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

Detective Frank Lenahan assaulted

As Detective Frank Lenahan drove “through a riotous section of Eighth Avenue,” his car was bombarded by rocks, shattering most of its windows. The brief report of the attack in the New York Herald Tribune did not include a time. While most of the reported violence on 8th Avenue occurred in the early hours of the disorder, the detective could have had objects thrown at his vehicle at any time. Lenahan was the one of two officers attacked in a vehicle rather than on the street. Several hours later, Patrolman Harry Whittington would be hit by a rock while riding on the back of an emergency truck. Police traveled to Harlem in vehicles in response to the outbreak of disorder and when they deployed beyond 125th Street, officers used radio cars and emergency trucks to respond to violence and to try to control crowds.

Cars and buses driven by whites were also targets of rocks thrown by black crowds throughout the disorder, but those attacks took place on 7th Avenue, the major route to the Bronx and northern neighborhoods, not the less traveled 8th Avenue. In at least two cases, flying glass from smashed windows injured occupants of those vehicles.

Only the New York Herald Tribune reported this event, in a single sentence at the very end of its story from March 20: “The automobile of Detective Lieutenant Frank Lenahan was badly battered by rocks and most of its glass shattered when Lenahan drive through a riotous section of Eighth Avenue.” There is no mention of an injury to Lenahan, so it is not surprising that he did not appear in hospital records or the lists of the injured published by other newspapers.

 

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