This page was created by Anonymous. 

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

Emmet Williams arrested

Sometime during the disorder, Officer Carrington of the 32nd Precinct arrested Emmet Williams, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, for allegedly breaking a window in Frendel's meat market at 2360 8th Avenue. There are no sources that clearly describe what Williams allegedly did. He is identified as "breaking window" in a list in the New York American, which fits the charge made against him in the Harlem Magistrates Court, malicious mischief. That offense involved damage to property, and all those arrested during the disorder who faced that charge had allegedly broken windows. Leo Halberg, a butcher employed in the meat market is recorded as the complainant against Williams in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, by " marks that refer to his details in the row above, the record of the appearance of Theodore Hughes. The clerk used the same marks to identify Carrington as the arresting officer. He arrested Hughes, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, for allegedly taking two pieces of salt pork from the broken window of the meat market, according to a story in the New York Herald Tribune and a list in the New York American. The later source specified that Hughes had taken the pork from an already broken window; Williams likely allegedly broke the window.

The home address recorded for Williams in the docket book, 242 West 127th Street, was only half a block west of 8th Avenue. The meat market was midway between 127th and 126th Streets, on the east side of 8th Avenue. He was likely drawn to the area by the multiple incidents of attacks on windows, looting, and violence reported there during the disorder: the arrest of James Hayes for allegedly looting the Danbury Hat store at 2334 8th Avenue near 125th Street; the arrest of Rose Murrell for breaking windows in a grocery store three buildings to the north, on the corner of 127th Street; the arrest of Thomas Babbitt for taking soap from Thomas Drug store a block north; and at the very end of the disorder, the arrest of Jean Jacquelin at 128th Street for looting and police shooting and killing James Thompson across the street from the store.

Williams appears in the list of those charged with inciting a riot published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide. A list published in the New York Daily News,  which misreported his name as "Emmet Hughes" and his race as white, listed the charge against him as disorderly conduct. In the court docket book, Williams is recorded as Black. Arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, directly after Hughes, the charge against Williams was malicious mischief. Several of the other people arrested during the disorder charged with breaking windows likewise were reported as charged with inciting a riot or disorderly conduct, but were then charged with malicious mischief in court. Like Theodore Hughes, Magistrate Renaud sent him to the Court of Special Sessions and held him on bail of $500. There is also no evidence of the outcome of his trial. Williams, and Hughes, are two of the few of those who appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court not mentioned in the Home News story on March 21 that provides brief details of the charges against those arrested in the disorder. Given the location of the market, Williams, and Hughes, should have been taken to the 28th Precinct and appear in their blotter, but they do not. Carrington may have instead taken them to his own precinct, the 32nd, on West 135th Street.

 

This page has tags:

This page references: