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

Clara Crowder injured

Around 5PM, during the struggles between police and customers who remained in Kress Store after Patrolman Raymond Donahue took Lino Rivera into the manager’s office, Clara Crowder, a twenty-year-old white woman employed as a clerk in the store fainted. According to the hospital record, she had been aiding another store employee at the time.

Crowds of black women customers had remained in Kress’ store after Rivera was led away, concerned about what had become of the boy. Some wanted the boy to be produced to show he had not been harmed; others simply wanted some explanation of where he was. Store staff and police offered no information. After several hours, sometime after 5PM, when some reports put the size of the crowd at around 500 women, police appeared and began to clear the store, still refusing to respond to questions about Rivera. Louise Thompson, who had arrived in the store around 5PM, told the MCCH that the women became disorderly only in reaction to being moved out by police, knocking over displays of pots and pans knocked over, and smashing dishes and glasses as they left. By contrast, the New York Times reported that police arrived in response to the customers going “on the rampage, strewing merchandise on the floor and shouting.” Once police had emptied the store, they blocked the store entrance. Soon after an ambulance arrived to attend to Crowder; many in the crowd reacted to its appearance as a sign that Rivera was injured or dead.

Standing outside the store, Louise Thompson had no way of knowing that Crowder had fainted. In fact, only three narratives of the events in Kress store mention Crowder. The HT included her in its account of the store being cleared, reporting “As police beat the crowd back it was discovered that Miss Clara Browder, twenty, a clerk, of 473 West 158th Street, had fainted.” The story went on to say she was attended by the same ambulance as attended the two store employees bitten by Rivera. The Medical Attendances records indicate it was a second ambulance, carrying a different intern physician, that attended Crowder. The NYDN did report that a second ambulance came to Kress, but offered a vaguer account of the circumstances, noting only that Crowder “fainted after the boy had been released.” The DM mentioned Crowder without making clear whether she was in the store or on the street outside, but did sensationalize the circumstances, reporting she “fainted in that crush and was trampled upon until rescued, by a football wedge of police.”

While not including Crowder in their narratives, the New York American (March 20 only), New York Evening Journal and New York Post did list her among the injured. As in the narratives and the hospital record, her injury is recording as fainting, other than by the New York Evening Journal, which listed her as “treated for shock,” which is also her injury in the New York Daily News list. Crowder, one of three women among the injured (33%) is the only individual reported as having fainted. After being attended by the physician, Crowder left for home, 473 West 158th Street, beyond Harlem to the north, an address emblematic of the disconnect between Kress’ largely white staff and its largely black customers.
 

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