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Inciting crowds (15)
The reported instances of calls for crowds to act are concentrated on West 125th Street and on 7th and Lenox Avenues within two blocks of 125th Street. The one outlier was also one of only two reports not associated with an arrest, further north on Lenox Avenue between 131st and 132nd Streets. The alleged events on West 125th Street occurred near the beginning of the disorder, beginning inside Kress’ store, followed by those on 7th Avenue north and south of 125th Street up to 11.15PM, and then those Lenox after midnight. Again the crowd further north on Lenox Avenue falls outside that pattern, likely appearing on the street sometime between 11 PM and midnight.
Most of the alleged calls were to break windows, made by men who themselves were breaking windows. John Kennedy Jones allegedly called only "come on," while motioning with his hand. Leon Mauraine and David Smith shouted "Com[e] on gang, here's two more windows, let's break them," Bernard Smith, “We will get this two windows here…You fellows get the others,” and Leroy Brown, “Go right along and get the other windows.” Other alleged cries that did not directly call for windows to be broken fueled crowds who went on to such attacks. The shouts “Down with the whites!” Let’s get what we can!” from the crowd further up Lenox Avenue reported by Herbert Cantor were followed by objects being thrown at windows. Similarly, a woman’s cries that a hearse arriving on 124th Street had come to pick up Rivera’s body drew a crowd that broke windows. While Daniel Miller said only a few words before being pulled down from a stepladder, someone threw an object through a window in Kress’ store as he spoke, associating him with window breaking. That association extended to Harry Gordon. He was arrested only a few minutes after Miller, attempting to speak to the crowd police had moved away from the store after the window was broken.
Three of the men arrested allegedly called for violence against white police. While fitting the more sensational accounts of violence offered by some white newspapers, the alleged calls are out of place in the context in which they occurred, attacks on store windows. James Pringle allegedly called out, “Let's go cross the way and scale rocks at the cops, they are coming down our side of the street.” Kill the cops, the dirty mother-fucking sons-of-bitches,” was the alleged cry of Claude Jones. A patrolman testified that William Ford shouted “Shed white blood, kill the cops, there has been enough black blood shed here now.” Ford and Jones both allegedly broke windows. The arresting officer’s affidavit made no mention of Pringle breaking windows, but a handwritten note added that he “led others who smashed windows.”
John King clashed more directly with a police officer. Told to move on from the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue, he refused and threatened to “put that Kress store out of business and punish that man that injured the child.” King’s failure to move more than what he said likely led to his arrest. The officer who arrested Sam Jameson, Murray Samuels and Claudio Viabolo explained their arrest was for not following police instructions to move, in their case from the front of Kress’ store where they were picketing.
The three reported instances when women allegedly incited crowds came during the events around Kress’ at the beginning of the disorder, in the gendered context of shopping and consumption. Two unnamed women, one inside Kress' store and one on 124th Street, shouted that Rivera had been beaten or killed rather than the direct calls to act attributed to men. Knocking pans to the floor, as Margaret Mitchell allegedly did, was a similarly indirect way of causing a crowd to gather, different from the speeches and pickets attributed to men. [gendered picture of women’s role, not leaders; also calling for protection? Disrupting consumption?] Away from the store, and from 125th Street, women’s actions in inciting crowds not mentioned. To the contrary, [newspaper] published photographs of women as victims of crowds, knocked to the ground. alongside photos of crowds in which women’s presence is not noted in captions etc>
In arresting individuals who allegedly had urged others to damage businesses police were implicitly claiming to have identified and focused on those leading the disorder. Given that police do not appear to have arrested any other members of the groups they claimed those men had been part of, those allegations may have been self-serving, to make police activity seem more effective. It also could be the case that the nineteen men arrested and charged with disorderly conduct were crowd members. That broad, minor charge was not used in cases of alleged looting, window breaking, or inciting crowds – although it was the charge against Margaret Mitchell. Two men reported as charged with riot for which there are no details, John Hawkins and Hashi Mohammed, also had that charge reduced to disorderly conduct in the Magistrates Court, perhaps indicating they had been part of crowds rather than inciting them.
Calls to break windows or attack police do not appear in newspaper stories about the disorder. Three newspaper stories about assaults mentioned shouts from groups. In reporting an alleged assault on the white reporter Harry Johnson, the Daily Mirror described someone in a group of three Black men calling out, “There’s a reporter. Get Him!” That detail is not mentioned in any of the other stories about the alleged assault.
The other two cases were reported only in the New York Evening Journal, in sensationalized stories about alleged assaults on white men and women. That newspaper gave more attention to interracial violence than any other newspaper. One NYEJ journalist reported widespread calls to “Kill the whites.” [nature of this article – reprinted in PT – rejected by group in NYP story – reported assaults on whites do not support Levitt’s story or other sensationalized cases reported by NYEJ and other Hearst newspapers] Only two specific cases that include such threats are reported in the newspaper. A call to “Kill him” is attributed to a crowd of Black men and women that the New York Evening Journal described threatening B. Z. Kondoul, a thirty-five-year-old white man. Again, only one story mentioned that detail. So too the alleged assault on Betty Willcox, as she waited in a parked car, which is reported only in a story in the New York Evening Journal. The Black men she described surrounding the car screamed "White- we'll get you' We'll get all of them around here!"
Rather than shouted incitements and speakers, some newspaper reporting focused on distribution of leaflets and spread of rumors as responsible for crowds gathering and outbreaks of violence.