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Assaults on women (5)
Patricia O’Rourke was hit by glass after a bottle was thrown at the car in which she was traveling on 7th Avenue toward her home in the Bronx, leaving her with cuts to her eyes, forehead and cheeks. Betty Willcox was also traveling on 7th Avenue, in a car that stopped at 7th Avenue and 125th Street so her companion could buy cigarettes. A crowd of black men attacked the car as she sat in it, until a group of police appeared and drove them away. Willcox was uninjured. Alice Gordon was also allegedly assaulted by a group of black men, also on 7th Avenue, eight blocks to the south at 117th Street, only a block south of where O’Rourke was assaulted. She was treated for lacerations to her face. The alleged assault on Emma Brockson occurred at 125th St and 7th Avenue, the same location as that described by Willcox, but there is no evidence indicating the form of the assault. She suffered an injured hand. The final assault, on Elizabeth Nadish, is described as her being “beaten,” a term that encompasses assaults by an individual and by groups while excluding being hit by objects or shot. Her injury was to her eye.
Four of the women are white and one of unknown race. Two of the women were traveling through neighborhood rather than present there. However, white women could be found among the staff of businesses in Harlem, and among those who patronized the theaters on 125th Street and 116th Street. That the four assaults with locations all occurred on 7th Avenue, at 125th Street or further south, fits that pattern. Nonetheless, white women do not appear in any images of the crowds in Harlem’s streets.
Although no black women are identified as victims of assault in any of the sources, they do appear in images of crowds and of the injured. One photograph printed in several newspapers shows a black woman being helped up from the pavement, reportedly after being knocked down by “rioters.”
Two men have hold of her arms, a black man looking directly at the camera and a partly visible white police officer. Offering additional evidence of the presence of black women on the streets, three of the four figures in the background are black women. While the woman in that photograph does not appear to be seriously injured, a black woman was photographed being treated in Harlem Hospital – although no black women appear in the list of those treated sent to the MCCH.
(There are additional photographs published, that are largely illegible in microfilm copies, showing an injured woman being loaded into a vehicle, and another of a woman knocked to the ground). Black women can also be seen in the front ranks of the crowd a police officer is attacking with a night stick and there is a woman in background of another photo of a crowd being dispersed.
There are also three photographs of women who were allegedly assaulted. O’Rourke is bandaged, leaving hospital, her fur coat attracting particular attention from NYDN (The only other bandaged individual is among those arrested being transported to court; otherwise injured are bleeding or being treated). Only Nadish’s head appears in her photographed, with her “puffed up eye” visible, not bandaged. Willcox is photographed striking a pose and smiling while seated on a desk -- an image that on its own contains nothing to associate it with assault or the disorder.
The reporting of assaults on women varies little from that on men. Several stories do frame women victims of assault as indicating the indiscriminate nature of the violence of the disorder. The NYDN titled the photograph it published of a woman in Harlem Hospital “Sex was disregarded in riot” and in the body of its coverage wrote “Men and women alike were attacked by hoodlums” (NYDN, 3/20/35, 3a,).