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

"Harlem Riot Damage is Figured at Half Million," Afro-American, March 30, 1935, 1, 2.

This list of those arrested in this story was from a story by A. E. White distributed by the Associated Negro Press (ANP) and also published in the Norfolk Journal and Guide and Atlanta World. The list identified 117 of those arrested (and also included three names that were repeated (William Jones, Louis Cobb and Raymond Easley, the later two with variant spellings) and Lloyd Hobbs, who was not included among those arrested for this study as he died in hospital). Eleven of those arrested are missing from the list. Daughty Shavos and Clifford Mitchell were not arrested until late on March 20, and Jackie Ford was not arrested until March 22. Henry Goodwin was likely also arrested after daybreak on March 20 as he did not appear in court until March 21. Charles Alston was hurt trying to escape police and appeared in the list of the injured (he was not arraigned in the Magistrates Court until April 9). There is no obvious reason for the omission of six other arrested men: Albert Bass, Joseph Fernandez, Frank Hall, Herbert Hunter, Salathel Smith, and Nathan Snead.

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Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted 158 plain 2023-07-25T21:35:56+00:00
When Charles Hurley, a floorwalker, and Kress' store detective confronted Lino Rivera, an unemployed sixteen-year-old Puerto Rican boy, about stealing a pocketknife in Kress’ store, and started pushing him out of the store, the boy bit the hands of Hurley and a white window dresser who came to their aid, Steve Urban. Although having initially indicated that they wanted Rivera charged with assault, the two men ultimately did not ask police to arrest him. The incident is treated here as an assault as the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York American and Daily News listed the two men among the injured.

As the incident between Rivera and the store staff triggered the disorder, it was widely reported in the press and a topic investigated by the MCCH. This analysis relies on testimony given in MCCH public hearings, by far the most complete and detailed evidence. Newspaper narratives varied in detail, consistently reporting only that a boy had been grabbed by store staff for taking merchandise, and later released, but omitting most other details. Several white newspapers also published separate stories based on statements made by Rivera at the West 123rd Station during the disorder or at his home the next day that included additional details of why he was in the store and his encounter with the store staff but not of subsequent events in the store.

Rivera had begun the day by taking the subway to Brooklyn, in pursuit of job as an errand boy, he told reporters for the New York American and New York Herald Tribune. Finding the job already filled, he returned to Harlem. Getting off the subway at West 125th Street, Rivera decided to go to a show or movie at one of the theaters that lined the street, perhaps at the Apollo Theater opposite Kress' store, as a story in the New York Evening Journal claimed. When the show ended, Rivera went into Kress' store, a detail also reported in the New York Sun. He said he did so because he had "nothing to do," according to the New York Post, "just to look around I guess," according to the New York World-Telegram, or "to walk through to 124th Street," according to the New York American, "to take a short cut home," according to the New York Herald Tribune. Testifying in a public hearing of the MCCH, Hurley, a twenty-eight-year-old white resident of the Bronx, said he was with the store manager Jackson Smith in an office overlooking the rear of the store when he saw Rivera take a pocketknife from a counter around 2.30 PM. Calling down to the store detective, he pointed out Rivera and then headed to the floor himself. Rivera later admitted to reporters that he did take the knife, after it "caught his eye," according to the New York Post or "attracted" him according to the New York World-Telegram and New York American, or because it "matched a fountain pen set he had," according to the New York Herald Tribune. (The New York Sun mistakenly reported that it was chocolate that Rivera had taken). When Rivera denied having the knife, Hurley took it from the boy’s pocket. Both Rivera and Hurley testified that the men started to push him out of the store. According to Hurley, near the front door Rivera became scared and started to lash out at them. Rivera reportedly told journalists from the New York World-Telegram, New York Post and New York Evening Journal that he had told the men he could walk out on his own, and tried to shake free of their hold, "really started fighting" when, as he also testified in a MCCH hearing, Hurley said, "Let's take him down the cellar and beat hell out of him.” Hurley denied making that statement; he told the MCCH hearing that he held Rivera around his shoulders while the store detective tried to calm the boy. As a struggle developed, another store employee, Steve Urban, a thirty-nine-year-old white window dresser, also grabbed hold of Rivera, according to Hurley. Once the group was through the front door and into the store's vestibule, a recessed area of the street surrounded by display windows, the store detective went to get a Crime Prevention Bureau officer. That police agency provided an alternative to having children arrested; its officers instead undertaking investigations of their conditions in order to refer them to social agencies to better prevent “juvenile delinquency.” Kress store staff turned most of the boys they caught shoplifting over to the Crime Prevention Bureau, according to Hurley, and had police arrest only one or two a week.

Sometime after the store detective left, Rivera bit both Hurley and Urban on the hands and wrist, "trying to get away," he told a public hearing, reportedly explaining to journalists from that New York World-Telegram and New York Post that "I didn't want a licking." The struggle in the vestibule attracted the attention of Patrolman Donahue, who was the nearest of several police officers on West 125th Street at the time (identified in some newspapers as a traffic officer and by Rivera in a MCCH hearing as a mounted patrolman). Donahue took Rivera back into the store, to near the candy counter at the front, to get away from a curious crowd gathering on 125th Street, and sent an officer to get an ambulance to provide treatment for Hurley and Urban. (He told the MCCH hearing that the officer was his partner Keel, or another patrolman named Walton; the call log records the man's name as Miller, who was later identified by the store manager as a Black officer). The telephone call to Headquarters was logged at 2:30 PM, followed by one from Police Headquarters to Harlem Hospital at 2:35 PM, with the ambulance bringing Dr. Sayet recorded in the hospital records as having arrived at 2:40 PM. Those records provide better evidence of the timing of the incident than Donahue’s testimony that he witnessed the struggle at 2:15 PM. Soon after the ambulance arrived, the manager, Jackson Smith came to the front of the store, he testified in a public hearing, after being told a crowd had gathered by a staff member. Informed that a Crime Prevention Bureau officer had been called, Smith decided there was “nothing further for him to do,” and he returned to his office. A few minutes later Alfred Eldridge, a Black Crime Prevention Bureau officer, arrived. Usually the store staff would have turned Rivera over to Eldridge, who would have taken Rivera with him. However, on this occasion Hurley and Urban told Eldridge they wanted the boy arrested and charged with assault. Hurley told a public hearing he had gone to the rear of the store before Eldridge arrived, and did not want Rivera arrested, but the officer was clear that he spoke with both Hurley and Urban. The store manager similarly told a later public hearing that “Hurley wants to press charges for biting.” Eldridge could not take Rivera with him if he was arrested: “The job and purpose of our bureau is not to arrest a child," the told the MCCH hearing. He telephoned his superior, and told him that “the 5 & 10 wanted the boy arrested.” In response that officer told him to “let the patrolman take care of it due to the fact that he was first on case.” So after about 25 minutes at Kress, around 3:15 PM, Eldridge left the store.

However, Eldridge testified he later found out that soon after he left, “the store officials changed their mind.” Donahue simplified those events in the public hearing, testifying that “The boy was not arrested, but was taken through the basement to 124th Street and sent home.” He did not mention Eldridge or who reversed the decision to arrest Rivera. Hurley’s self-interested statement that he did not want him arrested made Urban responsible. Urban himself was not among those who testified before a MCCH public hearing. It does seem that it was Urban who Donahue said was with him when he released Rivera; the officer referred to him not by name but as “the window dresser.” They took Rivera out the rear rather than on to 125th Street as there was a crowd in front of the store and Donahue “didn’t want to start something,” he told a public hearing. He was clearly anxious enough about the situation in the store to ignore another option that Eldridge had given him, “that in the event that Kress Store did not want to press charges, that the boy could be handed over to us for supervision,” according to the Crime Prevention Bureau officer’s testimony. After releasing Rivera on to 124th Street, Donahue left the store, at around 3.30 PM. Many of the fifty or so mostly black women shopping in the store observed these events, after their attention had been attracted by the struggle between the two men and Rivera, and the appearance of an ambulance. None of these women testified in a public hearing. A Black man named L. F. Cole told a MCCH public hearing that he saw Rivera being taken to the basement by two men. As they had not seen Rivera leave the store, groups of women concerned to find out what had become of him remained in the store until Smith closed it and police pushed them out sometime around 5:00 PM or 5:30 PM.

Bites are a relatively minor injury, and the hospital record indicates that both men received treatment at the scene and were not taken to the hospital. Hurley did still have a scar when he testified at a MCCH public hearing on April 20. Hays examined it, announcing that “I should say enough [of a scar] to indicate there was a bite,” adding in response to a question from the audience that he saw four teeth marks.” Only one other individual in the disorder is described as having been bitten, Arthur Block, a Black man. He appears among lists of the injured in only three publications, with no details provided of the circumstances in which he was assaulted.

The significantly less detailed narratives of what happened between Rivera and the store staff published in newspapers largely reflected what Inspector Di Martini told a journalist working for the Afro American and others in front of the store around 7.30 PM: "A boy stole some little article here this afternoon. The manager caught him, grabbed him by the arm, and was taking him in the back when a woman screamed. The crowd gathered. The manager did not press charges, and let the boy go home through the back.” (At the at time, Di Martini’s information came only from interviewing Jackson Smith and Hurley, as both Donahue and Eldridge were off duty and would not learn of the disorder until the next day). Missing from that narrative was Rivera biting the men, which was also missing from stories in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York World-Telegram and New York Evening Journal, and Daily Worker. However, the assault was mentioned in the New York American, Home News, New York Sun, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, Atlanta World, New York Age, Philadelphia Tribune, Pittsburgh Courier, La Prensa and in Time magazine and the New Republic. Only the New York American, Daily News and New York Herald Tribune included language that gave a particular slant to the assault, with the New York American and Daily News describing Rivera as “hysterical” in his response to being grabbed by Hurley and the store detective, while the New York Herald Tribune labelled him pugnacious. The New York Age reported that “someone” had hit Rivera, the New York Herald Tribune and Brooklyn Daily Eagle that Hurley or Urban “slapped him", or “slugged him” according to the Pittsburgh Courier, with the New York Age mistakenly reporting that he was being treated at Harlem Hospital. That story was in a special edition of the New York Age published in the midst of the confusion early in the disorder. Two stories, in the New York American and New York Sun, had Rivera leave the store rather than being released. A story in The New Republic by white journalist Hamilton Basso included dialogue, almost certainly invented, between Rivera and the two men who grabbed him and comments from a crowd around him (Basso also mixed up the sequence of events inside and outside the store after Rivera's release).
- Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted (Part 2)
- Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted in secondary sources
Looting (67) The disorder resulted in damage to at least 300 Harlem businesses, perhaps as many as 450, many of which also had goods stolen. Such attacks on white businesses distinguished the events in 1935 from collective racial violence earlier in the twentieth-century, although the scale was far smaller than the disorders that would follow. When racial violence broke out in Harlem in 1943, four times as many businesses were targets of violence. The press labeled the theft as looting, a term that distinguished it on the basis of the context of violence and crisis in which it took place. Such theft often involved crowds publicly stealing goods, but those circumstances were not entirely out of the ordinary. Just over one in five (15 of 67) burglaries at other times in 1935 involved smashing street-front doors and windows, to steal goods before police responded, although not crowds of participants.

Although press reports and the MCCH gave prominence to attacks on property in characterizing the disorder as “not a race riot,” they offered only general descriptions of this violence, including fewer detailed incidents than was the case with assaults and none of the quantitative information that would be collected in subsequent racial disorders. However, damaged businesses do figure prominently in press photographs, highlighting that such damage represented a spectacle (one which also drew crowds to Harlem the day after the disorder to view the damage for themselves). Only sixty-seven looted businesses are identified in the surviving sources, twenty-nine linked to arrests, with nine stores linked to more than one arrest. An additional seventy-two businesses are identified as having their windows damaged, which would have exposed them to theft. There were almost certainly more looted businesses than those identified in the sources. In the cases of sixteen of those arrested for looting there is no information on their alleged targets; while some of those stores may be among those identified in other sources, given the limited number of cases where multiple arrests were made for thefts from the same store, most are likely missing from this picture of the looting. (Two looted businesses that appear in photographs whose location cannot be determined are not included in these counts).

The stores identified in the sources as having stock stolen represented a cross-section of the small businesses in Harlem focused on needs more than luxuries, and on personal items rather than larger items like furniture. Businesses providing food make up the largest group (24 of 57). Clothing was also a target (19 of 57), while the remaining businesses sold a variety of goods (14 of 57). Missing from this partial list of businesses attacked during the disorder are large stores and several enterprises prominent in the neighborhood: beauty shops, and barbers. There are sixteen individuals charged with looting unidentified businesses. Two looted businesses that appear in photographs whose location cannot be determined are not included in these counts. At other times in 1935 the full range of stores were targets of burglaries.

However, newspaper reports and legal records indicate that in the initial hours of the disorder store windows were smashed without efforts to steal their contents. After police dispersed the crowd drawn to Kress’ store and set up a cordon on 125th Street protecting it, another clash at the rear of the store on 124th Street around 7.45PM saw windows broken. Around the same time, crowds smashed windows on 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue. Although the police present on this block lacked the numbers to protect the windows, in several cases they responded to damage by taking up positions in front of stores, which appears to have prevented much looting. While many of the large stores were identified as having windows smashed at this time, only the New York Evening Journal reported that thefts also took place. Around 8.45 PM, when police succeeded in pushing the crowds from 125th St on to 7th and 8th Avenues, the smaller businesses on those streets became targets. Windows were broken, and isolated looting reported in the blocks of 7th Avenue immediately north of 125th Street (AM, AA, Hobbs investigation). The New York Times and Afro-American reported goods were thrown into the street rather than taken, actions more akin to efforts to damage property, to ransack, than a turn to theft, but it is not clear how often that happened. Many of these businesses were still operating and staffed, but that did little to curtail theft. In some businesses staff removed goods from windows and shelves, but most hid or fled crowds and bombardment with rocks and stones. More effective were the Black storeowners and staff who put signs in their store windows identifying the business as Black-owned, which spared them from looting if not always from having windows broken. Around 10PM, as crowds began to move away from the block of 125th Street containing Kress’ store, where police were concentrated, assaults and attacks on stores spread through Harlem. Further isolated looting occurred on 7th Avenue north of 125th Street, and after 10.30PM, in the area of 116th Street to the south.

Around midnight, reporters from the New York Herald Tribune, Daily Mirror and Afro-American noted a change in the tenor of the disorder reflected in arrests: violence became overshadowed by looting, particularly on Lenox Avenue in the blocks north of 125th Street, lasting until around 2 AM. This turn to looting was helped by both earlier damage to windows that offered access to displays and store interiors and the lesser police presence in this area. By that late hour most undamaged businesses had closed, some with their doors and windows protected by iron gates and grills. However, those additional obstacles did not prevent looting, an indication of growing violence and limited police presence. At least three businesses in this area were also set on fire, having been looted first. Even the return of some businessowners, once they learned of the disorder, did little to prevent looting, with several reporting futile efforts to secure police assistance. The progression from violence and damage to looting also features in the later racial disorders, in Harlem and Detroit in 1943, and in Detroit in 1967. As Sydney Fine argues was the case in Detroit in 1967, that pattern locates looting as a consequence of the violence, not as the defining characteristic of the disorder, and as serving to prolong disorder.

The progression from damage to looting also reflected time for additional groups to join the crowds of men most prominent in the initial violence. In later racial disorders, women would be much larger presence among those arrested for looting, and in images of theft. However, in 1935, while three women are among the sixty individuals arrested for looting, almost as many women were arrested for other offenses: two for breaking windows and another for inciting a crowd. Several newspapers reported that white men also joined the looting, but only two are identified in legal records. One of those men was arrested in circumstances that do not put him in the midst of the disorder: Jean Jacquelin, a thirty-three-year-old Canadian driver with a previous arrest for assault with a knife, arrested at 5.40AM, after the crowds had left the streets, in possession of clothing stolen from a tailor down the block from his home. Louis Tunick, the second white man arrested, is not linked to a specific business, and lived outside Harlem (one additional white man, Leo Smith, was arrested for breaking windows).

The feature of the looting that drew particular comment in the reports of newspapers and later the MCCH was the extent to which it targeted only white-owned businesses, sparing Black-owned businesses. The press reports allowed that a small number of Black-owned businesses did suffer damage, either before identifying themselves with signs, or after crowds became less discriminating (MCCH). However, none of the instances of looting identified in the sources involved black businesses. At the same time, Harlem’s racial landscape was more complex than these reports recognized. Among the “white-owned” businesses targeted were a number of Hispanic/Puerto Rican businesses around 116th Street, and Chinese laundries scattered throughout the neighborhood.

Police responded to looting very differently than to crowds and attacks on stores, with a greater degree of violence and more arrests. Theft warranted firing at suspects, rather than in the air, as police claimed they did in confronting crowds and assaults. Police pursuing suspected looters shot and killed Lloyd Hobbs and James Thompson. Sixty of those arrested were alleged to have been looting, identified in the sources either because they were charged with burglary, an offense which involved breaking into a store and entering it to take merchandise, or by details of what police officers alleged an individual had done that fit looting but that resulted in other charges such as petit larceny or disorderly conduct. Those arrests far outnumbered those arrested for any other activity during the disorder (although what prompted the arrest of 30 of the 133 arrested is not known). Officers generally claimed to have seen an individual stealing goods from a business. At least some of those police arrested claimed to have simply been standing with crowds on the street when police approached. In one-third (9 of 27) of the cases where the circumstances are known, the arrest occurred away from the looted store, as police apparently stopped and questioned individuals they encountered carrying goods.

Courts also treated charges of looting more severely than other alleged offenses in the disorder. Magistrates held over half (28 of 50) of those who appeared before them for the grand jury, compared to only one third of those charged with assault. The grand jury did redirect a significant number to the Court of Special Sessions, casting them as involving goods of too little value to warrant treatment as felonies. District attorneys followed the same pattern with those individuals as at other times in 1935, negotiating guilty pleas for lesser offenses with most, so that only two prosecutions for looting went to trial.

As these criminal prosecutions made their way through the legal system, Harlem's white business-owners turned to the civil courts seeking compensation from the city for their losses on the basis of a nineteenth-century municipal law that held a city or county liable if their property was destroyed or injured by a mob or riot. One hundred and six owners brought actions, twenty-six of who were identified in newspaper stories. The first of those suits heard in the Municipal Court was brought by William Feinstein, who owned a liquor store on Lenox Avenue. The jury awarded him damages, a verdict which two months later the judge decided to uphold. In the interim, the city also lost a second case in the Municipal Court, for damages to Anna Rosenberg's notion store, which had been set on fire, and seven actions in the Supreme Court, which heard cases for larger damages.
Events
Kress 5, 10 & 25c store front windows broken Around 6.15 PM, a step was set up on the sidewalk in front of the Kress 5, 10 & 25c store. A Black man climbed up, spoke briefly to the crowd of about 100 gathered there, and then had Daniel Miller, a twenty-four-year-old white man take his place on the step. As Miller began to speak, someone threw an object through one of the store windows. A second object quickly followed, smashing another window, according to the New York Times and New York Sun. Different objects are identified as having smashed the store window. A bottle was the most common, identified in the New York Times and Home News, and more precisely as a milk bottle in the New York Sun and a whiskey bottle in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and by a police inspector quoted in the Afro-American. The Daily News identified the object as a brick, as did the New York Sun in the case of the second object, while Louise Thompson described it as a stone. The MCCH report opted to simply say "a missile" hit the window. These are all everyday objects, likely to hand on 125th Street, other than the whiskey bottle. A whiskey bottle fitted with portrayals of those who attacked white businesses as hoodlums and played to racist stereotypes about African Americans, as was evident in the appearance of this detail in a list of brief items headlined "Highlights on the Harlem Front." Picketing of white-owned businesses on 125th Street by Black organizations in 1934 had not resulted in any broken windows; concern about what had become of the boy arrested at Kress' may have caused this crowd to react differently. There may also have been members of groups affiliated with the Communist Party in the crowd; when those groups picketed the Empire Cafeteria in 1934, they did break windows.

After the windows was broken, police officers moved in to arrest Miller and push people away from the store, most of who ran across 125th Street to the opposite sidewalk. No one was arrested for breaking the window. Harry Gordon was arrested soon after trying to speak to the crowd on 125th Street east of Kress' store. A few minutes later, around 6.45 PM, three men began picketing in front of Kress' store. They too were soon arrested by police. Three to five police radio cars, an emergency [riot] truck, and six mounted policemen struggled to keep people from the store. No further objects appear to have been thrown at Kress' store front windows at this time. Soon after West 125th Street was cleared, around 7 P.M., people pushed on to 8th Avenue saw a hearse stop behind the store on West 124th Street, triggering rumors it had come to pick up the body of the boy who had been arrested, and a rush to the rear of the store that saw windows there broken.

Sustained and extensive attacks on stores on 125th Street came sometime after those rear windows were broken. Another brick hit Kress' front windows around 10:40 PM, allegedly thrown by William Ford, who then called for others on the street to attack police. Louise Thompson described a group breaking though the police cordon around 125th Street to break all but a few windows in the store, in the context of an exaggerated claim about the extent of smashed windows, and Kress' store does appear on the list of businesses with broken windows compiled by a La Prensa reporter who walked down 125th Street. But a reporter for the Afro-American wrote that the store "suffered very little loss on the front." The store manager, Jackson Smith, confirmed that later in a public hearing of the MCCH. Of the eighteen windows facing 125th Street and in the vestibule, only four were damaged. Repairs to the front of the store next day appear to have focused on only two sections of the store window, on the right side of the left entrance, in a photograph published in the New York American, and on the left side of the right entrance, where a ladder can be seen in Universal newsreel footage. Those repairs cannot have taken long. A photograph of Kress' store published in the Daily News on March 21 showed intact store windows, guarded by two police officers. A sustained police presence during the disorder appears to have protected the front of the store. That was the opinion of Channing Tobias, the fifty-three-year-old Black secretary of the Colored Division of the National Council of the YMCA, who told E. Franklin Frazier that "I guess it was because police were on guard" that Kress' store "got only a small window smashed." Police established a cordon in front of the store after it closed. Officers were still there around 10 PM, when Detective Henry Roge was hit by a rock while standing in front of the store, and after a window was broken at 10:40 PM there were officers able to arrest William Ford. Later in the evening the police cordon extended to cover 125th Street from 8th Avenue to Lenox Avenue, with Kress' store remaining at its center, and as the base for police responding to the disorder.

A window being smashed as a speaker began to address a crowd in front of Kress' store featured in narratives in the New York Times, New York Sun, and Home News. Only the New York Times and New York Sun mentioned the second object and smashed window. A broken window, without reference to a speaker, is reported by the Daily News, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York Age, and Pittsburgh Courier. No mention of a window in Kress' store being smashed at the beginning of the disorder appears in the narratives published in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Journal, New York American, Daily Mirror and New York Post, and the Afro-American reported only the damage visible the next day. In the MCCH public hearings, Inspector Di Martini, Patrolman Moran, Jackson Smith, the store manager, and Louise Thompson (who also mentioned it in her account published in New Masses) all discussed how the window was broken. In the MCCH's final report, the arrests of Miller and Gordon police made in the aftermath of the window being broken are included as examples of "actions on the part of the police [that] only tended to arouse resentment in the crowd."

The Kress 5, 10 & 25c store appears in the MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935 and was still visible in the Tax Department photograph from 1939-1941.
Police establish perimeter around Kress' store After Inspector Di Martini returned to 125th Street around 7:00 PM, he called for police reinforcements. A New York Evening Journal story celebrated the response as “the most remarkable “military” feat in the history of the department.” That portrayal was certainly how the police department would have sought to present the deployment. However, the arrival of additional officers appears to have taken longer than the story allowed, and to have been focused on establishing a perimeter around Kress’ store. The piecemeal arrival of reinforcements made that a protracted process. As police struggled to keep crowds away from Kress' store, those clashes served to disperse crowds along the avenues rather than stopping the violence. Unable to prevent windows being broken in businesses on 125th Street, police had to guard damaged stores, limiting the officers who could be deployed on the avenues. Guards appear to have prevented looting; they did not stop additional windows being broken. After crowds broke through on to 125th Street around 10:30 PM, there are only two further incidents in that area during the remaining disorder, an alleged assault on a woman and a shooting, both at the intersection of 125th Street and 7th Avenue. Although other incidents whose timing is unknown may have occurred during that time, the evidence suggests that police perimeter held through that period.

The New York Evening Journal story lauding the police response reported “a small army of 700 police was beating back the rioters” on 125th Street between 8th and 7th Avenues. That number likely reflected the total deployment rather than the force that set up the perimeter around Kress’ store. It was in line with the number Di Martini reported to the Police Commissioner were in Harlem after midnight and fell between the totals reported by newspapers, with the 1000 officers mentioned by the Daily Mirror at one extreme, and the 500 officers reported by the Home News and New York Herald Tribune representing the other end of the range. While the officers coming from beyond the local precincts went initially to 125th Street, Lt. Battle later told Langston Hughes that the reserve officers from Harlem's precincts went to their stations, on West 123rd Street and West 135th Street. Some of those officers may have been sent directly to other areas of Harlem, particularly those who arrived later in the evening.

The perimeter established by police extended from 8th to Lenox Avenues, and from 124th to 126th Streets, according to stories in the New York Times, Daily Mirror and Pittsburgh Courier, the only sources that described police deployments. While Inspector Di Martini had summoned the reinforcements, the newspapers credited that deployment to Deputy Chief Inspector McAuliffe, who commanded uniformed police in the borough of Manhattan, and would have taken over from Di Martini when he arrived around 9:00 PM. The department’s Emergency trucks attracted the most attention in newspaper stories, presented as the anchors of the police cordon. Six emergency trucks were stationed at the intersection of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue in the strategy reported by the New York Times, Daily Mirror and Pittsburgh Courier. Emergency trucks were more dispersed according to the New York Herald Tribune; two at West 125th and 7th Avenue, one at West 125th and Lenox Avenue, and one at West 127th and 7th Avenue.

The Emergency Services Division had succeeded the Police department’s Riot Battalion in 1925. Each truck had a crew of eight officers and, in addition to rescue equipment, carried a Thompson machine gun, three Winchester rifles and a Remington shotgun, as well as a tear gas gun, for use against "disorderly crowds." The twenty-two trucks in the department in 1935 were dispersed throughout the city. While the two located closest to 125th Street arrived relatively quickly, additional trucks would have taken significantly longer. Squad #6 was based on East 122nd Street, and had been involved in clearing shoppers from Kress’ store earlier. Squad #5, based on Amsterdam Avenue, arrived around 7:15 PM, according to Patrolman Eppler. The New York Evening Journal identified trucks as coming from Kingsbridge in the Bronx and from Coney Island at the southern end of Brooklyn, the later apparently arriving later: “It slithered perilously over wet streets but arrived in time for its crew to get into action.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle identified another squad from Brooklyn, Squad #16 from Herbert Street, as having crashed returning from Harlem, at 1:00 AM (a time when there was still significant disorder). Thompson did not mention the trucks. Neither did trucks appear in any of the published photographs of the disorder. Some of their crew did, identifiable because the rifles they carried - described as “riot guns” in newspapers stories and photograph captions - caused them to stand out from other police. They did not, however, have a machine gun that needed to be “set up,” as the Afro-American reported: each truck instead carried a single hand held ‘Tommy gun.’ Nor were the trucks equipped with enough of those weapons for all the crew to have one. And there are no reports that they used tear gas. Those weapons prompted several newspapers to use martial language in stories about the squads’ activities. The New York Evening Journal story on the police reinforcements described Harlem as a “seething battleground,” and the police as “beating back the rioters in a savage and organized attack.” An Emergency truck from the Bronx “leaped off the machine and tore into a crowd of window smashers” (perhaps at Herbert’s jewelry store at 125th Street and 7th Avenue, where another New York Evening Journal story described a similar scene). The Daily Mirror described Emergency trucks as "being sent to the battle zone."

The other evidence of the presence of Emergency trucks placed them in less warlike roles. Newspaper photographs show their crew among the officers who guarded damaged stores. A patrolman with a riot gun stands in front of Herbert’s jewelry store on northeast corner of 125th and 7th Avenue in a photograph published in the Burlington Free Press. Stories in the New York Evening Journal and New York Herald Tribune described police with riot guns guarding the store (the Daily News, New York American and Home News described the officers simply as patrolmen). Another patrolman with a riot gun was photographed on the corner across 7th Avenue from the jewelry store. The image published in the New York Evening Journal is narrowly focused on the officer, whereas another version of that image published in the Daily Mirror shows a Black man walking past him, and the image published in the Daily News shows several Black men and women walking by on the sidewalk, evidence of the continued presence of people around 125th Street. Two additional patrolmen, one visibly carrying a rifle, stand in front of Sherloff’s jewelry store, just a few buildings north of the intersection, in an AP photograph published in the Los Angeles Times. Taken together, the images suggest that the crew of at least one Emergency Truck guarded stores at the intersection. Captain Rothengast, Patrolman Moran and Patrolman Eppler told the MCCH that they also guarded other stores on 125th Street, including Kress’ store. A photograph published in the Daily News shows a patrolman talking through a broken window with a man inside a store on 125th Street. Again, Black men and women are visible in the background on the sidewalk in the background, their presence indicating that police had not closed the streets.

The police perimeter appears to have focused on keeping crowds off 125th Street, not individuals and small groups. In addition to those visible in photographs, Captain Rothengast described seeing "groups of people in 125th Street – no more than 250" when he arrived at Kress’ store around 8:30 PM. A story in the Home News also reported that “In an effort to keep traffic moving, police permitted pedestrians to walk through 125th St. The sidewalks on both sides of the street were crowded.” Patrolmen Moran and Eppler testified that at least some of those people approached police guarding Kress' store asking about the boy beaten in the store, encounters also described by a reporter for the Afro-American. Allowing individuals to walk along 125th Street was not incident-free: around 8:30 PM, a white man was allegedly beaten in front of Kress’ store, with police arresting James Smitten for committing the assault. About twenty minutes later, police arrested Frank Wells for breaking a window in the Willow Cafeteria. Just before 10:00 PM, Detective Roge was hit by a rock in front of Kress’ store and another patrolman injured at 124th Street and 7th Avenue. At the same time, Louise Thompson described larger groups being pushed back by police. She told a MCCH hearing she saw "one policeman throw his billy into the crowds while the mounted police were riding them down” at the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue between 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM, a scene similar to that captured by a photograph published in the Daily News. There is no evidence of where that photograph was taken, but a second photograph of police dispersing a group of Black men and women, the most widely reproduced photograph of the disorder, was taken at 125th Street and 7th Avenue according to the caption. It shows the island that that divided the north and south lanes on the roadway, which contained trees and were surrounded by the barriers like those visible in the photograph. A group of men and women are scattering in response to a uniformed patrolman moving toward them. One man is bent over; the caption describes him as falling down. He may also have been pushed down or hit by the patrolman; another man obstructs the view of what has happened between the two men. (One version of the caption claimed that the photographer was hit by a rock soon after taking the image, which might explain why the patrolman was trying to move the crowd).

One of the Black men killed during the disorder, Andrew Lyons, sustained a fractured skull "during the thick of a melee at 125th street and Seventh avenue," according to the New York Amsterdam News, or a block further west at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue according to the Times Union. Police clubs may have been responsible for those injuries, but the doctors who treated Lyons recorded that had been too groggy to tell his roommate or anyone else how he had been injured. No sources mentioned police firing revolvers or rifles to try to disperse the crowds.

On at least two occasions large crowds appear to have broken through the police perimeter. Louise Thompson told a MCCH hearing that around 9:00 PM a crowd broke through on to 125th Street. The Home News also reported that incident. Store windows were broken, Young's hat store looted, and two white men and a white police detective allegedly assaulted around that time. A second crowd broke through around 10:30 PM, resulting in more windows being broken and a white man allegedly being assaulted, and police arresting four Black men.

Most of the incidents on 125th Street before 10:30 PM did not result in arrests, likely because police were heavily outnumbered by crowds and constrained by the responsibility of guarding stores. Only at Kress’ store it seems were enough officers stationed to make arrests: there arrests were made not just around 10:30 PM but also just before 10:00 PM and at 8:30 PM. There are no arrests among those with known times in the period between the arrest of the picketers in front of Kress’ store at 6.45 PM and arrests on 125th Street between 8:30 PM and 9:00 PM. There are approximately a dozen arrests made at unknown times and places that might have occurred during this time, but it is more likely that police were too outnumbered to make arrests, as Lt. Battle later told Langston Hughes. While an arrest for breaking windows was made just before 9:00 PM, police made no arrests for the assaults and broken windows reported when a crowd broke through soon after.

The police perimeter appears to have held after 10:30 PM. Sometime before then, no later than 10:00 PM, and likely as early as between 8:30 PM and 9:00 PM, groups had moved on from 125th Street to attack businesses on 8th Avenue and 7th Avenue, and later, Lenox Avenue. In response, police began to disperse across Harlem, driving along those streets in radio cars and taking up positions on street corners and guarding damaged stores. Exactly when the first police were sent beyond 125th Street is not clear. The first arrest made away from 125th Street, on West 127th Street between St Nicholas and 8th Avenues around 9:00 PM, appears to have been made by a patrolman on his way to 125th Street rather than being deployed elsewhere in Harlem. The arrest of Leroy Brown around 9:45 PM on 7th Avenue between 127th and 128th Streets is clearer evidence of a spreading police presence.

With the MCCH giving limited attention to this period of the disorder, witnesses who testified at their hearings did not provide the details they do of the earlier police response. Newspaper reporters and photographers were on 125th Street during this time, so would have seen some of these events and been able to obtain information from police. Inspector Di Martini spoke with a group of reporters including one from the Afro-American during this time. At the same time, those reporters would have had a limited view. The block was too long for those at one intersection to see the details of what was happening at the other intersection, or even for those at Kress' store to clearly see the nearby intersection with 8th Avenue. At the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue the Afro-American's reporter saw only "little knots of people on the corner;" "once he walked on, however, he found high police officials and the first detail of 500 extra policemen rushed to the area" and "a large number of people between Seventh and Eighth Avenues." It is unsurprising then that newspaper stories offer only general and fragmented accounts of this period of the disorder. Information on specific events comes from legal records, which are limited largely to the period around 10:00 PM when police made arrests, and narrowly focused on the actions of a single arresting officer.
Cases in the civil courts (106) At least one hundred and six claims seeking damages from the city were filed, with sixty-five more suits rejected because they were filed after the three-month window allowed by the statute. Those numbers were consistently reported by multiple newspapers in stories in July, 1935, but appear to have come from Barney Rosenstein, an attorney representing many of those plaintiffs, rather than an official source. The General Municipal Law required claims be filed within three months of the damage, so no additional cases could have been filed after that date. Nonetheless, a higher total, 160 cases, was reported in October, as only a proportion of the total, only those in the Municipal Court which handled smaller claims. Only a handful of newspapers published that number. The New York Herald Tribune attributed that information to the Corporation Counsel, an official source, but no other story provided a source. The only indication of how many cases were in the other civil court, the Supreme Court, came in stories about the first trial in that court in March 1936. However, the number came not from an official source but again from Rosenstein, who mentioned fifteen "similar" cases. That number likely only represented cases that involved plaintiffs he represented. As the total of 106 cases was the most widely and consistently reported, it was used as a baseline in this study.

Only twenty-seven businesses are identified in reports of the litigation. None of those businesses had Black owners, and there was no evidence that Black business-owners filed damage claims. All but two of those business were represented by Barney Rosenstein. While several newspapers reported that he represented around half of the 106 cases reported in July, 1935, it is not clear how representative these plaintiffs are of those who filed claims. All but four of the businesses were located on Lenox Avenue, or just off the avenue, in the blocks from 125th Street to 130th Street. Several of those businesses were neighbors: Jacob Saloway, Anthony Avitable and Manny Zipp at 381 and 383 Lenox Avenue; Jack Stern, Sam Apuzzo and Michael D'Agostino at 348 Lenox Avenue; Irving Guberman and Samuel Mestetzky at 60 West 129th Street; and Michael D'Agostino and Irving Stetkin at 361 and 363 Lenox Avenue. In addition, at least as recently as 1930, four of the business owners, Michael D'Agostino, William Gindin, Jacob Saloway and Irving Stetkin, had lived in 1930 in the apartments above 363 Lenox Avenue, a building anomalous in this area of Harlem in being home to only white residents. Barney Rosenstein represented all those men. Both the business owners not represented by Rosenstein had stores further north on Lenox Avenue, above West 131st Street. There is no evidence of whether their attorneys represented other business owners who filed claims; the New York Herald Tribune claimed that there were other lawyers like Rosenstein with multiple clients, a situation also seen in the aftermath of the racial disorder in Chicago in 1919.

Six insurance companies joined in suits against the city. The Royal Insurance was identified as a co-defendant in the trial of William Feinstein's claim in the Municipal Court. It took a position at odds with the city in arguing that a riot had occurred, and thus the company had no liability as their policies excluded that situation. Approximately two-thirds of Harlem’s businesses had insurance according to a widely reported survey of forty-seven companies who paid out $147,315 to replace 697 glass windows broken in 300 stores. But insurance was not available throughout Harlem. One plaintiff, Estelle Cohen, complained to Mayor LaGuardia that she had no way of making up her loss of at least $800 as “we do not carry burglary insurance on account of not being able to get it up in that section,” just south of 132nd Street.

The total of the damage claims filed against the city was reported as $116,000 in July, 1935. Stories in the Daily News, New York World-Telegram and the New York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier added that the claims ranged from $2.65 to more than $14,000. The first twenty claims announced in April by Barney Rubenstein made up just under $38,000 of the total, and ranged from $14,125 to $47.40, with a median claim of $733. Stories about the first trial to settle a claim reported a total of $1 million in claims, which some newspapers attributed to the judge and which a small number quoted Mayor La Guardia as saying. No sources noted or explained the jump in the total from what was reported in July. (The New York Herald Tribune had included an estimate of a "Million" in the headline of an early story on the disorder, but other newspaper stories in the immediate aftermath of the disorder had offered lower estimates: for example, around $500,000 according to the Afro-American, "more than $400,000" according to the Associated Press and "more than $350,000" according to the Pittsburgh Courier. Most newspapers simply reported extensive property damage.) The claims that went to trial in the Municipal Court were for $627.40 and $980.13, and in the Supreme Court, $20,000. The type of business was identified for only sixteen of the twenty-seven claims. Nine of those business involved food and drink, five business involved clothing, and two businesses involved other goods The missing information, together with the small number of identified business, mean little weight can be given to that distribution, but it was in line with the targets of looting during the disorder. In other words, there is no evidence that the owners of particular types of businesses filed claims more often than others.

At least initially the city's lawyer, the Corporation Counsel, pursued a strategy of denying all the claims. As a result, the claims had to be resolved in the city's civil courts, the Municipal Court, the venue for smaller claims, and the Supreme Court, the venue for larger claims. Only three trials were reported in the press, two in the Municipal Court in September and October 1935, and one in the Supreme Court in March 1936. The interval between the deadline for filing claims in June and the legal proceedings was likely the result of the full calendar of the courts noted by the New York World-Telegram. Newspaper stories referred to all three trials as test cases, although the New York Times reported that the city's lawyers denied that and insisted they would try all the claims individually on their merits. The cases of William Feinstein's liquor store and Anna Rosenberg's notion store tried in the Municipal Court appear typical of the claims filed after the disorder, other than the fire set in Rosenberg's store. Only two other stores were damaged by fire during the disorder. They were the only two plaintiffs identified in the press not represented by Barney Rosenstein. Charles Garfinkel represented William Feinstein. Anna Rosenberg's attorney was not identified.

The city's liability for damages resulting from a riot, while seemingly not well known, at least among reporters, was clearly established by state law and by judicial decisions that interpreted that law broadly. The legal basis for the claims was a statute enacted in 1855. Section 71 of the General Municipal Law read, “A city or county shall be liable to a person whose property is destroyed or injured therein by a mob or riot for the damages sustained thereby” provided that person did not contribute to the damage, had used all reasonable diligence to prevent damage, notified the authorities of the threat to their property, and brought the action within three months. The manager of Feinstein's store and the owner of a business near Rosenberg's closed store described crowds on the street breaking windows, looting stores and setting fire despite the presence of police. Rosenstein's clients, based on their testimony to the Comptroller before their trials, more explicitly criticized police for providing insufficient protection for their stores, and refusing direct appeals for help. Such failures were not necessary to obtaining damages; they did, however, establish that the business owners and their staff had not contributed to the damage and that the authorities were aware of the riot. This evidence effectively left the city with only one defense, that the events in Harlem had not been a riot. That was the main claim of a motion that the Corporation Counsel filed after the jury ruled in favor of William Feinstein and awarded him damages. The judge in that trial, Benjamin Shalleck, reserved judgement on that motion so he could research the law; the judge in Rosenberg's trial simply dismissed the city's motion after that jury also ruled in the plaintiff's favor. Shalleck confirmed that position when he published his opinion two weeks later. In the Supreme Court a month later, the Corporation Counsel advanced a specific definition of a riot that he contended events in Harlem did not fit, and called three senior police officers to give testimony in support of that position. Again, the jury was not persuaded and awarded damages to the seven plaintiffs whose cases Rosenstein presented.

While the city lost all three cases, the damages the jury awarded in the two Municipal Court cases were significantly larger than those later awarded by their counterparts in the Supreme Court. Feinstein's award was $450, 70% of his claim of $627.40. Rosenberg's award was $804, 82% of her insurance company's appraisal of her losses, $980.13. The seven plaintiffs in the Supreme Court collectively received $1200, only 6% of their $20,000 of claims. That dramatic drop in the awards was not remarked upon or explained in the press, but it could explain the lack of subsequent trials. Awards of that scale could have encouraged the city to settle the other cases.

Events
Police in front of Kress' store Although Inspector Di Martini told a MCCH hearing that he saw no “indications of further trouble” when he left 125th Street at 6:00 PM, he did station some officers at Kress’ store -"Sergeant Bauer, two foot policeman, one mounted policeman in the rear to prevent a riot” according to his testimony, or “a Sergeant and four patrolmen” on the 125th Street side and “a mounted patrolman and a foot patrolman” on the 124th Street side according to his report to the Police Commissioner immediately after the disorder. A patrolman stationed in front of the store told an MCCH hearing that there were 10-15 officers there around 6:15 PM; that total may have included officers on regular assignment on 125th Street. However many police were present, one was Patrolman Shannon, who like Bauer, had been inside the store earlier.

Patrolman Moran, who arrived after Kress' store was closed, described being instructed to “keep the crowd moving in front of the store.” He insisted he did so by requesting them to “move on;” the lawyers who questioned him at a hearing of the MCCH alleged he used force, pushing people and using his nightstick. By around 6:15 PM, Moran said the front of the store was “pretty clear” while a crowd walked up and down on the opposite side of the street. Louise Thompson told the MCCH that there “little knots of people” on the street (although she wrote in New Masses that the crowd in front of the store numbered in the hundreds, that across the street in the thousands). Two men set up a stepladder in front of the store, a Black man named James Parton speaking briefly and then as, Daniel Miller tried to speak to the crowd, a window in the store was broken and Patrolman Shannon arrested Miller. Outnumbered as they were by the crowd, police made the arrest following the practice of focusing on the leaders of crowds. Other officers then cleared the crowds from in front of the store, moving them first across West 125th Street and then towards 7th avenues. Thompson testified that “police got rough and would not let anyone stop on the street” and wrote “the cops who were becoming ugly in their attempts to break up the increasing throngs of people.” About fifteen minutes later Patrolman Irwin Young, assisted by several other officers arrested Harry Gordon when he climbed a lamppost to speak to the crowd. They bundled him into a radio car and took him to the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street. Again, police were trying to control the crowd by arresting men they perceived to be leaders, possibly identifying them as Communists with whom they regularly clashed. They had not arrested Parton, the Black man who introduced both Miller and Gordon. A few minutes later, Patrolman Shannon, Sgt Bauer and Patrolman Moran were involved in arresting two white men and a Black man after they refused to stop picketing in front of Kress’ store. Those men carried placards that identified them as members of an organization associated with the Communist Party, which again likely contributed to the decision to arrest them.

After the arrests, police continued to move on people who stopped on the sidewalks around Kress’ store – and perhaps clear some who had gone into the street itself, as the New York Herald Tribune reported the street reopened after being blocked to automobiles and streetcars. By 7:00 PM, the crowds had been pushed to the avenues (some of those on 8th Avenue for a short time moved to attack the rear entrance of Kress’ store, where two police officers were hit by objects thrown by those trying to get into the store). Additional officers who arrived seem to have been key to that success. “15 patrolmen, six mounted police and uniformed men of five radio cars” were on 125th Street by that time according to the New York Evening Journal. Inspector Di Martini also returned, around 7:15 PM.

The Daily News published a photograph of the disorder that showed police officers engaging with crowds. The caption for the image, which captures the largest crowd to appear in a photograph of the disorder, described only the actions of one of the two uniformed patrolmen visible: "“The raincoated policeman swings in against the angry crowd as his comrade tries to hold the police line. One colored man is lifting his arm as if to restrain the cop.” The use of force captured here is at odds with Patrolman Moran's insistence that officers simply asked crowds to move. While uniformed patrolmen carried nightsticks as part of their standard equipment, detectives in plainclothes were issued them for riot duty, according to the New York Evening Journal. As well as hitting people with their batons, police officers used the butts of their revolvers and riot guns as clubs. The Times Union directly contradicted Moran's claim police did not use those weapons to move the crowds in front of the store: "Police night sticks swung and soon the mob was dispersed." Only the Daily News reported police fired their guns to move the crowd, describing with unlikely precision that five shots were fired in the air. Inspector Di Martini told a hearing of the MCCH that he heard no gunshots on 125th Street, so if those shots were fired it was before he arrived around 7:15 PM. The caption makes no mention of where the photograph was taken; the group appears to be on the sidewalk, perhaps near Kress’ store or later near 7th or 8th Avenue. Unmentioned is the horse’s head visible on the right side of image, indicating the presence of a mounted patrolman.

Mounted patrolmen, part of the police crowd control force, were reportedly deployed “to ride people off the sidewalk,” Louise Thompson testified. Lt. Battle told Langston Hughes that "an officer on a horse can be more effective than twenty patrolmen on foot," as the horses are "trained to brush a crowd back without stepping on anyone." When a reporter for the Afro-American arrived around 7:30 PM “mounted police rode the sidewalk [in front of the store] keeping the crowd back.” Charles Romney likewise told a hearing of the MCCH that he saw "men on horseback were on the sidewalk to trample people." The New York Times and Daily News opted to describe the mounted police in more sensational terms as ‘charging’ the crowds. In the New Masses, Thompson presented a similar picture, juxtaposing the mounted officers with women protesting in terms echoing those used by other Communists: “Brigades of mounted police cantered down the street, breaking into a gallop where the crowds were thickest. Horses' hoofs shot sparks as they mounted on the glass-littered pavements. The crowds fighting doggedly, gave way. The women more stubborn even than the men, shouted to their companions, "What kind of men are you-drag them down off those horses." The women shook their fists at the police. "Cossacks! Cossacks!" they shouted here in Harlem on 125th Street.” Years later, interviewed for her autobiography, Thompson identified many of the mounted patrolmen as Black officers and described the women as actually fighting with them. Another Afro-American journalist simply described the mounted police as "somewhat rough" during the early hours of the disorder. Whatever approach they took, it was mounted police that the Afro-American credited with keeping large groups away from Kress and on the avenues.

While police cleared 125th Street of large groups and stopped any more assembling there, they did not – or could not -- close it off. Instead, “they patrolled 124th and 125th Streets between Seventh and Eighth Avenues constantly to prevent more groups from assembling,” the New York Herald Tribune reported. Thompson testified that she walked up and down 125th Street after the arrests, but was only able to stop and speak with members of groups on the corner of 8th Avenue. Charles Romney told a hearing of the MCCH that when he arrived on 125th Street around 7:30 PM, walking from Lenox to 7th Avenue, he “noticed a crowd of police with sticks on their hands telling the crowd to go on.” Given the small numbers of police, those patrols did not protect the stores on the block from attack: Thompson testified windows were broken in almost every store between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM (although she was away from the area from 7:30 PM to 8:00 PM); and Romney likewise testified that at 7:30 PM "there were a lot of windows smashed." The New York Herald Tribune reported the same timeline, that “by 8 p.m. one or more windows in virtually every 125th Street store front in the block had been smashed.” Around that time the situation began to change as additional officers arrived, reinforcements that made it possible for police to set up a perimeter around 125th Street and keep people away from the stores.

As with other events at the beginning of the disorder, the most detailed and consistent evidence is the testimony of individuals present on 125th Street in hearings of the MCCH. Newspaper stories were generally vague and inconsistent about how many police were on the scene at what times and how they responded to the crowds, and tended to exaggerate the size of the crowds and the number of people on the street. It does seem that credible that several hundred -- and perhaps as many as 2000-3000 people -- were in the area during this time, although not gathered in a single group. This was a larger number than gathered in any one place later in the disorder, contributing to the different way that police responded.
Kress 5, 10 & 25c store rear windows broken When police officers pushed people away from the front of S. H. Kress' store and off West 125th Street after someone threw objects that broke the store's front windows, some ended up on 8th Avenue and West 124th Street. Around 7.00 PM, a hearse stopped on 124th Street near the rear of the S. H. Kress' store, located about a third of the way along the block to the east, attracting the attention of members of the crowd. A woman saw the vehicle, according to reports in the New York Times, New York Sun and New York Herald Tribune. She called out "There’s the hearse come to take the boy’s body out of the store,” according to New York Times and New York Sun, and "It's come to get the dead child," according to the New York Herald Tribune. While there were many Black women inside and outside the store, singling out one fitted the emphasis in the narratives published by those newspapers on the hysterical nature of the crowds: the New York Herald Tribune described the woman who called out as "excitable;" the New York Times reported that she "shrilled;" while in the New York Sun "her piercing scream lifted itself above the hoarse shouts of the mob," with the result that other people were "Incited." The outcry is more generalized in the New York Evening Journal, in line with its more explicitly racist narrative. That story claimed that "the Negroes were worked up to such a frenzy that they did not realize [the arrival of the hearse] was simply a coincidence. The cry went up" "They've killed him! They've killed him! They're taking him away in a hearse!"" No one arrested during the disorder was identified as being charged with inciting the crowd.

Whether they saw the hearse as evidence of the fate of the boy arrested in the S. H. Kress store or responded to shouts making that connection, people moved to the rear of the store. Those at the rear of the store may have found further reason to think the boy had come to harm when they found the store lights on and men moving around inside, workmen repairing displays and counters damaged earlier, according to the New York Herald Tribune and New York American. Or members of the crowd moved directly to renew the attack on the store begun on West 125th Street, as reported in the New York Times, New York Evening Journal, and Times Union. Or the crowd gathered at the rear of the store was joined by "a number of colored persons, believed to be inmates of the Salvation Army located on 124th Street, west of 7th Avenue,...[who] began throwing stones," as Inspector Di Martini wrote in a report to the Police Commissioner the next day. (The Salvation Army operated a hostel for homeless men at that location). One result was that windows in the rear of S. H. Kress' store were broken.

An "L" shaped building that spanned the width of the block between 125th and 124th Streets, S. H. Kress' store had twice as much storefront on West 124th Street as it had facing 125th Street. There were retail counters in the wider rear section of the store, and basement exits out on to West 124th Street (Lino Rivera had been released through one). Windows also faced 124th Street, but no images have been found that show their size and extent. Whatever their extent, more windows in the rear of the store appear to have been broken than in the front. Compared to the "very little loss on the front," a reporter for the Afro-American described "the windows in the rear showed signs of the stone and whiskey bottle barrage." Similarly, the New York Age reported "a plate glass window in the front of the store was smashed, while the back part of the building suffered several broken windows." Without the comparison, the Times Union reported similar damage, "the store's rear windows were smashed," as did the New York Times less precisely, noting "Stones were hurled through windows." With typical exaggeration, both the Home News and New York Herald Tribune claimed all the rear windows were shattered.

Windows were possibly not the only target of objects thrown on West 124th Street. Police officers had been stationed at the store's rear entrance earlier in the evening. Together with officers who followed the crowds from 8th Avenue, police once again tried to clear them from the street. Two mounted patrolmen were part of that group, according to Joe Taylor, the leader of the Young Liberators. Unlike on West 125th Street earlier, objects struck police officers. At least two officers suffered injuries that required an ambulance. Patrolman Michael Kelly was hit on the right leg by a rock and Detective Charles Foley was hit on the shoulder by a stone. Officers trying to push crowds away from the rear of the store could have been hit by objects thrown at the windows, but white newspapers reported in sensational terms that police were the targets. "A barrage of missiles fell on the ranks of police," according to the New York Times, while the New York Herald Tribune described a more dramatic scene in which "Negroes showered [police] with miscellaneous missiles from roofs, hallways and other hiding places." News of the hearse's appearance and renewed police clashes with crowds on the street spread to people gathered on 8th Avenue, and windows in other stores on 125th Street began to be smashed. Despite these attacks, police appear to have cleared the crowd from 124th Street within a few minutes. When Emergency Truck #5 arrived on the block around 7:15 PM, Patrolman Henry Eppler told a MCCH hearing that "everything was quiet," which led to the truck relocating to 125th Street.

Several newspapers made no mention of broken windows in the rear of S. H. Kress' store. A hearse appears in most of those narratives, provoking generalized reactions from the crowds on the street. It served to "fire the crowd" in the Afro-American's narrative, and in stories in the Home News and New York Post, although in the white newspapers crowds see the vehicle on West 124th Street before the speakers try to address the crowd, a different chronology. The New York Sun described the crowd moving directly to attacks on police and stores and looting. The hearse appears in front of the store, not at its rear, in the Daily Mirror. And it is mentioned as appearing in the area without mention of a specific location in the Atlanta World and in an ANP story published in both the Atlanta World and Pittsburgh Courier. Neither broken windows in the rear of Kress' store nor a hearse are features of the narratives in the Daily News, New York World-Telegram and the MCCH report, and are likewise missing from Louise Thompson's account (who was on 125th Street when the rear windows were broken).
Police find Lino Rivera Sometime during the disorder, police tried to locate Lino Rivera so they could show that he had not been killed or beaten. Chief Inspector Seely ordered the boy be located, according to the New York Times, which suggests those efforts started after 9:00 PM, when senior officers took charge of the police response. However, the Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York Times, Times Union and Afro-American newspapers simply reported that police searched for Rivera throughout the night. They were unable to find him because the home address they had was incorrect, 272 Morningside Avenue rather than 272 Manhattan Avenue. (The New York Age story written early in the disorder included the incorrect address) The Daily News reported that “the mistake was made” when Eldridge gave the address to an officer at the West 123rd St. station over the telephone – not that he had misrecorded the address as the New York Herald Tribune reported or that Rivera had given a false address as the Home News reported. According to Louise Thompson, a group of women who had tried to locate Rivera at the beginning of the disorder also had the wrong address, although one on the correct street, 410 Manhattan Avenue. Joe Taylor, the leader of the Young Liberators, also heard a rumor that Rivera lived at 410 Manhattan Avenue and went to investigate around 7:30 PM.

At 1:30 AM, Officer Eldridge was woken at his home on Whitlock Avenue in the Bronx by a telephone call telling him to report to the Chief Inspector at the West 123rd Street station, he told a hearing of the MCCH. The police officers at the scene, Eldridge and Patrolman Donohue, had gone off duty at 4:00 PM. Until he was woken Eldridge thought Rivera had been arrested and was unaware of what was happening in Harlem. He was able to go directly to Rivera’s home, arriving around 2:00 AM, and found him asleep, according to his testimony. The boy had not been there all night, as initially reported in the New York Evening Journal and New York Sun, but had gone out around 9:00 PM. Rivera had a cup of coffee and returned home after about twenty-five minutes because he "saw there was a lot of trouble around,” the New York World Telegram and Times Union reported. Rivera said Eldridge told him people thought he was dead, the New York World Telegram and New York Herald Tribune reported.

Eldridge took Rivera to the West 123rd Street station. Only the New York Sun described Rivera as “blubbering and frightened.” Rivera told a reporter for the New York World Telegram that he was at the station about half an hour. During that time, police questioned him, he spoke with reporters, and was photographed with Lt. Battle and Officer Eldridge. Newspaper stories that quoted his statements mentioned that he spoke to two different officers, Kear, according to the Daily News, and Captain Oliver, according to the New York Evening Journal and New York Sun. Battle told the MCCH that he asked Rivera “if he had been hurt by anyone and had he been arrested.” The New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York Sun, and New York American published separate stories about Rivera’s statements. The Daily News, New York Herald Tribune and Atlanta World appended his statements to larger stories on the disorder. Reporters also interviewed and photographed Rivera at his home later on March 20, with New York World Telegram, New York Herald Tribune and La Prensa publishing separate stories based on those interviews, and the New York Times including it in a larger story.

Inspector Di Martini took credit for having Battle appear in the images, telling a hearing of the MCCH that “It was my idea to get Lieut. Battle to pose with the boy and get the picture into the streets as soon as possible.” Battle said the reason Rivera posed with him was “for the moral effect.” Not made explicit in either statement was that having the boy photographed with a Black police officer added to the credibility of the image and cut across the racial divisions expressed in the disorder. “A lot” of pictures were taken, Rivera told a MCCH hearing, but only six different published images have been identified. An Associated Press photo that showed Battle seated with his arm around Rivera, who was standing, was published in the New York Times, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun. Rivera was only 4 feet 8 inches tall according to the New York Herald Tribune, so that pose put the two on the same level. Their height difference is visible in an image of them standing in the same pose taken by an International Photo agency photographer. That difference was further emphasized in the photograph of this pose published in the Daily Mirror, in which Battle is looking down at Rivera. (The Daily Worker took offense at Battles having "his arm protectively around" Rivera as the "Harlem masses...know that Battles would kill a worker on the slightest excuse.") Photographs taken by the International Photo agency and Daily News revealed that Eldridge was on the other side of Rivera in both poses. Eldridge did not have an arm around Rivera, as Battle did, so was detached from their grouping. A second Black officer added to message Di Martini wanted to send. However, Battle was in uniform and well-known as the senior Black police officer in New York City, while Eldridge was in plainclothes, a suit and tie, and not a public figure. It was likely on that basis that some photographers and editors decided not to include Eldridge. An ANS photo showed Rivera and Battle in a different pose, standing surrounded by white reporters, looking at a camera to their left. Where the other photographs showed Rivera unharmed, in contradiction of the rumors circulating in Harlem, the ANS image presented him as telling his story. Rivera, dressed in a leather jacket, is smiling in all the photographs. Photographed at home later that day, Rivera wore a suit and tie, because he said his mother suggested he “dress for the picture,” and, in the image published in the New York Evening Journal, a pensive expression rather than smiling. (The New York Times reporter who visited Rivera at home described him as "a dejected figure," "overwhelmed by the fact that his desire for a ten-cent knife had precipitated the riot and resultant bloodshed.")

If the primary purpose of finding Rivera was to show that he was alive and unharmed, his appearance at the police station also brought some consistency to reports about the identity of the boy who had been in Kress' store. Louise Thompson heard from the women she spoke to in Kress' store that a "colored boy" aged ten to twelve years had been beaten. The signs carried by the Young Liberators who picketed the store an hour or so later referred to a "Negro child," while the leaflets their organization distributed another hour later later described a "12 year old Negro boy." The first newspaper stories published appear to have relied on those rumors and leaflets in describing the boy; with neither Eldridge nor Donohue still on duty, police apparently did not have more precise information until Rivera was found. The New York American mentioned a "colored boy" and a "10-year-old Negro boy," the Daily News a 12-year old "colored boy," the New York Evening Journal a 15-year-old "Negro boy," the Daily Mirror a "little colored boy," the Home News a "young colored boy," and the New York Sun a "Negro boy." Early stories in some Black newspapers featured similar descriptions, a "small Negro boy" in the Norfolk Journal and Guide and a 10-year-old "colored boy" in the Indianapolis Recorder on March 23, or simply referred to the boy's age not his race, a 16 year old boy in the Atlanta World on March 21, a 12-year-old boy in the New York Age, a 14-year-old boy in the Chicago Defender, and a 16 year old boy in the Afro-American and Pittsburgh Courier on March 23. Newspapers published on March 20 after police found Rivera identified him as a 16-year-old Puerto Rican, in the New York Post and New York World-Telegram, or a "Puerto Rican youth" in the New York Herald Tribune and Times Union. The New York World-Telegram also pointed to the differences between Rivera and the boy of the rumors by putting Negro in quotation marks when reporting the rumors and the text of the Young Liberators leaflet. By contrast, the New York Times referred to a 16-year-old "Negro boy" even after Rivera had been found, as did the New York Sun and New York Evening Journal. While the New York Times did eventually identify Rivera as Puerto Rican when he appeared in the Adolescents court after the disorder, the New York Evening Journal continued to describe Rivera as "Negro," while the New York Sun made no mention of his race. Those newspapers' persistent use of "Negro" may have been intended to convey that Rivera was dark-skinned; the New York American described him in those terms, as a "dark-skinned 16-year-old Porto Rican" in a story reporting an interview with the boy in his home, while the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described him as a "Negro born in Porto Rico." Editions of the other newspapers published after Rivera was found, including the Black newspapers, simply switched to identify him as Puerto Rican. (Historian Lorrin Thomas argued that the New York Amsterdam News "failed to identify Rivera as Puerto Rican, referring to him instead as a “young Negro boy,”" but did not provide a citation. The March 23 issue of that newspaper is missing the news sections, but the March 30 issue identified Rivera as a "16-year-old Puerto Rican youth.")

Police found Rivera too late for his appearance to impact the disorder, although it may have contributed to the violence not continuing the next evening. However, the delays in locating him fed rumors that he was not in fact the boy grabbed in Kress’ store. Reflecting questions raised in hearings, the MCCH report noted that, “The final dramatic attempt on the part of police to placate the populace by having the unharmed Lino Rivera photographed with the Negro police lieutenant Samuel Battle only furnished the basis for the rumor that Rivera, who was on probation for having placed a slug in a subway turnstile, was being used as a substitute to deceive people.” After members of the MCCH met with Mayor La Guardia soon after their appointment, on March 22, the New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun both reported that “some” of them said that many in Harlem did not believe that Lino Rivera was the boy who had been caught in the Kress store. (Stories about the meeting in the New York Times, New York Post, Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Daily Worker included no mention of those comments). An Afro-American journalist reported the rumors before the first hearing of the MCCH: “At the present time Harlem is divided into those who has been presented by the police as the boy in the case, is not the boy who was beaten in the store. They declare that Lino is being paid off to be the scapegoat and a camouflage....The AFRO reporter has run scores of tips about the boy who actually stole the knife, or a bag of jelly-beans, as it was first given out. Everything so far has run up a blind alley. One clue to the real boy is that all during the riot he was referred to as a 12-year-old boy, but became a 16-year-old one with the finding of Lino Riviera." The New York Age hinted at those rumors when it described Rivera as “believed to have been the cause of the whole affair.” Writing in The New Masses, Louise Thompson reported that a man and woman who had been in the store said Rivera was older and taller than the boy they saw. Other publications did not raise the issue. However, as the Afro-American journalist predicted, questions about Rivera were raised in a hearing of the MCCH. In the first hearing, Police Lieutenant Battle was asked, "Is there any evidence that would indicate that Rivera is not the boy? There has been such rumor." He simply answered, "No." L. F. Cole, a thirty-year-old Black clerk who had been in the Kress store, also testified that he had "no doubt" that Rivera was the boy he had seen taken away by police. The question was raised again at the third hearing on April 20. Mention that he had been on parole after being caught putting slugs in a subway turnstile prompted an interjection from "Mrs Burrows:" "My impression is that this boy is not the boy. We have testimony here that he got into trouble before March 19th, 1935. They had a boy under supervision. This is not the boy. They got a boy through these people and this is the boy they presented." Hays, chairing the hearing, pushed the ILD lawyers for evidence that another boy was beaten in the store. They had found none, nor could they establish that Rivera had received lenient treatment. A month later, Jackson Smith, the store manager, confirmed in the subcommittee's final hearing that Rivera was the boy he saw from the office, with Donohue and again outside the Grand Jury room after the disorder. After listening to several questions trying to undermine the certainty of that identification, Hays announced "there is no question about it." Given the lack of evidence to the contrary, there is no reason to think Rivera was not person grabbed in the store. The shoppers who saw him in the store could have assumed he was younger, given his height. Similarly, seeing that he was dark-skinned, they could have assumed he was a Black rather than Puerto Rican.
Looting of food and drink (24) Business stocking food and drink make up the largest group of those who had goods stolen (24 of 57). There are also photographs of a meat market, a grocery store and a liquor store that have been looted whose location is unknown, which be additional looted locations or images of already identified looting. Some of the looting of businesses categorized as selling miscellaneous consumer goods may also have involved taking food and drink. Both stationary stores and drug stores sometimes sold meals and drinks. So too apparently did 5 & 10c stores; among the items Arnold Ford allegedly took from Lash’s store was three packets of tea (but that business is not included as one looted for food and drink, but as one looted for miscellaneous goods, as those items made up the bulk of what was taken). The number of these types of business looted reflected in part that they comprised a large proportion of the stores in Black Harlem, with grocery stores the most frequently found business, and restaurants nearly as numerous. Food and drink being taken also fitted the portrayal of the disorder as motivated by economic grievances.

Newspaper accounts of the merchandise taken from businesses featured food and drink featured alongside clothing. "The large grocery stores were looted," the Afro-American's correspondent reported, "and persons denied relief and discriminated against by the relief bureau authorities seized food fro their starving families." The Daily Worker offered a similar picture: “When the shop windows were broken and wares of all sorts displayed, the starving and penniless Negroes in the crowd seized the opportunity to carry off food, clothes, articles of all sorts.” In his "Hectic Harlem" column in the New York Amsterdam News, Roi Ottley highlighted food in his description of looting, writing “As Negroes snatched choice hams from butchers stores…lifted suits from tailor shops…and carried out bags of rice and other edables…the feeling, “here’s our chance to have some of the things we should have,” was often evidenced.” So too did J. A. Rogers in his "Ruminations" column, also in the New York Amsterdam News, writing "From the ravenous manner in which I saw some of the rioters eating the looted food, it was clear that they hadn't had a decent meal in months." The New York Post, like Ottley, imputed motives while identifying food as a target, describing looting as “the glamorous opportunity of snatching food and coats and liquor and tobacco from behind the broken panes.” Food also featured in Louise Thompson’s memoir of what she saw during the disorder, as “People on the street were tossing up to [people...on the second floor of apartment buildings] groceries – flour – anything they could toss up.” She offered more detail writing in New Masses: "Many grocery stores windows were smashed; hungry Negroes scooped armloads of canned goods, loaves of bread, sacks of flour, vegetables, running to their homes with the food.

Adam Clayton Powell described what he saw in the form of vignettes rather than a general picture of looting, in the first of three articles published by the New York Post; two of the three scenes involved food: “Witness a man, tall, strong and well built, carrying through the murkiness of the Harlem morning two pieces of the twelve-cents-a-pound salt pork that he had taken from a butcher's broken window. Witness two young lads one of them just finished high schools-furtively sneaking home as the noise of March 19 subsided, lugging two sacks of rice and sugar.” The Daily Worker also published a story by an “Eye Witness” that recounted police violence against a “young Negro boy” arrested with two cans of vegetables in his possession.

Food also featured in stories about the police line-up the morning after the disorder. The New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun noted in general terms that many of those paraded before police and reporters admitted to stealing groceries. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle singled out one Black woman who “still had in her possession five milk bottles.” In addition, two men arrested for looting who appear in a New York Evening Journal photograph are carrying shopping bags labeled as coming from Rex Food Market at 348 Lenox Avenue.

Legal records offer a similar mix of broad and individual pictures of the merchandise taken. Nine business-owners selling food and drink are among those identified who sued the city for damages, with losses of $14,000 for George Chronis’ restaurant,$2068 for Irving Stetkin's grocery store, $759.58 for Radio City Meat Market, $745 for Frank Dethomas' candy store, $721 for Manny Zipp's grocery store, $630 for William Feinstein's liquor store, $537 for Alfonso Avitable's Savoy Food Market, $453.90 for Alfonso Principe's saloon, and $146.75 for Michael D’Agostino’s market. Those losses, other than for Chronis, are lower than those claimed by the owners of stores selling clothing and miscellaneous other merchandise. (The nature of eleven of twenty-seven businesses identified in suits against city are unknown, so could include additional stores selling food and drink). Details of the losses of an additional eight businesses are identified in legal proceedings. The value of the merchandise in those cases is less than the losses of those who sued the city: $200 for Mario Pravia's candy store; $200 for J. P. Bulluroff's grocery store; $167.86 for Sol Weit and Isaac Popiel's grocery store, $100 for Jacob Solomon's grocery store; $50-75 for Sarah Refkin's delicatessen; $10-$12 for the San Antonio Market, and several bottle of liquor from the Mediavilla Liquor store. An indication of what items made up those totals is provided by the details Sol Weit gave to a Probation officer: the $167.86 of goods taken from the store he co-owned consisted of “126 pounds of butter, 90 dozen eggs, eight cartons of cigarettes, a ham and other food products, as well as $14 from the cash register.”

The individuals arrested for looting food and drink allegedly only had a small proportion of that merchandise in their possession, as the vignettes offered by Powell and the Daily Worker’s eye witness suggest. The man charged with looting Weit’s store, Arthur Merritt, allegedly had only "two cans of beans, a can of milk and a can of tuna.” There are only records of what police claimed five of the other ten men arrested for looting businesses selling food and drink had in their possession. Lawrence Humphrey had a 50lb bag of rice, Amie Taylor eighteen packets of gum, Louis Cobb two bottles of whiskey, Theodore Hughes two pieces of pork, and Hezekiel Wright four lamps and two jars of food.
Looting (66)
Leaflets distributed The Young Liberators printed a one-page mimeographed leaflet in the early evening of March 19. Just where they distributed the leaflet is uncertain. "Some white youngsters were passing out handbills" when a reporter for the Afro-American arrived at 125th Street and 7th Avenue at 7:14 PM; Louise Thompson saw people with the leaflet on that corner just after 8:00 PM, suggesting a focus on 125th Street. “They were hurriedly passed put among the throngs of Negro idlers up and down teeming 125th Street,” according to the sensationalized story in Time magazine. The New York American claimed, “These papers received wide circulation throughout Harlem.” The leaflet was also pasted on building walls, according to the New York Evening Journal. Reading its text incited the crowds that had gathered on 125th Street, the police and District Attorney William Dodge claimed, making the Young Liberators, who they considered Communists, responsible for the disorder. The MCCH did not agree. Based on testimony from Louise Thompson that the leaflet did not appear on 125th Street until sometime between 7.30 PM and 8.00 PM, the MCCH final report concluded that the Young Liberators “were not responsible for the disorder and attacks on property which were already in full swing.” By 7.30 PM, “Already a tabloid in screaming headlines was telling the city that a riot was going on in Harlem,” the MCCH report also noted. Louise Thompson identified that newspaper as the Daily Mirror. Later on March 19, the CP distributed a leaflet, after the Young Liberators approached them concerned about the growing disorder, according to James Ford’s testimony in a MCCH public hearing. He said that leaflet was “written and distributed” about “9 or 10 o’clock.” Leaflets were still in circulation on Harlem’s streets around 2 AM. Sgt Samuel Battle told a public hearing of the MCCH he came into possession of two or three at that time, without specifying to which of the two leaflets he was referring.

Both leaflets identified Kress store staff as responsible for the violence against Rivera, with only passing mention of police. That narrative focused protests on the store, and white businesses, Bosses, more generally, rather than police, or the white population. In terms of that framework, attacks on Kress’ store, and on other white businesses later in the disorder, appear not straightforwardly attacks on property and economic power, but also as retaliation against violence by those who owned and worked in those businesses

A mimeographed page, the Young Liberators’ leaflet combined handwritten and typewritten text. At the top, the handwritten text read, “Child Brutally Beaten. Woman attacked by Boss and Cops = Child near DEATH.” The remaining typewritten text read:
ONE HOUR AGO A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD NEGRO BOY WAS BRUTALLY BEATEN BY THE MANAGEMENT OF KRESS FIVE-AND-TEN-CENT STORE.
THE BOY IS NEAR DEATH
HE WAS MERCILESSLY BEATEN BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT HE HAD ‘STOLEN’ A FIVE CENT KNIFE.
A NEGRO WOMAN WHO SPRANG TO THE DEFENSE OF THE BOY HAD HER ARMS BROKEN BY THESE THUGS AND WAS THEN ARRESTED.
WORKERS, NEGROES AND WHITE, PROTEST AGAINST THIS LYNCH ATTACK ON INNOCENT NEGRO PEOPLE. DEMAND THE RELEASE OF THE BOY AND WOMAN.
DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE ARREST OF THE MANAGER RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS LYNCH ATTACK.
DON'T BUY AT KRESS'S. STOP POLICE BRUTALITY IN NEGRO HARLEM.
JOIN THE PICKET LINE
ISSUED BY YOUNG LIBERATORS.

Predictably, the anti-Communist Hearst newspaper the New York Evening Journal gave the greatest space to the leaflet, publishing both the full text of the Young Liberators' leaflet and photographs of it (and the YCP leaflet and two placards carried by pickets, under the headline "Insidious Propaganda That Started Harlem Riot," and a front-page photograph of the men arrested protesting in front of Kress’ store). A portion of the Young Liberators' leaflet appeared in a combination of AP photographs published in several newspapers. In addition to the New York Evening Journal, the HN, WT and the New Republic published the text of the leaflet. The NYHT quoted only about half of the leaflet, stopping after the first use of “lynch attack.” None of those published versions of the circular included the final line, “JOIN THE PICKET.” That line did appear in the version published by the Norfolk Journal and Guide, the only Black publication in which the leaflets appeared. That line is visible in the photograph published in the NYEJ, was in the version of the leaflet in the MCCH’s final report, and was raised by Hays in the public hearing of the MCCH (Taylor answered that he did not know to what it referred [31]). The text published in the HN omitted the line DON'T BUY AT KRESS'S. STOP POLICE BRUTALITY IN NEGRO HARLEM, substituting instead “Demand the hiring of Negro workers in Harlem department stores. Boycott the store." That phrase transposed the call not to buy in the store into the terms of boycott the campaigns of the previous year, effectively treating the tactic as having a single goal. The NYP quoted only the handwritten headline of the leaflet, the characterization of the incident as “this lynch attack,” and the call for protest. Time quoted only the headline, and the AA only the first two phrases from the headline, omitting “boss” so that the charge of violence was only against police. Quotations in the NYS were garbled versions of the actual leaflet text, including words and phrases that appeared but in the wrong form: "A Child Brutally Beaten." "A Twelve-Year-Old Child Was Brutally Beaten for Stealing a Knife from a Five and Ten Cent Store." "Workers Protest Against This Lynch Attack." The DN misreported the leaflet as making the more provocative charge that the boy had been beaten to death. Initial stories about the disorder published by the NYT and Am did not mention the leaflet, but added them to their narrative the next day, 3/21.

The CP leaflet, also a mimeographed page, similarly began with handwritten text that read, “FOR UNITY OF NEGRO AND WHITE WORKERS! DON'T LET THE BOSSES START RACE RIOTS IN HARLEM!”. The typewritten portion went on:
The brutal beating of the 12-year-old boy, Riviera, by Kress's special guard, for taking a piece of candy, again proves the increasing terror against the Negro people of Harlem. Bosses, who deny the most immediate necessities from workers' children, who throw workers out of employment, who pay not even enough to live on, are protecting their so-called property rights by brutal beatings, as in the case of the boy Riviera. They shoot both Negro and white workers in strikes all over the country. They lynch Negro people in the South on framed-up charges.
The bosses and police are trying to bring the lynch spirit right here to Harlem. The bosses would welcome nothing more than a fight between the white and Negro workers of our community, so that they may be able to continue to rule over both the Negro and white workers.
Our answer to the brutal beating of this boy, by one of the flunkies of Mr. Kress, must be an organized and determined resistance against the brutal attacks of the bosses and the police.
WORKERS, NEGRO AND WHITE: DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE DISMISSAL AND ARREST AND PROSECUTION OF THE SPECIAL GUARD AND THE MANAGER OF THE STORE.
DEMAND THE RELEASE OF THE NEGRO AND WHITE WORKERS ARRESTED.
DEMAND THE HIRING OF NEGRO WORKERS IN ALL DEPARTMENT STORES IN HARLEM
DON'T LET BOSSES START ANY RACE RIOTS IN HARLEM.
DON'T TRADE IN KRESSES.

Issued by
Communist Party
Young Communist League

The Daily Worker published the CP leaflet text, while not publishing the Young Liberators' leaflet, perhaps because the public position of the Young Liberators was that the organization was not affiliated with the CP. The handwritten headline of that leaflet appeared at the end of a WT story, after the full-text of the Young Liberators' leaflet: “In another manifesto, signed by the Communist party and the Young Peoples’ League, a plea was made “for unity of Negro and white workers—don’t let the bosses start race riots in Harlem!” While the New York Evening Journal published a photograph of the leaflet, no other white newspapers reproduced the text, nor did it appear in the MCCH final report. The Norfolk Journal and Guide was the only Black publication in which the leaflet text appeared.

Initial newspaper stories reported that police said that the leaflets were responsible for moving the crowds on 125th Street to violence. The sensationalized version of that story employed metaphors of fire that placed the leaflets at the start of the disorder: leaflets were the “match which ignited Harlem and pitted its teeming thousands against the police and white spectators and shopkeepers” in the Daily News, “inflammatory handbills, the spark that fired the tinder” in Newsweek, and "inflame the populace" in a New York Age editorial; and in the NYS and DM leaflets fanned the crowd’s fury. The NYEJ opted for a more racist image evoking slavery, in which the leaflet was “largely responsible for whipping the Negroes to a frenzy.” The New York Age columnist the "Flying Cavalier," described the leaflets as as an example of the Communist "technique in the making up of their messages which would incite a lamb to jump on a tiger—if the lamb didn’t think first." Other newspapers framed the leaflets in terms of rumors: as having started the rumor in the NYHT, as “the chief agency which spread the rumor in the HN; and as having “helped spread resentment” in the NYP. (The WT described the leaflet without giving it a specific role; the “tinder for the destructive conflict” was the rumor that a boy had been beaten and killed, “assiduously spread by Communists.”) Writing in the New Republic, white journalist Hamilton Basso devoted two paragraphs to weighing the role the leaflet played in the disorder. He concluded that it “helped to rouse the crowds to violence,” but rejected the idea that the leaflet’s purpose “was deliberately to provoke a race riot” as requiring belief in “the stupid Red Scare of the Hearst press.”

The only direct evidence of when the Young Liberators' leaflet was distributed came from Louise Thompson. She told a public hearing of the MCCH that the leaflets were not in circulation when she left 125th Street around 7.30 PM. It was when Thompson returned around 8.00 PM that she “first saw the leaflet” in the hands of several people, but not anyone handing them out. Thompson was not a disinterested witness; as a member of the Communist Party she would not have wanted to see them held responsible for the disorder. L. T. Cole, who like Thompson had been inside Kress’ store after Rivera was grabbed but was not a Communist, told the MCCH he saw pamphlets in the crowd around 8.00 PM (the number is smudged in the transcript so that time is uncertain). Inspector Di Martini’s report supported that timeline, locating the appearance of “a number of pamphlets under the heading of the YL and YCP” after the crowd that gathered the rear of Kress’ store around 7.00 PM had been dispersed. Presumably that timing was based on the statements of officers on 125th Street -- but not Patrolman Moran, who told the MCCH he was on duty in front of Kress’ store from 6.00 PM throughout the night and did not see leaflets passed out. Copies of the leaflets were attached to the report. They may have been the copies that Sgt Battle told the MCCH public hearing that he had gathered near the end of the disorder, around 2 AM.

Newspaper stories presented a different timeline that had the leaflet appear earlier, around 6.00 PM, for which there was no direct evidence. The NYEJ and HN, the New York Post the next day, and the New Republic, reported that the Young Liberators' leaflet appeared about an hour after Kress’ staff grabbed Rivera, which would have been around 3.30 PM. When DA William Dodge spoke to reporters on March 20, the DN and WT (and Am 3/22) reported him as saying that the leaflets appeared within two hours of the incident in the store. No one at the scene described that timeline. It was likely based on the text of the leaflet, which read “One hour ago a twelve-year-old boy was brutally beaten by the management of Kress five-and-ten-cent store.” At that time, however, the Young Liberators were unaware of what had happened in the store. It was not until around 5.00 PM, as police were clearing people from Kress’ store, a black man brought news to the offices of the Young Liberators, James Taylor testified. Taylor, the leader of the Young Liberators, was asked about the timing referred to in the leaflet; he replied that he did not know whether that was correct.[29] The NYT story reporting Dodge’s comments had the “first of the Communist handbills” appear at 6:00 PM. That timeline is at least plausible; it would have been around an hour after the Young Liberators learned of an incident in Kress’ store. It was not, however, a timeframe that fitted with Di Martini’s report. The DN had the Young Liberators distributing the leaflets as they picketed Kress’ store, at a time not specified in the story. However, that detail is part of the truncated timeline police provided that had all five men they arrested arriving at Kress’ store at the same time, rather than separately over a period of forty-five minutes starting around 6.00 PM as testimony from those at the scene indicated. The pickets were the final protesters to arrive at Kress’ store, around 6.45 PM. Thompson saw them, so would have seen leaflets being distributed at that time.

William Ford’s testimony in a MCCH public hearing is the only evidence related to the origins and timing of the CP pamphlet. The CP leaflet appeared after members of the Young Liberators visited Ford, about an hour after distributing their leaflet, he testified. They “were very much disturbed” that “these leaflets had not been able to allay mass resentment in Harlem,” and instead “a rumor had got around that a race riot had started in Harlem.” The CP immediately produced a leaflet intended “to stop race rioting,” Ford testified, and he went to Harlem around 8 PM. The leaflet arrived an hour or two later, about “9 or 10 o’clock.” The MCCH report stated that that CP leaflet was issued “about the same time” as the YL’s leaflet. None of the newspapers mentioned the time that the leaflet was distributed.

District Attorney William Dodge and Police Commissioner Valentine both amplified the police narrative when they spoke to reporters on March 20 after Dodge appeared before the grand jury to seek indictments against alleged participants in the disorder. The leaflets remained central to that charge, and to the evidence that the authorities presented in an effort to substantiate it. Valentine summarized Di Martini’s “departmental report on the cause of the rioting” as detailing “that a Negro youth had been caught stealing, that a woman had screamed, that the "Young Liberators" had met, that they had thereafter disseminated "untruthful deceptive and inflammatory literature" and that all these events had been climaxed by the appearance of a hearse in the vicinity,” the NYS reported, a chronology also reported in the Am (3/22), WT, TU [3/21_LaG] and BDE. (The hearse is not the final element in Di Martini’s report; it is mentioned before the YLs). Two days later Dodge showed the grand jury a typewriter and mimeograph machine. The fruits of police raids on the offices of several organizations affiliated with the Communist Party, the machines were used to produce the YL’s leaflet, he told the grand jury, according to stories in HT, NYP, Am, DN, NYT. (The mimeograph machine was taken from the Nurses and Hospital Workers League, the organization which employed one of the men arrested for trying to speak in front of Kress’ store, Daniel Miller, the NYP and Am reported). According to the DN, after the grand jury examined that material, “Dodge said arrests might be expected momentarily.” There are no reports of any arrests related to the leaflets.

Mayor La Guardia did not echo the DA and Police Commissioner in directly blaming Communists for the disorder. While the statement he issued that was distributed and displayed in Harlem the evening after the disorder followed the same police narrative, and mentioned the leaflets, it did not present them as triggering the disorder. Instead, they were used to characterize those responsible: “The maliciousness and viciousness of the instigators are betrayed by the false statements contained in mimeographed handbills and placards.” That statement indirectly implicated the Young Liberators and Communist Party, who had signed the leaflets (as the DW noted, 3/21). However, the circular presented the disorder as “instigated and artificially stimulated by a few irresponsible individuals,” who went unnamed. Questioned by journalists, La Guardia "would not say whether he agreed with the police that the instigators were Communists," the New York Herald Tribune reported.

Newspaper stories about the MCCH public hearing treated the testimony regarding the time at which the leaflets appeared in a variety of ways. The HT and an editorial in the AN highlighted how that testimony undermined what police said in the aftermath of the disorder. “Reds' Handbills Are Cleared As 'Chief Cause' of Harlem Riot” was the headline of the HT story [3/31, 1], which reported that “The committee learned that the circulars did not appear on the streets until 8:30 p. m., fully two hours after the worst of the rioting was over. Therefore, the committee was asked by Communist lawyers to conclude that the literature could not have been a cause of much loss of property or life.” The title of the AN editorial, “The Road is Clear,” described the testimony that “The much-publicized Young Liberator pamphlets, carrying the false reports, did not appear on the streets until two hours after the worst rioting was over” as “one important fact” established by the MCCH. “With the red herring out of the way,” the editorial went on, “the investigating body can set out to probe the basic factors which really precipitated the riots - the discrimination, exploitation and oppression of 204,000 American citizens in the most liberal city in America. The NYA, HN, and NYT reported the testimony on when the leaflets appeared without addressing the implications of that evidence for the police narrative of the disorder. The Am and Daily News mentioned other aspects of Taylor’s testimony about the leaflet, but not when it was distributed, with the Daily News continuing to describe the leaflet as having "brought the riot into being." No mention of testimony about the leaflet appeared in stories about the hearing in the WT, TU, NYP, and NYEJ. In other words, the anti-communist Hearst newspapers that had given the most attention to the leaflets did not respond to the testimony at odds with their narrative.
Kress 5, 10 & 25c store front windows broken (10:40 PM) At 10:40 PM, a large display window in Kress' store at 256 West 125th Street broke after being hit by a brick. Patrolman Walter MacKenzie told the Harlem Magistrates Court that he saw William Ford, a seventeen-year-old Black laborer throw the brick, and them allegedly shout, "in a loud tone of voice "Shed white blood, kill the cops, there has been enough black blood shed now." A "very large and threatening crowd" gathered in response to Ford's shouts. By that time the large crowds on 125th Street had been cleared from the street and had broken into smaller groups, many of which scattered north and south up the avenues, but some groups remained. Ten minutes before windows were broken in Kress' store, Claude Jones allegedly threw a rock that broke a window at Blumstein's department store several buildings to to the east, and then called on the people on the street to attack police, drawing a large crowd. Around the same time, a white man named Thomas Wijstem was hit by a rock in front of the W. T. Grant store immediately east of Blumsteins, allegedly while being attacked by a group of Black men.

One or two display windows at the front of Kress' store had been broken earlier, at the beginning of the disorder, as well as more windows at the rear of the store not long after. However, a reporter for the Afro-American wrote that the store "suffered very little loss on the front." Repairs to the front of the store next day appear to have focused on only two sections of the store window, on the right side of the left entrance, in a photograph published in the New York American, and on the left side of the right entrance, where a ladder can be seen in Universal newsreel footage. Those repairs cannot have taken long. A photograph of Kress' store published in the Daily News on March 21 showed intact store windows, guarded by two police officers. A sustained police presence during the disorder appears to have protected the front of the store. Police established a cordon in front of Kress' store from the time it closed; officers were still there around 10 PM, when Detective Henry Roge was hit by a rock while standing in front of the store, and after the windows was broken at 10:40 PM, there were officers able to arrest William Ford. Later in the evening the police cordon extended to cover 125th Street from 8th Avenue to Lenox Avenue, with Kress' store remaining at its center, and as the base for police responding to the disorder. It was also the case that Ford was not alleged to have been trying to incite others to break more windows, as most of the other men arrested for inciting crowds allegedly did, but to attack police.

There is no mention of this specific incident in any newspapers reporting on the disorder. William Ford did appear in the Harlem Magistrates Court, on March 20, but his case was not among those about which the Home News reported details. Eventually sent to the grand jury, Ford was transferred to the Court of Special Sessions to be tried for both the misdemeanor forms of inciting a riot, and malicious mischief, an offense involving damage to property used in the prosecution of those who allegedly broke windows during the disorder. There ws no information on the outcome of that trial; Ford does not appear in the transcript of the 28th Police Precinct blotter that provides outcomes for most of those prosecuted in the Harlem Magistrates Court.

The Kress 5, 10 & 25c store appears in the MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935 and was still visible in the Tax Department photograph from 1939-1941.
Businesses that survived (40) Both the white-owned newspapers the New York Sun and the New York Evening Journal and the Black-owned Afro- American 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." 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."

There is little direct evidence that businesses actually closed as a result of the disorder. Indirect evidence of which businesses continued to operate in Harlem after the disorder is provided by the business survey undertaken by the MCCH between June and December 1935. 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 close enough to allow individual businesses to be identified. In other cases the photographs are taken from a distance or angle that does not show the address of the business that was looted.

Forty-six of the sixty-six addresses reported as having being looted can be identified in those sources; forty-one stores continued in business after the disorder. Among that group are seven of the businesses whose owners sued the city for damages after the disorder; five of those owners did go out of business, and in fourteen cases there is no evidence to establish what happened (an additional eighty owners who filed suits are not identified in the sources).

This page references:

A. E. White, "Harlem Rioters Must Face Courts - Mayor La Guardia Appoints Committee," Associated Negro Press News Releases, Series A, March 1935, Claude A. Barnett Papers: The Associated Negro Press, Part 1 (ProQuest)