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

Carl Jones arrested

Around 1.45 AM, Officer Raymond Early arrested eighteen-year-old Carl Jones in front of 391 Lenox Avenue. From across the street he had allegedly seen Jones pick up an object and throw it through the window of the stationary store owned by Harry and Morris Farber located at that address. Early must also have alleged that Jones reached into the window or trying to climb through it, as he charged Jones with attempted burglary, rather than the offense employed when windows were smashed, disorderly conduct. Jones, who lived several blocks to the north, in a furnished room at 84 West 134th Street, admitted that he smashed the window, but denied trying to steal any merchandise from the window. However, given that Early had some distance to cover (across the four lanes of Lenox Avenue), Jones evidently did not immediately flee after the window smashed. The Probation Officer investigating Jones appears to have sought another motive for Jones attack other than theft, recording that Jones "had been a regular customer of the complainant's store, but denies that he had any personal grievance against the complainant." The explanation to Probation Officer settled on was that Jones had become "imbued with the mob psychology prevalent at the moment," echoing the conclusion of Dr. Charles Thompson after examining Jones in the Court Psychiatric Clinic.

Morris Farber told the Probation officer that he wanted "the leniency of the Court be extended to [Jones]." The District Attorney's case file for Jones is missing, producing some confusion about his prosecution. Jones appears in the lists of those arrested during the disorder, as charged with burglary, published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Gazette, and in the New York Evening Journal. However, there are no newspaper reports of his subsequent appearances in court. The docket book records that Jones appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with attempted burglary. Magistrate Renaud held him on bail of $1000 and then discharged him on March 25, an outcome also recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter. Jones must have been rearrested and sent to the grand jury after that discharge, as the Probation Department investigation report records him pleading guilty to unlawful entry on March 29, and being sentenced to the workhouse for four months on April 9. The plea bargain the district attorney offered Jones is in line with that offered to others not allegedly found with stolen goods in their possession, as is the sentence. Other offenders around eighteen years of age were sentenced to institutions for youthful offenders, but the Probation Department investigation raised questions about Jones' age that seem likely to worked against such an outcome in his case. While noting that Jones "claims to be 18 years, four months of age," a Probation officer wrote that he "appears to be several years older than he claims." The department was unable to obtain any evidence of his date of birth in the eleven days it spent investigating Jones.

It was not only Jones' statement about his age that the Probation Officer considered unreliable. Jones said he had been born in St Louis, Missouri, leaving at age fourteen to travel to New York City. The only response to the department's inquiries about Jones that appears in his file is a letter dated April 5 from the St Louis Juvenile Court, reporting that the court could find no mention of Jones in its files, nor anyone at the address Jones gave for his father who knew him or his family. A Probation officer was able to confirm that Jones had lived at a furnished room at 84 West 134th Street for six months prior to his arrest, with eighteen-year-old Black woman named Georgia Harris. Jones' statements about his employment proved less reliable. The bakery on East 103rd Street that Jones named as his employer at the time of his arrest did not exist. Prior to that he said he worked for a year at a shoe repair store at 395 Lenox Ave, in the same building as the Farber's store; the owner said Jones had been employed only for several months, about three years earlier. The neckwear manufacturer Jones identified as his employer for nine months had no recollection of him. The Probation officer's frustration with Jones is evident in his conclusion that "the manner in which he has lived during this time is decidedly questionable." He was more direct in the preliminary investigation, scrawling "Liar" across the section of the form relating to manner and "etiology of maladjustment." Dr Charles Thompson's psychiatric examination report did not offer similar assessments. He found Jones neither psychotic nor mentally defective, but merely "an immature youth" of "low average intelligence." The explanation of his alleged crime lay in outside forces: "he seems to have acted together with other individuals under the influence of mob spirit, with no purpose in his action."

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