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

Black-owned business signs (6)

Six businesses were identified as having signs in their windows identifying them as Black owned. Stories in both white and Black newspapers presented such signs as a more widespread part of the disorder and as a key reason why Black-owned businesses were generally spared from damage and not looted. On placards and directly on windows with whitewash or soap were written “Colored,” "Black" and “This Store Owned by Colored,” the Afro-American reported. Three of the identified businesses fitted those generalizations, with a reporter for La Prensa describing signs that read "Colored" on a billiard hall and the Castle Inn on Lenox Avenue, and a sign reading "This is a Store Owned By Colored" in the Monterey Luncheonette reported by the Afro-American. Three other stores reportedly used a variation on those signs. Seven signs identifying a store named “Winnette’s Dresses” as a “Colored Store” are visible in both a photograph of an arrest taken during the disorder published in the Daily News, and a photograph taken the morning after the disorder showing a group of Black boys in front of the store published in the Afro-American. Embed from Getty Images
The sign on the Williams's drug store used the same phrase, "Colored Store" with the additional phrase "Nix Jack," repeating the combination twice on its side windows. The Cozy Shoppe customized the phrase to fit its name, rendering it as "Colored Shoppe."

Signs appeared in Black-owned businesses as a response to windows being broken in nearby stores. In some accounts, those attacks were indiscriminate until signs appeared; other accounts leave open the possibility that the signs reflected store-owners sense of the targets of those throwing objects at windows. "The mob made no choice, at first, of victims," in the most elaborate story, in the New York Evening Journal, "And then one colored man who owned a small restaurant pasted a sign in the window. It bore one word: "Colored." The mob passed him by and when others saw how the "miracle" was worked, signs flashed up in store windows throughout West Harlem. Those owned by Negroes, in most cases, were not broken into." The dismissive tone of the story was typical of that newspaper's treatment of Black subjects; attributing the posting of signs to an individual and the protection from damage that resulted to a "miracle" diminished the decisions those on the streets made about what stores to target that Black store-owners recognized. By contrast, the Black reporter for the Afro-American, emphasized “Stores owned by colored persons in the rioting area had to rush improvised signs reading ‘Colored, “Black,” “This Store Owned by Colored," but cast the signs as based on an understanding of the intentions of those attacking stores, as created "in order to be spared in the rain of bricks, whiskey bottles, and other missiles." That description appears to have reflected the reporter's treatment among the crowds on the street, whose "ring leaders," he complained, "were ready to jump on the reporters of "the Uncle Tom press" as they would on many whites.” <add briefer mentions - [indiscrim - NJG / two more in NYEJ, IR, NYP (not indisc)?>

The mention in the Home News appears to have confused the nature of the signs displayed. Explaining how it was that "Most of the damage was done to shops which were known to be operated by white persons," the reporter claimed "The colored persons who owned stores protected their shops against vandalism by picketing their establishments. They carried signs stating that the store was operated by colored people." No other sources mention pickets in front of Black-owned stores.

NB significance of additional signs going up the morning after, as became aware of details of disorder?

<Some of evidence of signs in images - in NYDN, not mentioned in narrative>

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