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

Henry Stewart arrested

Sometime during the disorder, Officer Libman of the 32nd Precinct arrested Henry Stewart, a thirty-three-year-old Black man, for allegedly having thrown a bottle through a window in the meat market at 2422 8th Avenue, a story in the Home News reported. There was no information on the time or circumstances of the arrest. The arrest may have taken place around 10:30 PM, when the disorder intensified and crowds spread from 125th Street along 8th Avenue, but more likely occurred later, around 11:00 PM, given how far north the store was located. Libman also appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court as the arresting officer of another man, Warren Johnson, and two women, Louise Brown and Rose Murrell, who, with Stewart, had all been arrested at 8th Avenue and West 127th Street, according to a story in the Daily Mirror. The broken window in 2422 8th Avenue was the northern-most report of disorder on 8th Avenue, on the block between 130th and 131st Streets, two and half blocks north of where the story reported Stewart's arrest. While the grocery store whose window Murell allegedly broke was located at that intersection, on the southeast corner of 127th Street, the location of Brown and Johnson's alleged offenses are not mentioned in any sources. The intersection may have been where police were stationed and where those arrested were initially brought, rather than the site of their arrest. The other reported broken windows and looting on 8th Avenue were south of 128th Street. Stewart lived at 268 West 132nd Street, east of 8th Avenue a block and a half north of the meat market, so may have been drawn to the noise and crowds on the avenue in the early evening of March 19. All six of the men and women arrested by police on 8th Avenue lived either west of the avenue or in the block between 8th and 7th Avenues.



Henry Stewart was recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter as charged with inciting a riot. That charge was reported in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, in the New York Evening Journal and the Daily News, and in a story in the Daily Mirror. However, malicious mischief was the charge recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book on March 20, when Stewart appeared in court, and reported in the Home News story about those proceedings. Police appeared to have initially charged many of those arrested during the riot with inciting a riot and then revised those charges to fit the specific act that an individual was alleged to have committed before their arraignment in court. The others arrested by Libman were all charged with malicious mischief, although Brown and Johnson later had that charge reduced to disorderly conduct, indicating a lack of evidence they had broken windows. Magistrate Renaud transferred Stewart to the Court of Special Sessions and set bail at $500. That decision meant that the value of the damage to the building was not more than $250, the level required for the charge to be a felony. On March 25, the judges in that court discharged Stewart, according to the 28th Precinct police blotter. He was the only one of the six individuals tried for malicious mischief known to have been released (the outcome of three trials is unknown). Evidently police could not prove that Stewart had been a participant in the disorder rather than a spectator.

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