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

Harry Lash's 5 and 10c store looted

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 $1000 missing. Lash had insurance for his store, but as of early April, when he spoke with a Probation Department investigator, his insurers refused to pay his claim. Despite that problem, Lash appears to have been able to remain in business, as the store was photographed several years later.

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. Police arrested no one at the store, but around 1.50 AM, an arrest 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; 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, he 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 detail what caused Frikser to stop Moore or what he found in his possession. Like Ford, Moore was likely returning home; he lived nextdoor 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, while Moore was acquitted at the direction of the judge, an outcome for which the Daily Worker gave credit to the International Labor Defence 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, remaining under supervision under April 1938.

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