Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935Main MenuREAD ME: Help Navigating This BookIntroductionOn the StreetsIn the CourtsUnder InvestigationThe Mayor's Commission on Conditions in HarlemOver TimeEventsSourcesStephen Robertsona1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bfStanford University Press
12020-10-22T02:15:56+00:00AnonymousHarry Lash's store looted2plain2020-10-22T02:16:29+00:00Anonymous
12020-10-22T02:18:54+00:00AnonymousArnold Ford arrested1plain2020-10-22T02:18:54+00:00Anonymous
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12020-02-25T16:56:23+00:00Assault in the courts (9)40plain2020-08-07T18:57:18+00:00While fifty-three assaults appear in newspaper reports and hospital records, police made arrests in only nine of those cases, all of men and all but one black. Three of the arrests involved alleged assaults involved police officers, including one for which a white man was arrested: Harry Gordon, one of the Communists who had picketed Kress' store at the very beginning of the disorder. The alleged assaults resulting in arrests were a mix of the forms reported in the disorder - two assaults by individuals, three by groups, two hit by objects, and one shooting (with no details surviving of the circumstances of Jackson's arrest). That mix suggests that no form of assault was more likely than another to lead to arrest.
Courts treated these events as serious crimes more often than they did other forms of disorder. Magistrates held a much higher proportion of men arrested for assault for the Grand Jury, which then indicted more of them: four of the twelve arrested, involved in half the assaults for which an arrest was made. In one case, James Smitten, there is no information on the legal outcome. Of the men prosecuted for Disorderly Conduct in the Magistrates Court, the circumstances are unknown in one case, in one a man was allegedly part of a group that attacked a white man, and in the others, Charles Alston, Albert Yerber, Edward Loper and Ernest Johnson charged as a group with shooting at police, there is no evidence anyone was injured and no weapons were found in the men's possession. The magistrate transferred Harry Gordon to the Court of Special Sessions, to be prosecuted for "simple" (misdemeanor) assault, involving a lesser level of violence, but he was discharged, likely because the officer he allegedly assaulted was the only witness. Of the four men Magistrates held for the grand jury, only one man had the charges against him dismissed - Douglas Cornelius, who was arrested for an attack by a group. The issue in that case was likely the identification of Cornelius as one of the assailants rather than a bystander. However, strikingly few of the prosecutions produced convictions: a Magistrate convicted Richard Jackson and Rivers Wright of the lesser offense of disorderly conduct, and a jury convicted James Hughes of third degree (misdemeanor) assault for throwing a rock that hit Detective Henry Roge. None of those men received a prison sentence: a Magistrate sent Jackson sent to the workhouse for two days, and Wright for ten days, while a judge sent Hughes to the workhouse for three months. Those sentences reflected the limited violence of the assaults in the disorder in terms of both the lack of weapons and the limited injuries inflicted. A magistrate acquitted three of the group of men who allegedly shot at police of the lesser charge of disorderly conduct, unsurprisingly given the lack of any evidence they had committed a crime (The outcome of the prosecution of the fourth member of the group, Charles Alston is unknown as he was injured and did not appear in court with the others). Despite the prevalence of plea bargaining at this time, none of these men pled guilty to lesser offenses. Two juries also acquitted men put on trial, both in cases of assaults by blacks on whites. This was not a circumstance in which juries usually voted for acquittal unless there was a question about the identification of the defendant as the person who committed the assault. As cases involved alleged assaults by groups, identification was likely an issue. How do these outcomes compare with assault prosecutions outside the disorder?
