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

Assaults by groups (17)

During the disorder, seventeen individuals were allegedly attacked by groups of people. All those reported attacked were white, fifteen men and two women, and all the groups that allegedly attacked them were made up of Black men and women. In these attacks, rather than throwing rocks and stones from a distance, assailants came close enough to hit their targets with their fists and other weapons. That distinction was not always clear cut: in the case of the assault on James Wrigley, newspaper reports differed on whether he had been beaten or had objects thrown at him. Such attacks on individuals by groups were characteristic of the mass racial violence of the early twentieth century, evidence of continuity rather than change.

Sources disagreed about the size of groups who committed assaults. Small groups committed five of the sixteen assaults, two specified as involving three people, three others as involving “several” people. Attacks by groups of this size regularly occurred in Harlem outside the disorder. Larger groups committed eight assaults, two specified as involving five or eight people and ten people, and six involving groups described in general terms (“group,” “number," “some,” and “Negroes”). These attacks highlight the fragmented nature of the disorder, in which groups emerged from the larger crowds on the streets. “Mobs,” and a “gang of 40 or 50,” committed the remaining four assaults, all reported only in the NYEJ or NYP, white papers which presented violence against whites in sensational terms (and did not show any concern with reporting more specific numbers).

A number of the attacks by groups occurred near 125th Street, where crowds concentrated and other assaults and attacks on stores took place. Despite the presence of those crowds, several of the assaults involved only small groups: just three men attacked Joseph Sarnelli in his store, “several” assaulted Morris Werner, and a “number” assaulted Maurice Spellman. Likewise, the areas where groups of men allegedly attacked Krim Shamhal, William Burkhard, Alice Gordon, and William Ken also saw other forms of disorder. On the other hand, the two assaults in the north of Harlem, on Max Newman and Julius Narditch, occurred in an area that saw no other reported disorder or reports of crowds on the streets. Attacks on Timothy Murphy and B.Z. Kondoul fall in between these spaces, on the fringes of the disorder.
The most reported attack by a group occurred early in the disorder. A group of around ten Black men attacked Timothy Murphy on West 128th Street between 8th Avenue and St. Nicholas Avenue. They beat him, knocked him down, and kicked him, until Patrolman George Conn arrived on the scene and dispersed the crowd (in the process shooting Paul Boyett, a twenty-eight-year old Black man, who was arrested for assaulting Murphy, but testified he was simply a bystander and was acquitted at trial). One other attack by a group was widely reported, in which group of four men shot at police on post at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No one was injured by the alleged shooting, so it is not included in this category as no victim of the attack was identified. While police arrested four men, they did not find any guns on them and all were acquitted in the Magistrates Court, raising questions about the validity of the reports.

Police made an arrest in just one other alleged assault by a group. After a “mob” attacked Thomas Wijstem in front of W. T. Grant’s department store on 125th Street, police arrested twenty-two-year-old Douglas Cornelius for assaulting him. The HT reported Cornelius allegedly struck Wijstem with a rock; however inflicted, Wijstem’s injuries left him unconscious. That this attack occurred near the origins of the disorder, where police concentrated their forces, likely contributed to an arrest being made. But as in the case of Paul Boyett and the four men arrested on West 138th Street, it appears that police could not prove that Cornelius was actually involved in the assault. A grand jury dismissed the charges against him.

Evidence exists of the details of only two other assaults, each reported in similar sensational language in only a single story in the New York Journal: a “gang of 40 or 50 Negroes pursued B. Z. Kondoul up Lenox Ave; and a group surrounded Betty Willcox as she sat in a parked car at 125th St. and 7th Avenue. Both stories refer to mobs, shouting and screaming threats to kill whites. In both cases it takes police wielding clubs and shooting guns to save the white victims, an explicit justification of police violence against the crowds, notwithstanding that the stories make clear that no one in the crowds had a weapon. In neither case do police make any effort to arrest members of the mob. Betty Willcox’s first person account of being attacked is even more sensational and steeped in racist tropes than the story about Kondoul. The mob is “howling” and “roar for blood,” and all have “murderous rage” in their faces. When police drive the crowd back, they stay nearby, with an “undertone of ominous muttering and shuffling.”

Two other victims were also rescued from attacks by groups. The New York Post published the only report of a “group” of men attacking Joseph Sarnelli as he closed his barber’s shop in the Hotel Theresa. Refusing to give up his razors, Sarnelli fought the men, and “was being badly pummeled” until Patrolman Thomas Jordan came to his aid. As happened when Murphy, Kondoul, and Willcox were rescued, no one was arrested, an indication of the limited control police had over the crowds. In a third case reported only in the New York Journal, William Ken was rescued not by white police officers but by two of his Black coworkers. According to the story, Ken was “seized” as he entered the Blue Heaven Restaurant at 378 Lenox Ave, punched a couple of times, but then dragged to safety by two Black employees who convinced the crowd to “spare him.”

The fact that these details are reported only in the NYJ and NYP, newspapers whose coverage of the riot stands out for its emphasis on violence against whites and sensational language, raises some questions about their reliability. In other cases, the evidence is again fragmented: victims of assault appear in lists of the injured, with details of how they were injured only in one or two papers. The HT and AM reported that a group of either eight or five men attacked Max Newman, like Joseph Sarnelli, as he closed his store. Only the HT explained the injuries of Julius Narditch as the result of being attacked by three men just across the street from Newman’s store.

There are no details of the circumstances of the remaining attacks other than that they involved groups. Three of those attacked are described as having been stabbed, the only reports of knives being used in the disorder. All the reports of injuries to Edward Genest, a white sailor, mention him being stabbed, as does the only source mentioning Morris Werner, his hospital record. Only one of the multiple sources that mention Julius Narditch report him as being stabbed, a story in the New York American, and the police report of his case just describes him as being “jumped” and suffering head wounds and lacerations of the kind that resulted from beatings. A knife allegedly taken from one of those arrested during the disorder is also displayed in this photograph from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Assaults (54)

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