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Benjamin Zelvin's jewelry store looted
There is no newspaper coverage of the looting; Henry and Leacock appear only in the four most comprehensive lists of those arrested published in black newspapers and the New York Evening Journal. The details come from the District Attorney's case file; as the grand jury sent the cases to the Court of Special Sessions, the only information is from the Magistrate Court affidavit. The 28th Precinct Police Blotter recorded that the judges convicted both men.
Zelvin appears in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 21 to charge an additional man, a thirty-one-year-old Black man named Henry Goodwin, with burglary (the only other individual charged for an offense related to the disorder in the court that day is John Henry, although Zelvin is not listed as the complainant in that case). Goodwin appears only in the docket book and the 28th Precinct Police Blotter; there are no details of his alleged crime. If he did take goods from 372 Lenox Avenue, they were of little value. When Goodwin appears again the charge is reduced to petit larceny and the Magistrate transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions. Like Henry and Leacock, the Police Blotter records that the judges convicted him.
It is possible that Zelvin did not continue to operate his jewelry store. It does not appear in the MCCH Business survey in the second half of 1935, which has no record for 372 Lenox Avenue. The Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941 is from an angle that does not offer a clear view of the business at that address.
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This page references:
- "Transcripts of Police Blotter - Precinct 28, March 19 & 20, 1935," Folder "MCCH - Juvenile Delinquency - 1935-36," Correspondence (Roll 13), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945.
- "106 Suits Filed Under Mob Law in Harlem Riot," New York World-Telegram, July 23, 1935 [clipping]
- Harlem Magistrates Court docket book
- District Attorney's Closed Case Files, 204032 (1935) (New York City Municipal Archives)
- "Harlem Riots to Cost Dearly," New York Sun, July 23, 1935 [clipping]
- "Cops not on Job, Say Harlem Suits," New York Post, July 23, 1935 [clipping]
- "Riot Victims Ask Relief," New York Evening Journal, July 23, 1935 [clipping].