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

Betty Willcox assaulted

Betty Willcox, a white woman, was allegedly assaulted by a group of Black men at 125th Street and 7th Avenue. The only evidence of this event was a story published in the New York Evening Journal, the only newspaper story of an assault to take the form of a first-person account. No time was given for these events. The intersection was a locus of violence throughout the disorder, with six other assaults reported there, including attacks on reporters and on another woman, Emma Brockson, at 12:35 AM, and the shooting of Clarence London at 1:00 AM. It was also at this location that Andrew Lyons may have been injured. All those events occurred despite police emergency squads being deployed at the intersection from 9:00 PM. Despite all that activity, Willcox reported seeing no one when she first arrived.

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 Black men, 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 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 the New York Evening Journal 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 photograph that accompanied the story was jarringly at odds with that sensational account. It showed a smiling Willcox jauntily sitting on the corner of a desk, with her legs crossed and her hands on her hips.

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