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
12020-02-24T23:08:33+00:00Hit by Objects (19)18plain2020-05-05T18:15:38+00:00The most common assault involved throwing a stone, rock or bottle. Such attacks made up 35% of the assaults in the sources (19/54); however, that proportion is somewhat distorted by six instances of assaults on police officers. Throwing objects made up 29% (13/45) assaults not targeted at police. Most of those attacked in this way were white, but five were black (and one of unknown race); by contrast all of those shot were black and all of those assaulted by groups of people were white. Two of the attacks on blacks involved objects thrown at a car; there are no details of the circumstances of the other three assaults. Only one of those hit by an object was a woman, struck by glass when a rock shattered a window in a moving car.
Almost all (11/13) of the civilians hit by objects appear only in reports of hospital admissions (5/13) or only in newspaper reports (6/14); only two appear in both sources (one whose assault led to an arrest). That discrepancy did not result from reporters ignoring the hospital, as five photographs appear in the New York Daily News taken both inside and outside the facility. But reporters do not appear to have been able to systematically gather the names of those being treated notwithstanding the their practice of publishing lists that had the appearance of being comprehensive. Clearly the hospital records did not include everyone treated for an injury. Patricia O’Rourke appears in one of the New York Daily News photographs, leaving the hospital bandaged, but is not in the hospital’s admission records. Likewise, lists of the injured in newspapers recorded numerous individuals as having been treated at Harlem Hospital who do not appear in the admission records. Journalists also noted that ambulances called during the disorder treated more people than made it into their records. Of the six police officers, four appear in hospital records and in newspaper lists of the injured, while the remaining two appear only in newspaper reports.
O’Rourke’s injuries are typical of those resulting from these assaults – cuts to the eye, forehead and cheek, which most of papers described as “lacerations” rather than cuts, as hospital records did. Cuts produced by rocks, stones, bottles and shattered glass produced significant bleeding, as photos show. The impact of being hit by an object also knocked at least some off their feet, a detail missing from reports but evident in photos. Two police officers suffered injuries to their legs rather than heads, and one to his hands.
It was not always clear that those hit were actually the intended targets of the objects. Rocks, stone and bottles were also being thrown at store windows. The Home News account of Isaac Daniel’s assault on Herman Young explicitly identified a store window as Daniel’s target; Young, the storeowner, was not injured by the stone Daniel’s threw but by the glass sent flying when it hit and shattered a window. Young was likely behind the window, inside his store. Others hit by objects were standing in front of windows, potentially between those throwing and their targets. That was the case with Detective Henry Roge, who was in front of Kress store when hit by a rock allegedly thrown by James Hughes. Police witnesses were certain that Roge was the target, although two newspaper reports said the rock hit the store window after striking Roge. Hughes denied throwing the rock, and although convicted, received a sentence of only 3 months in the workhouse, which the DA explained reflected the judge’s belief that the store window, not Roge, was his target.
In other cases, there is evidence that those throwing objects hit their targets. The New York Daily News photographer Ebbs Breuer and his assistant made their identity obvious by setting up to take images, prompting some members of the crowd to bombard them with rocks. Breuer suffered cuts to the head, Martin a broken nose, injuries that required a trip to Harlem Hospital. None of the black journalists on 125th Street reported being attacked.
Similarly, cars and buses traveling along Harlem’s streets were clearly the targets of the objects that hit them. Lenox and 7th Avenues were major traffic routes, with almost all of the vehicles, private and commercial, driven by whites. One black driver, Fred Campbell, was caught up in the disorder. A brick smashed the rear window of Campbell’s car as he drove up 7th avenue at the same time as windows smashed on both sides of the street – but the width of Harlem’s avenues made it unlikely he had been hit by someone trying to throw from one side of the street at a window on the other side. In the streets rather than on the sidewalks, vehicles represented targets similarly distant from the crowd as bystanders in front of stores, police and reporters. Campbell reported being hit by more bricks before he reached his destination, and seeing cars driven by whites with broken windows, but on finishing his errand to pick up the day’s receipts from his two barber’s shops, he returned home. Likely so too did the drivers of the other cars Campbell saw. Two buses likewise were bombarded with stones as they drove through the disorder on 7th Avenue, one part of the local service, one on its way out of the city to Boston, but continued on to their destinations. Only the injured were drawn into the historical record. Joseph Rinaldi, a passenger traveling to Boston, was hit by flying glass; the bus stopped at a drug store outside Harlem so he could treat his injuries. Patricia O’Rourke was also in a car hit by bricks while traveling on 7th Avenue, toward her home in the West Bronx, but in her case the front window smashed, leaving her with cuts to her eyes, forehead and cheeks. The New York Daily News put a photograph of O’Rourke leaving Harlem Hospital with bandages obscuring much of her face on its front page (the caption highlighting the fur coat and wealthy father that made her entirely unrepresentative of those caught up in the disorder).
Police riding on riot trucks were more exposed than passengers inside cars; at least one officer, Henry Whittington, was hit. According to the Daily Mirror, he “was “sniped” off of the emergency truck he was riding at 8th Ave and 123rd St.” No such details appear in other newspapers, which simply include Whittington in their lists of the injured, with a head wound. Police in cars do not seem to have been subject to the same attacks as other whites driving through Harlem. The only reported instance of such an attack appears only in the HT, a brief note that “The automobileof Detective Lieutenant Frank Lenahan was badly battered by rocks and most of its glass shattered when Lenahan drove through a riotous section of Eighth Avenue” in the early hours of the disorder.
Two assaults are clearly ascribed to an individual. One is an alleged assault on a police officer during an arrest in the very early stages of the disorder. Harry Gordon, a white member of the Young Liberators, was one of group that picketed Kress’ store around 6pm. When a member of the group began to speak to the crowd gathered there, someone threw a rock through the window of Kress’ store, prompting police moved to arrest the speaker. In the ensuing struggle, Gordon allegedly grabbed Patrolman Irwin Young’s nightstick and used it to hit the officer.
The second assault mostly clearly ascribed to an individual is reported only in hospital admission records, a record that does not need to extrapolate an individual from a group. It is also one of the small number of reported assaults of blacks 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 place.
The hospital record for Patrolman Charles Robins reports his injury as the result of having been attacked “by some unknown person,” but locates 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. Robins was “struck over the head with an iron bar,” an unusual weapon in the context of the disorder, according to the hospital report and one newspaper account. Two other papers reported him being “hit over the head with a brick,” a more common weapon. Treated at 124th St and 7th Avenue, he had likely been involved in efforts to keep crowds from 125th Street. Images 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 8.30PM. The assault report comes from a legal proceeding, one of the few (4?) reports 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 is one of the very few that led to an arrest. Few sources exist on this case as it occurred very early in the riot and Smitten was arraigned in the Night Court that evening not the next day, when almost all those arrested appeared in court. (Only the HT appears to have had a reporter in the Night Court, although Smitten does appear in several lists of those arrested in the disorder). Smitten, not Kitlitz, also appears 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 is reported in terms of an individual act that caused injury without more explicit details of the circumstances of the assault. Arthur Block, a black man, is reported having been bitten on the hand, again with no details of the circumstances, only in lists of the injured not in stories. Biting rarely appears 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, clerks in Kress’ store, when they held him after his was caught stealing a pocketknife, in the incident that became a trigger for the disorder. Hurley and Urban were treated at Kress’ for their injuries at 2.30PM, several hours before crowds gathered.