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

Ben Salcfas' grocery store windows broken

Sometime during the disorder, windows were broken in Ben Salcfas' grocery store at 2061 7th Avenue, on the northeast corner of West 123rd Street and 7th Avenue. Patrolman Leahy of the 28th Precinct arrested David Bragg, a thirty-three-year-old Black man, for allegedly throwing a rock through the window, according to a story in the Home News. The window could have been broken around 11:15 PM, when a group of twenty-five to thirty people gathered at the intersection. Another officer from the 28th Precinct, Patrolman Peter Naton, arrested one member of that group, James Pringle, for allegedly urging the others to throw rocks at police. The group continued on despite the arrest, smashing store windows and assaulting people, according to Naton. Bragg may have been part of that group. Later, two stores close to the grocery store were looted. First, Sarah Refkin's delicatessen at 2067 7th Avenue at 12:30 AM, and then Nicholas Peet's tailors store at 2063 7th Avenue at 1:30 AM. The shoe repair store directly across 7th Avenue from the grocery store was also looted sometime during the disorder.

"Ben Salcfas" of 2061 7th Avenue was recorded as the complainant against David Bragg in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book. A story in the Home News was the only other source that linked 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 appeared in the City Directory. The store was still in business in the second half of 1935 when it appeared in the MCCH Business survey (which misidentified the address as 2063 7th Avenue). "Corner store - well supplied," the MCCH investigator noted, with "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, was 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 threw a rock at the store window was only found in a story in the Home News that reported 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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