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

Edward Loper arrested

Near the end of the disorder, at 5 AM on March 20, Edward Loper,  Charles Alston, Albert Yerber and Ernest Johnson allegedly opened fire on police stationed at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No police officers were reported injured, but Alston suffered a fractured skull as the men fled police. Trying to escape by leaping from the roof of a six-story-building to the adjoining building, Alston fell to a second-floor ledge. He was a twenty-one-year-old Black man, as was Loper, Yerber was twenty years of age, and Johnson was twenty-two years of age. Loper lived on the other side of Harlem at at 298 West 138th Street, as did Yerber, 106 Edgecombe Aveand, even further west, Alston at 512 West 153rd Street, while Johnson lived close to where they were arrested, at 206 West 140th Street. Only a small proportion of those involved in the disorder lived above 135th Street.

Newspaper stories contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language - for example, the New York World Telegram reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” policemen. Stories in the New York World Telegram and Brooklyn Daily Eagle did offer the name of the officer allegedly targeted by Alston and his companions, Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station, and the same dramatic account that a bullet whistled past his ear as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street. Taking cover, he saw the men on the roof of the six-story building at 101 West 138th. Soon after police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. One other story, in the Home News, identified Brennan, but cast him not as the target of the shooters but as one of the police who responded. In a radio car assigned to the area with his partner Patrolman McGrady, Brennan “heard the shots and sped to the scene. At the radio car's approach the four snipers [standing in the doorway] ran to the roof of the building.” This story provides the key detail that no guns were found on Alston and his companions.

Alston did not appear in court, likely because of his injury, but on March 20 Loper and the other two men were charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book. That offense did not involve any violence, reflecting that no guns were found in their possession; instead it focused on the men's presence in the area. It does not appear police had any evidence that Loper, Yerber or Johnson had created any sort of disturbance, as Magistrate Ford released all three men. Given that outcome, it is possible police officers confused where the shots fired at them came from, or perhaps mistook some other noise for gunfire. Without any evidence of an assault in the sources, these events are treated here only as arrests.
 

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