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• 1 2021-04-29T19:15:25+00:00 Businesses that did not survive (5) 50 plain 2024-01-18T20:08:57+00:00 The white-owned newspapers the New York Sun and the New York Evening Journal, the Black-owned Afro-American and the Spanish-language publication La Prensa reported that businesses in Harlem might close as a result of the disorder. The New York Sun implied that racial conflict motivated such decisions: "It is reported that many white merchants of the Harlem district have signified their intention of leaving the neighborhood just as soon as they can arrange for the disposition of their stocks." La Prensa reported a similar sentiment, that "it is impossible to continue doing business in areas that are exposed to racial outbursts and radical controversies." The statement in the New York Evening Journal was speculation linked to the losses suffered: "The looting of stores reached such proportions that small merchants feared they would be thrown into bankruptcy." The Afro-American's correspondent offered a similar assessment: "[Many businesses] probably will never open again because their owners are bankrupt as a result of the looting of stores and lack of insurance to cover the losses."
  
  A similar claim was made by Barney Rosentein, the attorney representing more than half of the 106 business owners who sued the city to recover losses they suffered during the disorder. "Many of his clients, Mr Rosenstein said, were completely wiped out by the wave of robberies which followed the beginning of the riots," the New York World-Telegram reported. The New York Sun reported the same claim without attributing it to Rosenstein. In newspaper stories about their suits against the city, only five business owners are identified as saying that they had gone out of business due to the damages they suffered. This group included the two owners who made the largest claims for damages, Harry Piskin ($14,125) and George Chronis ($14,000), and the owners who made the fourth and seventh largest claims, Harry Levinson ($4,805) and Irving Stekin ($2,068). The remaining owner, Manny Zipp, claimed only $721 in damages, below the median claim of $733.13 for the twenty-six owners identified in newspaper stories. Piskin and Chronis both told the city comptroller that extensive damage to their stores had put them out of business. Piskin said "they looted his laundry, broke all of his machinery and drove him out of business," the New York Sun reported, while Chronis said his lunchroom had been "completely demolished," according to the New York World-Telegram. Zipp and Levinson emphasized lost merchandise. Zipp told the city comptroller "everything in his store was taken," forcing him out of business, in a story in the New York Post, while Levinson said the "mob cleaned out" his store, forcing him to retire, the New York Sun reported. In Stekin's case, no explanation was given; a story in the New York Sun simply said he was not in business anymore.
  
  Indirect evidence of what happened to other businesses can be found in the MCCH business survey undertaken between June and December 1935 and the Tax Department building photographs taken between 1939 and 1941. However, the survey and photographs do not provide certain or comprehensive evidence. While the survey identified more than 10,000 businesses, other sources do indicate that it did miss some businesses and sometimes incorrectly recorded addresses. In most cases, the owner and the business name were also not recorded, so they cannot be matched to looted businesses with certainty. In addition, some of the Tax Department building photographs taken between 1939 and 1941 are taken from a distance or angle that does not show the storefront of the address that was looted.
  
  Twenty-one additional business owners who sued the city are identified in newspaper stories, seven of whom continued to operate their businesses after the disorder, appearing in the MCCH business survey and/or the Tax Department building photographs. Those businesses reported damages ranging from $453.90 to $1,273.90, lesser amounts than all but one of the businesses that closed. Those sources do not offer information on the remaining fourteen businesses identified as the subject of damage suits. Four of those owners claimed damages higher than those that remained in business: Samuel Mestetzky claimed $5,860.50; Irving Guberman claimed $3,967; Benjamin Zelvin claimed $2,685; and Sam Lefkowitz claimed $1,610.64. The scale of those damages makes it possible that these men may also have gone out of business.
  
  The losses for twenty-six additional businesses reported in legal records and the press were, with one exception, less than those of the businesses reported as suing the city, ranging from $10-12 to $1,000 (and one with losses of $10,000), with a median loss of only $100. Nineteen of those businesses reopened after the disorder; there is no information on the other seven businesses.
  
  In addition to the twenty-six business owners identified as suing the city, an additional eighty others also filed suits. Some of those businesses may be among those who appeared in legal records. There is no information on the scale of the damage they suffered, so no indication of whether any likely did not reopen.
  
  In total, nearly ninety percent (40 of 45) of the businesses reported as having being looted that can be identified in the sources reopened after the disorder.
  
   
• 1 2022-12-07T18:32:00+00:00 In Harlem court on March 22 (18) 40 plain 2024-02-12T20:00:26+00:00 Only the stories in the New York Times and Daily News described the scene at the courtroom on March 22. Police searched several who entered courtroom for weapons, according to the former story, and turned away those who “bore indications of connection with the Young Liberators, the Communist organization which fomented the disorder” according to Daily News. Neither of those stories indicated that police had to control a crowd like that which had gathered two days earlier. However, the Daily Mirror reported that "several hundred Colored persons" "thronged" outside the court. That story was discounted given that reporters from other publications had noted the presence of crowds earlier in the week, so it was likely that they would have again on this day if they had been present.
  
  The Daily Mirror story did provide a context for the day's proceedings, that "Magistrate Renaud began yesterday the work of cleaning his calendar of the remainder of 85 cases growing out of the Harlem riots." Only the New York Times explicitly offered a similar framing, that Renaud had "disposed of the cases of Negroes accused in the rioting and looting Tuesday night and Wednesday morning." The number of cases in the Daily Mirror story does not fit the legal records. No newspaper story identified all those who appeared in the court. The Home News, as it did on other dates, mentioned the largest number, ten of the seventeen. Its story described the charges against three of those convicted, Elizabeth Tai, Arthur Davis, and Herbert Hunter and reported testimony by the storeowner whose business Daughty Shavos and Clifford Mitchell had allegedly looted. Tai, Davis, and Hunter's convictions were the hearings reported most widely and in the most detail, also mentioned in the New York Evening Journal, Daily News, and Daily Worker. Mitchell and Shavos, appearing in the Magistrates Court for the first time and sent to the grand jury, were also mentioned in the New York Evening Journal, Daily News, and Daily Mirror.
  
  The three men discharged and rearrested as they had been indicted by Dodge's grand jury, James Hughes, Charles Saunders, and Isaac Daniels, are identified in the Home News and are the only individuals whose appearance was reported by the New York Post. Only Hughes and Saunders are mentioned by the Daily Worker, which describes them simply as held for the grand jury, omitting any reference to their discharge. Of the five additional men Renaud sent to the grand jury, Amie Taylor and Arthur Merritt are mentioned in the Home News, New York Evening Journal Daily News, and Daily Worker. No newspaper mentioned the appearances of the other three men sent to the grand jury, James Williams, John Henry, and Oscar Leacock (although the Home News had reported that morning that Henry and Leacock would appear, they were not in its story on the hearings published the next day, March 23).
  
  Nor did any publication mention the four men sent to the Court of Special Sessions, William Jones, Henry Goodwin, Frederick Harwell, and Jackie Ford. Ford, the third man to appear in court for the first time on March 22, with Shavos and Mitchell, was not mentioned in any of the stories on the day's hearings, although his arrest that day was reported by the New York Post, New York World-Telegram, and La Prensa. Paul Boyett, remanded a second time, also did not appear in stories about the day's hearings.
  
  According to stories in the Daily Mirror and the Home News, police also brought Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators to Harlem court on March 22. They did not appear before the magistrate, according to the Home News, because just before the hearing began, police found out that they had been indicted by Dodge's grand jury. The Daily Mirror reported only the consequence of that news, that they waited for a bench warrant to be served that would allow them to be discharged and rearrested as Hughes, Saunders, and Daniels had been. By the next day, March 23, several newspapers reported that process would occur at a later hearing, on March 25.
  
  The uneven coverage of these hearings is a further example of the incomplete and unreliable nature of newspaper stories about legal proceedings. That the mix of cases the stories reported included convictions and referrals of those charged with felonies but not any of those sent to the Court of Special Sessions suggests newspapers focused only on the more serious allegations. That focus is also evident in how the Home News emphasized the charges against Tai, Davis, and Hunter, notwithstanding that the outcome of the prosecution and short sentence indicated that they had been involved in less serious acts. The story reported their arrest for "stealing groceries" and that they had been found guilty of disorderly conduct and sentenced to five and ten days in the Workhouse, before noting that the original charge of burglary had been reduced by the court without addressing the implications of that change.
• 1 2021-12-14T19:50:40+00:00 Jackie Ford arrested 15 plain 2024-01-27T16:20:57+00:00 Early on March 22, Officer Mckenna of the 28th Precinct arrested Jackie Ford, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, for allegedly being one of a group who broke windows in Julia Cureti's restaurant at 142 Lenox Avenue. Where that arrest took place is unknown. While police made other arrests after the disorder at the homes of those they arrested, Ford was recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book as having "no home." Stories about Ford's appearance in court that same day in the New York Post, New York World-Telegram, and La Prensa mention only that Cureti had identified Ford as one of those she saw break windows. There was no information on how she came to identify Ford.
  
  As Ford was arrested two days after the disorder, he did not appear in the transcript of the 28th Precinct police blotter or lists of those arrested published on March 20. In the Harlem Magistrates Court, Ford was charged with malicious mischief, the offense used in cases in which windows were broken. Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions and held him on bail of $500, indicating that the value of the damage to the building was not more than $250, the level required for the charge to be a felony. There was no information found on the outcome of the prosecution.
• 1 2021-12-14T19:44:16+00:00 Julia Cureti's restaurant windows broken 15 plain 2024-05-30T21:11:32+00:00 Sometime during the disorder, windows in Julia Cureti's restaurant at 142 Lenox Avenue, on the southeast corner of 117th Street, were broken. Several businesses on the blocks of Lenox Avenue south and north of 116th Street had windows broken, damaged reported only in a story by a reporter for La Prensa who walked up Lenox Avenue the morning after the disorder. However, although the reporter would have walked by it, the restaurant is not included in that story. That likely indicates it was one of the business they reported had not been included as they had only suffered minor damage.
  
  Cureti must have been in the business at the time, as early on March 22 she identified Jackie Ford, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, as one of the group who broke the windows. There is no information on how she came to identify Ford. Reports of his appearance in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 22 in the New York Post, New York World-Telegram, and La Prensa only mention Cureti's identification and that Ford had broken her store windows. Cureti is recorded as the complainant against Ford in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, where the charge against him is recorded as malicious mischief. Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions and held him on bail of $500. There is no information on the outcome of the prosecution.
  
  
  
  A white-owned restaurant is recorded at 142 Lenox Avenue in the MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935. While that record likely indicates that Cureti remained in business, she may not have operated the restaurant much longer. When a man and woman were arrested after using counterfeit $10 bills to pay for food at the restaurant in July 1937, the New York Amsterdam News story identified Dennis King as the owner. Whoever owned it, a chicken restaurant is visible at 142 Lenox Avenue in the Tax Department photograph from 1939–1941.