This page was created by Anonymous.
Grocery store looted (340 Lenox Avenue)
Detective Phillips of the 28th Precinct arrested Elizabeth Tai, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman, and Arthur Davis, a thirty-six-year-old Black man, for allegedly taking groceries from the store. A third person, an eighteen-year-old Black man named Herbert Hunter, was arrested by Phillips at the same time as Tai and Davis, according to a story in the Home News, but was not explicitly identified as also having taken groceries from the same store. Tai and Davis may not have broken the store windows, as a story in the Home News specified that their alleged offense occurred "after the windows had been smashed." The story in the Home News was the only source that linked Tai and Davis to 340 Lenox Avenue; a Daily Worker story reporting the same court appearance only mentioned that they were charged with "stealing groceries." However, in that court appearance the charge against Tai and Davis was reduced to disorderly conduct, suggesting that police could not produce evidence that they had taken any merchandise. Magistrate Renaud found them both guilty (as he did Hunter), and fined them each $25. Neither could pay that fine, so he sent them to the Workhouse for five days.
The grocery store did not appear in the MCCH business survey from the second half of 1935, which recorded the businesses on the southeast corner as at 340 Lenox Avenue. There was no business recorded on the northeast corner; the first business in that block in the survey is a plumbing shop at 342 Lenox Avenue. The Tax Department photograph taken sometime between 1939 and 1941 showed the plumbing shop was located one building north of the corner. The corner was still occupied by a large grocery store. There is no evidence to indicate if the business had the same owner as in 1935.