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"Harlem: Survey - Census Tract #208 (9)," 1935, Roll 79, Subject Files, Office of the Mayor, Fiorello H. La Guardia records (New York City Municipal Archives).
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2020-10-22T02:15:56+00:00
Harry Lash's 5 and 10c store looted and set on fire
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2024-05-29T21:27:22+00:00
Around 11:15 PM, Harry Lash closed his 5c & 10c store at 400 Lenox Avenue, on the southeast corner of West 130th Street. He likely then went home to his residence at 536 West 178th Street, north of Harlem in Washington Heights. Wherever he was, Lash apparently got news of the disorder in Harlem and returned to the store around two hours later, at approximately 1:20 AM, according to the affidavit he gave later that day in the Magistrates Court. He found the store windows broken, fixtures damaged, and "general merchandise" valued at $1,000 missing. Display windows that ran the length of the side of the store that faced West 130th Street, as well as those that faced Lenox Avenue, could be seen smashed in the Associated Press photograph published in the New York Sun. Significant damage to the window displays was also visible. However, large amounts of merchandise could be seen still inside the store, indicating limits to the scale of the looting. Lash's store was in the heart of the blocks of Lenox Avenue north of West 125th Street where reported looting was concentrated. Disorder continued in this area after the time Lash returned to his store.
The store windows were likely broken and merchandise taken starting around 11:30 PM and continuing until Lash returned to the store. The rear of Lash's store on West 130th Street had also been set on fire, by a "group of 35 blacks...soon after midnight," according to the New York Herald Tribune. That crowd "tried to prevent policeman from sounding an alarm - 'let it burn' they shouted," the report continued. "When firemen came, they hindered them too, bustling about hydrants and shoving hose lines about - when firemen threatened to turn the hose on them, they dispersed." Some of those details also appeared in the New York Evening Journal, but its story combined the fire and those at 429 and 431 Lenox Avenue two blocks to north: “As detectives and uniformed men closed in on crowds surrounding the burning buildings, they met with resistance. 'Let them burn. Let them burn.' The shout was taken up by hundreds, and it was not until firemen threatened to turn hoselines on the rioting men and women that they dispersed.” An entire block separated the two locations, too far for a single crowd to be involved. Both the number of police and the size of the crowd were larger in the New York Evening Journal story, which repeated and gave more prominence to the crowd's alleged chant, “Let them burn." The New York Herald Tribune characterized the crowd as having "hindered" firefighters because some individuals who pressed forward to see the fire got in their way. The New York Evening Journal more sensationally characterized the crowd's behavior as "resistance." Those differences and characterizations were in keeping with how that publication sensationalized and exaggerated the actions of Black crowds.
An ACME agency photograph published in the Daily News showed flames in the last section of the store window on West 130th Street. Firefighters could be seen crouched in front of the window (they were cropped out of the version published in the Daily News). They appeared to have quickly extinguished the fire. Only one small section at the rear of the store, on West 130th Street furthest from Lenox Avenue, looked to be burned in an Associated Press photograph. A Home News reporter’s assessment that “damage from the fires was not great” fit that image. There were no other newspaper stories or photographs of this fire, but it attracted the attention of newsreel cameramen. Some of the limited footage from the night of the disorder showed the fire burning in the store and firefighters crossing in front of the camera. No bystanders were visible. Cameramen returned the next day to shoot footage of the burned section of the building both from Lenox Avenue, and, for the Universal newsreel, West 130th Street by the fire-damaged section looking toward Lenox Avenue. Debris was visible on the sidewalk in front of the fire-damaged section in the footage from Lenox Avenue. Several Black men and women walked by the store in the footage from West 130th Street.
Lash's store was misidentified in several sources including the caption to the Associated Press photograph in the New York Sun: headed "Harlem Rioters Break Every Window in Radio Store," it read "Not a pane of glass was left unbroken in this West 125th Street establishment. The Harlem Church of the Air on the second floor escaped raiders." The New York Herald Tribune also described the store as a Raffer's Radio store. Some of the confusion resulted from the large sign on the store advertising Raffer's Radio Service. By the time the Tax Department photograph was taken between 1939 and 1941, that sign had been changed to read "Harry's 5 and 10c Store." The details of the windows and the shape of the sign in the Associated Press photograph matched those in the Tax Department photograph. Signs for the You Pray for Me Church of the Air visible in the second story windows confirmed that match. Sister Rosa Horn's Pentecostal Church occupied the upper floors of the building spanning 392-400 Lenox Avenue by September 1932, remaining there for several decades. Additionally, the Acme agency caption and the caption published by the Afro-American identified the store as being on Lenox Avenue. The Daily News and New York Herald Tribune captions of the photograph of the store on fire mistakenly located it at 128th Street and Lenox Avenue, but the windows matched the distinctive details of Lash's store, as did the presence of the Hope Wo Chinese Hand Laundry next to the store. A Chinese laundry appeared in the MCCH business survey at 68 West 130th Street, and the sign that was visible in the newspaper photograph could be seen in the Tax Department photograph.
Around 1:50 AM, an arrest for looting the store was made five blocks to the east, on the Third Avenue Bridge connecting the eastern end of West 130th Street in Harlem with the Bronx. Patrolman Louis Frikser observed a Black man, nineteen-year-old Arnold Ford, "walking across the bridge with a package," according to the details provided in the Probation Department investigation. Ford was likely going home; he lived just three blocks beyond the bridge, at 246 East 136th Street in the Bronx. The package he carried cannot have been large as it contained "soap, garters, thread and notions" with a value of $1.15. According to Frikser, Ford admitted being part of a group of men who had entered Lash's store and stolen goods. Later, Ford made clear that he had not broken the store windows but only joined others entering the store and "helping himself to some merchandise." "A few minutes later" the officer stopped a second man crossing the bridge from Harlem, Joseph Moore, a forty-six-year-old West Indian carpenter, and also arrested him for looting Lash's store. None of the reports of this case described what caused Frikser to stop Moore or what he found in his possession. Like Ford, Moore was likely returning home; he lived next door to Ford, at 248 East 136th Street in the Bronx. Only seven other men are identified in the sources as having been arrested away from the stores they allegedly looted, a group making up one third (9/27) of the arrests for which that information is known (27/60).
Police charged both Ford and Moore with burglary in the Harlem Magistrate Court. Subsequently they were indicted by the grand jury and tried in the Court of General Sessions. During the trial on April 1, Ford pled guilty to petit larceny. Moore, however, was acquitted at the direction of the judge, an outcome for which the Daily Worker gave credit to the International Labor Defense lawyers who appeared for him. Ford was the only individual of the ten men convicted in the Court of General Sessions as a result of the disorder placed on probation rather than incarcerated. He remained under supervision under April 1938.
Police also arrested a third man for looting who likely also allegedly took merchandise from Lash's store. Lash was recorded as the complainant when Milton Ackerman, a twenty-four year old Black man, was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20. According to the New York Times, Ackerman was charged with "taking two rolls of paper, worth 5 cents, and 8 cents' worth of napkins from a Lenox Avenue store." It seems likely Lash's store at 400 Lenox Avenue was the location referred to in the story, especially given that Ackerman lived at 33 West 130th Street, only a few buildings east of that store. Lash's other store in Harlem was at 2530 8th Avenue, near the corner of West 135th Street, not on Lenox Avenue. There was no mention of where or when police arrested Ackerman.
Ackerman returned to the Magistrate's Court on March 25, when the charges against him were dismissed as he had been indicted by the grand jury, and he was held on $1000 Bail. Three days later he appeared in the Court of General Sessions, where Judge Donnellan dismissed the indictment and released him. Neither of the sources for that outcome, the 28th Precinct Police blotter and the New York Times, provided any explanation for the judge's decision. -
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2021-04-19T18:25:16+00:00
Louis Levy's dry goods store looted
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2024-05-31T02:14:43+00:00
Around 11:00 PM, Louis Levy locked up his dry goods store at 374 Lenox Avenue and left for the night, likely going to his home at 636 West 174th Street. When he returned to the store around 3:00 AM, he found the window broken and $10,000 worth of textiles, clothing, and sundries stolen, the store "entirely cleaned out of its stock," according to the Daily Mirror. The owner of the jewelry store next door at 372 Lenox Avenue, Benjamin Zelvin, locked up his store around thirty minutes after Levy, so the store was likely attacked soon after that time. The Magistrates Court affidavit recorded Levy closing the store on March 18, the night before the disorder, and returning on March 22, two days after the disorder. It was likely that those dates are mistakes, and that he closed the store on March 19 and returned in the midst of the disorder, as several storeowners did on hearing what was happening in Harlem. But it was possible that Levy had been away from the store for some reason, as the two men charged with looting his store did not appear in court until March 22, among the last of those arrested to do so. Both Clifford Mitchell, a forty-six-year-old Black laborer, and Daughty Shavos, a twenty-one-year-old Black peddler, had been arrested the previous evening, a day after the disorder, at two different locations, in possession of "wearing apparel" with a combined value of $50 that Levy identified as part of his stock. How police found the men was not mentioned in the sources.
Levy appeared in Harlem Magistrates Court on March 22 to charge Mitchell and Shavos with burglary. The Magistrate sent both men to the grand jury. They dismissed the charges against Mitchell and sent Shavos to the Court of Special Sessions to be charged with a misdemeanor. There was no evidence of the outcome of that case.
The only mention of the looting in the press were stories in the New York Evening Journal, Daily Mirror, and Daily News that reported the appearance of the two men in the Magistrates Court. The story in the Daily Mirror identified Levy and the store and the value of the goods stolen; the other two stories simply noted that the men had been held for the grand jury.
Despite the scale of the damages claimed, Levy appeared to have continued to operate the dry goods store. In the second half of 1935, a white-owned dry goods store was recorded at 374 Lenox Avenue in the MCCH business survey. "L. Levy" was also visible on the signage for the storefront in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. -
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2021-08-20T01:24:37+00:00
Isreal Riehl's Unclaimed Laundry store looted
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2024-05-31T19:31:13+00:00
Sometime during the disorder, Lamter Jackson, a twenty-four-year-old Black man, allegedly threw a rock that shattered the window of a store selling unclaimed laundry at 1 West 131st Street, and then took a bag of laundry from the store, according to the report of his appearance in the Magistrates' Court published by the Home News. Patrolman C. Jackson of the 32nd Precinct was recorded as having arrested Jackson in the Magistrates Court docket book. There are no other details of those events in the sources. There was only one other looting in this area, two blocks south on 5th Avenue, and a fire reportedly set on the roof of the building next door, 5 West 131st Street. A block west, Lenox Avenue saw multiple stores looted, assaults, and three fires, but there were far more business on that street than in this area of 5th Avenue.
Although the store was identified as at 1 West 131st Street, the business was likely the white-owned unclaimed laundry store the MCCH business survey identified at 3 West 131st Street (the survey includes no businesses at 1 West 131st Street). The first building on West 131st Street is number 5, so 3 West 131st Street would be in the building on the northwest corner of 131st Street and 5th Avenue. The awnings visible in the Tax Department photograph on the left side of the building would be over the store.
Jackson appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with petit larceny. That charge suggests a lack of evidence he had broken in and entered a store to take merchandise. Isreal Riehl was listed as the complainant, so was likely the owner of the store. Magistrate Ford sent Jackson to the Court of Special Sessions. There are no surviving police or legal records of the outcome of his prosecution.
The business seems likely to have survived the disorder, but there is no evidence that definitively links the store visited by investigators compiling the MCCH business survey to that looted during the disorder. -
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2022-12-16T01:48:20+00:00
[Photograph] "Two Store Fronts Looted in Lenox Ave.," New York Evening Journal, March 20, 1935, 15.
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2024-01-29T00:52:25+00:00
Full caption: "TWO STORE FRONTS LOOTED IN LENOX AVE. Although police made every effort to preserve property and prevent destruction, many stores were broken into and their plate glass windows shattered. Here are two such stores on Lenox Ave. and 127th St. with the goods removed from the windows - some of it left on the sidewalk. Many suspects were caught red-handed."
Although the caption describes the photograph as showing two stores, a sign across the doorway suggests the entrance to a single business (there is no evidence of such signage across entrances shared by two businesses). Both the signs, the display outside one window, and the merchandise visible in the window suggest it was a grocery store. On the right of the image is a smashed and emptied window, with an empty street display on the left, behind which is a broken window that contains some merchandise. The caption refers to "goods removed from the window" rather than stolen, reflecting the presence of multiple boxes of merchandise "left on the sidewalk," destroyed as an extension of attacking the store.
The caption locates the store "on Lenox Ave. and 127th St."; no signage or street number is visible in the image to more precisely identify it. It may be the A&P chain grocery store the MCCH Business Survey found on the northeast corner of West 127th Street, at 338 Lenox Avenue, although there is no other evidence that store was looted. The photograph could also show one of the grocery stores that were reported looted on the block between West 127th and West 128th Streets, at 343 Lenox Avenue and across the street at 348 Lenox Avenue.