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Clara Crowder injured
Jackson Smith, Kress' manager, had decided sometime after 4.30 PM that efforts to convince those in the store that Rivera had been released unharmed were failing, and had called for additional police to help him close the store. When those officers began to move customers from the rear of the store, "they began to get rough," Louise Thompson wrote in the account of what she witnessed published in New Masses. Displays of pots and pans and glasses were knocked over and women screamed. Crowder and the unnamed colleague she tried to help were likely behind counters in the store, where the sales staff worked, perhaps counters whose displays were knocked to the ground. The noise and shouting led many customers to rush to leave the store, Thompson and Jackson Smith testified in the MCCH public hearings, so could also have led Crowder to faint. Neither Smith nor Thompson mentioned Crowder when describing what they saw happen in Kress' at that time.
Louise Thompson, on West 125th Street after being cleared from the store by police, did mention seeing the ambulance arrive, but testified in a public hearing of the MCCH that "we never knew whom he was going to treat." L. F. Coles, who like Thompson had been in the store, likewise told a MCCH hearing that none of those he asked knew why the ambulance was there, with a police officer telling them "it wasn't any of our business." In fact, only three narratives of the events in Kress store mention Crowder. The New York Herald Tribune had her faint as Hurley and Urban grabbed Rivera: "[Rivera] bit two Kress employees on the hand when they hauled him from the counter and this, in turn, caused a woman clerk to faint." The story returned later to Crowder, in describing customers being cleared from the story, reporting “As police beat the crowd back it was discovered that Miss Clara Browder [sic], twenty, a clerk, of 473 West 158th Street, had fainted.” The story went on to say she was attended by the ambulance attending the two store employees bitten by Rivera. Had Crowder fainted when Rivera was grabbed, she could have been attended by that ambulance, but police did not clear the store until two hours after it had returned to Harlem Hospital. The Medical Attendances records indicate it was a second ambulance, carrying a different intern physician, that attended Crowder. That timing makes the clearing of the store, not Rivera being grabbed, the context in which the woman fainted. The Daily News 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 Daily Mirror 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, New York Evening Journal and New York Post did list her among the injured. As in the narratives and the hospital record, her injury was recording as fainting, other than by the New York Evening Journal, which listed her as “treated for shock,” which was also her injury in the Daily News list. Crowder, one of three women among those injured (14%, 3 of 21) 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, that address was emblematic of the distance between Kress’ largely white staff and its Black customers.
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This page references:
- "Injured," Daily News, March 20, 1935, 3.
- "1 Dead, 7 Shot, 100 Hurt as Harlem Crowds Riot over Boy, 16, and Hearse," New York Herald Tribune, March 20, 1935, 1.
- "Medical Attendances, 19-20 March 1935," Subject Files, Box 167, Folder 5 (Roll 76), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
- “List of Victims," New York Evening Journal, March 20, 1935, 1, 3.
- Public Hearings - Outbreak (March-April 1935), 23, Subject Files, Box 408, Folder 8 (Roll 194), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
- “List of Casualties in Riots,” New York Post, March 20, 1935, 6.
- Public Hearings - Outbreak (March-April 1935), 22, Subject Files, Box 408, Folder 8 (Roll 194), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
- Public Hearings - Outbreak (March-April 1935), 20, Subject Files, Box 408, Folder 8 (Roll 194), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
- Public Hearings - Riot (May 1935), 7, Subject Files, Box 410, Folder 7 (Roll 195), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
- "Harlem Race Riot: 1 Dead; Cops Fire; Women Join Mob of 4,000 in Battering Stores," Daily News, March 20, 1935, 3.
- "1 Slain, 20 Injured in Harlem Rioting," New York American, March 20, 1935, 1.
- Louise Thompson, "What Happened in Harlem: An Eye-Witness Account," New Masses (April 2, 1935): 15.
- Robert Campbell, "8000 in Harlem Riot. Fight 1,000 Police Over Killing Hoax," Daily Mirror, March 20, 1935 [clipping]