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Forms of violence in Harlem in 1935
The shootings in the disorder are more in proportion to those at other times, with 7 shootings in the 54 assaults (13%) compared with 31 in the 298 assaults at other times in 1935 (10%). However, the seven shootings in the disorder amounted to one-fifth of the year’s shootings occurring in one night.
Assaults without knives and guns of the kind that dominated the disorder (42 of 51 assaults) amounted to only one fifth (59 of 298) of the felony assault prosecutions at other times. Much of that violence involved the same objects used in the disorder: thirty of the fifty-five cases for which that information exists. Seventeen assaults employed fists, five iron pipes, five bottles, three biting and one a stone. In other cases the assaults employed items that would not have been available on the streets where the disorder took place, such as a baseball bat, blackjack, candle stick, pool cue, flat iron, chair, hammer, hatcher, coffee pot, sash weight, stick and lye. As was the case with knives, the absence of those items suggests that those involved in assaults during the disorder did not arm themselves prior to taking to the streets.
Far fewer of the assaults at other times in 1935 involved groups than during the disorder. Only 12 of 58 assaults, and 21 of 196 stabbings, compared with 17 of 24 in disorder (an additional 19 hit by objects in disorder, a form of violence particular to that context, could be either groups or individuals). Incidences of attacks by groups can be found in robberies, which also parallel the violence of the disorder in the prevalence of attacks on whites and in the weapons used (almost half of robberies did not involve weapons, 73 of 149). Groups of two to six individuals committed 124 of 150 robberies, and 55 of 61 robberies of whites, in the rest of 1935.
Missing entirely from violence at other times in 1935 are assaults in which individuals were hit by objects, the largest group of attacks in the disorder (19 of 54).