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Child's restaurant windows broken
Windows were broken in large numbers of businesses on this block of West 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues, where police clashed with crowds gathered in front of Kress' store. Two newspapers reported very extensive damage. "Practically every store window on the block had been shattered by 10 PM, according to the Home News; that damage was both less extensive and took longer in the New York Herald Tribune story: "By midnight one or more windows had been smashed in almost every storefront" on that block between 7th and 8th Avenues (although in another mention of that damage in the story it had been done by 8 PM). However, the businesses identified in the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, and Daily Mirror as having windows broken were east of Kress' store, near the intersection with 7th Avenue rather than 8th Avenue. No reason is given in those stories for why that mix of businesses were singled out. The reporter for La Prensa who walked along 125th Street from Lenox Avenue to 8th Avenue listed only one business west of Kress' store, the branch of London Shoes at 276 West 125th Street. The scale of damage described in the Afro-American should have warranted inclusion in that list; it may have been repaired before the reporter walked by.
No other sources mentioned broken windows in Childs restaurant. No one among those arrested during the disorder was identified as having broken windows in the restaurant. The restaurant does not appear in the MCCH business survey. It was no longer at this location by the time that the Tax department photograph was taken between 1939 and 1941, which instead showed Gonshaks department store, opened in August 1938, in a new building on the site. The restaurant closed in late May, 1935, according to a story in the Pittsburgh Courier, which reported that it had been subject to a boycott over its refusal to serve Black customers, a change that had been made by "several other white restaurants in the same block, which had formerly discriminated against Negroes." Channing Tobias told Frazier the restaurant went out of business because it was "not getting enough business from whites to keep it open and Negroes did not go there – It was just losing all the time. It went out very suddenly.”
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- "1 Dead, 7 shot, 100 Hurt as Harlem Crowds Riot over Boy, 16, and Hearse," New York Herald Tribune, March 20, 1935, 1.
- "5 dying and Scores Wounded as Race Riots in Harlem Subside," Home News, March 20, 1935 [clipping]
- Interview of Channing Tobias by E. Franklin Frazier, August 10, 1935, Harlem Survey: March 19th, Box 131-123, Folder 7, E. Franklin Frazier Papers (Moorland Spingarn Research Center, Howard University).
- "1 Slain, 20 Injured in Harlem Rioting," New York American, March 20, 1935, 1.
- "Numerosos Establecimientos Hispanos Apedreados y Saqueados por la Turba," La Prensa, March 21, 1935, 1.
- "Harlem Mob War. 1 Dies, 50 Hurt, 100 Arrested In Wild Night, Daily Mirror, March 20, 1935, 4.
- "Childs's Restaurant First Mark for Harlem Rioters," Afro-American, March 30, 1935, 1.
- "Labor Union's Pickets Carry on in Battle, New York Amsterdam News, August 13, 1938, 2.
- "Chain Stores Control 125th Street Business," New York Age, April 27, 1935, 1.
- "Child's Restaurant Quits Harlem," PIttsburgh Courier, June 1, 1935, 3.