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

Edward Genest assaulted

Edward Genest, a thirty-two-year-old white sailor from the S.S. Virginia, was stabbed in the left arm on 7th Avenue at 123rd Street. Lists of the injured in two newspapers, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the New York Herald Tribune, added the detail that he had been stabbed by Black assailants. Five newspapers noted only that he had been stabbed, the New York American (on both March 20 and 21), Daily News, New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and Home News.

Genest was likely a visitor to Harlem seeking entertainment on 125th Street who became caught up in the disorder. He could have travelled by subway, unaware of what was happening until he arrived. There was no information on when Genest was assaulted. The area around 125th Street and 7th Avenue was the site of clashes between Black crowds and police from early in the disorder, and reported attacks on white men and women around 9:30 PM, 10:00 PM, 11:00 PM, 12:30 AM and 1:00 AM. The attack on Genest could have occurred at any of those times.

The use of a knife in this assault was unusual; only one other of the 54 assaults in the disorder involved a stabbing, the attack on Morris Werner. In the rest of 1935, knives were a favored weapon of those committing acts of violence, used in two thirds of felony assault cases.   
 

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