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Assaults by individuals (7)
Two assaults are clearly ascribed to an individual. One was an alleged assault on a police officer during an arrest in the very early stages of the disorder. Harry Gordon, a twenty-year-old white student likely affiliated with the Communist Party, had climbed a lamppost to speak to the crowd that police had pushed east, away from the Kress store; Patrolman Young pulled him down. The patrolman alleged that Gordon then grabbed his nightstick and hit him with it; Gordon denied doing anything.
The second assault mostly clearly ascribed to an individual was reported only in hospital admission records, a record that does not need to extrapolate an individual from a group. It was also one of the small number of reported assaults on Black individuals during the disorder, in this case explicitly by a white man. Staff at Harlem Hospital recorded that James White was treated for “laceration of the scalp, received during an altercation with an unknown white man at 129th Street and Lenox Ave.” This location was at the heart of the area where the most extensive looting took
The hospital record for Patrolman Charles Robbins reported his injury as the result of having been attacked “by some unknown person,” but located that attack “at scene of riot,” suggesting the assault occurred in an encounter between a group of police and a crowd rather than two isolated individuals. Treated at 124th St and 7th Avenue, he had likely been involved in efforts to keep crowds from 125th Street. Photographs of police trying to hold back crowds show officers moving into the midst of groups of people, potentially exposing themselves to attacks such as Robbins suffered – and allowing their assailants to disappear into the crowd before they could be apprehended.
William Kitlitz, a white clerk, was also allegedly assaulted at the heart of the disorder, “beaten on the head” in front of Kress’ store on 125th Street around 8:30 PM. The assault report comes from a legal proceeding, one of the few that link a victim and an alleged assailant, in this case James Smitten, a twenty-two-year-old black man. Given that the police were concentrated on 125th Street at that time, it is not surprising that this assault was one of the very few that led to an arrest. Few sources exist on this case as Smitten was arraigned in the Night Court that evening not the next day in the magistrates courts with most of those arrested during the disorder. Smitten, not Kitlitz, also appeared in hospital records: doctors were called to treat him at the 28th Precinct after his arrest “for lacerations to the scalp he received in some unknown manner.”
One additional assault was reported in terms of an individual act that caused injury without more explicit details of the circumstances. Arthur Block, a Black man, was reported having been bitten on the hand, again with no details of the circumstances. Biting rarely appeared as a form of assault. There are two other men listed as having been bitten, but those assaults are not part of the disorder. Lino Rivera allegedly bit both Charles Hurley and Steve Urban, staff in Kress’ store, when they held him after he was caught. Hurley and Urban were treated at the store for their injuries several hours before crowds gathered.
As Part of Related Categories:
- Assaults on white men & women (3/29)
- Assaults on police (2/9)
- Assaults on Black men (2/13)
- Assault in the courts (2/9)
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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).
- "Medical Attendances, 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).
- Assaulted