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Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store windows broken
Two photographs show a smashed window and empty display that is likely a section of the windows of Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store. Both show the same section of the window; in one there was a white man with his back to the camera looking in the window. The store was identified as a jewelry store by the captions to both photographs, and several bracelets and a pearl necklace can be seen on the back row of the display in the image that includes the white man (no example of that image being published has been found; it is part of the Bettman collection).
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Only the caption of the photograph in the Afro-American gave a location for the store, on Lenox Avenue, so not at the address of Herbert's store. However, compelling details in the photograph point to Herbert's, namely the distinctive panels beneath the windows, which are visible in the Tax Department photographs of the store, most clearly in the section visible in the photograph of the building to the store's north on 7th Avenue. Mistakenly locating the store on Lenox Avenue, as the caption appears to have done, also occurred a story in the New York Evening Journal, quoting the manager. The Afro-American photo caption also reported that items had been taken from the store window, but did not use the term looting, instead describing merchandise "scattered in all directions" rather than taken. The image itself could equally well fit with the displays having been emptied by clerks, as several other newspapers reported, as with having been looted.
Whenever they arrived, police "were stationed in front of the store for the night," as the Home News put it, one of the few stores identified as receiving such protection. One patrolman standing in front of the store appears in a image taken by a photographer for World Wide Photos, published in the Burlington Free Press and several other newspapers. While the caption did not identify the store, the distinctive panels that decorated the exterior below the windows are visible behind the officer. He was armed with a "riot gun," a rifle, rather than pistols regularly carried by police. Additional officers may have guarded other sections of the storefront. Four patrolmen with riot guns guarded the store in a New York Evening Journal story, three patrolmen in the Daily News, while the New York American and Home News reported two policemen guarded the store, and the New York Herald Tribune did not specify how many "police with riot guns." (Only the Afro-American mentioned police setting up "machine guns to prepare for pitched battle," weapons that were not part of police equipment). Clashes between those policemen and crowds are mentioned only by Bernard Newman, interviewed in the Daily News:
In other reports, the police presence less dramatically deterred crowds from approaching the store windows. Police "patrolled in front of the building," in the New York Herald Tribune's account, "Their armament effectively preventing attack by looters," according to the New York American. A second patrolman with a riot gun was photographed guarding another store at the intersection of 7th Avenue and West 125th Street, likely the United Cigar Store across 7th Avenue from Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry on the northwest corner of 125th Street. Notwithstanding the police guards, no one arrested for breaking windows, or looting, was charged with targeting the jewelry store.It looked for a while, according to Newman, as though the mob would crash the doors and pillage the store, despite three policemen with drawn guns who guarded the entrance. "We waited near the rear, ready to barricade ourselves in the cellar," Newman continued breathlessly, "but by some miracle the doors held."
However many windows were broken, multiple rocks were apparently thrown at the store, as Newman displayed a collection of rocks to reporters from the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and Daily News, the latter publishing a photograph of them. The United Cigar Store and the businesses on the other corners were also targeted during the disorder; Regal Shoes on the southeast corner was also reported looted, while the United Cigar Store on the northwest corner and the branch of the Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant chain on the southwest corner only had windows broken. Only three stores with broken windows are reported on West 125th Street east of 7th Avenue, suggesting that most of the crowd instead went north and south on the avenue, where there were multiple reports of looting and assaults, including the looting of another jewelry store, owned by Jack Sherloff, opposite Herbert's store by the Alhambra Theatre.
The broken windows in Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store were more widely and extensively reported by the white press than any other damaged business. The prominent location of the business likely contributed to that coverage, as did the apparent willingness of the store manager, Bernard Newman, to speak with reporters.
The jewelry store is recorded at the address in the MCCH business survey in the second half of 1935 and is visible in the Tax Department photograph from sometime between 1939 and 1941.
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- "1 Dead, 7 Shot, 100 Hurt as Harlem Crowds Riot over Boy, 16, and Hearse," New York Herald Tribune, March 20, 1935, 1.
- "5 Dying and Scores Wounded as Race Riots in Harlem Subside," Home News, March 20, 1935 [clipping].
- [Photograph] "One Killed and Many Injured in Harlem Riots," Burlington Free Press, March 22, 1935, 16.
- [Photograph] "Jewelry Gone," Afro-American, March 30 1935, 17.
- R. J. McBride, "Visit to Herberts Diamonds, June 7, 1935," Harlem Survey: Part III, Chapter V, Box 131-124, Folder 17, E. Franklin Frazier Papers (Moorland Spingarn Research Center, Howard University).
- Percy Gould, "20,000 Fight Police in Orgy of Looting," New York Evening Journal, March 20, 1935, 1.
- "1 Slain, 20 Injured in Harlem Rioting," New York American, March 20, 1935, 1.
- [Photograph] "A man looks through a smashed window of a jewelry shop...," March 19, 1935 (Bettman Collection)
- [Photograph] "After the storm...of bricks," Daily News, March 21, 1935, 31.
- C. C. Nicolet, "One Dead in Wake of Harlem Riots," New York Post, March 20, 1935 [clipping].
- Edna Ferguson, "Loot Frenzy of Mob Bared in Riot Terror," Daily News, March 21, 1935, 4.
- Joseph Mickler, "Harlem Shuffles Along, Blaming Reds for Riot. 'Sure Sumpin!' Negroes Say of Shootings," New York Evening Journal, March 20, 1935, 3.
- "Machine Guns Set Up in New York Streets. False Rumor Causes Death of One, Wounding of 50, and Looting of 300 Stores," Afro-American, March 23, 1935, 1.
- Robert D. Levitt, "Kill the Whites Roar Maddened Harlem Mobs," New York Evening Journal, March 20, 1935, 3.