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Ben Salcfas' grocery store windows broken
"Ben Salcfas" of 2061 7th Avenue is recorded as the complainant against David Bragg in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book. A story in the Home News is the only other source that links Bragg to 2061 7th Avenue. Benjamin Salcfas, a fifty-four-year-old white polish immigrant, had owned the grocery store since at least 1933, when he appears in the City Directory. The store was still in business in the second half of 1935, appearing in the MCCH Business survey (which misidentified the address as 2063 7th Avenue). "Corner store - well supplied," the MCCH investigator noted, also writing that at that time Salcfas employed "1 Negro clerk or assistant." It was unusual for small family-run businesses such as the grocery store to employ Black staff. The store visible on the corner in the Tax Department photograph, taken between 1939 and 1941, is the grocery store. When Salcfas registered for the draft in April 1942 he identified himself as the owner of his own grocery business at 2061 7th Avenue. At that time he and his family lived at 270 St Nicholas Avenue, only a block west of the store, in an area where most residents were white.
The information that Bragg through a rock at the store window was only found in a story in the Home News, a report of his appearance in the Harlem Magistrates Court. When Bragg appeared in court on March 20 Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions. Convicted by the judges of that court, he was sentenced to three months in the workhouse.
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This page references:
- "Police Guard Against New Uprising as Mayor Acts to Probe Race Riot," Home News, March 21, 1935, 1.
- Harlem Magistrates Court docket book
- City Directory, New York, New York, 1933, 2877 (Ancestry.com)
- Draft Registration Cards for New York City, 1940-1947, Records of the Selective Service System, Record Group 147, National Archives and Records Administration (Ancestry.com)