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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 41 plain 2023-11-15T20:33:33+00:00 AnonymousThe 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 was 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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- 7:00 PM to 7:30 PM
- 7:30 PM to 8:00 PM
- 8:00 PM to 8:30 PM
- 10:00 PM to 10:30 PM
- 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 did not survive (5)
- Businesses that survived (40)
- Carl Jones arrested
- Cases in the Civil courts (106)
- Charles Alston arrested
- Charles De Souse arrested
- Charles Jones arrested
- Charles Saunders arrested
- Charles Wright arrested
- Claude Jones arrested
- Claudius Jones arrested
- Crowd inside Kress 5, 10 & 25c store
- David Bragg arrested
- David Smith arrested
- David Terry arrested
- De Soto Windgate shot
- Detective Henry Roge assaulted
- Douglas Cornelius arrested
- Earl Davis arrested
- Edward Hughes 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 Banks arrested
- Robert Porter arrested
- Robert Tanner arrested
- Roger Scott 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
- Vernon Daniels arrested
- Viola Woods arrested
- Vito Capozzio assaulted
- Walter Jones arrested
- Warren Johnson arrested
- William Ford arrested
- William Grant arrested
- William Jackson arrested
- William Jones arrested
- William Kitlitz assaulted & James Smitten injured
- William Norris arrested
- Wilmont Hendricks shot
This page is referenced by:
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Businesses that did not survive (5)
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The white-owned newspapers the New York Sun and the New York Evening Journal, the Black-owned Afro-American and the Spanish-language publication La Prensa reported that businesses in Harlem might close as a result of the disorder. The New York Sun implied that racial conflict motivated such decisions: "It is reported that many white merchants of the Harlem district have signified their intention of leaving the neighborhood just as soon as they can arrange for the disposition of their stocks." La Prensa reported a similar sentiment, that "it is impossible to continue doing business in areas that are exposed to racial outbursts and radical controversies." The statement in the New York Evening Journal was speculation linked to the losses suffered: "The looting of stores reached such proportions that small merchants feared they would be thrown into bankruptcy." The Afro-American's correspondent offered a similar assessment: "[Many businesses] probably will never open again because their owners are bankrupt as a result of the looting of stores and lack of insurance to cover the losses."
A similar claim was made by Barney Rosentein, the attorney representing more than half of the 106 business owners who sued the city to recover losses they suffered during the disorder. "Many of his clients, Mr Rosenstein said, were completely wiped out by the wave of robberies which followed the beginning of the riots," the New York World-Telegram reported. The New York Sun reported the same claim without attributing it to Rosenstein. In newspaper stories about their suits against the city, only five business owners are identified as saying that they had gone out of business due to the damages they suffered. This group included the two owners who made the largest claims for damages, Harry Piskin ($14,125) and George Chronis ($14,000), and the owners who made the fourth and seventh largest claims, Harry Levinson ($4,805) and Irving Stetkin ($2,068). The remaining owner, Manny Zipp, claimed only $721 in damages, below the median claim of $733.13 for the twenty-six owners identified in newspaper stories. Piskin and Chronis both told the city comptroller that extensive damage to their stores had put them out of business. Piskin said "they looted his laundry, broke all of his machinery and drove him out of business," the New York Sun reported, while Chronis said his lunchroom had been "completely demolished," according to the New York World-Telegram. Zipp and Levinson emphasized lost merchandise. Zipp told the city comptroller "everything in his store was taken," forcing him out of business, in a story in the New York Post, while Levinson said the "mob cleaned out" his store, forcing him to retire, the New York Sun reported. In Stetkin's case, no explanation was given; a story in the New York Sun simply said he was not in business anymore.
Indirect evidence of what happened to other businesses can be found in the MCCH business survey undertaken between June and December 1935 and/or the Tax Department building photographs taken between 1939 and 1941. However, the survey and photographs do not provide certain or comprehensive evidence. While the survey identified more than 10,000 businesses, other sources do indicate that it did miss some businesses and sometimes incorrectly recorded addresses. In most cases, the owner and the business name were also not recorded, so they cannot be matched to looted businesses with certainty. In addition, some of the Tax Department building photographs taken between 1939 and 1941 are taken from a distance or angle that does not show the storefront of the address that was looted.
Twenty-one additional business owners who sued the city are identified in newspaper stories, seven of whom continued to operate their businesses after the disorder, appearing in the MCCH business survey and/or the Tax Department building photographs. Those businesses reported damages ranging from $453.90 to $1,273.90, lesser amounts than all but one of the businesses that closed. Those sources do not offer information on the remaining fourteen businesses identified as the subject of damage suits. Four of those owners claimed damages higher than those that remained in business: Samuel Mestetzky claimed $5,860.50; Irving Guberman claimed $3,967; Benjamin Zelvin claimed $2,685; and Sam Lefkowitz claimed $1,610.64. The scale of those damages makes it possible that these men may also have gone out of business.
The losses for twenty-six additional businesses reported in legal records and the press were, with one exception, less than those of the businesses reported as suing the city, ranging from $10-12 to $1,000 (and one with losses of $10,000), with a median loss of only $100. Nineteen of those businesses reopened after the disorder; there is no information on the other seven businesses.
In addition to the twenty-six business owners identified as suing the city, an additional eighty others also filed suits. Some of those businesses may be among those who appeared in legal records. There is no information on the scale of the damage they suffered, so no indication of whether any likely did not reopen.
In total, nearly ninety percent (40 of 45) of the businesses reported as having being looted that can be identified in the sources reopened after the disorder.
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8:00 PM to 8:30 PM
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At 8:00 PM, people crowded both the corners of 8th and 7th Avenues and the sidewalks of 125th Street between them — except in front of the Kress store, where police continued to move on anyone who attempted to stop. When Louise Thompson returned to 125th Street and 8th Avenue at that time she found the situation that the reporter for the Afro-American had watched develop in the preceding half an hour, people on all four corners, not just the side of 8th Avenue closest to the Kress store. Walking along 125th Street to 7th Avenue, she found the four corners of that intersection similarly occupied.
The other change Thompson noticed as she walked to 7th Avenue was that by 8:00 PM “most of the windows [were] broken on 125th Street." Carlton Moss described the same sight when he arrived at 125th Street and 7th Avenue from uptown; store window after store window broken on 125th Street. Broken windows meant holes in the large store windows, not that they had been entirely smashed; only after being hit multiple times would all the glass in the large display windows break and the merchandise inside them be accessible to looters. However, the only damage to the Kress store on 125th Street was the one window broken around 6:15 PM, thanks to the police deployed there to keep crowds from gathering.
Windows being broken along 125th Street were likely part of what Inspector Di Martini was referring to when he said that while standing in front of the Kress store he “noticed the crowds becoming excited” around 8:00 PM. Police had been allowing people to walk along 125th Street, as Thompson had, to keep the crowds moving rather than becoming a “mass demonstration.” With the numbers of people on the sidewalk grown large, and officers numbering in the hundreds arriving on the scene, police began to push people back to 8th and 7th Avenues. Senior police officers explained to reporters that they were establishing a cordon to protect both the Kress store and the other damaged businesses on 125th Street. At 8th Avenue, James Ford, a white Communist Party leader, saw the police “driving the people back to 8th Ave from Kress store.” Arriving around 8:00 PM, he watched mounted police riding on the sidewalk and patrolmen using their clubs, causing “resentment” among the crowd. Ford also heard “crashes of glass” as some of those at that end of 125th Street reacted by breaking more windows, perhaps along 8th Avenue by the corners as well as on 125th Street.
At the intersection with 7th Avenue, police were making similar attempts to keep groups of people from 125th Street. Among the small groups Louise Thompson encountered, “there were people who were infuriated,” about rumors that a boy was dead, which some compared to lynching, but also about conditions on 125th Street, that the stores “didn’t employ negroes” and charged high prices for inferior goods. She also saw “a few people” with copies of the leaflet distributed by the Young Liberators. Carlton Moss too heard rumors about a boy being killed from people at 125th Street and 7th Avenue, as well as cries to “Run dem white folks outa Harlem” — leading him to put two white friends who were with him, a man and a woman, into a taxi so they could leave Harlem. When Charles Romney returned from warning his wife to stay off the streets, he found the crowd growing, and patrolmen and mounted police on the sidewalk trying to move them. On the southwest corner, Thompson encountered Black patrolmen among the officers “pushing the people back,” and “saw one patrolman throw his billy [club] into the crowds while the mounted police were riding them down.” With police batons swinging, this could have been when Andrew Lyons, a thirty-seven-year-old Black man, received the head injury which would later kill him. Like Ford, Thompson and Moss also heard breaking glass; Thompson “occasionally…heard a few rocks breaking windows,” whereas Moss heard lots of crashing glass. He also heard someone claiming, “We got Childs — Bastards don’t ‘llow Niggahs in dare, we got ‘em,” referring to the white-owned restaurant at 272 West 125th Street, on the opposite end of the block near 8th Avenue. Louise Thompson attributed the windows being broken in stores to resentment at police tactics and the refusal to allow people to gather and seek information at the Kress store.
The crews of the emergency trucks, the police riot squad, were deployed at the intersection with 7th Avenue, likely indicating that there were more people and more windows being broken there than at 8th Avenue. With at least two trucks, and perhaps as many as six in the area, there would have been ten or more patrolmen armed with rifles, shotguns, or Thompson machine guns (tommy guns) among the police. Many of the Black residents coming to 125th Street in response to the rumors spreading through Harlem would have come via 7th Avenue as it was the major traffic route through Harlem, carrying two lanes of traffic in each direction, separated by an island planted with trees. The homes in the blocks surrounding 7th Avenue, especially north of 125th Street, were occupied almost exclusively by Black residents. By contrast, 8th Avenue was a narrower street, with only one lane of traffic each way, an elevated railroad track running above the middle of the street, and fewer Black residents to its west, thanks to St. Nicholas Park and the presence of white neighborhoods. (There was a stop on the elevated train line at 8th Avenue and 125th that would have brought people — whereas the subway stop was a block east of 7th Avenue, at Lenox Avenue.)
The islands in the center of 7th Avenue contributed to how many people could gather at the intersection with 125th Street, providing a place for some of those an Afro-American reporter observed “overflowing” the corners to go. One such group appeared in a widely reprinted image taken by a Daily News photographer. The concrete barriers on either side of the island are visible in the photograph, as is a tree, and a caption identified the location as 125th Street and 7th Avenue. A patrolman is moving toward the Black men and women in the island, indicating that police efforts to move people away from 125th Street extended to the island. A rock hit the white photographer, twenty-eight-year-old Everett Breuer, in the head after he took the image, so the officer may have been responding to objects being thrown at nearby businesses. One man close to the patrolman is bent over; the caption described 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 patrolman and the man. Two women are among the four other people in the image; women continued to be the significant presence among those responding to rumors about what had happened in the Kress store that they had been from the moment Rivera had been grabbed.
Groups of people were also on the corners of 125th Street on the eastern side of 7th Avenue by this time. Around 8:30 PM, some of those people began throwing rocks at windows of stores on the eastern side of 7th Avenue, the first reported attacks on businesses beyond the block containing the Kress store. Herbert’s Blue Diamond Jewelry store on the northeast corner of 7th Avenue seems to have been the initial target. As Carlton Moss watched, people threw rocks at the white-owned store’s windows. -
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7:00 PM to 7:30 PM
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Just after 7:00 PM, a woman on 8th Avenue cried out that a hearse had pulled up at the rear entrance of the resource="125th-street-between-8th--7th-avenues-1" href="https://harlemindisorder.supdigital.org/hid/media/125th Street Between 8th & 7th Avenue.png">Kress store on 124th Street to get the body of the dead boy. Thanks to police clearing the sidewalk in front of the store, there were groups of people on 8th Avenue to hear her call. Some responded by moving to the rear of the store. They may have been joined by residents of a Salvation Army hostel for homeless men located opposite the store. Several police officers had been stationed at the rear entrance earlier by Inspector Di Martini; additional officers followed the crowd from 8th Avenue. Stones were soon being thrown, smashing windows in the Kress store and hitting at least two police officers, Patrolman Michael Kelly, assigned to a radio car, and Detective Charles Foley. Whether the officers were targeted or caught between the crowd and store windows is unclear. Police did not arrest anyone for throwing the stones. Two mounted policemen were moving the crowd away from the rear of the store when Joe Taylor, the Black leader of the Young Liberators, arrived at 124th Street, on his way to 125th Street, having been “put out” of the West 123rd St police station together with others seeking information.
By 7:15 PM, there were no longer groups of people on 124th Street at the rear of the store; an emergency truck that arrived at 8th Avenue and 124th Street at that time as part of the reinforcements called by Inspector Di Martini found that “everything was quiet.” An ambulance from Harlem Hospital arrived at the same time to treat Patrolman Kelly. His injury was serious enough that he was taken to the hospital for an x-ray. Joe Taylor also left 124th Street around that time, moved on by police he said were shooting their guns in the air. He had heard a rumor that the boy who had been beaten lived at 410 Manhattan Avenue, so headed south to investigate.
Around the same time, 7:15 PM, Inspector Di Martini returned to 125th Street. He found that there too “everything was calm.” There were no people in front of the Kress store, small groups gathered elsewhere on the street, but no “mass demonstration.” Di Martini thought that, as “the people of this part of the city of N. Y. have been very friendly with me,” “they would take my word that no child had been injured.” However, although he “spoke to all of the groups on 125th Street until [he] was hoarse,” they were not convinced.
As Di Martini was futilely speaking with groups gathered around the Kress store, Louise Thompson walked from 7th Avenue to 8th Avenue. With police not permitting people to stand in front of the Kress store, she found “numerous people who were on the corner” and spent “a length of time” talking with them. There were white men and women among the groups Thompson encountered, but “not very many.” More Black residents joined Thompson on 125th Street as rumors spread further through the neighborhood. Charles Romney, a Black West Indian activist involved in a range of political organizations, who was returning home from the YMCA on 135th Street, had noticed crowds on West 117th Street running uptown around 7:00 PM. When he asked “what it was all about,” he was told “that a boy in Kress store was murdered.” Romney followed them “to go to 125th Street to see if I could get any information."
Additional members of the Young Liberators had also arrived on 125th Street. At 7:15 PM, a Black reporter for the Afro-American encountered “some white youngsters [who] were passing out handbills” at the corner of 7th Avenue, a leaflet based on the information brought to their office. The mimeographed page had handwritten text at the top that 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
While small groups of people were also gathered on the corner of 7th Avenue and 125th Street, as they were at the other end of the block, the Afro-American reporter found “all was quiet.” However, as he walked along the block toward the Kress store, he found a different situation, “a large number of people between Seventh and Eighth Avenues” and Inspector Di Martini and numerous police. He joined a group asking Di Martini what had happened in the store. A boy caught shoplifting had been let go, but rumors were being spread that he had been beaten or killed, the inspector told them. He also showed them the store window that had been broken. But he would not let reporters into the store or answer their question, "Well, where is the boy?”
When Louise Thompson walked in the opposite direction to the reporter, from 8th Avenue to 7th Avenue, just before 7:30 PM, she saw windows broken in businesses on the same side of 125th Street as the Kress store. As yet, that damage had not spread the length of the block. Channing Tobias, who returned to 125th Street around the time Thompson left, found no windows broken yet east of Blumstein’s store, about halfway between the Kress store and that corner. The scene had “quieted down” from the threatening crowds Tobias had encountered an hour or so earlier. Likely that lack of activity was why Thompson decided now was the time to go to her home, a ten-minute walk from 125th Street, to “tell my people what had happened.”
At 7:30 PM an ambulance arrived in front of Blumstein’s department store on 125th Street, several buildings east of the Kress store. Police had called it to treat Detective Foley, who had an injured shoulder after being hit earlier by a stone thrown by someone in the crowd that attacked the rear of the Kress store. By that time at least some of the police officers who had dispersed that crowd had returned to 125th Street.
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). 4 plain 2023-10-05T18:22:56+00:00