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• 1 2020-10-22T01:55:04+00:00 Jacob Solomon's grocery store looted 29 plain 2024-05-30T20:03:32+00:00 At 9:00 PM, Jacob Solomon closed his grocery store at at 2100 5th Avenue, on the corner of West 129th Street. Around 12:40 AM, Officer Rock of the 28th Precinct allegedly saw six men run out of the store. He gave chase and claimed he was able to arrest one of those men, a thirty-five-year-old Black laborer named Lawrence Humphrey. He allegedly had a fifty-pound bag of rice worth $2.50 in his possession, according to a note written on the Magistrate's Court affidavit. The men Rock allegedly saw must have been only some of those who took merchandise from the store, as Solomon's reported losses exceeded what they could have carried. When Solomon returned to his store around 7 AM he found the door and windows broken and approximately $100 of groceries missing. He told a passing New York World-Telegram reporter, who heard the sound of "cracking glass" and saw him "sweeping the walk in front of his little shop" the morning after the disorder that "my windows were smashed early this morning and the mob stole $150 worth of food."
  
  The attack on Solomon's store was one of only four incidents reported on 5th Avenue; two occurred on blocks north of the grocery store, the other on West 116th Street. In part that absence of disorder reflected a lack of targets. The blocks around the grocery store contained very few businesses. Only the block north of 125th Street, and the blocks from 131st Street to 138th Street, were lined with stores. The men who attacked the store may have come from Lenox Avenue, a block to the west, where multiple attacks on businesses were reported around this time. Humphrey lived at 55 West 132nd Street, in the middle of the block between 5th Avenue and Lenox Avenue three blocks north of Solomon's store, closer to the crowds and violence on Lenox Avenue than the apparently relatively incident-free 5th Avenue.
  
  
  
  Humphrey appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, a proceeding reported only in the Home News. Magistrate Renaud held Humphrey for a grand jury on bail of $1,000. There were no newspaper reports on the subsequent steps in his prosecution. His district attorney's case file recorded that the grand jury sent him to the Court of Special Sessions rather than indicting him and sending him to the Court of General Sessions. Their decision to charge him with a misdemeanor rather than a felony likely reflected the low value of the goods — $2.50 — allegedly found in his possession. According to the 28th Precinct police blotter, the judges found Humphrey guilty and on April 17 sentenced him to thirty days in the Workhouse.
  
  It is not clear if Solomon remained in business after the attack on his store. The store did not appear in the MCCH business survey, which included no businesses at 2100 5th Avenue. However, the Tax Department photograph taken a few years later does show a store with the window signs characteristic of grocery stores, and a truck parked outside filled with boxes and milk containers that could have been stock for the store.