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

Herman Young assaulted

Around 1:00 AM, Herman Young, a fifty-three-year-old Austrian-born white man who had lived in Harlem for twenty years was cut on the head by flying glass after a stone was thrown through the glass door of his Lenox Avenue hardware store. Young and his wife Rose had come from their apartment directly above the store after hearing smashing glass and seeing four men taking merchandise from the window display. They rushed downstairs. Rose arrived at the store first, turning on the lights, but remained on the stoop while Herman went inside. A man came up behind her, she told police,"called her names" and tried to push past her into the store. Herman closed the door stopping him from getting inside. The man then started cursing, according to Young, calling out "You Goddam Jew I am going to kill you if you don’t get out of here,” and smashed the glass in the door. Rose testified that the man used a piece of pipe; Herman said he used "some instrument." Police later reported a stone had been thrown through the door. Rose said she saw glass hit Herman; the stone may also have hit him.

Young appeared in lists of the injured published by the New York Post (mistakenly identified as a Patrolman) and the Home News, and among those recorded as attended by physicians from Harlem Hospital. All three sources described the injury as a laceration of the scalp. The hospital record added the detail that it resulted from being hit with a stone, while the report of the arrest mentioned that Young had been cut by flying glass. The other details appeared in the District Attorney's case file, which included notes on statements by Herman and Rose Young, an arresting officer, and the man arrested for the assault and his wife. Another man, James Williams, was later arrested for looting the store. The affidavit in his case made no mention of Young being assaulted by a man, instead recording that he had seen four men in the store windows stealing merchandise. The affidavit charging assault did refer to the couple finding the store “windows cleared out” when they got downstairs.  Notes in the case file made by the district attorney during the subsequent trial included information from the couple's testimony that provided the details of the events missing from the court documents.

Isaac Daniels, a twenty-nine-year-old black man was arrested and charged with throwing the rock. According to notes in the District Attorney's case file, when Young was having his wound stitched at Harlem Hospital around 1:30 AM, Daniels came in for treatment. Young identified him as the man who assaulted him, and an officer at the hospital arrested him. Young was certain of his identification because he had stared at the man who assaulted through the glass in the hardware store door for several minutes.

Questioned in a lineup at the Manhattan Police headquarters, Daniels denied throwing the stone at Young. He had been in the area on his way home. Later, at his trial, he added the detail that he had gone out to buy cigarettes. Daniels, a native of Georgia who had come to New York City in 1928, lived with his wife only a few blocks from Young's store, at 73 West 130th Street. His wife said that he had gone to the movies, and was listening to the radio at home at 1:00 AM, when Young was attacked. Notes in the District Attorneys case file say that neither statement was true without indicating the basis for that claim.

Daniels was one of the first of those arrested to appear in the Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with felonious assault. The Home News reported he was back in the court two days later, one of three men returned to have their original charges dismissed so they could be rearrested and new charges brought (which is likely why Daniels appears in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter as having been discharged). The indictment in the District Attorney's case file has a charge of first degree assault, with intent to kill, struck out, leaving a charge of second degree assault, with intent to cause bodily harm, suggesting that prosecutors reduced the charge after obtaining details of what happened. Indicted for assault, Daniels was one of the handful of individuals tried for alleged offenses during the disorder. On April 9, the District Attorney's case file recorded that a jury acquitted him of the charge of assault, likely because of questions over Young's identification of him.
 

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