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

Assaults on white men and women (29)

At least twenty-nine white men and women were assaulted during the disorder, in addition to nine white police officers. This violence has been overlooked in most scholarship on the disorder, which has followed the lead of the final report of the MCCH. Assaults were only obliquely mentioned in that document which instead emphasized attacks on property: “In fact, the distinguishing feature of this outbreak was that it was an attack upon property and not upon persons. In the beginning, to be sure, the resentment was expressed against whites—but whites who owned stores and who, while exploiting Negroes, denied them an opportunity to work."

Newspapers told a different story, particularly the New York Evening Journal, a Hearst afternoon publication that sought out and gave prominence to white men and women assaulted by Black men. The most sensational and racist example of that emphasis was a story by Richard Levitt published under the page-spanning headline, “Kill the Whites Roar Maddened Harlem Mobs.” It was more a litany of racist fears and stereotypes than an account of the events of the disorder, with the phrase "kill the whites" used as a refrain to separate different elements of the story not in descriptions of specific events. In none of instances was the alleged call associated with the events being described. Invoking Black violence, or fears of Black violence, was a longstanding racist trope, employed in white narratives about the race riots of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Only two specific cases that include such threats were reported in the newspaper. A call to “Kill him” is attributed to a crowd of Black men and women that the New York Evening Journal described threatening B. Z. Kondoul, a thirty-five-year-old white man. Again, only one story mentioned that detail. So too the alleged assault on Betty Willcox, as she waited in a parked car. The story that quoted Willcox appeared alongside Levitt's article. The Black men she described surrounding the car screamed "White- we'll get you' We'll get all of them around here!"

While the New York Evening Journal slanted its coverage to emphasize interracial violence, there was other evidence for all but four of the incidents that it reported. Other white publications reported that violence more sporadically, while the Black press generally did not report it at all. At the other end of the political spectrum, the Daily Worker dismissed the claims of the Hearst press that the disorder had been a race riot and gave credit to Communists on the streets and the leaflets they and the Young Liberators distributed for urging the "unity of black and white workers." However, the radical newspaper obliquely allowed that attacks on whites did take place: "In a few instances where small turbulent groups were suspicious of whites and disposed to attack them, white Communists were pointedly excluded from attack." Several papers reported clashes between bands of blacks and whites, in line with patterns from earlier racial disorders, but none offered details and there are no reports of blacks injured in those circumstances. Those claims appeared to reflect tropes about racial violence not descriptions of events during the disorder. Violence against whites took place throughout the disorder and across a wide area centered on 125th Street. Assaults on whites are thus woven into the disorder not so marginal as to distinguish the disorder from outbreaks earlier in the century.

White men and women on the street, newspaper reporters and photographers, storeowners, and passengers in vehicles traveling through Harlem all allegedly suffered injuries at the hands of black assailants.

Crowds threw stones and rocks at whites. The occupants of vehicles traveling through the neighborhood became targets, with Patricia O'Rourke hit in her car and Joseph Rinaldi in a Boston-bound bus. In other cases, whites standing apart, observing crowds came under attack, including a newspaper photographer Everett Breuer and his assistant Joseph Martin, and security guard James Wrigley. Others appeared at the hospital with similar injuries resulting from flying glass and rocks that they did not report as assaults, that did not result from efforts to injure them but from the attacks on property. One of them was likely the unidentified white man with a bleeding head wound after being hit by an object who appeared in a photograph published in the Daily News.

The remaining assaults involved attacks by individuals or groups who targeted white individuals they encountered on the street. The victims of those assaults were apparently observing the events like those hit by objects or walking Harlem’s streets either around the entertainments of 125th Street or near the areas of white residents north of 116th Street. Almost all those attacks took the form of beatings, with only two men stabbed, Edward Genest and Morris Werner. Attacks on Betty Willcox, B. Z. Kondoul, and Timothy Murphy only ended when police officers intervened, while William Ken was saved by Black co-workers. Such violence was not endemic to the disorder. "All night until dawn on the Tuesday of the outbreak white persons, singly and in groups, walked the streets of Harlem without being molested," Claude McKay reported in an article in The Nation. While McKay insisted that "there was no manifest hostility between colored and white," it was clear that he mistook the lack of attacks on whites at some times and places for a general attitude. A Columbia University student's experience captured the intermittent presence of violence against whites among the variety of behavior during the disorder. Hector Donnelly reported being hit on the shoulder by a milk bottle while walking on West 135th Street and Lenox Avenue having gone to the neighborhood unaware of the disorder. As several members of the crowd on the street then moved toward him, he knew he was "in for it." A policeman came running, however, and dragged Donnelly away. Although the officer told him, "You better stay out of here," the white student met a reporter he knew so decided to stay "to watch the excitement." He remained despite further warnings from police until he "got into more trouble." A group of four or five men bumped him as they passed him on the sidewalk and then stopped and continued to push him. Again, a police officer came and "broke up the trouble." After that encounter, Donnelly decided that he needed to leave the neighborhood.

White storeowners also appear among those assaulted, but in very small numbers not as the focus of violence as the MCCH report claimed. Herman Young's injuries resulted from glass from a smashed window rather than a direct attack. Max Newman was attacked as he closed his store, as was Joseph Sarnelli, with his assailants also attempting to rob him.

Four white women appear among those assaulted in Harlem. Two of the women were attacked in cars, Patricia O'Rourke while driving through Harlem, Betty Willcox while parked. Alice Gordon was assaulted by a group on the street. Elizabeth Nadish was reported simply as having been “beaten."

Attacks on white men and women occurred throughout the disorder (information about timing is missing for thirteen of the twenty-nine assaults), but were more geographically contained than in race riots in the north earlier in the twentieth century. Other than one man attacked north of 145th Street in an assault likely unrelated to the disorder, most attacks occurred around 125th Street, with a small number further south, around the stores on 116th Street. The first reported assaults came early in the disorder as the crowd on 125th Street clashed with police and began smashing windows. William Kitlitz was allegedly assaulted by James Smitten around 8.30 PM and Timothy Murphy and Maurice Spellman by different groups of men around 9 PM, and Morris Werner around 9.30 PM. All these men lived west of Harlem, relatively close to where they were attacked, so were likely regular visitors to 125th Street, to shop, seek entertainment or access public transport, on this evening caught up in the disorder. Around 11:00 PM a small cluster of assaults took place on or near 7th Avenue north of 116th St, as crowds moved away from 125th Street into an area with white residents. Further assaults occurred north of 125th Street around 1:00 AM, back near the entertainment district frequented by whites. The final assault whose timing is known was of a storekeeper during the looting that intensified after midnight.

Most assaults on white men and women left few traces in the official record: police made arrests in only seven cases (there was no information on the circumstances that led to the arrest of two of the men charged with assault). Seven victims of alleged assaults appeared only in records of ambulance callouts and hospital admissions. Fifteen assaults are reported only in newspapers. Four cases appeared in only the New York Evening Journal, a publication that reported the disorder with an emphasis on violence against whites distinct from the rest of the press.

Only one of the five Black men arrested for assaulting whites, Rivers Wright, was convicted, but only summarily by a Magistrate for the misdemeanor offense of disorderly conduct, for which he received a sentence of ten days in the Workhouse. That charge likely indicated that Wright had not been involved in the assault, but had been on the street nearby and been mistakenly arrested by police pursuing the assailants. In one case, there was no evidence of the outcome, one case was dismissed by the Grand Jury, and two men acquitted by trial juries.

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