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

Benjamin Bell shot

Around 3.55 AM, Benjamin Bell, a thirty-two-year old man of unknown race, was shot “when fired upon by some unknown person” outside his home at 73 West 128th Street. The shooting occurred near the end of the disorder, just east of an area of Lenox Avenue that not long before had seen two assaults on black men, the shooting of Wilmont Hendricks nearly two hours earlier at the intersection and an assault on James White by a white man a block north less than thirty minutes earlier. Those assaults came during a period of significant looting on Lenox Ave, which began around 1.30 AM and attracted police. Officers arrested one looter a block south of Bell’s address an hour before he was shot.

Shot in front of his home, Bell was likely a bystander, watching the events on Lenox Avenue. Police responded to the outbreak of looting by firing their weapons. Given the evidence of both looting and police responding to it at the time, and the lack of any evidence that blacks on the streets during the disorder used guns, Bell was likely hit by shots fired by police – as were the others reported as shot and wounded.

Other than a white police officer, the five other men shot and wounded in the disorder were black. None of the sources that record the assault on Bell identify his race. His address does not help identify him. The block on which Bell lived included white as well as black residents. While the hospital records did not record the race of any of those treated, the two papers that included Bell in their lists of the injured typically did. As was common at the time, the New York American and the New York Post identified the race of the black individuals in their lists, but not the whites, making it likely that Bell was white. If Bell was white, it is surprising that his shooting did not attract more attention from the white press.

The hospital record described Bell’s injury as a “gunshot wound in the left thigh,” serious enough to warrant the ambulance called to treat him taking him back to Harlem Hospital. The New York American and New York Evening Journal reported simply that he had been shot in the leg, while the New York Post more dismissively listed the gunshot wound as “superficial.”

No one was arrested for shooting Bell, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed).

 

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