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Betty Willcox assaulted
Willcox reported driving down 7th Avenue with a "young man," who stopped the car at 125th street so he could get cigarettes. Only after they had stopped did she noticed stores in the area had been damaged, and their stock strewn across the street. She then heard gunshots, and saw a white man pursed by a crowd of blacks, some of whom caught and beat him. When they saw Willcox, they came toward her, surrounding the car, pounding on it and screaming threats at her. She frantically honked the horn, attracting the attention of a group of uniformed and plainclothes police who "with big clubs swinging, dashed up and began to strike out at random and shoot in the air." The police then formed a cordon around the car while the crowd of blacks milled around, before slowly dispersing. When her escort returned they drove off away from the disorder.
The sensational language of the story is characteristic of how that white newspaper reported the riot, particularly violence against whites: a “mob” commits the attack, threatens to kill whites, is “howling” and “roar for blood,” and all have “murderous rage” in their faces, and after being dispersed by police "kept up a steady yelling with an undertone of ominous muttering and shuffling." For all the shooting that Willcox hears, it is telling that she notes that the crowd that surrounds the car "didn’t seem to be armed." The accompanying photograph is jarringly at odds with that sensational account, showing a smiling Willcox jauntily sitting on the corner of a desk.