWhile police arrested eight white men during the disorder, the sources suggest that perhaps only one was involved in the attacks on people and property after the protests at the Kress store, hardly evidence that the crowds on Harlem's streets included whites as well as Black residents.
Half of the white men police arrested during the disorder were taken into custody during the initial protests in front of the Kress store, charged with riot. Daniel Miller, the first arrested when he tried to speak to the crowd, and Murray Samuels and Sam Jamison, arrested soon after for picketing in front of the store, were avowed members of organizations affiliated with the Communists. Harry Gordon, arrested in the aftermath of Miller's arrest, for allegedly assaulting a patrolman trying to arrest him for also trying to speak to the crowd, denied he was a Communist or otherwise connected with the whites who protested at the store. Nonetheless, the anti-Communist Hearst newspapers gave particular attention to all four men, blaming them for inciting the disorder and calling on Mayor La Guardia to act against the Communist Party in response. Regardless of their responsibility for the disorder, the men were arrested during protests, before members of the crowd shifted into violent attacks on white men and women and white-owned businesses.
Police arrested the other four white men later in the night, during that wider disorder. However, only one of those men may have actually participated in those events. Leo Smith allegedly threw a rock through a store window on 7th Avenue, likely early in the disorder, as he was arraigned on the evening of March 19 in the Night Court. Smith did not appear to have been a member of one of the Communist organizations whose members came to 125th to protest at the beginning of the disorder. While he was represented by a lawyer at his arraignment, as the Communists were, his lawyer tried to blame Black residents for the disorder, contrary to the Party's position that storeowners and police were to blame. Magistrate Renaud convicted Smith and sentenced him to the Workhouse for a month. Both the white men arrested for looting ultimately had the charges against them dismissed. At least one, Jean Jacquelin, had been arrested in possession of clothing rather than in the act of taking those items from a store. The final man the courts classified as white, Jose Perez, was likely Hispanic rather than European in background, probably visiting the Puerto Rican neighborhood around West 116th Street. An officer from the Alien Squad charged him with possession of a gun. Both the arresting officer and the charge suggest Perez might not have been arrested as part of police efforts to control the disorder. Instead he may have been one of the handful of men arrested for unrelated offenses arraigned in the Harlem court on March 20, mistaken for one of those arrested during the disorder by those compiling the list published by several Black newspapers and the list published by the New York Evening Journal.