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"Harlem Riot Damage is Figured at Half Million," Afro-American, March 30, 1935, 1, 2.
1 2020-09-22T17:49:10+00:00 Anonymous 1 26 plain 2023-07-31T19:21:31+00:00 AnonymousThis 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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- Albert Allen arrested
- Albert Brown arrested
- Albert Yerber arrested
- Alonzo Greenridge arrested
- Amie Taylor arrested
- Andrew Lyons killed
- Archie Niles arrested
- Arnold Ford arrested
- Arthur Bennett arrested
- Arthur Davis arrested
- Arthur Killen arrested
- Arthur Merritt arrested
- Aubrey Patterson arrested
- August Miller killed
- Bernard Smith arrested
- Businesses that survived (40)
- Carl Jones arrested
- Charles Alston arrested
- Charles De Souse arrested
- Charles Jones arrested
- Charles Saunders arrested
- Charles Wright arrested
- Claude Jones arrested
- Claudius Jones arrested
- David Bragg arrested
- David Smith arrested
- David Terry arrested
- De Soto Windgate shot
- Detective Henry Roge assaulted
- Douglas Cornelius arrested
- Earl Davis arrested
- Edward Larry arrested
- Edward Loper arrested
- Elizabeth Tai arrested
- Elva Jacobs arrested
- Emmet Williams arrested
- Ernest Barnes arrested
- Ernest Johnson arrested
- Frank Wells arrested
- Frederick Harwell arrested
- Harry Gordon arrested
- Hashi Mohammed arrested
- Henry Stewart arrested
- Hezekiah Wright arrested
- Homer Thomas arrested
- Horace Fowler arrested
- Isaac Daniels arrested
- Jack Berry arrested
- Jack Williams arrested
- Jacob Bonaparte arrested
- James Bright arrested
- James Harris arrested
- James Hayes arrested
- James Hughes arrested
- James Lloyd arrested
- James Mason arrested
- James Pringle arrested
- James Simon arrested
- James Smith arrested
- James Smitten arrested
- James Williams arrested
- James Wrigley assaulted
- Jean Jacquelin arrested
- John Darby arrested
- John Hawkins arrested
- John Henry arrested
- John Kennedy Jones arrested
- John King arrested
- John Vivien arrested
- Jose Perez arrested
- Joseph Moore arrested
- Joseph Payne arrested
- Joseph Wade arrested
- Julian Rogers arrested
- Julius Hightower arrested
- Kress 5, 10 & 25c store front windows broken
- Kress 5, 10 & 25c store front windows broken (10:40 PM)
- Kress 5, 10 & 25c store rear windows broken
- Lamter Jackson arrested
- Lawrence Humphrey arrested
- Leaflets distributed
- Leo Cash arrested
- Leo Smith arrested
- Leon Mauraine arrested
- Leroy Brown arrested
- Leroy Gillard arrested
- Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted
- Looting (67)
- Looting of food and drink (24)
- Louis Cobb arrested
- Louis Tonick arrested
- Louise Brown arrested
- Loyola Williams arrested
- Lyman Quarterman shot
- Margaret Mitchell arrested
- Merryman McAllister arrested
- Milton Ackerman arrested
- Nelson Brock arrested
- Oscar Austin arrested
- Oscar Leacock arrested
- Paul Boyett arrested
- Police establish perimeter around Kress' store
- Police find Lino Rivera
- Police in front of Kress' store
- Porter O'Neill arrested
- Preston White arrested
- Raymond Easley arrested
- Raymond Taylor arrested
- Reginald Mills arrested
- Richard Jackson arrested
- Rivers Wright arrested
- Robert Porter arrested
- Robert Tanner arrested
- Roosevelt Dration arrested
- Rose Murrell arrested
- Salathel Smith arrested
- Sam Nicholas arrested
- Theodore Hughes arrested
- Thomas Babbitt arrested
- Thomas Jackson arrested
- Thomas Wijstem assaulted & killed
- Viola Woods arrested
- Vito Capozzio assaulted
- Warren Johnson arrested
- William Ford arrested
- William Grant arrested
- William Jones arrested
- William Kitlitz assaulted & James Smitten injured
- William Norris arrested
- Wilmont Hendricks shot
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2020-02-25T19:43:29+00:00
Looting (67)
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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. -
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Cases in the civil courts (106)
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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.
This page references:
- 1 2022-11-23T15:57:21+00:00 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) 3 plain 2022-11-23T16:23:11+00:00