This page was created by Anonymous.
"Hospital Admissions, 19-20 March 1935," Subject Files, Box 167, Folder 5 (Roll 76), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
1 2020-09-25T17:41:02+00:00 Anonymous 1 8 plain 2022-10-11T21:20:29+00:00 AnonymousSixteen of the events included in the hospital records do not appear in any other sources (45%, 16/36 in records). A similar proportion of injuries not related to assaults (45%, 5/11) and injuries related to assaults (44%, 11/25) appear only in the hospital records. By comparison, a smaller proportion of the injuries and assaults reported in newspapers appear only in a single source, 30% (11/37), but a greater proportion of injuries, 66%, 6/9 than assaults, 19%, 5/26 assaults (two additional assaults appear only in a statement to MCCH investigators)
Each item on the list identifies an individual's name, age, and home address (but not their racial identity, which if known is found in other sources), the attending physician's name and hospital affiliation, the nature of the injury and a brief description of the circumstances in which the injury occurred, and usually the outcome of the attendance, either the individual leaving for home or being sent to the hospital.
There are several marked differences between the events that appear in the two documents. Almost all the “Medical Attendances” involve whites: eleven of the thirteen injured are white, and the other two are of unknown race. The only non-white individuals on this list are two arrested men, Paul Boyett and James Smitten, attended at police precincts and then put in cells, and Lyman Quarterman, who was shot and killed, attended at 121st and 7th Avenue. By comparison, only eight of the twenty-three individuals on the “Hospital Admissions” list are white, although nine are of unknown race, and six are non-white. A slightly higher proportion of the events on the “Medical Attendances” list involved assault rather than injuries suffered in other circumstances, 77% (10/13) compared to 65% (15/23) on the “Hospital Admissions” list.
Unsurprisingly, Harlem Hospital staff attended most of the individuals on the lists: ten of the thirteen callouts involved ambulances from Harlem Hospital, and eighteen of the twenty-three attended by physicians. Seven other hospitals also appear: physicians from the other major hospitals in the Harlem area attended four individuals, one at Sydenham Hospital and three at Knickerbocker Hospital. As Sydenham Hospital was the closest hospital to Kress’ store, and to the events on Seventh Avenue south of 125th Street, it is surprising that it does not appear more often on the lists (although Harlem’s Black newspapers did report a number of instances in the 1930s when the hospital allegedly refused treatment to black residents). Individual cases were also attended at five other hospitals, including three some distance from Harlem that seem unlikely to have sent ambulances to the riot area (in two of those cases the men involved lived well outside Harlem, in the direction of the hospitals). All the patients attended by staff from the hospitals well outside Harlem were white.
This page has tags:
- 1 2023-07-05T20:55:35+00:00 Anonymous Investigations of the events of the disorder Anonymous 31 plain 2023-07-10T21:46:12+00:00 Anonymous
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1
2020-02-25T18:06:03+00:00
August Miller killed
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2023-08-29T03:16:40+00:00
Around midnight, August Miller, a fifty-six-year-old white handyman, suffered a head injury in the midst of a crowd at 126th Street and Lenox Avenue. A cab driver took him to the Joint Disease Hospital, according to the police complaint report. It was 12:30 AM when Dr. Millbank attended Miller, so likely around midnight when he collapsed in the crowd. Millbank diagnosed him as suffering a possible skull fracture "received in some unknown manner during disorder," according to hospital records, and admitted him for treatment. However, after Miller died on March 22, the medical examiner conducted an autopsy which he reported showed that the cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage, “a natural cause, nothing suspicious.”
Miller appeared in three of the seven newspaper lists of the injured published on March 20, those in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post and New York American, among those the New York Herald Tribune reported still in hospital on March 21, and those listed as injured in the Atlanta World on March 27. His death was widely reported on March 23, in some cases with information on how he had been killed. The most direct explanations came in stories published in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Journal, and Times Union, and in the Associated Press story, which reported Miller had been "beaten by rioters." The Home News offered the additional detail that Miller was "struck by several bricks, knocked down and kicked around by the mob." The New York Times and New York Sun did not attribute Miller's death to anyone, only going as far as saying Miller was "in the midst of rioters" when injured, while the Brooklyn Daily Eagle even more obliquely said his death came "during the height of the disorders." The New York Post implied he had been assaulted in a different way. Noting where he had been injured, the story added that, "He was one of the half a dozen white men seriously hurt during the disturbance." Lists of those killed in the Daily News and stories in the New York Herald Tribune and in the Black newspapers the New York Age and New York Amsterdam News, as well as the lists of those killed published in the Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide and Pittsburgh Courier simply listed Miller's injury, a fractured skull.
Miller himself never described what happened to him. It was the taxi driver who brought him to the hospital who provided the information on where he had collapsed to the nurse to who he delivered Miller, according to the detective who investigated the case. Soon after Miller arrived in the hospital he briefly regained consciousness. Patrolman Anthony Kaminsky, who had been called when the injured man was admitted, was able to question him. After asking his name, address and age, the officer told a hearing of the MCCH that he asked "how he received his injuries?" As Miller started to answer, he lost consciousness again. He died on March 22 without again regaining consciousness.
Detective John O'Brien was assigned to investigate Miller's injury at 2:00 AM; at the time he was in the midst of investigating the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs. He visited the location where Miller had been injured, questioning business owners, residents and taxi drivers without finding witnesses to what had happened or locating the taxi driver who had brought him to the hospital. As a result, O'Brien was unable to establish the circumstances of Miller's injury. The detective also visited Miller's home, 1674 McCombs Road in the Bronx, and spoke with the superintendents of the building who employed him as a handyman. They had been seen him there about midnight. There was also no information on why he traveled to Harlem, but he must have collapsed almost as soon as he arrived, likely by subway. His employers did report Miller had been “acting peculiar for some months previous.” His family were in Germany, so his employers identified the body. Confusingly, when O'Brien testified at a public hearing of the MCCH on April 20, he mentioned speaking to Miller's sister, who had seen him around 10:00 PM, a meeting not recorded in police records. When the medical examiner reported that he had not died as a result of a fractured skull or suspiciously, O'Brien closed his investigation on March 24.
The version of the case reported to Arthur Garfield Hays by Hyman Glickstein, the lawyer from his law firm working to gather evidence for the MCCH subcommittee on crime, gave the police a greater role that clearly raised their suspicions about the circumstances of Miller's injury: "According to police report [Miller] died of natural causes and was merely picked up by the police in a dead or dying condition." Once testimony in the public hearing put a taxi driver in the place of police in delivering the injured man to the hospital, little basis remained for holding them responsible for Miller's injuries. However, ILD lawyers who questioned Detective O'Brien when he testified about his investigation at a hearing of the MCCH remained unconvinced that Miller died of natural causes. Rather, they suggested he had been struck by police, and his injury had not been accurately reported to prevent officers from being charged. Eventually, Hays cut off their questioning of O'Brien, saying it had no basis unless somebody could "provide evidence how Miller came by his injuries."
Miller was included in lists of those killed in the disorder published on March 23 and 24, and in Black weekly newspapers on March 30, without mention of the autopsy. On March 31 the Home News also included him in its count of those killed in the disorder even while noting that Miller's death "was later found to have been due to heart disease, probably aggravated by exertion and excitement." The Daily News, New York American, Daily Mirror, Times Union, the Associated Press, Afro American, and Chicago Defender reported the death of Lloyd Hobbs on March 30 as the fourth death resulting from the disorder without specifying the other three individuals killed. None of those newspapers included Edward Laurie among those killed, so they also still included Miller after the autopsy, along with James Thompson and Andrew Lyons. So too did the New York Herald Tribune, which identified Hobbs as the fifth death resulting from the riot. (The Daily Worker initially reported Hobbs as the fourth death, on April 1, but a week later referred to him as the third death, while the New York Times reported his death without reference to how many others had been killed). -
1
2020-02-25T17:59:47+00:00
James Thompson killed & Detective Nicholas Campo shot
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2023-09-03T15:07:11+00:00
Around 5:30 AM James Thompson, a nineteen-year old Black man, was shot and killed by Detectives Nicholas Campo and Theodore Beckler.
The officers claimed that while driving on 8th Avenue they heard breaking glass in a damaged grocery store at 2364 8th Avenue near the southeast corner of West 127th Street. Police crime scene photographs of the store taken later showed that there were several large holes in the windows and no merchandise left in their displays. However, like many other businesses, the shelves inside the store were untouched. To get inside Thompson smashed the glass in one of the entrance doors, making the noise that the detectives heard. Investigating, they entered the store, a branch of the A & P chain. Press reports offered a variety of different accounts of what happened next. The New York American, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Post reported a gun battle between the officers and Thompson, during which he was shot in the chest and Detective Campo in the hand. The New York Evening Journal sensationally reported an even larger gunfight in which "other rioters" returned the officers shots. The New York World-Telegram reported a struggle between Thompson and Campo during which Thompson was shot; the officer then dropped his gun, causing it to go off and a bullet to hit his fingers. The New York Amsterdam News reported, several days later, that the officer’s gun went off accidentally, hitting Thompson.
The arrest report and police blotter made no mention of Thompson having a gun or struggling with the officers. Instead, as Campo and Beckler moved through the store, Thompson burst out of the rear storeroom and ran for entrance. He collided with Campo, causing the detective’s pistol to fire and the bullet to hit two fingers on his left hand. When Thompson got out on to the street he ran across 8th Avenue toward his home at 301 West 127th Street. As the two detectives followed, they both shot at him; Campo fired twice, Beckler five times. Only one of those bullets hit Thompson, but it struck him in the chest perforating his liver. One of the other shots hit Stanley Dondero, a white man walking along the west side of 8th Avenue, in his left leg. A resident of Hoboken, New Jersey, Dondero was likely on his way to work in one of Harlem’s businesses. The Home News and New York Post added the detail that a third bullet had passed through the trousers of a man with Dondoro without injuring him. Campo and Beckler caught up with Thompson in front of and arrested him. A note at the end of the hospital admission records indicated that Thompson died at Harlem Hospital at 9:30 AM, four hours after the shooting, a time of death that led to him being listed as the only fatality of the disorder in newspapers published on March 20. Campo appeared in lists of the injured published by the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York American.
Police investigated the shooting after the disorder, according to the records gathered by the MCCH. A police blotter record of Captain Mulholland’s investigation identified the detectives as responsible for shooting Dondoro, specifying that Campo had shot twice at Thompson and his partner Detective Beckler had shot three times, as well as twice in the air, a warning to stop that was a common police practice. One of the bullets struck Thompson in the chest, killing him. The blotter also recorded Captain Mulholland’s conclusion that Campo sustained his injury “in proper performance of police duty and no negligence on the part of the aforesaid detective contributed thereto." Campo and Becker also appear not to have been disciplined or charged for killing Thompson. Asked in reference to the killing of Thompson and other Black men killed during the disorder in a hearing of the MCCH, “Has anyone been arrested, charged with using deadly weapons with which these men were killed?", Captain Rothengast replied, "Some of the detectives were exonerated."
Although the New York World-Telegram story reported Thompson as saying at the hospital that “he was hungry, “that others were stealing, anyway,” and that he was “long out of work,” there was no record of an admission in the report of the police investigation. James Tartar, an investigator for the MCCH, did interview Thompson’s aunt, Sarah Rhue, on April 20. She reported hearing from Thompson’s landlady that he had brought home canned goods during the disorder, with the implication that he had been looting prior to the shooting. However, she also reported that he worked at a barber’s shop, contradicting the statement that he was out of work in the admission reported in the New York World-Telegram.
The police records and newspaper for some reason all mistakenly identified the address of the grocery store as 2365 8th Avenue. However, at that address was a large bank building that included no other businesses. The A & P grocery store was included in the MCCH business survey at 2364 8th Avenue and was visible in the Tax Department photograph of that address taken between 1939 and 1941. In addition, the NYPD crime scene photograph, taken sooner enough after the shooting to show the damage to the store and debris still on the street, showed a distinctive raised stoop entrance to the upstairs apartments that was also visible in the Tax Department photograph of 2364 8th Avenue. -
1
2020-02-24T21:39:32+00:00
Injured [not in assaults] (21)
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2022-11-03T19:26:59+00:00
The twenty-one injured individuals that are not linked to an assault or arrest are a mix of those reported as being hurt by flying glass and those reported without any explanation of the circumstances in which they were hurt. The injured had similar conditions to those assaulted. Head wounds made up the largest group, as was the case with those assaulted. Relatively more of the injured suffered wounds to the hands and legs than those assaulted, and relatively fewer wounds to the face. Nonetheless, the severity of their wounds is similar to those assaulted. The information is partial, available for only forty of the seventy-three injured (29 of 53 assaulted, 11 of 21 injured), and on first glance suggests relatively fewer severe wounds among the injured, with only 18% (2 of 11) sent to hospital after being attended by physicians compared with 31% (9 of 29) of those assaulted. However, five of those assaulted sent to hospital had gunshot wounds; of the remaining group, only 20% (4 of 20) were sent to hospital (these numbers exclude the two arrested men who were injured).
Five injuries are reported as lacerations caused by glass, terms that made clear they had not occurred in assaults. Those who threw objects at stores and passing cars and buses often emerged from the crowds that filled the sidewalks and streets during the disorder, leaving bystanders little opportunity to distance themselves from the windows and the shattered glass produced by those attacks. On the other hand, this group of injured could have been involved in those attacks, or in subsequent looting, which required moving through broken glass, or could have received the lacerations in assaults.
Similarly, two others of those counted here as injured appear in some sources as victims of assault, but the weight of evidence is against that picture. The New York Evening Journal and New York American reported that eighteen-year-old Nathaniel Powell had his nose cut off, with the New York American specifying that a razor had been used. However, as the New York Post, Daily News, and most importantly the hospital record all simply reported cuts to his nose and face, those stories of an attack are likely another example of the white press falling back on tropes of racial violence rather than a reliable account of what happened to Powell. Similarly, Stanley Dondoro suffered a gunshot wound, but there is clear evidence that police shot him accidentally when pursuing James Thompson.
For the remaining thirteen counted as injured, there is no information as to cause or the circumstances of the injury. Some of these individuals could have been injured when knocked off their feet in the crowds on Harlem’s streets, a circumstance captured in several photographs of the disorder, including the most widely circulated.
Most of this group of injured received their wounds around the heart of the disorder, in the blocks around 125th Street, but there are a cluster along Lenox Avenue up as far north as 132nd Street. This area saw the most extensive attacks on stores and looting; it was also relatively close to Harlem Hospital, which was located on Lenox Avenue between 136th and 137th Streets. The two injuries outside this area, Giles Jackson hurt by flying glass at West 116th Street and 7th Avenue and Nathaniel Powell cut on the nose on Lenox Avenue between 116th and 117th Streets, also occurred in an area that saw significant amounts of looting and broken windows. The map also reveals that the injured lived relatively close to where they got hurt; only Clara Crowder came from as far away as some of those arrested for looting (although that group also included some from close to the site of their arrest). That proximity could indicate that this group of the injured were bystanders, parts of the crowds drawn to the streets from their homes by the disorder but not participating in it.
Three woman are among the twenty injured. One, Clara Crowder, is anomalous. A white clerk at Kress’ store, Crowder fainted when the crowd inside Kress' store knocked merchandise off displays as police cleared the store so it could be closed. The other injured women, of unknown race, appear to have been part of the crowds on Harlem’s streets. Photographs of the crowds show women scattered among the men. Most of those injured are not identified by race; of the five that are, the white individuals were injured in anomalous situations. In addition to Crowder fainting in a store, Dondoro was accidentally shot by police, while the third white individual, Salvatore Nicolette, suffered a fractured skull in unspecified circumstances.
The evidence of these events is very fragmentary. Twelve of the twenty-one cases are mentioned in only one source: six cases appear only in hospital records; and four cases appear only in a single list in the New York Post. Given the inconsistency of the details the newspapers published about individuals, this limited evidence likely contains errors. -
1
2020-02-26T14:46:34+00:00
Herman Young assaulted
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2023-08-31T22:56:03+00:00
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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1
2020-03-11T21:18:25+00:00
Detective William Boyle assaulted
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2022-07-12T18:49:21+00:00
Detective William Boyle, a twenty-nine-year-old white officer, was allegedly assaulted "while attempting to rescue an unknown white man being assaulted at scene of riot,” according to the record of the ambulance that attended him. Dr Sayet of Harlem Hospital treated Boyle at the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street, where he was based, at 9.15 PM, indicating that that assault took place sometime earlier, around 9.00 PM. The "scene of riot" where the alleged assault occurred was likely the block of 125th Street between 8th and 7th Avenues, where the disorder was concentrated around 9.00 PM. Two alleged assaults on white men on 125th Street around that time could be the incident in which Boyle was assaulted. Both men are described as being assaulted by groups of "unknown colored men" in Hospital Admission records, Maurice Spellman on the corner of 8th Avenue and Morris Werner on the corner of 7th Avenue. Those locations fit the details in Boyle's Medical Attendance record better than the location at which a story in the New York Times put the assault, the rear of Kress' store on West 124th Street. Boyle is one of three officers listed as injured after "a barrage of missiles fell on the ranks of the police who had caught up with the crowd" after it moved from the front of the store. However, that clash occurred around two hours before Boyle attended by an ambulance. Ambulances treated the two other officers on that list, Patrolman Michael Kelly and Detective Charles Foley, around two hours before Boyle was treated, although they received treatment at the scene, while Boyle was attended at the 28th Precinct. The story also mistakenly located Harry Gordon's alleged assault on Patrolman Young at the rear of this store around the same time, rather than in front of the store around forty-five minutes before police clashed with crowds at the rear of the store. No sources mention an attack on a white man at the rear of Kress' store.
The Medical Attendance record described Boyle's injury as "contusions and abrasions of left ankle." He also appeared on lists of the injured published by the New York American, Daily News, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune and New York Evening Journal, in addition to the story in the New York Times and a story in the Daily Mirror. All but the Daily Mirror reported Boyle's injury as cuts to the left ankle, or "deep cuts" in the case of the New York Herald Tribune and New York Post. Both those lists and the stories in the New York Times and Daily Mirror included the information that Boyle had been hit by an object, a "rock," "hurled stone," "flying brick" and "thrown rock" respectively. The injury was not serious enough for Boyle to be taken to hospital; he "remained on duty," according to the Medical Attendance record. The Daily Mirror alone mistakenly reported that Boyle had "received a fracture of the left leg" and been "removed to Harlem Hospital." It seems likely given Boyle's injury that the unknown white man that he intervened to protect was the target of missiles rather than being beaten. As a detective, Boyle would not have been in uniform at the time.
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1
2020-04-09T17:59:07+00:00
Clarence London shot
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2023-08-30T03:21:12+00:00
Sometime shortly before 1:00 AM, Clarence London, a thirty-four-year-old Black man was shot in the leg while walking on the street near West 122nd Street and 7th Avenue. London lived in north Harlem, at 676 St Nicholas Avenue, so was far from home when the bullet hit him. Dr Payne attended London at Harlem Hospital at 1:00 AM.
The location of the shooting was recorded in hospital admission records as West 122nd Street and 7th Avenue. That record was a more reliable source than the stories in the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune that located the shooting three blocks north, at 125th Street and 7th Avenue. An ambulance from Harlem Hospital also attended a white man, John Eigler, who reported being hit by an object thrown by a Black assailant at 122nd Street and 7th Avenue around the time London was shot. Fred Campbell's car was hit by a brick at the same intersection a few minutes earlier. He saw police officers with riot guns and heard shots being fired as he drove by. The New York American reported London had been “shot by an unidentified man” but offered no other details. Other newspapers simply listed him as “shot.” The hospital records further obscured the circumstances by describing London as “wounded.” His wound was consistently reported as in the right leg, although the Home News did report it was in the left leg. Given the evidence of both looting and the police response to it at the time, and the lack of any evidence that Black individuals on the streets during the disorder used guns, London was likely hit by shots fired by police – as were the other men reported as shot and wounded during the disorder.
The New York American, New York Post, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and New York Times all identified London as a Black man; only the Daily News and New York Evening Journal did not specify his race. Four of the six other individuals shot and wounded in the disorder were Black men; the others were one man of unknown race, and one white police officer.
No one was arrested for shooting London, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed).
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1
2020-03-09T18:16:03+00:00
Alice Gordon assaulted
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2023-10-21T03:16:15+00:00
Alice Gordon, a thirty-four-year-old white woman, was "assaulted by several unknown colored men at 117th St. and 7th Ave," according to hospital admission records. Dr. Adams from the Knickerbocker Hospital on Convent Ave and West 131st Street attended Gordon at 11:45 PM, so she was likely assaulted around 11:15 PM. A few minutes later, William Burkhard would allegedly be assaulted nearby, on West 118th Street between 7th Avenue and Lenox Avenue.
The hospital admission records described Gordon's injury as "laceration of face." The injury was not serious enough for Gordon to be admitted to hospital. After treatment she left for home, 72 Sound Road, Rye, twenty miles north of where she had been assaulted. There was no mention of why Gordon was in Harlem. A number of businesses closed at 10:00 PM or 10:30 PM, so she may have just left work. Or Gordon could have been a patron of one the theaters or other entertainments on West 116th Street. The hospital admission records were the only source that mentioned Gordon. While those records did not include information about an individual's race, the description of her attackers as "colored men" indicated that Gordon was a white woman.
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1
2020-08-20T20:56:13+00:00
Nathaniel Powell injured
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2023-08-30T19:48:56+00:00
Nathaniel Powell, a nineteen-year-old Black man, suffered cuts to his nose and left wrist on Lenox Avenue between 116th and 117th Streets “in some unknown manner,” his hospital admission recorded. Dr Payne attended Powell at Harlem Hospital, twenty blocks north on Lenox Avenue, at 1:00 AM, so Powell was injured sometime after 12:30 AM. Just after midnight, windows were broken in the San Antonio Market on West 116th Street just east of Lenox Avenue and groceries valued at around $10 taken. A restaurant on Lenox Avenue near West 117th Street and three businesses around West 118th Street also had windows broken some time during the disorder. Like many of those injured, Powell was close to home when hurt. He lived only two blocks to the north at 69 West 118th Street so may have been a spectator attracted by the noise and crowds rather than a participant in that violence.
If the phrasing of the hospital record indicated that Powell did not provide the medical staff with any details of the circumstances in which he had been injured, the context makes it likely he had been injured by glass flying from smashed windows. While he could have been watching as others broke windows, the severity of his wounds would suggest he was closer than that and involved in smashing the glass. While others treated by hospital staff did tell them they had been hit by glass, Powell would have had little incentive to reveal if that was the cause of his injuries. Police officers were stationed at Harlem Hospital during the disorder, where they arrested at least one Black man, Isaac Daniels, while he was being treated after a white storeowner identified him as the man who had assaulted him. Another possibility was that Powell had been beaten by police officers as they sought to disperse crowds on the street. While police violence intensified after midnight, Powell's injuries include more extensive lacerations than were seen in those hit with batons and gun butts. There was also no evidence of police in the area of Lenox Avenue where he was injured until more than an hour later when James Williams was arrested.
While the hospital record recorded Powell’s injuries as "laceration of nose and left wrist," the Daily News described them more broadly as cuts about the face and the New York Post shifted the injury to his foot. The New York Evening Journal and New York American reported a more dramatic wound, that Powell’s nose had been cut off, with the New York American sensationally describing his nose as “severed by [a] razor.” That account cast Powell as having been assaulted with a weapon that whites associated with Black New Yorkers. While the hospital record provided no details of the circumstances of the injury, given that none of the other newspapers mentioned a weapon, the information in the New York American was likely an example of the Hearst press falling back on tropes of racial violence rather than a reliable account of what happened to Powell. Descriptions of his nose being cut off likely stemmed from the seriousness of the cuts. After Payne attended Powell, he was admitted to the hospital, one of only eleven among the injured known to have needed that additional care (11 of 42, 26%).
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2020-08-20T20:55:23+00:00
Alice Mitchell injured
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2023-10-03T18:48:43+00:00
Alice Mitchell was at the intersection of Lenox Avenue and West 129th Street when she was “cut by falling glass,” according to a hospital admission record. The twenty-one-year-old woman of unknown race lived only a few buildings west on 129th Street, an area of Black residents, so may have been a bystander drawn by the noise on Lenox Avenue at this time. Dr. Payne attended Mitchell at Harlem Hospital, half a dozen blocks north on Lenox Avenue, at 1:30 AM according to a hospital record, so she was likely injured sometime around 1:00 AM. Another person, Hugh Young, was also injured by flying glass at the same place, and attended by Payne at the same time. They may have been transported in the same ambulance.
The hospital record described Mitchell's injury as a "laceration of wrist." Mitchell appeared in only two lists of the injured, those published by the Daily News and New York Evening Journal. Both reported different injuries, lacerations to the face and neck in the Daily News, and to the head in the New York Evening Journal. Others injured by flying glass suffered wounds to their legs (2), hands (1), and in the case of Hugh Young, to the head. After being seen by the physician, Mitchell went home, her injury evidently not serious enough for her to be sent to the hospital. None of the sources recorded Mitchell's race. Her residence in an area almost entirely populated by Black New Yorkers was strong evidence that she was a Black woman.
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2020-04-09T18:40:36+00:00
William Holland injured
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2023-09-01T18:11:59+00:00
William Holland, a forty-six-year-old man of unknown, was “struck by an unknown object” at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue, according to a hospital admission record. Dr Payne attended Holland at Harlem Hospital, eleven blocks north on Lenox Avenue, at 1:40 AM, so he was likely injured sometime after 1:00 AM. At that time the blocks of Lenox Avenue above 125th Street saw assaults, injuries from flying glass and attacks on stores as far north as West 134th Street with limited police intervention. James Connel was injured "in some unknown manner" at the same corner around the same time. Both men's injuries could have come from a police baton or a stone intended for a store window. If Holland were a white man, he might have been the intended target of the object that hit him.
The hospital record described Holland's injury as a "laceration of scalp." He did not appear in any of the lists of those injured published by the press. The injury was not severe enough to require Holland be admitted to hospital, so he left for his home. The hospital record did not include information on Holland's race. He lived four blocks to the south, at 175 West 121st Street. As that area had a mix of Black and white residents, his residence did not provide clear evidence of his racial identity.
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1
2020-03-17T13:33:36+00:00
James White assaulted
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2023-09-03T02:30:12+00:00
James White, a twenty-nine-year-old Black man, was injured in "an altercation with an unknown white man at 129th Street and Lenox Ave,” Harlem Hospital staff recorded in the admission records. Dr Payne attended White at 3:30 AM, so he was likely assaulted sometime after 3:00 AM. Two other men of unknown race, Jack Ponder and Thomas Brown, suffered injuries at the same place and were treated by Dr Payne at the same time. White lived at 104 West 123rd Street six blocks south of where he was assaulted.
The hospital record described White's injury as a "laceration of scalp." He left for home after treatment rather than being admitted to the hospital so it was not a serious injury. White's absence from police and court records, and from newspaper lists and stories, indicated that he did not make a report to police.
While the hospital admission record did not include information regarding White's race, that it specified that the man who assaulted him was a white man" suggested that White himself was a Black man. He was one of twelve Black men reported assaulted during the disorder and the only who explicitly attributed the attack to a white man. The white men in the area at that time would almost all have been police officers, including plainclothes detectives. There was also at least one white storeowner present at this time. Louis Levy returned to his dry goods store at 374 Lenox Avenue near the intersection around 3:00 AM.
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1
2020-03-11T21:40:24+00:00
Morris Werner assaulted
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2023-09-03T03:57:20+00:00
Morris Werner, a fifty-six-year-old white man, was attacked on the southwest corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue “by several unknown colored men,” according to the hospital admission record. Dr White attended Werner at the Vanderbilt Clinic in Presbyterian Hospital on West 168th Street at 9.30 PM, so he was assaulted earlier, likely around 9.00 PM. The alleged assault could have occurred even earlier, given that the hospital was more than forty blocks north of the scene of the assault and Werner's home, at 537 West 127th Street.
Werner was allegedly attacked early in the disorder, when it was still centered on Kress’ store. Around this time a crowd reportedly broke through the police perimeter around the store, and two other white men alleged they were attacked by Black men around this time: William Kitlitz in front of Kress’ store, and Maurice Spellman at 125th Street and 8th Avenue. All those men lived west of Harlem, relatively close to where they were attacked, so were likely regular visitors to 125th Street, to shop, seek entertainment or access public transport, on this evening caught up in the disorder. The area around 125th Street and 7th Avenue would continue to be the location of struggles between police and crowds until around 10:30 PM, and alleged assaults on white individuals for at least the next three hours, with three men and two women reportedly targeted.
Dr White treated Werner for a "stab wound," with no mention in the hospital admission record of where that wound was located. Werner then left for home, indicating that the injury was not serious enough to require admission to the hospital. The use of a knife in this assault was unusual; there was only one other stabbing in the fifty-four reported assaults in the disorder, the alleged attack on Edward Genest, distinguishing this violence from what occurred at other times. In the rest of 1935, knives were a favored weapon of those committing acts of violence, used in two thirds of the incidents prosecuted as cases of felony assault.
The hospital admission record is the only evidence of the assault on Werner. That he was not included in lists of the injured may mean he did not make a report to police. No one else injured in the disorder was recorded as having been treated at the Vanderbilt Clinic, which was well outside the borders of Harlem and some distance from Werner's home. It may be that the violence saw calls to ambulances from further afield than usual. Spellman, allegedly assaulted at around the same time was attended at a closer hospital, Sydenham Hospital at 123rd Street and Manhattan Avenue, near his home. Murphy and Kitlitz were allegedly assaulted in locations where they attracted police, who made arrests, creating legal records and helping those men appear in newspaper lists of the injured, and in Murphy’s case, newspapers stories. Werner, like Spellman, may have been caught up in the crowds, and to have received medical treatment without attracting police attention.
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1
2020-04-09T17:35:02+00:00
Victor Fain shot
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2023-09-02T02:49:50+00:00
Victor Fain, a nineteen-year-old Black man born in South Carolina, was shot in “some unknown manner during [the] disorder” at 128th Street and 7th Avenue, according to a hospital admission record. Dr Payne attended Mitchell at Harlem Hospital at 2:30 AM, so he was likely shot sometime after 2:00 AM. The bullet almost certainly came a police gun. The noise of police gunfire had been one of the sounds of the disorder from early on, with many of those shots fired in the air in an attempt to disperse groups who gathered on the street. Around midnight, police had begun shooting more indiscriminantly, aiming at those on the street and shooting sufficient rounds to prodice many stray shots.
Fain was shot some distance from his home fifteen blocks to the south, at 315 West 113th Street, in a section on the southern margins of Harlem mostly occupied by whites and Puerto Ricans. Sometime later in 1935 he relocated to section of Black Harlem, lodging at 208 West 141st Street. Fain was still at that address when a census enumerator called on April 30, 1940.
The hospital record described Fain as having been shot in the left ankle. All the newspaper lists of the injured, in the New York American, Home News, Daily News, New York Post and New York Evening Journal, and a story in the New York Times, reported the same injury. That unusual consistency might result from him being admitted to the hospital after being attended.
The hospital record did not identify Fain’s race, but the newspapers did. The lists of the injured in the New York American, Home News and the story in the New York Times identified him as a Black man. The lists of injured in the Daily News, New York Post and New York Evening Journal did not. Four Black men were among the six men shot and wounded in the disorder, with one man unknown race, and one white police officer.
No one was arrested for shooting Fain, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed).
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1
2020-08-14T19:41:17+00:00
Thomas Brown injured
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2023-09-03T02:23:11+00:00
Thomas Brown, a twenty-year-old man of unknown race was injured in “some unknown manner” at Lenox Avenue and 129th Street, according to hospital admission records. Dr Payne attended Brown at Harlem Hospital at 3:30 AM, so he was likely injured sometime after 3:00 AM. Jack Ponder was also injured, and James White, a Black man, assaulted, at the same place and treated by Payne at the same time. Brown lived only five blocks north, at 504 Lenox Avenue, so could have been part of the crowds of spectators drawn by the noise and activity.
The hospital admission records and the lists of the injured in the New York Post and New York Evening Journal agree that Brown suffered a lacerated forehead. Six of those injured (30%) suffered similar head wounds. After being seen by Dr Payne, Brown went home, his injury evidently not serious enough for him to be admitted to the hospital.
Brown appeared only in the hospital records, which did not record information about his race.
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1
2020-04-09T17:57:19+00:00
Wilmont Hendricks shot
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2023-09-01T00:40:35+00:00
Wilmont Hendricks, a twenty-five-year-old Black man, was shot on Lenox Avenue near 128th Street. Dr Payne attended Hendricks at Harlem Hospital at 1:30 AM, the hospital staff recorded, so he was likely injured sometime around 1:00 AM (not around 2:00 AM, as a New York Times story reported). No details survived of the circumstances of Hendricks’ injury: the hospital record noted that he had been shot in “in some unknown manner,” while newspapers only reported he had been shot. There was considerable violence on the blocks of Lenox Avenue north of 125th Street around this time, including other assaults and looting. Police had begun shooting more indiscriminately after midnight than earlier in the disorder, and it is likely that Hendricks was shot by police. No one was arrested for shooting Hendricks, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed).
After being seen by Dr Payne, Hendricks' injury was sufficiently serious for him to be admitted to the hospital, and to still be there a day later, according to the New York Herald Tribune. While the hospital recorded his wound as being in his left shoulder, only the list of injured in the Home News echoed that report. The lists in the New York American, New York Post, Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide instead locating the gunshot in his chest, and the lists in the Daily News and New York Evening Journal, and story in the New York Times reported it was in in his back.
The hospital record did not identify Hendricks' race, but the newspaper lists in the New York Post, Home News, New York American and New York Evening Journal did. Four of the six other men shot and wounded in the disorder were Black, one of unknown race, and one white police officer. When he was shot Hendricks was some distance from his home at 214 West 146th Street, which was almost twenty blocks to the north.
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1
2020-03-11T21:32:46+00:00
John Eigler assaulted
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2023-08-30T03:26:30+00:00
John Eigler, a forty-five-year-old man, was walking on 7th Avenue near 122nd Street, only a few feet from his home at 163 West 122nd Street, when he was "struck by an unknown object...thrown by some unknown colored men," according to a hospital record. Dr Payne attended Eigler at Harlem Hospital, fourteen blocks north on Lenox Avenue, at 1:00 AM, so he was likely injured sometime around 12:30 AM. At that time the intersection was the site of attacks on passing cars driven by whites and nearby stores and efforts by police to disperse those crowds that by this time involved extensive gunfire.
The hospital record described Eigler's injury as a "laceration of scalp." He did not appear in any of the lists of the injured published in the press. After being seen by the physician, Eigler went home, his injury evidently not serious enough for him to be admitted to the hospital.
The hospital records did not include information on Eigler's race. However, his identification of his alleged assailants as "colored" suggested that he was a white man. The block of 122nd Street east of 7th Avenue where Eigler lived was in transition in the 1930s, from mostly white and Puerto Rican residents in 1930 to all Black residents by 1940.
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1
2020-08-20T20:54:31+00:00
Giles Jackson injured
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2023-09-03T02:04:34+00:00
Giles Jackson, a thirty-three-year-old man, was struck on the leg by “falling glass” around 3:00 AM. An unnamed physician from nearby Beth Israel Hospital attended Jackson at West 116th Street and 7th Avenue, but the hospital record identified the injury as having occurred “in some unknown place.” That place was likely nearby as businesses at the intersection and in the commercial district on West 116th Street between 7th and Lenox Avenues had windows broken and merchandise taken beginning around 1:00 AM. Police arrested Robert Tanner for allegedly reaching through the broken window of Jack Garmise's cigar store on the southwest corner of the intersection to take a pipe around the time Jackson was injured. Injuries from flying glass make up 25% of the injuries not related to assaults that appeared in hospital records and lists of the injured published in the press, the largest group after head injuries.
Jackson’s injury did not require he be taken to the hospital; after the physician attended him he “left for home.” He gave a home address four blocks south of where the ambulance treated him, at 33 West 112th Street, an area of Puerto Rican residents. The hospital record, the only source in which Jackson appeared, did not identify his race. Census and draft records did identify a Black man born in Virginia named Giles Jackson of the correct age living in Harlem at this time, but he was a roomer who moved frequently so cannot be placed at that address in 1935.
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1
2020-08-20T20:55:47+00:00
Jack Ponder injured
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2023-09-03T02:23:50+00:00
Jack Ponder, a forty-year-old man of unknown race, was injured “while walking” at Lenox Ave and 129th Street, hospital staff recorded. Dr Payne attended Ponder at Harlem Hospital at 3:30 AM, so he was likely injured sometime after 3:00 AM. Thomas Brown was also injured, and James White assaulted, at the same place and treated by Payne at the same time. Alice Mitchell and Hugh Young had been injured by flying glass at that intersection two hours earlier.
The Hospital Admission record described Ponder's injury as a "laceration of right ear," the only wound to the ear among those reported as injured during the disorder. The result of the physician’s treatment, whether Ponder was admitted to the hospital or went home, was not recorded.
Ponder appears only in the Hospital Admission record, which did not include information his race. The address recorded for him, 40 West 110th Street, did not exist (that side of 110th Street is Central Park).
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2020-04-09T18:53:50+00:00
Emma Brockson assaulted
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2023-08-29T03:28:20+00:00
Emma Brockson, a twenty-six-year-old woman of unknown race, was allegedly assaulted at 7th Avenue and 125th Street. At least five other assaults and the fatal injury of Andrew Lyons took place at that intersection during the course of the disorder. Dr Millfrank treated Brockson at Knickerbocker Hospital at 12.35 AM for injuries to her left hand "received when assaulted by some unknown person or persons." It was not clear if an ambulance brought Brockson to the hospital or whether she made her own way. The Knickerbocker Hospital was located west of 7th Avenue. Given the time she was at the hospital, the alleged assault on Brockson likely took place around midnight. After being attended by the doctor, Brockson left for her home. She lived only two blocks to the west of where the alleged assault took place on 126th Street.
The hospital record was the only evidence of the assault. It did not contain information on a patient's race. Given the location of the assault and the area where she lived, on the boundary of an area of white residences, Brockson was likely a white woman. As Brockson did not appear in any of the lists of the injured or assaulted published in the press, she likely did not make a report to police. Around midnight there would have been police on at least some of the corners of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue as a cordon had been thrown up around the block of 125th Street to the west and officers were guarding Herbert's Jewelry store on the northeast corner. -
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2020-08-14T19:40:21+00:00
William Brown injured
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2023-09-02T02:52:23+00:00
William Brown, a twenty-year-old man of unknown race was "cut by flying glass" at Lenox Avenue and West 127th Street, according to hospital admission records. Dr Payne attended Brown at Harlem Hospital at 2:30 AM, so he was likely injured sometime after 2:00 AM. Multiple people reported being hit by glass an hour earlier when violence on Lenox Avenue intensified. Brown could have been close to stores that were attacked or have participated in those attacks. Brown lived some distance to the south of where he was injured, at 26 West 118th Street, an area of mixed Black and Puerto Rican residences.
The hospital record and lists of the injured in the New York Post and New York Evening Journal agreed that Brown suffered lacerations to his leg, although they disagreed on which leg. The hospital records said the injury was to the left leg, the newspapers to the right leg. Brown was admitted to the hospital, indicating a relatively severe injury. The others injured by flying glass during the disorder treated at Harlem Hospital were sent home. The hospital record did not include information about an individual's race; although newspapers sometimes included that information, in Brown's case they did not.
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2020-03-11T21:28:58+00:00
George Anton assaulted
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2023-09-03T03:39:23+00:00
George Anton, a forty-four-year-old white man, was assaulted by “several unknown colored men” on 7th Avenue between 126th and 127th Streets, according to a hospital admission record. Dr Reed of the Fifth Avenue Hospital attended Anton at 10.45 PM, so the alleged assault likely occurred around 10.15 PM. The assault occurred in an area reached by groups moving up the avenue from the intersection with 125th Street having been frustrated in their efforts to reach the Kress store. While there had been incidents of violence involving members of those groups since around 8:30 PM, they intensified around the time of the attack on Anton as more people left 125th Street. Police were only just beginning to be deployed to the blocks north of 125th Street, so there was little check on the crowds. Anton must have been in Harlem frequenting one of the businesses or entertainment on 125th Street or was leaving a job in one of the nearby businesses as he lived at 73 Washington Street at the opposite end of Manhattan.
The hospital record described Anton's injury as “laceration of right hand, abrasion of head and right knee.” Although more extensive than most of the wounds described in the admission records, they were not serious enough for Anton to be admitted to hospital. After treatment he left for home. Anton did not appear in police or court records, or in newspaper stories or lists, indicating that he did not make a report to police.
While the hospital records did not include information on an individual's race, the language specifying that his alleged attackers were "colored men" and the location of his home indicated that Anton was a white man. -
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2020-03-11T21:39:06+00:00
Maurice Spellman assaulted
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2023-09-03T03:49:22+00:00
Maurice Spellman a twenty-six-year-old white man, reported being “struck by a number of unknown colored men” at 125th Street and 8th Avenue around 9pm. The attack left him with cuts to his right eye, which he had treated at Sydenham Hospital. After being attended by Dr Karlen, Spellman left for his home, at 511 West 127th Street, a white neighborhood three blocks west of where he was assaulted.
Spellman was attacked early in the disorder, when it was still centered on Kress’ store, putting him in the midst of the crowd. Blacks targeted at least three other white men around this time. William Kitlitz reported being attacked by James Smithies in front of Kress’ store and Timothy Murphy a few blocks west of Spellman’s location by a group of men at around the same time, and Morris Werner by another group, half an hour later at 125th St and 7th Avenue, the other end of the block on which Kress’ stood. All these men lived west of Harlem, relatively close to where they were attacked, so were likely regular visitors to 125th Street, to shop, seek entertainment or access public transport, on this evening caught up in the disorder.
The hospital admission record is the only evidence of the assault on Spellman. The attacks on Murphy and Kitlitz were assaulted in locations where they attracted police, who made arrests, creating legal records and helping those men appear in newspaper lists of the injured, and in Murphy’s case, newspapers stories. Werner, like Spellman, appears to have been caught up in the crowds, and to have sought medical attention without attracting police attention. Neither man was attended at Harlem Hospital in the heart of the black neighborhood, but rather at hospitals to the west: Spellman at Sydenham Hospital at 123rd Street and Manhattan Avenue, near his home; and Werner at the Vanderbilt Clinic on West 168th Street. -
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2020-08-20T20:49:15+00:00
James Connel injured
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2023-08-31T19:38:37+00:00
James Connel, a twenty-three-year-old man of unknown race, was injured “in some unknown manner” at Lenox Ave and 125th Street according to a hospital admissions record. He was likely injured sometime around 1:00 AM, as Dr Payne attended him at Harlem Hospital at 1:30 AM according to that record. At that time there were assaults, injuries and attacks on stores on all the blocks of Lenox Avenue from 125th Street up to 134th Street. The noise and crowds may have attracted Connel from his home, only a few blocks from where he was injured, at 62 West 129th Street. That address was in an area occupied almost entirely by Black residents, so Connel was likely a Black man. The hospital records included no information on race. His injury could have come from a police baton, a stone intended for a store window or from shattering glass. His unwillingness to provide any details to the hospital staff make it more likely he was beaten by police or injured in circumstances related to participating in the disorder.
The hospital record described Connel’s injury was a laceration of the scalp, a head wound suffered by six of those injured (30%). He appeared only in the hospital records; Connel's name was not in any of the lists of those injured published in the press. After being seen by the physician, Connel went home, his injury evidently not serious enough for him to be admitted to the hospital.
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2020-08-20T20:56:36+00:00
Hugh Young injured
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2023-09-01T01:15:52+00:00
Hugh Young was at the intersection of Lenox Ave and West 129th Street when he was cut by “flying glass,” according to a hospital record. A twenty-three-year-old man of unknown race, he lived a block north, on the corner of Lenox Avenue and West 130th Street, an area of Black residents. He may have been a bystander drawn by the noise on Lenox Avenue at this time, when a number of incidents of looting took place. Dr Payne attended Young at Harlem Hospital at 1:30 AM according to a hospital record, so he was likely injured sometime after 1:00 AM. Alice Mitchell, a twenty-one-year-old Black women who like Young lived nearby was also injured by flying glass at the same place and treated by Dr Payne at the same time. They may have been transported in the same ambulance.
The hospital record described Young's injury as "lacerations of face." Young did not appear in any of the lists of the injured published by newspapers, unlike Alice Mitchell. After being seen by the physician, Young went home, his injury evidently not serious enough for him to be admitted to the hospital. The hospital records did not record race. Young's residence in an area almost entirely populated by Black New Yorkers is strong evidence that he was a Black man.