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

Edna Ferguson, "Loot Frenzy of Mob Bared in Riot Terror," New York Daily News, March 21, 1935, 4.

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Police establish perimeter around Kress' store After Inspector Di Martini returned to 125th Street around 7:00 PM, he called for police reinforcements. A New York Evening Journal story celebrated the response as “the most remarkable “military” feat in the history of the department.” That portrayal was certainly how the police department would have sought to present the deployment. However, the arrival of additional officers appears to have taken longer than the story allowed, and to have been focused on establishing a perimeter around Kress’ store. The piecemeal arrival of reinforcements made that a protracted process. As police struggled to keep crowds away from Kress' store, those clashes served to disperse crowds along the avenues rather than stopping the violence. Unable to prevent windows being broken in businesses on 125th Street, police had to guard damaged stores, limiting the officers who could be deployed on the avenues. Guards appear to have prevented looting; they did not stop additional windows being broken. After crowds broke through on to 125th Street around 10:30 PM, there are only two further incidents in that area during the remaining disorder, an alleged assault on a woman and a shooting, both at the intersection of 125th Street and 7th Avenue. Although other incidents whose timing is unknown may have occurred during that time, the evidence suggests that police perimeter held through that period.

The New York Evening Journal story lauding the police response reported “a small army of 700 police was beating back the rioters” on 125th Street between 8th and 7th Avenues. That number likely reflected the total deployment rather than the force that set up the perimeter around Kress’ store. It was in line with the number Di Martini reported to the Police Commissioner were in Harlem after midnight and fell between the totals reported by newspapers, with the 1000 officers mentioned by the Daily Mirror at one extreme, and the 500 officers reported by the Home News and New York Herald Tribune representing the other end of the range. While the officers coming from beyond the local precincts went initially to 125th Street, Lt. Battle later told Langston Hughes that the reserve officers from Harlem's precincts went to their stations, on West 123rd Street and West 135th Street. Some of those officers may have been sent directly to other areas of Harlem, particularly those who arrived later in the evening.

The perimeter established by police extended from 8th to Lenox Avenues, and from 124th to 126th Streets, according to stories in the New York Times, Daily Mirror and Pittsburgh Courier, the only sources that described police deployments. While Inspector Di Martini had summoned the reinforcements, the newspapers credited that deployment to Deputy Chief Inspector McAuliffe, who commanded uniformed police in the borough of Manhattan, and would have taken over from Di Martini when he arrived around 9:00 PM. The department’s Emergency trucks attracted the most attention in newspaper stories, presented as the anchors of the police cordon. Six emergency trucks were stationed at the intersection of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue in the strategy reported by the New York Times, Daily Mirror and Pittsburgh Courier. Emergency trucks were more dispersed according to the New York Herald Tribune; two at West 125th and 7th Avenue, one at West 125th and Lenox Avenue, and one at West 127th and 7th Avenue.

The Emergency Services Division had succeeded the Police department’s Riot Battalion in 1925. Each truck had a crew of eight officers and, in addition to rescue equipment, carried a Thompson machine gun, three Winchester rifles and a Remington shotgun, as well as a tear gas gun, for use against "disorderly crowds." The twenty-two trucks in the department in 1935 were dispersed throughout the city. While the two located closest to 125th Street arrived relatively quickly, additional trucks would have taken significantly longer. Squad #6 was based on East 122nd Street, and had been involved in clearing shoppers from Kress’ store earlier. Squad #5, based on Amsterdam Avenue, arrived around 7:15 PM, according to Patrolman Eppler. The New York Evening Journal identified trucks as coming from Kingsbridge in the Bronx and from Coney Island at the southern end of Brooklyn, the later apparently arriving later: “It slithered perilously over wet streets but arrived in time for its crew to get into action.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle identified another squad from Brooklyn, Squad #16 from Herbert Street, as having crashed returning from Harlem, at 1:00 AM (a time when there was still significant disorder). Thompson did not mention the trucks. Neither did trucks appear in any of the published photographs of the disorder. Some of their crew did, identifiable because the rifles they carried - described as “riot guns” in newspapers stories and photograph captions - caused them to stand out from other police. They did not, however, have a machine gun that needed to be “set up,” as the Afro-American reported: each truck instead carried a single hand held ‘Tommy gun.’ Nor were the trucks equipped with enough of those weapons for all the crew to have one. And there are no reports that they used tear gas. Those weapons prompted several newspapers to use martial language in stories about the squads’ activities. The New York Evening Journal story on the police reinforcements described Harlem as a “seething battleground,” and the police as “beating back the rioters in a savage and organized attack.” An Emergency truck from the Bronx “leaped off the machine and tore into a crowd of window smashers” (perhaps at Herbert’s jewelry store at 125th Street and 7th Avenue, where another New York Evening Journal story described a similar scene). The Daily Mirror described Emergency trucks as "being sent to the battle zone."

The other evidence of the presence of Emergency trucks placed them in less warlike roles. Newspaper photographs show their crew among the officers who guarded damaged stores. A patrolman with a riot gun stands in front of Herbert’s jewelry store on northeast corner of 125th and 7th Avenue in a photograph published in the Burlington Free Press. Stories in the New York Evening Journal and New York Herald Tribune described police with riot guns guarding the store (the Daily News, New York American and Home News described the officers simply as patrolmen). Another patrolman with a riot gun was photographed on the corner across 7th Avenue from the jewelry store. The image published in the New York Evening Journal is narrowly focused on the officer, whereas another version of that image published in the Daily Mirror shows a Black man walking past him, and the image published in the Daily News shows several Black men and women walking by on the sidewalk, evidence of the continued presence of people around 125th Street. Two additional patrolmen, one visibly carrying a rifle, stand in front of Sherloff’s jewelry store, just a few buildings north of the intersection, in an AP photograph published in the Los Angeles Times. Taken together, the images suggest that the crew of at least one Emergency Truck guarded stores at the intersection. Captain Rothengast, Patrolman Moran and Patrolman Eppler told the MCCH that they also guarded other stores on 125th Street, including Kress’ store. A photograph published in the Daily News shows a patrolman talking through a broken window with a man inside a store on 125th Street. Again, Black men and women are visible in the background on the sidewalk in the background, their presence indicating that police had not closed the streets.

The police perimeter appears to have focused on keeping crowds off 125th Street, not individuals and small groups. In addition to those visible in photographs, Captain Rothengast described seeing "groups of people in 125th Street – no more than 250" when he arrived at Kress’ store around 8:30 PM. A story in the Home News also reported that “In an effort to keep traffic moving, police permitted pedestrians to walk through 125th St. The sidewalks on both sides of the street were crowded.” Patrolmen Moran and Eppler testified that at least some of those people approached police guarding Kress' store asking about the boy beaten in the store, encounters also described by a reporter for the Afro-American. Allowing individuals to walk along 125th Street was not incident-free: around 8:30 PM, a white man was allegedly beaten in front of Kress’ store, with police arresting James Smitten for committing the assault. About twenty minutes later, police arrested Frank Wells for breaking a window in the Willow Cafeteria. Just before 10:00 PM, Detective Roge was hit by a rock in front of Kress’ store and another patrolman injured at 124th Street and 7th Avenue. At the same time, Louise Thompson described larger groups being pushed back by police. She told a MCCH hearing she saw "one policeman throw his billy into the crowds while the mounted police were riding them down” at the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue between 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM, a scene similar to that captured by a photograph published in the Daily News. There is no evidence of where that photograph was taken, but a second photograph of police dispersing a group of Black men and women, the most widely reproduced photograph of the disorder, was taken at 125th Street and 7th Avenue according to the caption. It shows the island that that divided the north and south lanes on the roadway, which contained trees and were surrounded by the barriers like those visible in the photograph. A group of men and women are scattering in response to a uniformed patrolman moving toward them. One man is bent over; the caption describes him as falling down. He may also have been pushed down or hit by the patrolman; another man obstructs the view of what has happened between the two men. (One version of the caption claimed that the photographer was hit by a rock soon after taking the image, which might explain why the patrolman was trying to move the crowd).

One of the Black men killed during the disorder, Andrew Lyons, sustained a fractured skull "during the thick of a melee at 125th street and Seventh avenue," according to the New York Amsterdam News, or a block further west at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue according to the Times Union. Police clubs may have been responsible for those injuries, but the doctors who treated Lyons recorded that had been too groggy to tell his roommate or anyone else how he had been injured. No sources mentioned police firing revolvers or rifles to try to disperse the crowds.

On at least two occasions large crowds appear to have broken through the police perimeter. Louise Thompson told a MCCH hearing that around 9:00 PM a crowd broke through on to 125th Street. The Home News also reported that incident. Store windows were broken, Young's hat store looted, and two white men and a white police detective allegedly assaulted around that time. A second crowd broke through around 10:30 PM, resulting in more windows being broken and a white man allegedly being assaulted, and police arresting four Black men.

Most of the incidents on 125th Street before 10:30 PM did not result in arrests, likely because police were heavily outnumbered by crowds and constrained by the responsibility of guarding stores. Only at Kress’ store it seems were enough officers stationed to make arrests: there arrests were made not just around 10:30 PM but also just before 10:00 PM and at 8:30 PM. There are no arrests among those with known times in the period between the arrest of the picketers in front of Kress’ store at 6.45 PM and arrests on 125th Street between 8:30 PM and 9:00 PM. There are approximately a dozen arrests made at unknown times and places that might have occurred during this time, but it is more likely that police were too outnumbered to make arrests, as Lt. Battle later told Langston Hughes. While an arrest for breaking windows was made just before 9:00 PM, police made no arrests for the assaults and broken windows reported when a crowd broke through soon after.

The police perimeter appears to have held after 10:30 PM. Sometime before then, no later than 10:00 PM, and likely as early as between 8:30 PM and 9:00 PM, groups had moved on from 125th Street to attack businesses on 8th Avenue and 7th Avenue, and later, Lenox Avenue. In response, police began to disperse across Harlem, driving along those streets in radio cars and taking up positions on street corners and guarding damaged stores. Exactly when the first police were sent beyond 125th Street is not clear. The first arrest made away from 125th Street, on West 127th Street between St Nicholas and 8th Avenues around 9:00 PM, appears to have been made by a patrolman on his way to 125th Street rather than being deployed elsewhere in Harlem. The arrest of Leroy Brown around 9:45 PM on 7th Avenue between 127th and 128th Streets is clearer evidence of a spreading police presence.

With the MCCH giving limited attention to this period of the disorder, witnesses who testified at their hearings did not provide the details they do of the earlier police response. Newspaper reporters and photographers were on 125th Street during this time, so would have seen some of these events and been able to obtain information from police. Inspector Di Martini spoke with a group of reporters including one from the Afro-American during this time. At the same time, those reporters would have had a limited view. The block was too long for those at one intersection to see the details of what was happening at the other intersection, or even for those at Kress' store to clearly see the nearby intersection with 8th Avenue. At the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue the Afro-American's reporter saw only "little knots of people on the corner;" "once he walked on, however, he found high police officials and the first detail of 500 extra policemen rushed to the area" and "a large number of people between Seventh and Eighth Avenues." It is unsurprising then that newspaper stories offer only general and fragmented accounts of this period of the disorder. Information on specific events comes from legal records, which are limited largely to the period around 10:00 PM when police made arrests, and narrowly focused on the actions of a single arresting officer.
Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store windows broken Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store on the northeast corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue had windows broken in the early hours of the disorder, beginning after police drove crowds on 125th Street toward 7th Avenue after 8.00 PM. Just how much damage the store suffered the store suffered is uncertain. "One brick was thrown through the window," the New York American reported, while the New York Post and New York Evening Journal reported windows on just one side of the store had been smashed, and the New York Herald Tribune that two windows were broken. The most damage was reported in an interview with Bernard Newman, the store manager, published in the Daily News. He claimed that fourteen "big show case windows" were broken. However, despite being attributed to the manager, the accuracy of that claim is questionable as the story also reported Newman as saying that "the mob jumped in the windows and scrambled for the jewelry," taking at least "Several thousand dollars worth" of merchandise. No other newspaper reported such looting; they all reported to the contrary that the store was not looted. "No attempt was made to loot the windows," according to the New York Herald Tribune, a statement echoed by the Home News. There was nothing to loot, in the New York American's story, as clerks had removed the display from the window. It was police arriving that prevented looting, according to the New York Evening Journal, describing the scene in typically sensational terms, "The emergency squad police swept into the mob with riot guns, drove the yelling, threatening men and women from their loot, and then guarded the store until armored trucks could remove the valuables." Newman was "deeply impressed with the police by the way they handled the situation in the vicinity of the store on the night of the riot," he told a MCCH investigator two months after the disorder, adding weight to the evidence that they did protect the store from being looted.

Two newspaper photographs show a smashed window and empty display that is likely a section of the windows of Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store. It was identified as a jewelry store by the captions to both photographs, and several bracelets and a pearl necklace can be seen on the back row of the display in the image that includes a white man looking into the window (no example of that image being published has been found; it is part of the Bettman collection).
Embed from Getty Images
Only the caption of the photograph in the Afro-American gave a location for the store, on Lenox Avenue, so not at the address of Herbert's store. However, compelling details in the photograph point to Herbert's, namely the distinctive panels beneath the windows, which are visible in the Tax Department photographs of the store, most clearly in the section visible in the photograph of the building to the store's north on 7th Avenue. Mistakenly locating the store on Lenox Avenue, as the caption appears to have done, also occurred a story in the New York Evening Journal, quoting the manager! The Afro-American photo caption also reported that items had been taken from the store window, but did not use the term looting, instead describing merchandise "scattered in all directions" rather than taken. The image itself could equally well fit with the displays having been emptied by clerks, as several other newspapers reported, as with having been looted.

Whenever they arrived, police "were stationed in front of the store for the night," as the Home News put it, one of the few stores identified as receiving such protection. One patrolman standing in front of the store appears in a image taken by a photographer for World Wide Photos, published in the Burlington Free Press and several other newspapers.

While the caption did not identify the store, the distinctive panels that decorated the exterior below the windows are visible behind the officer. He was armed with a "riot gun," a rifle rather than pistols regularly carried by police. Additional officers may have guarded other sections of the storefront. Four patrolmen with riot guns guarded the store in a New York Evening Journal story, three patrolmen in the Daily News, while the New York American and Home News reported two policemen guarded the store, and the New York Herald Tribune did not specify how many "police with riot guns." (Only the Afro-American mentioned police setting up "machine guns to prepare for pitched battle," weapons that were not part of police equipment). Clashes between those policemen and crowds are mentioned only by Bernard Newman, interviewed in the Daily News:
It looked for a while, according to Newman, as though the mob would crash the doors and pillage the store, despite three policemen with drawn guns who guarded the entrance. "We waited near the rear, ready to barricade ourselves in the cellar," Newman continued breathlessly, "but by some miracle the doors held."
In other reports, the police presence less dramatically deterred crowds from approaching the store windows. Police "patrolled in front of the building," in the New York Herald Tribune's account, "Their armament effectively preventing attack by looters," according to the New York American. A second patrolman with a riot gun was photographed guarding another store at the intersection of 7th Avenue and West 125th Street, likely the United Cigar Store across 7th Avenue from Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry on the northwest corner of 125th Street. Notwithstanding the police guards, no one arrested for breaking windows, or looting, was charged with targeting the jewelry store.

However many windows were broken, multiple rocks were apparently thrown at the store, as Newman displayed a collection of rocks to reporters from the New York Evening Journal, New York Post and Daily News, the later publishing a photograph of them. The United Cigar Store and the businesses on the other corners were also targeted during the disorder; Regal Shoes on the southeast corner was also reported looted, while the United Cigar Store on the northwest corner and the branch of the Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant chain on the southwest corner only had windows broken. Only three stores with broken windows are reported on West 125th Street east of 7th Avenue, suggesting that most of the crowd instead went north and south on the avenue, where there were multiple reports of looting and assaults, including the looting of another jewelry store, owned by Jack Sherloff, opposite Herbert's store by the Alhambra Theatre.

The broken windows in Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store were more widely and extensively reported by the white press than any other damaged business. The prominent location of the business likely contributed to that coverage, as did the apparent willingness of the store manager, Bernard Newman, to speak with reporters.

The jewelry store is recorded at the address in the MCCH business survey in the second half of 1935 and is visible in the Tax Department photograph from sometime between 1939 and 1941.
Jack Sherloff's jewelry store looted "When the trouble started, around 8.45, Mr. [Jack] Sherloff jumped into the show window [of his jewelry store at 2112 7th Avenue] and tried to save the stock," his clerk John Wise told Edna Ferguson, a reporter from the Daily News:
He had tossed only a few pieces back into the store when the rioters ganged him. He put up a terrific battle and got badly banged up; he's home in bed now. Somebody finally clipped him with a silver cake plate snatched from the window and I had to drag him into the store to save his life.
An Associated Press photograph is the only other evidence related to Sherloff's store. The store number, "2112 7th Ave," is visible above the door in the version published in the Los Angeles Times (but is cropped out in versions published in other newspapers). Remnants of signs, the distinctive window display, and the caption identify it as a jewelry store. Shattered glass is scattered in front of the windows, the right pane of which seems entirely smashed and the left pane to have a large whole in its center.

Sherloff does not appear in any records of those injured during the disorder. Of the four stores mentioned in Ferguson's Daily News story, only one appears in any other source (and the story included a sensational description of looting of Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store that is contradicted by all the other mentions of that store). None of the arrests for looting linked to businesses occurred during this time. While some of the other arrests for looting may have come during this time, it seems unlikely. The New York Herald Tribune claimed "the first arrest for alleged looting" during the disorder came two blocks further north, around 10.10 PM, when Officer Irwin Young arrested Leroy Gillard. Frank Wells was arrested for breaking windows around five minutes after Sherloff jumped into his store window, but around the corner on West 125th Street, where the police were concentrated at this time. It would be another hour before Leroy Brown was arrested across 7th Avenue at the southern end of the block for allegedly urging people to follow his example and break store windows. But there are several other reports of attacks on stores in the three blocks of 7th Avenue north of 125th Street, suggesting that crowds first moved there in the hour or so prior to those arrests. But few, if any, police appear to have then been on these blocks of 7th Avenue when the crowds began to attack stores; certainly not enough to both protect stores and make arrests, so no arrests were made to bring the events into the legal system.

Given the time, many businesses in this area would still have been open, but the struggle between Sherloff and those attacking his store is the only reported instance of a violent clash between storeowners or staff and those attacking stores. Herman Young was struck by a brick thrown through his store window on Lenox Avenue early on March 20, but otherwise all those reported as being present took cover in the rear of their stores.

While the Daily News story reported that Sherloff "suffered heavy losses" from the looting, he appeared to have been able to remain in business, perhaps thanks to insurance: the MCCH business survey found a white-owned jewelry store at the address in the second half of 1935.
Max Greenwald's tailor store looted Sometime on March 19, when people moving north from West 125th Street began throwing objects at stores on 7th Avenue, Max Greenwald headed for the lights in his tailor store at 2111 7th Avenue. The next day, he told Edna Ferguson, a reporter from the New York Daily News, what happened next:
"When the bricks started flying, I right away shut off my lights," explained Greenwald. "That way I don't make such a good target and I go out and save a lot of merchandise. Pretty soon, however, so much stuff comes flying in even without the lights that I give up and think only of saving myself. Even in the store I wasn't safe, entirely, look!"

He held up a ten-pound slab of paving. One bullseye from this fellow and right away Mrs. Greenwald is a widow. Anyway, I lose about twenty suiting lengths of woolens, uninsured, and believe me never did goods leave my store so quick! No waiting to pick patterns either!"
Although Greenwald does not give the time that attacks on his store started, it was likely around the same time as objects were being thrown at the windows of Jack Sherloff's jewelry store directly across 7th Avenue, 8.45 PM, and Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store down the block on the corner of West 125th Street, 8.30 PM. The stores would still have been open at that time, giving owners and staff the opportunity to protect their stock. Greenwald mentions a period of time when objects were being thrown at the store before anyone took goods from the store, but it appears briefer than general accounts that suggest an interval between attacks on businesses and looting. However, he did have time to "save a lot of merchandise," which given he had no insurance, would have been crucial to Greenwald being able to remain in business. Although the MCCH business survey did not include the store, a Tailors store is visible at the address in the tax photo from 1939.

The newspaper story is the only source to mention the looting of Greenwald's store. Of the four stores mentioned in the New York Daily News, only one appears in any other source. Police made no arrests in this area until around 9.45 PM, when Leroy Brown was arrested two blocks to the north for urging people to follow his example and break store windows, followed around 10.10 PM, by Officer Irwin Young's arrest of Leroy Gillard across the street on the same block for looting. Until then, few, if any, police appear to have then been on 7th Avenue north of West 125th Street; certainly not enough to both protect stores and make arrests, so events like the attack on Greenwald's store are not part of the legal record.
Mrs. Salefas' delicatessan looted Mrs. B. Salefas was in her "corner two-window delicatessen store" at Lenox Avenue and 123rd Street on March 19 when objects struck and shattered the windows. As glass flew around the store, she sheltered in a rear storeroom. Interviewed the next day Salefas told Edna Fergsuon of the New York Daily News:
It broke my heart to abandon my store, but what could I do all alone? Every time I peeked out from in back a shower of bricks greeted me. They got away with about $100 worth of food and all my beautiful dishes I was saving for prizes.
The newspaper story is the only source to mention the looting of Salefas' store. Of the four stores mentioned in that story, only one appears in any other source. There is no information on the time of the attack on the delicatessen other than the vague statement that Salefas was trapped "when the trouble started." That she was in the store suggests that it was still open, so the windows were likely broken before midnight. Attacks on Morris Towbin's haberdashery on the corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue started around 10.30 PM, and stores on the two blocks south of 125th Street across Lenox Avenue from Salefas' store had windows broken sometime during the disorder, but police made no arrests in this area, perhaps because there were far fewer businesses than in the blocks to the north. The presence of police may also have limited activity. The New York Evening Journal mentioned that Patrolman William Clements was "on guard duty" outside a grocery store at West 123rd Street and Lenox Avenue at some point during the night, when B.Z. Kondoul encountered him as he fled down 122nd Street from 7th Avenue. His presence could also have contributed to the relatively limited value of Salefas' losses. No one among those arrested for looting was identified as taking goods from this business.

The location of Salefas' store cannot be precisely established. There are businesses on only the northeast corner of the intersection. No business at that corner appears in the MCCH business survey. None of the stores visible in the Tax Department photographs from 1939-1941 is a delicatessen. However the signage of the partially visible store at 27 West 123rd Street includes "Groceries and Vegetables," making it a possible location. The store on the corner itself had a stretch of windows along West 123rd Street that could produce the "crossfire of missiles" described in the story, but appears too large to be a delicatessen that could be staffed by one person and was more likely a branch of the James Butler grocery chain mentioned in a New York Evening Journal account of a later assault on B. Z. Kondoul. The jewelers next to that store on Lenox Avenue has windows either side of the door, and may have taken the location some time after the disorder.