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

Crowd at Lenox Avenue between West 132nd and West 131st Streets

At 11.00 PM, Herbert Canter, who owned a pharmacy at 419 Lenox Avenue, on the northwest corner of West 131st Street, arrived to try and protect his business. He remained until 5.00 AM, according to stories about his testimony in a damages suit in the Municipal Court in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News. During that time Canter saw "a "mob" carrying bricks, stones and bottles, as well as canned goods march down the street shouting, "Down with the whites! Let's get what we can," and hurling missiles through windows." A block north, David Schmoockler, the manager of William Feinstein’s liquor store at 452 Lenox Avenue, also saw a crowd of around thirty people. Between 11.00 PM and midnight he watched as the crowd "created disturbances, hurled various missiles, broke store windows, set fire to some stores, pillaged others, and in general damaged property of various merchants in the locality,"  according to Justice Shalleck's summary of his testimony in the Municipal Court. Anna Rosenberg's notion store at 429 Lenox Avenue and the adjacent hardware store at 431 Lenox Avenue, on the same block as Canter's pharmacy, were set on fire, likely during this time. on the other side of the notion store, Gonzales' jeweler's store at 427 Lenox Avenue had windows broken. The fire a block south at 400 Lenox Avenue was started just after midnight. A little over an hour later, Feinstein's liquor store was attacked by a crowd of thirty to forty people.

The crowd Canter saw was further north than other reports of calls urging crowds to violence on West 125th Street and on 7th and Lenox Avenues within two blocks of 125th Street. It was also the only incident for which there were details that was not linked to an arrest. What was shouted to the crowd was different from the calls made to other crowds. Those calls allegedly focused on breaking windows or attacking police. While Cantor observed this crowd breaking windows, the second phrase he reported -- "Let's get what we can!" -- implied looting, which is what did occur in these blocks of Lenox Avenue possibly on a larger scale than elsewhere in Harlem. The first phrase shouted at the crowd identified whites as targets; mention of whites otherwise featured only in calls focused on police. But what was shouted was quite different from the calls to "Kill the Whites" which only one journalist for New York Evening Journal reported. "Down with the whites" was a threat to property and power not life.

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