This page was created by Anonymous. 

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

Charles Alston arrested

Near the end of the disorder, at 5 AM on March 20, Charles Alston, Albert Yerber, Edward Loper and Ernest Johnson allegedly opened fire on police stationed at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No police officers were reported injured, but Alston suffered a fractured skull as the men fled police. Trying to escape by leaping from the roof of a six-story-building to the adjoining building, Alston fell to a second-floor ledge. He was a twenty-one-year-old Black man, as was Loper, Johnson was twenty-two years of age, and Yerber twenty years of age. Alston lived northwest of the alleged shooting, on the edge of Harlem at 512 West 153rd Street. The other men also lived west of where they were arrested, within Harlem, Johnson at 206 West 140th St. Loper at 298 West 138th St., and Yerber at 106 Edgecombe Ave. Only a small proportion of those involved in the disorder lived above 135th Street.

Newspaper stories contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language - for example, the New York World Telegram reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” policemen. Stories in the New York World Telegram and Brooklyn Daily Eagle did offer the name of the officer allegedly targeted by Alston and his companions, Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station, and the same dramatic account that a bullet whistled past his ear as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street. Taking cover, he saw the men on the roof of the six-story building at 101 West 138th. Soon after police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. One other story, in the Home News, identified Brennan, but cast him not as the target of the shooters but as one of the police who responded. In a radio car assigned to the area with his partner Patrolman McGrady, Brennan “heard the shots and sped to the scene. At the radio car's approach the four snipers [standing in the doorway] ran to the roof of the building.” This story provides the key detail that no guns were found on Alston and his companions.

Alston did not appear in court, likely because of his injury, but on March 20 the other three men were charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book. That offense did not involve any violence, reflecting that no guns were found in their possession; instead it focused on the men's presence in the area. It does not appear police had any evidence that Yerber, Loper or Johnson had created any sort of disturbance, as Magistrate Ford released all three men. Given that outcome, it is possible police officers confused where the shots fired at them came from, or perhaps mistook some other noise for gunfire. Without any evidence of an assault in the sources, these events are treated here only as arrests.

Alston’s fall attracted more attention than the shooting. Again the Home News offers the most detail, noting that the leap that Alston had attempted was a distance of seven feet (the New York Post said 6 feet), and that after he landed on the ledge he managed to crawl through the window into an apartment and hid under a bed. His escape bid failed as the occupants of the apartment called police. The Home News report also makes clear that Alston did not appear seriously injured at the time of his arrest. It was at the 135th police station that he collapsed and was found to have a fractured skull, the serious injury noted in less detailed stories and in lists of the injured. (The New York Evening Journal was the only other newspaper to report these details, although it mistakenly reported that the group arrested numbered three not four. The New York Post did report that Alston hid under a bed.)

The New York Daily News published a photograph of Alston's arrest in which he is holding his head, suggesting he did appear injured at that time. The caption published with the photo drew attention to the “clubbed gun” held by the uniformed officer leading Alston a patrol wagon (seeming to suggest that the officer had used the gun butt to hit Alston). It concludes starkly, “He’s dying.” The photo published in the Norfolk Journal and Gazette and New York World-Telegram credited to the International Photo agency and likely taken with the camera visible in the foreground of the New York Daily News photo a few seconds earlier, also clearly shows Alston clutching his head, with marks on his trousers and jacket that may be evidence of his fall. The officer’s clubbed gun is also again visible, together with the night stick of his partner. The full photograph from which the published image is cropped, part of the Bettman Collection digitized by Getty Images, provides a clearer view of those gathered around the building.
Embed from Getty Images

Visible to the right of this group are three black men obscured in the New York Daily News photo, which shows only white men. Given the location of this arrest in the heart of Harlem, at 5AM, the only whites likely to be present would be police detectives in plainclothes and reporters. The photographs are some of the few taken beyond the area around 125th Street. By the time of Alston’s arrest the disorder was over, allowing white pressmen to travel more freely in Harlem than they had earlier, when crowds had attacked them.

The captions accompanying the published cropped versions of the photo in the Norfolk Journal and Gazette and New York World Telegram misidentify Alston as a suspected looter.

The New York American, New York Evening Journal and New York Post include Alston in their lists of the injured, as did the New York Herald Tribune on March 21, and the Black newspapers the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Gazette several days later, all describing the nature of his injuries with no reference to the circumstances in which he suffered them.
 

This page has tags:

This page references: