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

Benjamin Bell shot

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, according to hospital records. Dr Payne attended Bell at Harlem Hospital, eight blocks north on Lenox Avenue, at 3.55 AM, so he was likely shot sometime around 3.25 AM. Shot in front of his home, Bell was likely a bystander, watching the events on Lenox Avenue.

The shooting occurred just east of an area of Lenox Avenue that saw significant looting on Lenox Avenue that began around 1.30 AM and attracted significant numbers of police. Officers fired their weapons more frequently in response to looting than earlier in the disorder. Two black men were assaulted in the vicinity of Bell's shooting: Wilmont Hendricks around two and a half hours earlier at the intersection of 128th Street and Lenox Avenue; and an assault on James White by a white man a block north around thirty minutes earlier. 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 other men reported as shot and wounded.

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 newspapers 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 for him to be admitted 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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