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‘Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work’ Campaigns in Harlem
Critics of the boycott campaign were quick to connect it to the disorder in 1935. Theophilus Lewis, in his column in the AN, declared “the apostles of that movement were logically the long-distance leaders of the riot.” The economic campaign they initiated “quickly resolved itself into a race issue,” presented by “picket leaders and soapbox orators” in “terms of anti-Semitism and white versus black,” creating a “feeling of race antipathy” that “remained pent up in the community waiting for a spark to set it off.” Leaders of the campaign saw a different connection, holding white storeowners’ refusal to respond to the campaign responsible for the violence, which Rev. Johnson cast as “the explosion of a suppressed people who have been exploited by the business interests of this community,” (NYA, 3/30) and Rev Imes described as storeowners “reaping the harvest they have sown.”
Historian Cheryl Greenberg drew a similar connection between the boycott and the disorder (Kessner points to pent up rage against storeowners after months of strained relations due to job campaign as prompting initial clashes, but not larger outbreak (369); Watson, Thomas, Johnson do not mention it). She argued that after the collapse of the campaign “Harlemites were left in early 1935 with a strong sense of common grievance and a recognition of the potency of mass action but no organized way of channeling the struggle that had a broad appeal. Yet thousands of Harlemites were now accustomed to mass meetings, to listening to street corner orators define problems and offer solutions, and to breaking the law.” [406] However, the targets of the disorder do not so neatly fit the boycott campaign as Greenberg argues: “The attack was directed against only white property and confined to those areas, both topical and geographic, that were the focus of the failed jobs campaign -125th Street's white-owned businesses,” she asserts. “The riot did not, for example, attack white police officers or white passersby, or vandalize government offices.” (415) To the contrary, the evidence collected in this study shows that white businesses on the avenues many blocks north and south of 125th Street suffered damage and looting, smaller businesses quite different from those on 125th Street as well as small branches of chain stores. Additionally, there were alleged assaults on white passersby, and to a lesser extent, white police officers. If the disorder began in the footprint of the boycott movement, it overflowed those boundaries became an expression of the broad “racial antipathy” described by Theophilus Lewis rather than concern with racial discrimination. In that sense, the disorder echoed the attacks on whites of street corner speakers such as Sufi Abdul Hamid and black nationalists not the political agenda of the elite leaders of the boycott movement. The more detailed picture of the events of the disorder in 1935 provided in this study is much more like the disorder in 1943 than Greenberg portrayed it, smaller in scale rather than different in character.
Pickets first appeared in front of stores on West 125th Street in March 1932. Stories in the AN described members of the Negro Industrial and Clerical Association picketing Weisbecker’s meat and vegetable market at 268 West 125th Street, and later, in June, Woolworths at 210 West 125th Street, carrying signs that read “This store is unfair to colored labor” and “Do not spend your money where you cannot work” [AN, March 30]. Sufi Abdul Hamid founded the organization when he arrived in Harlem from Chicago, bringing with him experience using picketing to pressure white businesses to hire Black workers gained in campaigns in that city. Harlem, however, did not initially prove as receptive to such direct action. Black organizations would not give him a platform, and Black newspapers generally ignored his campaign, leaving Hamid to make his case on Harlem’s street corners, in competition with Garveyites and the CP. He set himself apart from other street speakers with his elaborate costume – described by a NYA journalist [Jan 19, 1935] as a “knee length, gold-braided green cape, black whipcord breeches, green shirt and black tie, Sam Browne belt and black riding boots, all topped by a gold-tasseled blue turban.” Hamid was also likely prominent among the street speakers who “viciously attack the white business man in Harlem” about which a letter to the NYA complained in 1932 [“Would Curb ‘Soapbox’ Orators,” August 6, 1932, 4] and gave “listeners an earful of what the white man is doing and what the black man must do,” according to another complaint sent to the AN (“Man in the Street: “Soap Boxers,”” June 15, 1932). When Hamid turned to direct action on 125th Street in 1932, New York police proved an obstacle. NICA picketers were arrested on at least two occasions, in March and in June, charged with disorderly conduct and disrupting traffic, for which Magistrates gave them suspended sentences to discourage further picketing.
After the second set of arrests, which included Hamid and thirteen others and came after four months of futile protest, according to historians August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, the NICA abandoned its campaign. In reporting the picketing only in relation to those arrests, the AN offered indirect criticism of Hamid’s approach that reflected the lack of support he received from other Black organizations in Harlem. Richard Nugent attributed the end of the campaign to Hamid’s dispute with the Tiger Division of the UNIA, in a biography written for the Federal Writers Project later in the 1930s. Hamid had unsuccessfully tried to recruit the Tiger Division to the boycott campaign, according to its leader, both the NYA and AN reported. That disagreement spilled over into clashes between adjacent street corner meetings of the two groups in August, resulting in police banning them speaking on Harlem’s streets, and later sending them to corners further apart. A subsequent alleged attack on the UNIA headquarters by the NICA on August 30 saw Hamid and six others arrested. CP speakers seeking space and attention on Harlem’s street corners also clashed with Garveyite groups. <<How is this relevant – speaks to the violence that accompanied presence of crowds on streets, in clashes with police and other groups, the context in which speakers attacked white businesses>> (NB neglected by ? historians, mentioned by Meier and ?)
In 1933, Hamid apparently relocated his meetings and pickets from 125th Street to the smaller white businesses around 135th Street, the center of the Black neighborhood. There is no mention of this activity in the Black press; the only evidence comes from Claude McKay’s study of the neighborhood, published in 1940. (A campaign that summer across the river in Brooklyn was the subject of a series of stories in the NYA, but it had elite leadership and veterans organizing the picket line, so was perhaps more palatable to the paper’s editors than Hamid). The white businesses in what McKay described as “middle Harlem” were different from the large department and chain stores on 125th Street. Small businesses, grocers, druggists and the like, they were usually operated by families and few staff. Hamid’s critics did not think those stores were appropriate targets. “(Certain ignoramuses) descend on a two-by-four shop where a man and his wife eke out a miserable existence and demand that he either take on help which he cannot pay for or else send his wife home and replace her with a colored person—such a measure only tends to ruin business,” NYA columnist Vere Johns complained, without naming Hamid. However, according to McKay, Hamid had a “modicum of success in the small stores,” as “for the first time some establishments employed Negro grocery clerks, in 1933.” [189-190]
Whatever Hamid did in 1933, he and his organization returned to 125th Street in 1934 to once again picket Woolworths, beginning around the middle of May, and to speak on the corner of 7th Avenue. The attitude of Harlem’s elite had changed sufficiently for Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. to join the picket line, an appearance publicized in a photograph on the front page of the AN on May 26. Hamid, however, went unmentioned in the caption, which identified the protest as organized by the NICA. The sign Powell was pictured wearing read “This Store Does Not Employ Negro Industrial Clerical All.,” an appeal to hire members of NICA rather than just Black staff. On the same day, the front page of the NYA published a story about another boycott campaign, initiated by Reverend John Johnson, after prompting from Effa Manley and a group of women, according to Greenberg. Inside the paper, the Carrying the Torch columnist called out Hamid‘s campaign for seeking jobs for organization’s members rather than the Black community, and Powell for joining the picket rather than organizing his congregation. By the first week of June, the Citizens League for Fairplay, organized in response to Johnson’s appeal, began picketing Blumstein’s store. Evidence of the protests comes from Harlem’s black newspapers, which took pronounced opposing positions on the campaign that skewed their reporting. Fred Moore, the editor of the NYA supported the campaign, and the newspaper effectively became its mouthpiece, with regular stories, editorials and support from columnists, particularly Vere Johns. The AN, by contrast, opposed the boycott campaign. Editorials and columnists Theophilus Lewis and J.A. Rogers claimed it would cause Black workers in other parts of the city to lose their jobs. It was also likely that, as Vere Johns (July 7) and the Carrying the Torch columnist (May 26) snidely charged, that having Blumstein as an advertiser contributed to AN’s editorial position.
While social and political organizations, fraternal lodges and churches joined the League, the direct action was organized by a picket committee led by Ira Kemp and James Thornhill of the African Patriotic League, one of the Black Nationalist groups whose leaders spoke on Harlem’s street corners. Society women and members of the African Patriotic League, UNIA and Abyssinian Baptist Church picketed, the NYA reported Kemp as telling a League meeting. Most were women; the Honor Roll published by the NYA included 83 women and 58 men (8/4, 9). They carried signs reading “Stay Out of Blumstein” and “Don’t Buy Where You Cannot Work,” which Attorney Richard Cary assured the group “were in accordance to legal requirements and fully protected.” [July 7] As picketers walked back and forth in front of the store, they were not to cause a crowd to gather or “annoy” shoppers entering and leaving the store, Carey warned, so as to avoid arrest. Departures from “orderly, dignified, peaceable” action the NYA (editorial 7/14) blamed on “radical organizations.” It was Hamid and his supporters joining the pickets that created “disturbances and excitement.” Carrying “meaningless” signs, they caused “trouble” with League pickets and annoyed shoppers, according to Kemp and Thornhill. (July 14). Despite their criticism of Hamid, the L and NYA apparently accepted incidents of violence against shoppers which, at least according to the NYA, did not involve participants in the protest: “One man who purchased a porcelain jar was accosted on leaving the store and had his package taken from him and smashed on the pavement. Another customer with a shopping bag in which there was a newly purchased straw hat was also buffeted about and saw his new straw hat trampled underfoot. It is reported also that a man and woman went inside the store and attempted to drag several ladies out by the hair.” (July 21). In the same issue, columnist Vere Johns supported a ‘head-whipping committee,’ allegedly proposed by a street speaker, as there were “quite a few thick-headed Negroes who would only be convinced of the wisdom of staying out of a store like Blumstein’s by having their heads knocked about.” These stories suggest that violence attended the pickets, even if not always expressed. [The details of the picketing receive only passing mention in the analyses of historians ? etc]
After eight weeks Blumstein’s agreed to hire thirty-five Black staff on July 26. Hamid’s NICA returned to picketing Blumsteins, complaining it had been ignored during negotiations with the store. Those pickets withdrew after a month, although the NICA continued to picket Woolworths three buildings to the east. [AN, 9/15] The League shifted its pickets to Weisbecker’s meat and vegetable market further west on 125th Street, starting on August 18, the NYA reported (8/26). By mid-September, the League leadership and the leaders of the Picket Committee were at odds over the women Blumstein had hired, who were all light-skinned, and not drawn from those who picketed, the AN reported (9/15). As Kemp and Thornhill extended their targets on West 125th Street, the League leaders and the NYA (Sep 22) were describing the Picket Committee as “renegades” and attacking the targets and tactics of their pickets. Given the newspaper’s clear opposition to the group, the sudden attention to the disorderly nature of picketing in its stories may not be reliable evidence– but it could equally be reporting what had always been part of this direct action as distorting the activities of the Picket Committee. The AN was in agreement with NYA’s attacks on Kemp and Thornhill, although it blamed the CL for the Picket Committee’s actions as it had “double-crossed” the group. (editorial, Oct 20, 1) However they behaved, once the Picket Committee broken away from the L, they appear to have increased the scale of picketing and the disorder it brought to 125th Street.
By September 21st, 50-60 picketers appeared daily on 125th Street, making it difficult for customers to enter stores along 125th Street, according to evidence given in the New York Supreme Court cited by historian Christie Anderson. Although a week or so earlier, Kemp had told the AN (9/22) that eight clothing and shoe stores spread along the two blocks between Lenox and 8th Avenues had entered into agreements with his group, and hired thirty Black staff, pickets reappeared to pressure them to hire members of the organization. A. S. Beck’s shoe store was among that group, with pickets beginning on September 15, according to the evidence presented in the NY Supreme Court, only a day or two after the AN reported that the manager spoke at the anniversary celebration of the African Patriotic League alongside Kemp and Thornhill (Sep 22). So too were the La Gene Shop and Nobbes Dress Shop, according the NYA (Oct 6) and AN (Oct 20). Those pickets were “Intimidating store-keepers, assaulting shoppers and by a campaign of maliciousness with no regard as to the results of their vicious tactics…demanding complete control of the allotting of jobs to Negroes in the 125th Street stores,” the NYA reported (Sep 22, 1). The specific incidents reported in the press focused on interactions with shoppers that Carey had warned the CL to avoid. Police arrested a picketer named Arnold Brout, for accosting Eleanor Hove in front of the Weisbecker store to stop her shopping inside, the NYA reported, so that, “annoyed by his efforts, she crossed the street, where she was slapped by the man.” Several weeks later, witnesses told the NY Supreme Court “one of the pickets [at Beck’s shoe store] collided with a prospective customer about to enter the store and threw her down. Disorder followed. Two of the defendants were arrested, tried and found guilty of disorderly conduct.” (paragraph 9) The NYA (Oct 13) reported that case as the men “annoying colored customers who attempted to enter the store” customer.” The AN (Oct 20) reported the arrests without details, noting only that picketers had distributed leaflets accusing store management of framing the two men. While all those incidents involved woman shoppers, Vere Johns described incidents involving men, in which male picketers “have a habit of using threatening language to gentlemen and making motions towards their rear pockets with their hands.” (October 27). Johns also reported two other arrests for disorderly conduct, of Henry Veal, one of the officials of the Picket Committee and another man.
On October 31, New York Supreme Court Judge Samuel Rosenman ended these clashes by granting Beck’s shoe store an injunction against Kemp and Thornhill’s pickets. He decided that the “controversy here is not a labor dispute,” in which picketing was legally protected, but “solely a racial dispute.” Permitting pickets in “a dispute of one race as opposed to another” risked counter protests by white groups, Rosenman argued, and “substantial danger that race riots and race reprisals might result in this and other communities.” (pgh 33) As a result of the injunction, on November 3 police arrested two men for picketing Beck’s store, according to stories in NYA and AN (11/17). Unlike pickets arrested earlier, those men received fines or workhouse terms rather than suspended sentences, the NYA reported. The L and its supporters in the NYA celebrated the injunction, despite its restriction on an effective form of direct action, as it shut down down the “renegade pickets,” or as NYA columnist Ebernezer Ray put it, was “the means of exterminating a group of parasites who had brought ill-repute to a reputable movement.” (Ray, 11/24)
The efforts of white business organizations, Jewish groups and police to end Hamid’s direct action enjoyed similar support from the L’s leaders and the NYA. In October, a white insurance adjuster and member of the Jewish Minutemen of America named Edgar Burman alleged Hamid had made anti-Semitic statements at a meeting on the corner of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue, resulting in a charge of disorderly conduct. The NYA (Sep 29) reprinted in full the story from the Jewish Day reporting those allegations, and later took on its claim that Hamid had called himself the “Black Hitler” (Oct 13)] Magistrate Harris acquitted Hamid, unable to resolve the contradictory statements of the white accusers and Hamid’s supporters the NYA (Oct 20) reported, and frustrated that no police officer had been at the meeting to provide “disinterested” testimony, according to the NYHT. NYA columnist Ebernezer Ray (Oct 20) had no such difficulty, questioning the credibility of the defense. Three months later police again arrested Hamid, charging him with preaching atheism and selling books without a permit. On this occasion a police officer was present at the street meeting to provide evidence, and Fred Moore, and senior police officers were on hand as character witnesses to aid the Magistrate in sentencing. “From the crowded courtroom, from the number of prominent citizens and law officers in hand ready to tell the court what kind of a man the uniformed Mohamed is, it was quite obvious,” a journalist for the AA wrote, “that a trap had been set for the caustic soapbox orator and non-conformist and that the threat of police and certain Harlemites to “get him yet” was being realized.” Hamid received two concurrent sentences of ten days in the Workhouse.
Although Hamid’s conviction was not the end of his activity in Harlem, as Vere Johns of the NYA (Feb 2) had trumpeted, there are no reports of picketing on 125th Street after the arrests at Beck’s store until the three YL appeared on March 19. (Picketing and calling for a boycott as response to violence by the staff of white businesses had precedent; Meier identifies such violence as the focus of that kind of direct action in southern cities). The boycott campaigns did contribute to who else was on the street that night. Lt Battle told a public hearing of the MCCH (17) that additional police officers patrolled the block of West 125th Street from 7th to 8th Avenues as a result of “unusual picketing of some of the stores” in the previous six months.
After the disorder, pickets returned to 125th Street. The groups involved cast their demands in terms of labor disputes to stay outside the injunction granted the year before (which did apply only to those named in the case, namely Kemp and Thornhill’s group). The CP, Rev. Powell and Rev. Imes, according to Naison (148), picketed Weisbecker’s starting in June, the Negro Liberator, a publication of the CP’s LSNR reported (June 15, 8 – illegible]. A picture of two male picketers, one black, one white, appeared on that paper’s front page on July 1, 1935; one of their signs read, “We Demand 1. Negro Trucker Drivers 2. 50% Negro Employees 3. Recognition of Action [Illegible].” (Greenberg notes police did try to shutdown that protest, citing an AN clipping that I cannot find in the newspaper itself). Hamid returned to 125th Street to picket the Lerner shoe store, having reorganized the NICA as what he claimed was a labor union and therefore entitled to picket. The Black women employees alleged that Hamid’s supporters had demanded they join the NICA, setting up the picket when they refused, according to the affidavits they provided to support the store’s request for an injunction to stop the protest. [in LaG, Roll 14, correspondence] The pickets went unreported in Harlem’s newspapers until that injunction was granted. Judge Cotillo determined that the NICA was not a union, the NYA (July 6) and AN reported (July 6). A longer story in the NYT reported the argument of the store’s lawyer, who used the disorder to amplify the connection between pickets and racial violence made by Judge Rosenham the previous year: “To deny the injunction would be to encourage so-called racketeers in the instigation of race prejudice which all too readily, particularly at the present time, may tend to lead to further race riots." Fred Moore again appeared to attack Hamid and support the injunction. For the following several years the only pickets found in Harlem were those of the CP and trade unions. Only when the Supreme Ct recognized a right to picket [WHAT GROUNDS] in 1938 did the Black organizations that joined the Citizen’s League turn again to picketing as a strategy, in campaign ultimately led by Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jnr.