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"Injured," New York Daily News, March 20, 1935, 3
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2020-03-11T21:54:28+00:00
Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted
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2022-07-26T19:03:44+00:00
When Charles Hurley, a floorwalker, and Kress' store detective confronted Lino Rivera, an unemployed sixteen-year-old Puerto Rican boy, about stealing a pocketknife in Kress’ store, and started pushing him out of the store, the boy bit the hands of Hurley and a white window dresser who came to their aid, Steve Urban. Although having initially indicated that they wanted Rivera charged with assault, the two men ultimately did not ask police to arrest him. The incident is treated here as an assault as the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York American and Daily News listed the two men among the injured.
As the incident between Rivera and the store staff triggered the disorder, it was widely reported in the press and a topic investigated by the MCCH. This analysis relies on testimony given in MCCH public hearings, by far the most complete and detailed evidence. Newspaper narratives varied in detail, consistently reporting only that a boy had been grabbed by store staff for taking merchandise, and later released, but omitting most other details. Several white newspapers also published separate stories based on statements made by Rivera at the West 123rd Station during the disorder or at his home the next day that included additional details of why he was in the store and his encounter with the store staff but not of subsequent events in the store.
Rivera had begun the day by taking the subway to Brooklyn, in pursuit of job as an errand boy, he told reporters for the New York American and New York Herald Tribune. Finding the job already filled, he returned to Harlem. Getting off the subway at West 125th Street, Rivera decided to go to a show or movie at one of the theaters that lined the street, perhaps at the Apollo Theater opposite Kress' store, as a story in the New York Evening Journal claimed. When the show ended, Rivera went into Kress' store, a detail also reported in the New York Sun. He said he did so because he had "nothing to do," according to the New York Post, "just to look around I guess," according to the New York World-Telegram, or "to walk through to 124th Street," according to the New York American, "to take a short cut home," according to the New York Herald Tribune. Testifying in a public hearing of the MCCH, Hurley, a twenty-eight-year-old white resident of the Bronx, said he was with the store manager Jackson Smith in an office overlooking the rear of the store when he saw Rivera take a pocketknife from a counter around 2.30 PM. Calling down to the store detective, he pointed out Rivera and then headed to the floor himself. Rivera later admitted to reporters that he did take the knife, after it "caught his eye," according to the New York Post or "attracted" him according to the New York World-Telegram and New York American, or because it "matched a fountain pen set he had," according to the New York Herald Tribune. (The New York Sun mistakenly reported that it was chocolate that Rivera had taken). When Rivera denied having the knife, Hurley took it from the boy’s pocket. Both Rivera and Hurley testified that the men started to push him out of the store. According to Hurley, near the front door Rivera became scared and started to lash out at them. Rivera reportedly told journalists from the New York World-Telegram, New York Post and New York Evening Journal that he had told the men he could walk out on his own, and tried to shake free of their hold, "really started fighting" when, as he also testified in a MCCH hearing, Hurley said, "Let's take him down the cellar and beat hell out of him.” Hurley denied making that statement; he told the MCCH hearing that he held Rivera around his shoulders while the store detective tried to calm the boy. As a struggle developed, another store employee, Steve Urban, a thirty-nine-year-old white window dresser, also grabbed hold of Rivera, according to Hurley. Once the group was through the front door and into the store's vestibule, a recessed area of the street surrounded by display windows, the store detective went to get a Crime Prevention Bureau officer. That police agency provided an alternative to having children arrested; its officers instead undertaking investigations of their conditions in order to refer them to social agencies to better prevent “juvenile delinquency.” Kress store staff turned most of the boys they caught shoplifting over to the Crime Prevention Bureau, according to Hurley, and had police arrest only one or two a week.
Sometime after the store detective left, Rivera bit both Hurley and Urban on the hands and wrist, "trying to get away," he told a public hearing, reportedly explaining to journalists from that New York World-Telegram and New York Post that "I didn't want a licking." The struggle in the vestibule attracted the attention of Patrolman Donahue, who was the nearest of several police officers on West 125th Street at the time (identified in some newspapers as a traffic officer and by Rivera in a MCCH hearing as a mounted patrolman). Donahue took Rivera back into the store, to near the candy counter at the front, to get away from a curious crowd gathering on 125th Street, and sent an officer to get an ambulance to provide treatment for Hurley and Urban. (He told the MCCH hearing that the officer was his partner Keel, or another patrolman namded Walton; the call log records the man's name as Miller, who was later identified by the store manager as a Black officer). The telephone call to Headquarters was logged at 2:30 PM, followed by one from Police Headquarters to Harlem Hospital at 2:35 PM, with the ambulance bringing Dr. Sayet recorded in the hospital records as having arrived at 2:40 PM. Those records provide better evidence of the timing of the incident than Donahue’s testimony that he witnessed the struggle at 2:15 PM. Soon after the ambulance arrived, the manager, Jackson Smith came to the front of the store, he testified in a public hearing, after being told a crowd had gathered by a staff member. Informed that a Crime Prevention Bureau officer had been called, Smith decided there was “nothing further for him to do,” and he returned to his office. A few minutes later Alfred Eldridge, a Black Crime Prevention Bureau officer, arrived. Usually the store staff would have turned Rivera over to Eldridge, who would have taken Rivera with him. However, on this occasion Hurley and Urban told Eldridge they wanted the boy arrested and charged with assault. Hurley told a public hearing he had gone to the rear of the store before Eldridge arrived, and did not want Rivera arrested, but the officer was clear that he spoke with both Hurley and Urban. The store manager told a public hearing that “Hurley wants to press charges for biting.” Eldridge could not take Rivera with him if he was arrested: “The job and purpose of our bureau is not to arrest a child.” He telephoned his superior, and told him that “the 5 & 10 wanted the boy arrested.” In response, Eldridge told a public hearing, that officer told him to “let the patrolman take care of it due to the fact that he was first on case.” So after about 25 minutes at Kress, around 3:15 PM, Eldridge left the store.
However, Eldridge later found out that soon after he left, “the store officials changed their mind.” Donahue simplified those events in the public hearing, testifying that “The boy was not arrested, but was taken through the basement to 124th Street and sent home.” He did not mention Eldridge or who reversed the decision to arrest Rivera. Hurley’s self-interested statement that he did not want him arrested made Urban responsible. Urban himself was not among those who testified before a MCCH public hearing. It does seem that it was Urban who Donahue said was with him when he released Rivera; the officer referred to him not by name but as “the window dresser.” They took Rivera out the rear rather than on to 125th Street as there was a crowd in front of the store and Donahue “didn’t want to start something,” he told a public hearing. He was clearly anxious enough about the situation in the store to ignore another option that Eldridge had given him, “that in the event that Kress Store did not want to press charges, that the boy could be handed over to us for supervision,” according to the Crime Prevention Bureau officer’s testimony. After releasing Rivera on to 124th Street, Donahue left the store, at around 3.30 PM. Many of the fifty or so mostly black women shopping in the store observed these events, after their attention had been attracted by the struggle between the two men and Rivera, and the appearance of an ambulance. None of these women testified in a public hearing. A Black man named L. F. Cole told a MCCH public hearing that he saw Rivera being taken to the basement by two men. As they had not seen Rivera leave the store, groups of women concerned to find out what had become of him remained in the store until Smith closed it and police pushed them out sometime around 5:00 PM or 5:30 PM.
Bites are a relatively minor injury, and the hospital record indicates that both men received treatment at the scene and were not taken to the hospital. Hurley did still have a scar when he testified at a MCCH public hearing on April 20. Hays examined it, announcing that “I should say enough [of a scar] to indicate there was a bite,” adding in response to a question from the audience that he saw four teeth marks.” Only one other individual in the disorder is described as having been bitten, Arthur Block, a Black man. He appears among lists of the injured in only three publications, New York Evening Journal, Daily News and New York Post, with no details provided of the circumstances in which he was assaulted.
The significantly less detailed narratives of what happened between Rivera and the store staff published in newspapers largely reflected what Inspector Di Martini told a journalist working for the Afro American and others in front of the store around 7.30 PM: "A boy stole some little article here this afternoon. The manager caught him, grabbed him by the arm, and was taking him in the back when a woman screamed. The crowd gathered. The manager did not press charges, and let the boy go home through the back.” (At the at time, Di Martini’s information came only from interviewing Jackson Smith and Hurley, as both Donahue and Eldridge were off duty and would not learn of the disorder until the next day). Missing from that narrative was Rivera biting the men, which was also missing from stories in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York World-Telegram and New York Evening Journal, and Daily Worker. However, the assault was mentioned in the New York American, Home News, New York Sun, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, Atlanta World, New York Age, Philadelphia Tribune, Pittsburgh Courier, La Prensa and in Time magazine and the New Republic. Only the New York American, Daily News and New York Herald Tribune included language that gave a particular slant to the assault, with the New York American and Daily News describing Rivera as “hysterical” in his response to being grabbed by Hurley and the store detective, while the New York Herald Tribune labelled him pugnacious. The New York Age reported that “someone” had hit Rivera, the New York Herald Tribune and Brooklyn Daily Eagle that Hurley or Urban “slapped him", or “slugged him” according to the Pittsburgh Courier, with the New York Age mistakenly reporting that he was being treated at Harlem Hospital. That story was in a special edition of the New York Age published in the midst of the confusion early in the disorder. Two stories, in the New York American and New York Sun, had Rivera leave the store rather than being released. A story in The New Republic by white journalist Hamilton Basso included dialogue, almost certainly invented, between Rivera and the two men who grabbed him and comments from a crowd around him (Basso also mixed up the sequence of events inside and outside the store after Rivera's release).
Several newspapers also published statements by Rivera made either at the West 123rd Street station after Eldridge, awoken at 1.30 AM, had located him and brought him to a police station around 2:00 A.M, or in his home the next day that provided more details of what happened before and when he was grabbed than the broad narratives. The New York Evening Journal, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, New York Post, New York Sun, Atlanta World, and Philadelphia Tribune quoted Rivera at the police station describing biting the men and the threat to beat him that had precipitated that struggle. In an ANS agency photograph of Rivera, standing with Lt. Battle taken at that time journalists can be seen taking notes. It’s not clear if they questioned Rivera directly, or recorded answers he gave to police officers: the Daily News reported his statements as told to Deputy Chief Inspector Frances Kear, the New York Evening Journal and New York Sun reported he talked to Captain Richard Oliver, and the New York Herald Tribune quoted Eldridge rather than Rivera. The New York Evening Journal story also mentioned the reporter speaking with Rivera. The New York World-Telegram, and New York Herald Tribune published stories quoting statements made by Rivera at this home later on March 20; a New York American story combined statements from the station and at his home. The information that before entering Kress' Rivera had gone to Brooklyn looking for work, having left high school six months earlier, that his mother needed help because his father was dead was reported in the interviews published in the New York American and New York Herald Tribune. His father's death was also reported in La Prensa and the Brooklyn Citizen. Only the New York Herald Tribune, and the New York Evening Journal and New York Sun reported that Rivera went to a show after returning from Brooklyn. Only La Prensa reported that Rivera had a job when he first left school. That interview with Rivera in his home focused on emphasizing his lack of responsibility for the disorder and willingness to try to pacify the crowds had he been asked, and contained no details of what had happened in the store as he did not want to talk about them. That focus was in line with La Prensa's concern to distance Puerto Rican residents from the disorder. Rivera gave an account of what happened in the store again when he appeared in the Adolescents Court on March 23 for inserting slugs in a subway turnstile before the disorder, in answer to questions from the Magistrate.
Until police found Rivera, newspapers described the boy caught shoplifting as a younger Black child, in line with the rumors and leaflets circulating in Harlem. Louise Thompson heard from the women she spoke to in Kress' store that a "colored boy" aged ten to twelve years had been beaten. The signs carried by the Young Liberators who picketed the store an hour or so later referred to a "Negro child," while the leaflets their organization distributed another hour later later described a "12 year old Negro boy." The first newspaper stories repeated those descriptions. The New York American mentioned a "colored boy" and a "10-year-old Negro boy," the Daily News a 12-year old "colored boy," the New York Evening Journal a 15-year-old "Negro boy," the Daily Mirror a "little colored boy," the Home News a "young colored boy," and the New York Sun a "Negro boy." Early stories in some Black newspapers featured similar descriptions, a "small Negro boy" in the Norfolk Journal and Guide and a 10-year-old "colored boy" in the Indianapolis Recorder on March 23, or simply referred to the boy's age not his race, a 16 year old boy in the Atlanta World on March 21, a 12-year-old boy in the New York Age, a 14-year-old boy in the Chicago Defender, and a 16 year old boy in the Afro-American and Pittsburgh Courier on March 23. Newspapers published on March 20 after police found Rivera identified him as a 16-year-old Puerto Rican, in the New York Post, New York World-Telegram and Brooklyn Daily Eagle or a "Puerto Rican youth" in the New York Herald Tribune, Times Union, Brooklyn Citizen (although later in that story Rivera was referred to as a "Negro")(The New York World-Telegram also pointed to the differences between Rivera and the boy of the rumors by putting Negro in quotation marks when reporting the rumors and the text of the Young Liberators leaflet.) By contrast, the New York Times referred to a 16-year-old "Negro boy" even after Rivera had been found, as did the New York Sun and New York Evening Journal. While the New York Times did eventually identify Rivera as Puerto Rican when he appeared in the Adolescents court after the disorder, the New York Evening Journal continued to describe Rivera as "Negro," while the New York Sun made no mention of his race. Those newspapers' persistent use of "Negro" may have been intended to convey that Rivera was dark-skinned; the New York American described him in those terms, as a "dark-skinned 16-year-old Porto Rican" in a story reporting an interview with the boy in his home, while the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described him as a "Negro born in Porto Rico." Editions of the other newspapers published after Rivera was found, including the Black newspapers, simply switched to identify him as Puerto Rican. (Historian Lorrin Thomas argued that the New York Amsterdam News "failed to identify Rivera as Puerto Rican, referring to him instead as a “young Negro boy,”" but did not provide a citation. The March 23 issue of that newspaper is missing the news sections, but the March 30 issue identified Rivera as a "16-year-old Puerto Rican youth.")
Stories in the New York Evening Journal, Home News, La Prensa and Daily Worker misidentified Hurley and Urban as store detectives. None mentioned the store detective, Smith, perhaps because he was not bitten and therefore not identified in any official records. He may also have been confused with Jackson Smith, the store manager. Many stories gave the manager a larger role than he played, involved in grabbing Rivera, and making the decision to release him with Rivera in this office. That expanded role came at the expense not only of the store detective but also the police. Only the Daily News, and a vague statement in the New York Post story of what Rivera said mentioned that officers were at the store. The Daily News included only Eldridge, misidentifying him as the officer who released Rivera. Rivera said “two policeman came in” after he bit the men, the New York Post reported. The New York Evening Journal, Daily News, Atlanta World, and Philadelphia Tribune stories quoting Rivera omitted that statement.
Several newspaper stories included a Black woman interceding or screaming when the store staff grabbed Rivera, which some accounts claimed precipitated broader disorder. The statements of those on the scene suggest any outcry came when Donohue and Urban took Rivera into the basement. Rivera testified in the public hearing that a woman screamed “They’re going to take him down the cellar and beat him up!” While Hurley made no mention of that scream, L. F. Cole, a thirty-year-old Black clerk, did testify that when he saw Donohue and Urban taking Rivera to the basement “a woman made a statement that the boy had been struck.” Cole's choice not to describe the woman as screaming suggests the possibility that the woman simply called out, with the gendered language of the press rendering any shouting by a woman as a scream. "They're beating that boy! They're killing him!" were the “screams” reported by the New York Evening Journal. Speeding up events, the New York American, New York Post and Atlanta World, and the New Republic, describe the woman as running into the street, screaming "Kress beat a colored boy! Kress Beat a colored boy!" according to the New York American. The New York Sun made this response collective: “Emotional Negro women shouted that the boy was being beaten and this information was quickly relayed to the curious crowds which had gathered in front of the store.” Rather than reacting, the woman intervened in the narrative presented in Home News and La Prensa, and was pushed aside by Hurley, after which she screamed.
Margaret Mitchell was identified as woman who reacted to Rivera being grabbed in the New York Evening Journal, Home News, Philadelphia Tribune and La Prensa (and later in stories about those arrested in the AN, AA, NYP, NYT). Here journalists with a truncated timeline of events were assuming that as she was arrested in Kress’ store it must have been when Rivera was grabbed. However, Donahue told the public hearing he had not made an arrest, and none of the store staff mentioned an arrest at this time. The circumstances of Mitchell's arrest recorded by police, the testimony of Louise Thompson and the New York Sun story suggest that it took place after the store was closed, as police tried to clear out the women who remained inside, with an officer named Johnson making the arrest. Similarly, in describing customers struggling with Hurley and Urban or attacking displays as Rivera was taken away the narratives of the New York Sun, La Prensa and the Home News collapsed together events that took place at different times. Testimony in the public hearings identified that struggle as coming later, when Kress’ manager decided to close the store and police cleared out those inside.
The MCCH public hearings elicited more details of the assault, with Rivera, the two police officers, and Hurley all testifying, together with Jackson Smith, the store manager. Provided in five separate hearings spread over nearly six weeks, that testimony described the roles of Officers Donahue and Eldridge, which were missing from the initial newspaper reports. Few newspapers included these new details in their stories about the hearings. The most extensively reported hearing was the first, in which Donahue testified. The WT, NYT, HN and TU, and later the NYA and AN, highlighted Donahue’s decision to release Rivera through the rear of the store rather than in view of concerned customers, as an “error in judgement,” as the Times Union put it, that helped trigger the disorder. While the HN, WT, TU, and AN reported Donahue had admitted that mistake, the hearing transcript does not include such a statement. Instead, it was Arthur Garfield Hays, chairing the hearing, who offered that assessment while questioning the officer. After Donahue testified that crowds in the store caused him to decide to release Rivera at the rear, Hays commented, “If you had let the boy go at that time there would not have been any excitement.” (8) (The NYEJ, NYP, HT and DM did not mention Donahue, but focused on the Communists who testified and participated in questioning witnesses). Eldridge and Hurley did not testify until three weeks later, and Jackson Smith until two weeks after that, when they were not given any attention in the briefer newspaper stories about those hearings.
The MCCH Subcommittee report submitted to Mayor La Guardia on May 29 compiled and summarized the testimony from the public hearings to offer a more detailed narrative of events in the store than any provided in the press, but one that still left out key details. Neither Urban nor Eldridge are mentioned, nor is the store detective identified as the man who grabbed Rivera with Hurley. Nor does it make clear that charge for which Rivera faced arrest was assault not theft (2-3). The report was not made public until several months later, on August 10. None of the newspaper stories about the report published in the NYT, NYHT, NYEJ, DN, HN, DW and NYA mentioned the events. They focused instead on the blame the MCCH leveled at police. (The New York Amsterdam News issue for this date is missing).
The summary of the testimony given in public hearings in the MCCH’s final report, the most widely circulated account of the disorder, named only Hurley and the store manager, and did not make clear that Urban was not the store detective who had helped confront Rivera. The report also implied that the arrival of the CPB somehow interfered with Rivera’s release: “While Mr. Smith, the manager, instructed the officer to let the culprit go free—as he had done in many eases before—an officer from the Crime Prevention Bureau was sent to the store.” (7) That framing seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the basis on which Rivera was held, that it was for theft rather than for bitting the men for which Rivera faced arrest. It was Hurley and Urban, not the Crime Prevention Bureau officer, who stopped the incident from being resolved in the same way as any other case of shoplifting, albeit only temporarily.
None of the historical scholarship on the disorder offers a narrative of these events that is entirely in line with this evidence. The unpublished public hearings are a source for only one narrative of these events in the historical scholarship, Cheryl Greenberg’s description. She is also the only historian to cite other unpublished sources, Di Martini’s report and the Subcommittee report. For some reason, Greenberg relies on Di Martini’s report to describe only one store employee grabbing Rivera and being bitten, rather than both Hurley and Urban. That report was compiled the day after the disorder, on March 20, without time for the information gathering undertaken by the MCCH. While Greenberg asserted “The Mayor’s Commission agreed with the police description of the events,” both the Subcommittee report and the final report identify Hurley and another employee as grabbing Rivera. Greenberg also asserts that Rivera was released before police arrived, rather than by Donohue, as the MCCH reports describe. Di Martini’s report did not mention Rivera’s release, so the source for that element of Greenberg’s narrative is uncertain.
Other historians rely on the MCCH report. However, those narratives consistently misidentify the store manager, Jackson Smith, as one of those who grabbed Rivera, even though the MCCH report describes Smith only as witnessing the theft, and Hurley and another employee as grabbing the boy. Mark Naison, Lorrin Thomas and Jonathan Gill portray the manager acting alone, and Naison makes no mention of Rivera biting him or anyone else. The manager acts with an unnamed store guard in Marilynn Johnson’s narrative, replacing Smith the store detective. There is no mention of Rivera biting either man; they simply turn him over to a police officer. Nicole Watson likewise replaces the store detective with the store manager, who is bitten along with Hurley. Thomas Kessner is the only historian not to mistakenly include the store manager, describing Rivera as grabbed by two employees. Kessner, Greenberg, Johnson, and Watson all mention a woman shouting that the boy was being beaten up. Naison and Thomas more generally refer to a rumor spreading through the crowd, with no mention that women made up the bulk of those in the store. None mention whether the woman was arrested.
While Naison, Kessner, Johnson, and Thomas follow the MCCH report in describing police releasing Rivera through the back entrance, Gill and Watson offer narratives more at odds with the evidence. Gill echoes Greenberg in describing Rivera taken to the basement before police arrive (there are no notes in Gill’s book, so it is not clear if he is relying on Greenberg for that detail). Watson offers two possible narratives, that Rivera escaped as Donohue tried to quell the crowd as Time reported, or Donohue released him on Smith’s instructions. While the magazine story was published at a greater distance from the events than newspaper stories, no evidence that Rivera escaped rather than being released was found by the MCCH investigation. To the contrary, testimony in the public hearings and the MCCH’s report are consistent in saying that is not what happened, with Donohue’s decision drawing specific attention at the hearings and in the report as a ‘mistake.’ Watson’s account is not clear on just how unbalanced the weight of evidence is in regards to those events; she simply posits the description in Time against “other versions.”
Portraying the store manager as involved in grabbing Rivera obscures the number of staff employed by the store to undertake surveillance and policing, a store detective and a floor walker. (Other large stores on 125th Street employed similar staff; around this time, however, Black store detectives were employed at the nearby McCrory, W. T. Grant and Blumstein stores, which at least at the McCrory store often defused encounters between white staff and Black customers). That apparatus contributed to how routine it was to apprehend a boy shoplifting, something that did not warrant the involvement of the manager, but did reflect the kind of treatment Black customers received in white-owned businesses. Portraying store employees as releasing Rivera or the boy as escaping obscures the involvement of police in his custody. Given the level of violence Black residents suffered at the hands of police, a patrolman taking him to the basement would have heightened the concern of those in the store that Rivera would be subject to violence. -
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2020-02-24T22:38:05+00:00
Two men speak to a crowd & Patrolman Irwin Young assaulted
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2022-08-01T15:30:44+00:00
Harry Gordon, a twenty-year-old white man in his senior year at City College, was walking along West 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues about 6 PM, he told a public hearing of the MCCH, when he noticed groups of “excited” people “milling around the street.” While Gordon claimed to have been simply passing by, it seems likely he was one of the Communist Party members who came to Kress’ store to in response to rumors a boy had been attacked. He did identify himself at the hearing as a member of the New York Students League, a Communist led organization. Gordon gave his address as 699 Prospect Avenue in the Bronx.
Gordon testified that he asked several people on the street what was happening, but he “couldn’t get anything at all from them.” He then saw a Black man, James Parton, set up a ladder in front of Kress; store, briefly speak to the crowd, and then Daniel Miller step up to speak. A window then smashed and police officers immediately seized Miller. Other officers chased Gordon and other people who had been listening to Miller across West 125th Street to the opposite sidewalk and then pushed them away from the store, east toward 7th Avenue. About 300 feet from Kress’ store, Gordon estimated, Parton climbed a lamppost and again spoke to those on the street, saying “that a boy had been killed and that a crowd should gather in protest,” according to Gordon’s testimony. Then he climbed the lamppost, intending, he told a public hearing, “to get a committee from the crowd” “to go to the police to find out if a child was killed.” He was only able to say “Friends” before Patrolman Irwin Young pulled him down from the lamppost. Gordon’s alleged assault on Young came when he “grabbed Patrolman Irwin Young’s nightstick and used it to hit the officer,” according to a story in the New York Times that is the only source that mentioned the nature of the assault, reporting Gordon’s second appearance in the Magistrates Court. After arresting Gordon, Young and other officers dragged him to a police radio car and drove him to the police station on West 123rd Street.
Lists of the injured variously described the injuries Young suffered as “cuts on hands,” in the Daily News and New York Evening Journal “lacerations of right hand” in the New York Herald Tribune, and "bruised on the hand" in the New York American. No version represented a sufficient injury to constitute a felony assault, which is the charge police initially made against Gordon. The New York Herald Tribune reported Young received medical treatment at the scene, but when Gordon’s lawyer cross-examined him in the Harlem Magistrates Court, Young testified that did not go to a doctor or the hospital, Gordon told the public hearing. Young did not appear in the hospital records, as the other police officers injured around this time did, offering confirmation of those statements. Moreover, Young was back on the streets by 10.10 PM, when he arrested Leroy Gillard at 200 West 128th Street, for allegedly looting. He was the first police officer allegedly assaulted in the disorder; five others would be assaulted around 125th Street before 10.30 PM, after which time the crowds had moved to other parts of the neighborhood.
Gordon denied he assaulted Young. He testified in a public hearing of the MCCH that he was grabbed from behind, and then “a rain of blows descended on me such that I have never experienced before," in response to which he was able to do nothing. Louise Thompson, part of the crowd on 125th Street, offered a more detailed account, although as a member of the Communist Party she was not an entirely disinterested observer. She described to a public hearing of the MCCH how “a cop kicked him, another knocked him over the head with his billy and another slapped him in the face and punched him in the ribs.” Thompson more clearly stated that Gordon did not assault Young when interviewed earlier by a reporter for the Daily Worker for a story published on the same day she testified in the public hearing: "I was standing a few feet from Harry Gordon when he was arrested. He did not strike any policeman. He did nothing.” In the same story in the Daily Worker, Gordon denied committing assault, implying that Young made the charge to justify his violence: “"I did not strike any policeman. He struck me over the head with his club before I even saw him. He said, 'So you'll hit a cop, will you?' as he struck me.”
As was the case with events inside Kress’ store, testimony in the public hearings of the MCCH provided the most detailed evidence of the events outside the store in the early evening of March 19. Louise Thompson testified on March 30 and Harry Gordon on May 4 (Thompson only mentioned the first speaker, Miller, in her article in New Masses). The MCCH subcommittee report and final report both describe a second person trying to speak in front of Kress who was arrested, without naming that person, but make no mention of his alleged assault on a police officer. More striking, Inspector Di Martini’s report names Gordon without mentioning an alleged assault on one of his officers. That report has no reference to Daniel Miller, presenting Gordon as the only person to speak in front of the store: “At about 7PM, one Harry Gordon, #699 Prospect Avenue arrived in front of Kress’ Store with a number of others carrying placards and made a speech to a group which was attracted and incited a number of colored persons to break windows of the store. He was immediately arrested by Ptl. Young #3203, 32nd Precinct.”
No newspaper stories explicitly reported the narrative in the MCCH hearings and reports, as they truncated events outside the store and presented Gordon, Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators who picketed the store as a single group arriving and acting together. Only some described Gordon as speaking, and only three of the initial stories about the disorder describe him as assaulting Young, in different circumstances that were both unlike what was described in the MCCH public hearings. Even later stories about Gordon’s first appearance in the Harlem Magistrates Court do not all mention the assault charge, and several describe him as picketing Kress’ store not trying to speak to the crowd. When Gordon testified in a public hearing of the MCCH, newspaper stories described him speaking, and being arrested by Young, but omitted the context he provided for those events as coming after Miller had tried to speak and been arrested.
Only some newspapers described Gordon as speaking in front of the store. NYA (3/23?) accurately captured the event, if not its context: “Harry Gordon, white Communist, was arrested when Patrolman Young of the 123rd street police station found him addressing a group. He was taken to the station house charged with inciting a riot.” NYP more briefly described Gordon, Miller and the two other white men as having been arrested for “haranguing crowds, urging them to fight.” The DM identified Gordon as a speaker, describing him as “a “Red” orator,” but with no details of circumstances of his speaking or arrest. The WT included Gordon in a group obliquely described as being arrested for being “Communist agitators.” [AA, HN, DN mentioned speakers but did not name them, and the NYS did not mention Gordon]
Only three of the initial stories about the disorder described Gordon assaulting Young, in different circumstances that were unlike what was described in the MCCH public hearings. Gordon came to Miller’s aid when he was arrested, joined by the three YLs, and battled Patrolman Shannon and two other officers before also being arrested, according to the New York American and NYEJ. That story also mistakenly had Gordon picketing the store. The New York Times relocated the encounter between Gordon and Young to the rear of Kress’ store on West 124th Street. In the struggle between police and a crowd that took place there, the story reported, Young “was cut on the right hand by a rock” thrown by Gordon. That clash occurred around thirty minutes after Gordon was arrested, and involved officers other than Young being injured.
Later stories about Gordon’s first appearance in the Harlem Magistrates Court did not all mention the assault charge, and several described him as picketing Kress’ store not trying to speak to the crowd. Gordon was described as charged with assault in the NYS, in a story about a line-up of those arrested, Am, and AN, which had him picketing the store. Four other papers did not mention the assault charge: the DM described Gordon and the others grouped with him as “curb-stone orators who had deliberately incited the 125th St. mobs;” in the HN the charge was inciting a riot, for “making a speech in front of Kress’ store;” in the DN it was an unspecified “separate charge” from that made against the other men, which was inciting riot; and in the NYEJ Gordon and three others were charged with “circulating false placards to the effect that a Negro boy had been beaten to death.” Gordon’s subsequent appearances in the Harlem Magistrates were generally not reported. Only the WT and Am mentioned his appearance on March 25, with no details of his alleged offense. The NYT story of Gordon’s appearance on May 27 provided the only details of the assault, that he “grabbed Patrolman Irwin Young’s nightstick and used it to hit the officer.” The HT story on the same hearing not only made no mention of those details, but omitted the assault entirely and instead made Gordon only indirectly responsible for Young’s injuries: his speech telling the crowd “that a Negro boy had been killed in the store… so excited the neighborhood that Patrolman Irving Young, of the West 123d Street station, and several others were hurt in the ensuing riot.”
Stories about Gordon’s testimony in the MCCH public hearing on May 4 published in the NYT, NYA and ANP described him speaking, and being arrested by Young, but omitted the context he provided for those events as coming after Miller had tried to speak and been arrested. The Am and AA had an even narrower focus, mentioning only that Gordon alleged he had been beaten by police, with no description of the circumstances of his arrest. The only story about Gordon’s allegation published before the hearing was in the DW on March 30, reflecting his association with the CP. Reporters for the NYEJ had been unable to locate him. When the DW’s reporter spoke to Gordon, “his left eye still black from the police beating more than a week ago.” However, in a DN photograph published on March 20 captioned as showing Gordon and the other men grouped with him by police, none of the men have visible injuries. As there are only three men, the image may be of the Miller and the YL without Gordon, perhaps around the time he was arraigned separately.
Harry Gordon did not appear in the MCCH's transcription of the 28th Precinct Police Blotter; Claudio Viabolo, the Black Young Liberator, is the only one of the five speakers and picketers in that record. Gordon appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, shortly after the other white men arrested at the start of the disorder. Magistrate Renaud remanded him to reappear on the March 25, and then again to March 27. While Miller and the three Young Liberators that police grouped with Gordon as the instigators of the riot appeared before the grand jury before being transferred to the Court of Special Sessions, the ADA reduced the charge against Gordon to misdemeanor assault in the Magistrates Court, with his IDL lawyers claiming credit in the public hearing of the MCCH, as they had elicited testimony from Young that he had not needed medical treatment for his injury. Magistrate Renaud then transferred Gordon to the Court of Special Sessions. There is no information of the outcome of his trial.
In the narratives of historians Mark Naison, Cheryl Greenberg, Marilynn Johnson, Lorrin Thomas and Nicole Watson Gordon and Miller are grouped together as “speakers” pulled down by police. Historian Thomas Kessner named Miller in his narrative as the only speaker in front of the store. None of those historians mention Gordon's alleged assault of Young. They all follow the narrative provided by police that presents the speakers as part of a single group protesting in front of Kress’ store, stepping up to speak to the crowd after picketing of the store had begun. That framing implicitly introduces the idea that the disorder was orchestrated by those men, while offering no details of how the crowds of women and men around them acted to weigh against that evidence. Weight is added to that implication by the failure to fully identify the men involved in the protests. While Greenberg and Thomas do not identify the men, Naison, Kessner, Johnson and Watson describe them as members of the Young Liberators. None of those historians mention that four of the five, and both the speakers arrested, were white men. Naison did describe the Young Liberators as an interracial group; so too did Watson, however she did not identify the men in front of the store as members of the Young Liberators. Neglecting their race makes those men appear more representative of the crowd than they were, particularly in Greenberg and Watson’s narratives, which do not identify they as Young Liberators. Naison, Kessner, Greenberg, Thomas, Johnson and Watson all follow the chronology that has the picketing begin before the speakers were arrested. Grouping the men places an organized Communist protest at the center of the outbreak of disorder, and makes the window being broken and the men’s arrest a response to the feeling they built in the crowd. Recognizing that the protests occurred in a less coordinated way highlights that police responded immediately to any sign of protest, not just to a window being broken. They may also have acted so quickly because they recognized the men as Communists; the men’s language and appeals would have given them away. Communist protest in Harlem, and across the city, drew violent responses from police in the months prior to the disorder. Recognition of the fragmented nature of the protests and the identity of those involved directs attention away from those events to the crowds of Black men and women around them. Crowd members gathered in groups, talked among themselves, sought answers from police about what had happened to the boy, and responded to police efforts to clear the street. Rather than organized or orchestrated by the Young Liberators, those behaviors appear more spontaneous, in line with the interpretation offered in the MCCH’s final report. -
1
2020-02-25T02:58:46+00:00
Timothy Murphy assaulted & Paul Boyett shot
58
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2022-07-12T18:36:48+00:00
Around 9:00 PM, as police reinforcements tried to disperse the large crowds that had gathered on 7th and 8th Avenues around 125th Street, a few blocks northwest on West 127th Street between 8th Avenue and St Nicholas Avenue, a group of around Black men allegedly attacked Timothy Murphy, a twenty-nine-year-old white rock driller on his way home. Murphy alleged that the men knocked him to the ground and then hit and kicked him. The men told him “they were beating me because I was a white man,” the Daily Mirror reported Murphy as saying. What they actually said was “You white son-of-a-bitch, take it now," according to his affidavit in the Magistrates Court. As a result of the beating Murphy suffered “lacerations, contusions [about his head, face and body], a broken nose and loss of hearing in his left ear.” Press reports simply said he received a broken nose.
The men beating Murphy allegedly attracted the attention of Patrolman George Conn from the 30th Precinct, immediately west of Harlem. He may have been in a radio car on his way to 125th Street as the New York Amsterdam News reported "police drove up." His Magistrate's Court affidavit described the crowd as numbering around ten men, a number reported by the New York Herald Tribune, Home News, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Other newspapers described larger crowds, twelve men according to the Daily Mirror, twenty men according to the Associated Press, and forty to fifty men in the sensationalized narrative published in the New York Evening Journal. The New York Times and New York Sun simply reported that several men had attacked Murphy. As Conn ran toward Murphy, newspaper stories and legal records agreed that he shot Paul Boyett, a twenty-year-old Black garage worker who lived only a few buildings away, at 310 West 127th Street. The New York Sun and New York Times reported Conn's statement that he had first fired a shot in the air to disperse the crowd and then ordered Boyett to halt and shot him only when he continued running. The Daily Mirror and Home News reported those details without making clear that Conn was the source of that information. The New York Evening Journal reported Conn fired two shots, one "in the air and then a second shot which struck Boyett in the back." A brief account in the New York Herald Tribune and Associated Press simply had Conn shooting Boyett, one of the group attacking Murphy. Several other newspapers did not mention that anyone else but Boyett had allegedly been involved in attacking Murphy: the New York American had Conn shooting Boyett "when he tried to flee," the Daily News "as he was about to strike" Murphy, and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle simply reported that Conn had shot Boyett. This incident was the most widely reported assault in the disorder, both because it occurred early in the evening, and because it fitted the sensationalized narrative of racial violence which the Hearst newspapers and white tabloids employed.
Boyett testified at his trial that he had been “an innocent onlooker” drawn to the “disturbance,” and “struck no one at that time,” the New York Amsterdam News reported. In the confusion as the crowd rushed to leave as police appeared, a bullet hit him. While the newspaper stories on March 20 give the impression that Conn arrested Boyett where Murphy had been assaulted, testimony at the trial revealed that Boyett continued running back to his home, apparently pursued by Conn, who arrested him in the building's hallway. A trial jury accepted Boyett's account and acquitted him of assaulting Murphy. The only source on the trial, the story in the New York Amsterdam News, did not mention what evidence was presented. One issue may have been how Conn claimed he picked Boyett out of the crowd; only Daily News explicitly mentioned that he saw Boyett beating Murphy, although the 28th Precinct Police blotter recorded the charge against him as "kicked complainant." A likely alternative scenario to that offered by Conn was that he simply fired at the crowd rather than singling out Boyett and calling on him to halt, and that his shot hit Boyett, whose injury consequently led Conn to arrest him.
The New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Associated Press reported Boyett had been shot in the right shoulder, the Daily Mirror in the left shoulder, the New York American and Home News in the shoulder, and the New York Times, New York Sun and New York Evening Journal reported the wound was in his back. Hospital records indicate that a doctor from Knickerbocker Hospital treated a wound to Boyett's right shoulder before he was placed in a cell. Conn was based at the 30th Precinct; St Nicholas Avenue was the boundary between that precinct and the 28th Precinct. Rather than taking Boyett to his own precinct, Conn took him to the 28th Precinct station on West 123rd Street, as Boyett appeared in that precinct's police blotter. Both Murphy and Boyett appear in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, Daily News, and New York American. Only Murphy appears in the list of injured published in the Home News and New York Post and only Boyett, in a list of those shot, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Herald Tribune.
Groups of Black men allegedly targeted at least three other white men around this time, all, unlike Murphy, in the area where crowds were clashing with police. William Kitlitz reported being attacked by James Smitten in front of Kress’ store, Maurice Spellman being assaulted at 125th St and 8th Avenue, and Morris Werner at 125th Street and 7th Avenue. All those white 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 St and 7th Avenue would continue to be the location of alleged assaults on white men and women for at least the next three hours, with three men and two women targeted. However, the assault on Murphy represented the western boundary of the disorder, the only event west of 8th Avenue. That section of Harlem was still an area of Black residents.
Murphy was one of four white men and women allegedly rescued from assaults by the intervention of police officers (with some press reports suggesting that this happened more frequently). Only in this case did police also make an arrest. In one of those other cases, an officer also fired shots at the crowd, but in that instance no one was reported as being injured. Police did shoot and kill two Black men, Lloyd Hobbs and James Thompson, in the later case also injuring two white bystanders. -
1
2020-02-24T21:39:32+00:00
Injured [not in assaults] (21)
50
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2022-09-27T20:34:02+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.
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1
2020-02-25T18:03:35+00:00
Lloyd Hobbs killed
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2022-08-01T20:35:39+00:00
Lloyd Hobbs, a sixteen-year-old Black teenager, was shot and killed by Officer John McInerney, who claimed Hobbs had been looting an auto supply store.
Around 7:30 PM, Hobbs and his fifteen-year-old brother Russell had made the short trip from their home on St Nicholas Ave to the Apollo Theater on 125th Street for a show, not emerging until 12.30 AM. When they stepped back onto 125th St, they saw crowds down the block at the intersection with 7th Ave, and went to investigate. They followed as police pushed the crowd north on 7th Ave. As people milled in front of a damaged auto parts store at 2150 7th Avenue near 128th Street, two officers in a radio car pulled up and called on the crowd to ‘break it up.’ Fearing that they had been mistaken for rioters, the boys ran in separate directions, Russell up 7th Ave, and Lloyd diagonally west on to 128th Street. Officer John McInerney then drew his gun and shot Lloyd. McInerney claimed that the officers had seen Hobbs throw a stone through the window of an auto supply store and steal goods, and that he called on him to halt before opening fire.
Several witnesses watching events from the corner of 128th and 7th Ave testified to seeing the crowd moving up the avenue, and Hobbs rush from the crowd as police pulled up, but not any looting, any goods on Hobbs, or any call for him to halt before McInerey shot him. The storeowner's complaint to police described the store window as having been broken, and looting starting, several hours earlier, at 10 PM. After the shooting, the officers loaded Hobbs into their car and drove him to Harlem Hospital.
Russell Hobbs reported what happened to their father, Lawyer Hobbs, who tried several times to identify and make a complaint against the officer who had shot his son. He also appears to have gone to the MCCH: an undated statement by Hobbs in the Commission's files describes Lloyd's shooting and his failed efforts to get police to investigate the case. According to a story in the New York Amsterdam News, after enlisting Fred Moore, the former alderman and editor of the New York Age, Hobbs succeeded in getting the police to agree "they would look into the case."
Hobbs did not die until the evening of March 30, so he does not feature in the initial newspaper reports of those killed during the disorder, but instead in all seven lists of the injured, published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, Daily News, New York American, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
Hobbs was the fourth of those killed in the disorder to die. A few hours earlier, his brother Russell testified before the first hearing of the Mayor’s Commission. While the New York Times, New York Age, and New York Amsterdam News referred to that testimony in reporting Hobbs' death, the New York Herald Tribune, Times Union, Home News, Daily Mirror, New York American and Chicago Defender reported the death in their stories on the hearing without mentioning Russell. He would testify again at a later hearing, together with his father and two eye-witnesses.
The Grand Jury twice heard the case against McInerney. The first hearing took place on April 10, after the Mayor's Commission hearings. McInerney testified before the grand jury, but it is not clear who else they heard from before they voted not to indict the officer. The MCCH nonetheless continued to gather evidence, hearing testimony from further witnesses to the shooting, including McInerney's partner and another officer, at subsequent hearings in late April and mid-May. Angry crowd members interrupted the police officers, leading the Commission to hold a closed hearing to take the testimony of McInerney, his partner, and the detective assigned to investigate the case, according to the World Telegraph. As a result of the MCCH investigation, the District Attorney present the case to the grand jury for a second time on June 10. Sixteen witnesses gave testimony, after which the grand jury declined to hear from McInerney and again voted not to indict him.
Notwithstanding that outcome, the MCCH gave a central place to McInerney killing Hobbs in its report on the events of the disorder, first released on August 10, 1935.
Police Commissioner Valentine's written response to the draft report on April 30 covered six typewritten pages, including sections on six cases of police brutality. He devoted only six and a half lines to the "Case of Lloyd Hobbs," significantly less than any of the other five. The killing was simply "the outcome of Hobbs burglarizing premises 2150 7th Avenue," an interpretation confirmed by the Grand Jury who, after hearing from McInerney, "exonerated him."
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1
2020-02-24T20:37:35+00:00
William Kitlitz assaulted & James Smitten injured
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2022-08-19T20:43:14+00:00
William Kitlitz, a twenty-year-old white mail clerk standing in front of Kress’ store, was allegedly attacked by a twenty-six-year-old Black man named James Smitten. Dr Russell of Harlem Hospital attended Smitten at 8.45 PM at the 28th Precinct, after his arrest, a Medical Attendance record indicated, so the alleged assault took place before that, likely around 8.30 PM. Attacks by individuals represented a very small proportion of both the assaults reported in the riot (7 of 53) and the assaults on whites (3 of 29). There are no details of the alleged violence other than the men's injuries: Kitlitz was described as "beaten on head" in a list in the New York American and having “bruises on face" in the Daily News. There is no record of an ambulance being called to attend him, so those injuries were likely minor. An ambulance was called to attend Smitten, who had "lacerations of scalp." Given that he was treated at the police station, he may have suffered those injuries at the hands of police, as had allegedly happened to Harry Gordon two hours earlier, rather than Kitlitz,
Both men lived only a few blocks from the site of the assault – Smitten at 158 West 123rd Street between 7th and Lenox Avenues, southeast of Kress, and Kitlitz on St Nicholas Avenue between 125th and 124th Streets just a block west of the store. The proximity of their homes to 125th Street likely contributed to them being present early in the disorder. This was the first reported assault on a white man or woman, occurring as clashes between black crowds and white police and attacks by blacks on white-owned stores began, intertwining all those forms of racial violence. Three other white men were allegedly assaulted shortly after Kitlitz. Morris Spellman reported being attacked by group of Black men a few buildings to the west at 125th Street and 8th Avenue at 9.00 PM and Timothy Murphy a few blocks further west by a group of Black men at around the same time. Half an hour later, another group of Black men allegedly attacked Morris Werner at 125th St and 7th Avenue, the eastern end of the block on which Kress’ stood. All those white 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.
With police concentrated on 125th Street, and on protecting Kress' store, at this time it is not surprising that Kitlitz’s alleged assailant was one of only thirteen men arrested for assault, with 85% (46 of 54) of reports not producing an arrest. Patrolman Gross of the 23rd Precinct made the arrest, the Medical Attendance record detailed.
Only two sources directly connected Smitten and Kitlitz. The Medical Attendance record identified Smitten as having been arrested for assaulting Kitlitz. A story in New York Herald Tribune described the assault. In addition, Smitten appeared in lists of those arrested for assault in the Afro-American, Atlanta World, Norfolk Journal and Guide, New York Evening Journal, and Daily News, while Kitlitz appeared in lists of the injured in the New York Evening Journal, Daily News, New York American (on March 20), and Home News.
Smitten’s arrest occurred early enough on March 19 that he was arraigned that evening, in the Night Court, the New York Herald Tribune reported, one of three who appeared in that court mentioned in the story. Magistrate Capshaw remanded Smitten for investigation until Saturday, March 23, the New York Herald Tribune reported, but there is no evidence of the outcome of his legal proceedings. One of the other men the story identified as appearing in the Night Court, an eighteen-year-old white man named Leo Smith, appeared in the Magistrates Court on March 20. The other man, Claudius Jones, was convicted and sentenced by Magistrate Capshaw in the Night Court on March 19.
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1
2020-10-01T19:30:34+00:00
Paul Boyett arrested
38
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2022-07-12T18:26:47+00:00
Around 9:00 PM, Patrolman George Conn arrested Paul Boyett, a twenty-eight-year-old Black garage worker, for assaulting Timothy Murphy, a twenty-nine-year-old white rock driller. Conn testified in the Magistrates Court that he had come upon a crowd attacking Murphy on West 127th Street between 8th Avenue and St Nicholas Avenue. He may have been in a radio car as the New York Amsterdam News reported "police drove up." After firing his pistol into the air to scatter the crowd, he then called on Boyett to halt, and when he did not, shot him. Although the bullet struck Boyett in his back or shoulder he was able to continue running toward his home, only a few buildings away at 310 West 127th Street. Conn pursued him, eventually catching him in the building hallway. Boyett denied assaulting Murphy, testifying that he had been “an innocent onlooker” drawn to the “disturbance," the New York Amsterdam News reported, and “struck no one at that time.” In the confusion as the crowd rushed to leave when police appeared, a bullet hit him.
Conn was based at the 30th Precinct; St Nicholas Avenue was the boundary between that precinct and the 28th Precinct. Rather than taking Boyett to his own precinct, Conn took him to the 28th Precinct station on West 123rd Street, as Boyett appeared in that precinct's Police blotter. Hospital records indicate that a doctor from Knickerbocker Hospital treated Boyett's wound before he was placed in a cell. That hospital record and New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Associated Press reported Boyett had been shot in the right shoulder. Several newspapers reported other locations for the injury: the Daily Mirror in the left shoulder, the New York American and Home News in the shoulder, and the New York Times, New York Sun and New York Evening Journal reported the wound was in his back.
Boyett appear in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, Daily News, and New York American, and in a list of those shot in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Herald Tribune. He also appears in the lists of the arrested published in the Afro-American, Atlanta World, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, the Daily News, New York American, and New York Evening Journal.
Boyett appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with felonious assault. The docket book indicates that he was remanded until March 22. Unusually, Boyett did not appear in any of the newspaper stories about the legal proceedings after the disorder. Over a month later, on April 23, Boyett appeared before the grand jury, according to the District Attorney's case file records; they indicted him for first degree assault. His trial in the Court of General Sessions occurred just over a month later, on May 29, where his lawyer was William T. Andrews, a prominent member of Harlem's elite elected to the New York State Assembly in 1934. Boyett testified he had been “an innocent onlooker” drawn to the “disturbance," the New York Amsterdam News reported, and “struck no one at that time.” In the confusion as the crowd rushed to leave as police appeared, a bullet hit him. There is no mention in that story of what evidence was presented at Boyett's trial. Whatever it was, the jury acquitted Boyett, an outcome that indicated they accepted his account.
The 28th Precinct Police blotter recorded the outcome of that trial but the only source for details is that brief story in the New York Amsterdam News. Headlined "Wins Acquittal in Disturbance Charge," the story only summarized Boyett's testimony and included no details of the alleged assault on Murphy or Conn's account of the shooting. In that way it fitted with the approach Black newspapers took of not reporting alleged violence against whites during the disorder. The story mistakenly identified the complainant as Kennedy Murphy rather than Timothy Murphy, and mispelled Boyett's last name as Boyette. -
1
2020-02-25T03:21:30+00:00
Thomas Wijstem assaulted & killed
31
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2022-08-16T20:01:51+00:00
Around 10.30 PM, Thomas Wijstem, a thirty-four-year-old white carpenter, was struck on the head by a rock and knocked unconscious in front of the W. T. Grant store at 226 West 125th Street.There is no information on why Wijstem was on West 125th Street at that time. He lived across town to the east, at 16 East 127th Street, a racially mixed section likely too far away for him to have heard the noise of the disorder. By 10:30 PM police had established a perimeter around 125th Street and the large crowds that had been concentrated there earlier had broken into smaller groups, many of which scattered north and south up the avenues. However, around 10:30 PM, crowds broke through the police cordon on to this block of 125th Street. Three of the four brief newspaper accounts of the assault reported that a group of Black men attacked Wijstem. At the same time, a rock was thrown through the window of Blumstein's department store, the building immediately to the west of where Wijstem was struck, and ten minutes later, a rock was thrown that broke windows in Kress' store. In both those cases police alleged that the men responsible urged people on the street to attack police, causing large crowds to gather. With police reinforcements having arrived, unlike earlier in the disorder, police made arrests in all three of those incidents, albeit of only one individual at each location. Douglas Cornelius, a twenty-four-year-old Black man, was arrested for allegedly throwing a rock that struck Wijstem. Given the objects being thrown at nearby store windows at this time, it is possible that the rock that hit Wijstem may have been meant for the windows of the W. T. Grant store, which were broken during the disorder
While many of those injured in the disorder suffered head injuries, Wijstem’s injury was one of the most severe, a fractured skull that rendered him unconscious. As a result, he appears in stories of the disorder and lists of the injured in the New York Evening Journal, Daily News, New York American, Home News, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide as a seriously injured "unidentified white man." The Home News, New York Post and New York World-Telegram did eventually name him, on March 22, with the Home News and New York World-Telegram reporting that his brother had identified him and the New York Post that his neighbors had identified him (the Home News misreported his name as "Thor Wigstrom"). Three months later, a brief story in New York Herald Tribune reported Wijstem had died in Bellevue Hospital without regaining consciousness. However, as the attack on Wijstem led to an arrest and prosecution for assault, he is included among both those assaulted and killed (but not among those injured in assaults).
Like the man he targeted, Cornelius lived in East Harlem, at 52 East 118th Street, a mixed black and Puerto Rican section. He appeared in lists of those arrested for assault in nine newspapers, but only five of those reports link him to the unidentified man with the fractured skull. After appearing in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with felonious assault, he was remanded in custody. He appeared in court again on March 25, when Magistrate Ford dismissed the charge against him as he had been indicted by the grand jury. The 28th Precinct Police blotter simply listed the charges as "Dism[issed]," as it did with other men dismissed in the Magistrates Court because they had been indicted already. However, there is no case file for Cornelius in the District Attorney's records, and no other information on the outcome of his prosecution. -
1
2020-02-25T01:54:44+00:00
Detective Henry Roge assaulted
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2022-09-30T01:43:58+00:00
Just before 10 pm police on 125th Street succeeded in dispersing the crowd in front of Kress’ store, moving them across the street and west on to 8th Avenue. Detective Henry Roge of the West 123rd St Precinct and his partner Raymond Gill were among the police standing in front of the store, watching the crowd, backlit by the lighted store. A rock thrown from the crowd then struck Roge in the head, causing deep cuts to his eye and face. Gill claimed he saw a man appear from behind the cars parked on the street, look around, and throw the rock that hit Roge. At that moment there were no other objects being thrown at stores or police, so Gill was certain that it was that rock that hit his partner, and he was able to keep his eyes on the man who threw it. After chasing him through the crowd, he trapped him among the parked cars. Gill frisked the man, twenty-four-year-old James Hughes, and found five stones in his pockets; Hughes insisted the stones were to defend himself, and he had not thrown the rock that struck Roge.
As Hughes was being arrested, Roge's injuries were bleeding profusely. A call for medical assistance brought Dr Fabian of the Joint Disease Hospital to attend to the detective. A New York Evening Journal photographer captured several images of a uniformed officer helping a bleeding Roge from the scene (the only images of an injured police officer published). According to the record of medical attendances, Roge remained on duty after being attended by the doctor, but other sources reported that his injury required two stitches, which involved Roge being taken to Harlem Hospital. The Probation report recorded that Roge was on sick leave for ten days after his injury, making it more likely his injury required him to leave the scene for treatment.
Hughes was tried and convicted of misdemeanor assault. The prosecutor’s notes on the trial suggest that Gill’s testimony stressed that he was certain of his identification of Hughes as the man who threw the rock, against which Hughes offered his denial and a series of character witnesses. In response, the prosecutor argued that Hughes “saw plenty of trouble – went right into it.” At the sentencing hearing, the judge expressed belief that Hughes had thrown the rock at the store window, not Roge, so sentenced him to term of only three months in the workhouse.
As with other assaults, the press coverage of this case was fragmented. Roge appeared on the lists of those injured published by white newspapers the New York American (on both March 20 & 21), New York Evening Journal, Home News, Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Post, and in stories in the Daily Mirror. Hughes appeared in lists of those arrested published in the Black newspapers the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the white New York Evening Journal. The two were linked in only three stories, in the New York Times, Home News and Daily Worker. Even when Hughes was tried, producing additional coverage, only two of the five stories mentioned Roge. But that legal process did generate case files in both the DA’s office and the Probation Department which provided details that are available for only a handful of the events of the disorder.
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1
2020-08-20T20:50:26+00:00
Clara Crowder injured
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2022-07-26T19:15:05+00:00
Around 5.00 PM, during the struggles inside Kress' store as police tried to clear out the customers who had remained after Patrolman Raymond Donahue took Lino Rivera into the basement, Clara Crowder, a twenty-year-old white woman employed as a clerk in the store fainted. According to the Medical Attendance record of the ambulance that arrived at the store at 5.05 PM, she had been aiding another store employee at the time.
Jackson Smith, Kress' manager, had decided sometime after 4.30 PM that efforts to convince those in the store that Rivera had been released unharmed were failing, and had called for additional police to help him close the store. When those officers began to move customers from the rear of the store, "they began to get rough," Louise Thompson wrote in the account of what she witnessed published in New Masses. Displays of pots and pans and glasses were knocked over and women screamed. Crowder and the unnamed colleague she tried to help were likely behind counters in the store, where the sales staff worked, perhaps counters whose displays were knocked to the ground. The noise and shouting led many customers to rush to leave the store, Thompson and Jackson Smith testified in the MCCH public hearings, so could also have led Crowder to faint. Neither Smith nor Thompson mentioned Crowder when describing what they saw happen in Kress' at that time.
Louise Thompson, on West 125th Street after being cleared from the store by police, did mention seeing the ambulance arrive, but testified in a public hearing of the MCCH that "we never knew whom he was going to treat." L. F. Coles, who like Thompson had been in the store, likewise told a MCCH hearing that none of those he asked knew why the ambulance was there, with a police officer telling them "it wasn't any of our business." In fact, only three narratives of the events in Kress store mention Crowder. The New York Herald Tribune had her faint as Hurley and Urban grabbed Rivera: "[Rivera] bit two Kress employees on the hand when they hauled him from the counter and this, in turn, caused a woman clerk to faint." The story returned later to Crowder, in describing customers being cleared from the story, reporting “As police beat the crowd back it was discovered that Miss Clara Browder [sic], twenty, a clerk, of 473 West 158th Street, had fainted.” The story went on to say she was attended by the ambulance attending the two store employees bitten by Rivera. Had Crowder fainted when Rivera was grabbed, she could have been attended by that ambulance, but police did not clear the store until two hours after it had returned to Harlem Hospital. The Medical Attendances records indicate it was a second ambulance, carrying a different intern physician, that attended Crowder. That timing makes the clearing of the store, not Rivera being grabbed, the context in which the woman fainted. The Daily News did report that a second ambulance came to Kress, but offered a vaguer account of the circumstances, noting only that Crowder “fainted after the boy had been released.” The Daily Mirror mentioned Crowder without making clear whether she was in the store or on the street outside, but did sensationalize the circumstances, reporting she “fainted in that crush and was trampled upon until rescued, by a football wedge of police.”
While not including Crowder in their narratives, the New York American, New York Evening Journal and New York Post did list her among the injured. As in the narratives and the hospital record, her injury was recording as fainting, other than by the New York Evening Journal, which listed her as “treated for shock,” which was also her injury in the Daily News list. Crowder, one of three women among those injured (14%, 3 of 21) is the only individual reported as having fainted. After being attended by the physician, Crowder left for home, 473 West 158th Street. Beyond Harlem to the north, that address was emblematic of the distance between Kress’ largely white staff and its Black customers.
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2020-09-29T20:47:10+00:00
James Smitten arrested
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2022-08-19T20:42:39+00:00
Patrolman Gross of the 23rd Precinct arrested James Smitten, a twenty-five-year-old Black man, for allegedly beating William Kitlitz, a white mail clerk, in front of Kress' store on 125th Street. Dr Russell of Harlem Hospital attended Smitten at 8.45 PM at the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street, after his arrest, a Medical Attendance record indicated, so the alleged assault took place before that, likely around 8.30 PM. Smitten’s arrest occurred early enough on March 19 that he was arraigned that evening, in the Night Court, the New York Herald Tribune reported, one of three who appeared in that court mentioned in the story. The story did not mention when the men were arrested. There are no details of the alleged violence other than the men's injuries: Kitlitz was described as "beaten on head" in a list in the New York American and having “bruises on face" in the Daily News. There is no record of an ambulance being called to attend him, so those injuries were likely minor. An ambulance was called to attend Smitten, who had "lacerations of scalp." Given that he was treated at the police station, he may have suffered those injuries at the hands of police, as had allegedly happened to Harry Gordon two hours earlier, rather than Kitlitz. The Medical Attendance record described Smitten's injuries as "lacerations of scalp which he received in some unknown manner." Other than that record there was no other evidence of his injury; he did not appear in any newspaper's list of the injured.
Only two sources connect Smitten and Kitlitz. The hospital record identified Smitten as having been arrested for assaulting Kitlitz. Only the story in the New York Herald Tribune described the assault. In addition, Smitten appeared in lists of those arrested for assault in the Afro-American, Atlanta World, Norfolk Journal and Guide, New York Evening Journal, and Daily News. His name was misspelled as Smith in the New York Herald Tribune and as Smithner in the Daily News. (Another man named James Smith was arrested during the disorder, for robbery. Smith lived at a different address than Smitten, and was younger, but was confused with Smitten and given Smitten’s address in reports in the New York American and Daily News).
Smitten’s arrest occurred early enough on March 19 that he was charged with assault and arraigned that evening, in the Night Court. The New York Herald Tribune reported Magistrate Capshaw remanded him for investigation until Saturday, March 23, but he was not in the Magistrates Court docket book on that day, and there is no record of the outcome of his prosecution. One of the two other men mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune as arraigned with Smitten, an eighteen-year-old white man named Leo Smith, did appear in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20. Magistrate Capshaw convicted and sentenced the other man, Claudius Jones, in the Night Court on March 19.
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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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2020-04-09T18:04:11+00:00
De Soto Windgate shot
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2022-04-18T17:41:20+00:00
At 1. 15 AM “some unknown person” shot a twenty-four-year-old black man named De Soto Windgate as he walked along West 144th Street between Lenox and 7th Avenues. Only five other events in the disorder occurred north of 135th Street, none within six blocks of this shooting. Three of those events were also assaults, two on white men on 8th Avenue north of 145th Street before midnight, and shots fired at police at 138th Street and Lenox Avenue at 5 AM. An equally small number of events occurred off the avenues, on cross streets, as this shooting did. Aside from assaults in front and behind Kress’ store, there are only two assaults, south of 125th Street.
There is no information on the circumstances of the shooting. Windgate lived at the opposite end of Harlem at 7 East 114th Street, a section mostly occupied by Puerto Ricans and whites. He may have come north to frequent one of the theaters on West 145th Street; the Roosevelt was on the corner of 7th Avenue. Or he may have been visiting friends. There is no evidence of any disorder nearby that might have attracted his attention or brought police into the area. So while the other black men shot and wounded in the disorder seem likely to have been hit by police shooting in response to looting that does not seem to have been the case with Windgate. Given the location and limited evidence, there is some question about whether this shooting is part of the disorder.
The shot hit Windgate in the abdomen (only the New York Post located the wound elsewhere, in his right shoulder), and was serious enough for him to be admitted to Harlem Hospital – and be included in the list of those “near death” in the New York American, Afro-American, Atlanta World, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the New York Evening Journal’s list of the “dying.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and New York Herald Tribune simply described his condition as “serious.” His injury is different from others shot in the disorder; only one is hit in the abdomen, with the remainder suffering injuries to the legs or hands.
Being admitted to Harlem Hospital might explain Windgate’s consistent appearance in newspaper lists. However, he does not appear in the hospital records provided to the MCCH.
Windgate does appear in another record gathered by the MCCH, information extracted from the Aided Cases book of the 32nd Precinct, based on West 135th Street. Procedure required police to record all incidents reported to them in that book. Only three other cases appear in the 32nd Precinct book for the period of the disorder, the assault on a white man, Julius Narditch, by a group pf black men at 8th Avenue and 147th Street, the assault on Thomas Suarez on 134th Street and the injury of Herbert Holderman on 132nd Street.
The police record does not identify Windgate’s race, but newspapers do. The New York American, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Home News, New York Daily News, New York Post, New York Times and New York Sun all include his race; the New York Herald Tribune and New York Evening Journal do not. Four of the six others shot and wounded in the disorder were Black men, one of unknown race, and one white police officer.
No one was arrested for shooting Windgate, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed).
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2020-03-11T21:51:31+00:00
Patrolman Michael Kelly assaulted
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2022-06-08T17:02:00+00:00
Patrolman Michael Kelly, a thirty-year-old white officer, was hit on the leg "by a stone thrown by an unknown person" at the rear of Kress’ store on 124th Street, according to the record of the ambulance that attended him. Dr Russell of Harlem Hospital treated Kelly at 7.15 PM, so the assault likely took place around 7.00 PM. That was the time newspaper stories reported that the crowd pushed from the front of Kress' store on 125th Street moved to the store's rear in response to the appearance of a hearse they assumed had come for the body of the boy rumored to have been killed in the store and began breaking windows. Kelly was one of the officers listed in a story in the New York Times 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. A similar account appeared in the New York Age, which described police arriving at the rear of the store as being "greeted with a fusillade of stone hurled by the crowd," as a result of which Kelly was one of two patrolmen "forced to undergo treatment for injuries." He was assigned to a radio car, the Medical Attendance record detailed, which may have allowed him to get to the rear of the store faster than other officers. The street had a narrower roadway and pavements than 125th Street, making officers easier to target with objects thrown from roofs as well as the street level. One other officer, Detective Charles Foley, was seriously injured enough to be attended by an ambulance after being hit by a stone thrown at him at the rear of the store around the same time as Kelly.
The Medical Attendance report described Kelly's injury as "contusion of muscle and right leg," serious enough that he was taken to Harlem Hospital for an x-ray and "surgical observation." The lists of the injured in the New York American on both March 20 and 21 and in the New York Herald Tribune, as well as the story in the New York Times echoed that information, while the lists in the Home News and New York Evening Journal reported the injury as a sprain without noting that Kelly was taken to the hospital. A story in the Daily Mirror, and lists in the Daily News and New York Post replaced the injury to the leg with a more dramatic head injury. The New York Age did not specify the nature of Kelly's injury.
No one was arrested for assaulting Kelly, as was the case in seven of the nine assaults on police.
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2020-03-11T21:14:02+00:00
Detective Charles Foley assaulted
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2022-06-08T17:05:48+00:00
Detective Charles Foley, a thirty-two-year-old white officer from the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street, was "struck by a stone thrown by some unknown person while at scene of riot in rear of Kress’ Store" on 124th Street, according to the Medical Attendance record of the ambulance that attended him. Dr Sayet of Harlem Hospital treated Foley in front of Blumstein's department store, on 125th Street, at 7.30 PM, so the assault likely took place around 7.15 PM. Around the same time a second officer, Patrolman Michael Kelly, was hit by an object at the rear of the store, where police had followed a crowd drawn to 124th Street around 7.00 PM by the appearance of a hearse they assumed had come for the body of the boy rumored to have been killed. Foley was one of the officers listed in a story in the New York Times 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. The street had a narrower roadway and pavements than 125th Street, making officers easier to target with objects thrown from roofs as well as the street level.
The Medical Attendance record described Foley's injury as a "possible fracture of left shoulder." Lists in the Home News, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and a story in the New York Times identified him as having a shoulder injury. Three other papers, the New York American on March 20 and 21, Daily Mirror, and New York Post, instead listed a head injury, the most common injury resulting from being hit by objects. According to the New York Times, Foley "refused medical attention." Given that an ambulance attended him that claim is likely a misstatement of the fact that he was not taken back to Harlem Hospital, as Kelly was, but treated at the scene.
No one was arrested for assaulting Foley, as was the case in seven of the nine assaults on police.
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2020-03-11T21:25:32+00:00
Everett Breuer and Joseph Martin assaulted
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2022-03-16T00:23:33+00:00
Everett Breuer, a twenty-eight-year-old white photographer working for the New York Daily News, was taking images of the crowd at 7th Avenue and 125th Street when a rock hit him in the head. It was likely one of several objects thrown in Breuer’s direction as the office boy carrying his plates, Joseph Martin, was also hit on the face. Breuer’s own publication reported he was “beaten” not hit by a rock, as did the New York American, but the Daily Mirror, Home News, New York Herald Tribune and New York Times all reported him being hit by an object, while the New York Evening Journal and New York Post reported only the resulting cuts. According to all but the New York Evening Journal, Breuer’s cuts were bad enough to require a trip to the hospital. Press accounts disagree on where he received treatment, with the New York American, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York Times and Daily Mirror reporting Harlem Hospital, the Home News Sydenham Hospital on Manhattan Ave and West 124th Street, and the Daily News the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled on 42nd St and Lexington Ave.
James Martin attracted less attention than Breuer. Other than a mention in the story and an appearance in the list of the injured in the New York Daily News, Martin appears only in the list of injured published by the New York Evening Journal. Both sources describe him as having cuts on his face, with the later recording that an ambulance treated Martin.
The area around 7th Avenue and 125th Street saw a cluster of assaults during the disorder, with six other assaults reported there, including the beating of another reporter, Harry Johnson of the New York American. It was also at this location that Andrew Lyons was shot and killed. All those events occurred despite police emergency squads being deployed at the intersection from 9pm.
A photograph Breuer took immediately before the rock struck him became the most widely reproduced photograph of the disorder.
When it initially appeared in the Daily News, the caption noted “After making this picture, The News photographer was struck down and went to hospital. He suffered lacerations to the scalp.” In later editions that information is omitted, and it does not appear in the caption of the photograph when it is reprinted by other publications. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle list of the injured did report Breuer was "hit by a rock while taking pictures of a riotous group." The scene the photographer captured shows two black men apparently trying to move away from a uniformed police officer; one man has fallen, while the officer is trying to hold the other. Neither they nor the three men and two women in the background look poised to throw anything at the photographer.
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2020-04-09T17:59:07+00:00
Clarence London shot
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2022-04-18T17:23:02+00:00
Sometime shortly before 1 AM, Clarence London, a thirty-four-year-old Black man was shot in the leg while walking on the street near 7th Avenue. London lived in north Harlem, at 676 St Nicholas Avenue, so was far from home when shot, likely drawn to the disorder around 125th Street at some point in the evening. Dr Payne attended London at Harlem Hospital at 1.00 AM.
The location of the shooting is recorded in hospital admission records as West 122nd Street and 7th Avenue, while reports in the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune put it three blocks north, at 125th Street and 7th Avenue. Both locations saw multiple acts of violence during the disorder, including an assault on a white man, John Eigler, at 122nd Street around the time London was shot also attended by an ambulance from Harlem Hospital. The assault is mapped at 125th Street as that is where the weight of the evidence puts it.
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.
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 New York 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. 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.
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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2020-08-20T20:55:23+00:00
Alice Mitchell injured
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2022-04-18T19:51:06+00:00
Alice Mitchell was at the intersection of Lenox Ave 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, when a number of incidents of looting took place. 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 also 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 class 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.
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2020-08-20T20:53:49+00:00
Herbert Holderman injured
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2022-04-18T19:54:50+00:00
Around 1.20AM, Herbert Holderman was “cut by flying glass when some unknown persons broke windows of stores” on Lenox Avenue at 132nd Street. Alice Mitchell and Hugh Young were also injured by flying glass three blocks south around 1.00 AM, as part of an outbreak of looting on the blocks north of Lenox Ave north of 125th Street around 1.30AM.
Holderman, like Mitchell and Young, was treated by Dr. Payne at Harlem Hospital, likely in the emergency room. He does not appear in the hospital records, but in the 32nd Police Precinct book of aided cases. Three newspaper lists of the injured also included Holderman, but the only information that they provided on his identity was his home address, 73 East 128th Street, an area of mixed black and white residences on the eastern boundary of Harlem. The police record did not specify where Holderman was cut. The lists disagree on his injury; the New York Post recorded it as laceration of his hands, the Daily News and New York Evening Journal of his face. He was one of four of those injured with wounds to the hands (20%). After being attended by a physician, Holderman went home, indicating the wound was not serious enough to require him to be admitted to hospital.
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2020-02-25T03:33:10+00:00
James Wrigley assaulted
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At some point during the disorder, forty-nine-year-old James Wrigley, a white security guard from Teaneck, New Jersey, suffered a serious head injury.
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2022-04-18T20:55:14+00:00
At 12.45am, forty-nine-year-old James Wrigley, a white security guard from Teaneck, New Jersey, suffered a serious head injury. Several newspaper reports identified Wrigley as an employee of the Holmes Protective Agency, which apparently provided private police officers (security guards) for one or more of the stores on 125th Street.
Press reports offered conflicting accounts of how he came to be injured that put the case in different categories of assault. As only the New York Times provided a specific time for the assault on Wrigley, and a detailed account of his injuries, Wrigley has been categorized as having been hit by rocks. The newspaper’s story included Wrigley among the victims of “stone-throwers,” “struck by a stone at 126th Street and Seventh Avenue, receiving cuts about both eyes and a serious head injury, possibly a concussion of the brain.” The Home News likewise cast him as “another victim of the rock hurlers,” but then proceeded to report Wrigley was “set upon by several colored men [and] beaten into unconsciousness before he was able to draw his gun.” The New York Evening Journal also reported Wrigley had been “seized and beaten,” an attack that apparently did not draw attention as the story went on recount that “Radio patrol cars found him lying on the pavement, unconscious, suffering from concussion of the brain.” The Daily News, which published no details of the assault, is the only other publication to report Wrigley was found unconscious in an alley. The AP reporter’s brief summary opted for this second narrative, reporting that Wrigley had been attacked by a gang. The New York American, Daily News, New York Post, New York Evening Journal, and Home News only included Wrigley in their lists of the injured. He also appeared in lists of the injured in the Afro-American, Atlanta World, and Norfolk Journal and Guide. Wrigley's injury was apparently serious enough that he was one of the eight men that the New York Herald Tribune reported as still in hospital on March 21.
The area where Wrigley was struck down saw a cluster of assaults on whites throughout the disorder, including other civilians and police hit by rocks, as well as crowds breaking windows and looting. Those hit by objects commonly suffered head injuries, as Wrigley did, although no others are reported as having been knocked unconscious.
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2020-04-09T17:35:02+00:00
Victor Fain shot
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2022-04-18T22:39:13+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 & 7th Avenue, according to a hospital admission record. Dr Payne attended Mitchell at Harlem Hospital, on Lenox Avenue and 136th Street, at 2.30 AM, so he was likely shot sometime around 2.00 AM. The shooting was the last reported assault on 7th Avenue, and one of last of the disorder. After midnight violence had moved up 7th Avenue from 125th Street, including the shooting of Clarence London at 125th Street, but switched to Lenox Ave after 1 AM.
As this shooting was not part of a cluster, and there is no information on the circumstances, it is possible Fain was shot by police patrolling the streets in radio cars and emergency trucks seeking to control looting – as was Lloyd Hobbs at the same corner an hour and a half earlier, and James Thompson on 8th Avenue three hours later. Fain was shot some distance from his home: he lived 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 (although some time later in 1935 he relocated to the heart of the neighborhood, lodging at 208 West 141st Street, where he still resided at the time 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 New York American, Home News, Daily News, New York Post and New York Evening Journal, and a story in the New York Times, agree on his injury, an unusual consistency that likely reflects that he was admitted to the hospital after being attended.
The hospital record did not identify Fain’s race, but newspapers did. The lists of the injured in the New York American, Home News and the story in the New York Times include his race; the lists of injured in the Daily News, New York Post and New York Evening Journal do not. Four of the six other men shot and wounded in the disorder were black, one of 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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2020-08-20T20:56:13+00:00
Nathaniel Powell injured
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2022-04-18T21:44:31+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, in the hospital record, so he was likely injured sometime around 12.15 AM, given how far the location was from the hospital. At some point during the disorder this area saw windows broken and some looting, in the blocks of Lenox Avenue around 116th Street, but no other injuries were reported. The closest violence occurred to the west, around 7th Avenue and 116th Street. Like many of those injured, Powell was close to home when hurt, only two blocks south of the address where he resided, 69 West 118th Street, suggesting he may have been a bystander attracted by the noise and crowds.
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 American sensationally describing his nose as “severed by [a] razor.” That account cast Powell as a victim of assault, with a weapon that whites associated with Blacks. While the hospital record provided no details of the circumstances of the injury, given that none of the other newspapers suggest an assault, the American listing seems an example of the white 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 stem 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 been treated in that way (11 of 42, 26%).
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2020-04-09T17:57:19+00:00
Wilmont Hendricks shot
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2022-04-19T16:10:54+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, eight blocks north on Lenox Avenue, 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 survive 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 disorder on the blocks of Lenox Avenue north of 125th Street around this time, including other assaults and looting. The outbreak of looting led police to begin shooting more indiscriminately than earlier in the disorder, and it is likely that Hendricks was shot by police.
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 reporting 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 on 146th Street.
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).
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2020-03-11T21:46:38+00:00
Patrolman Charles Robins assaulted
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2022-04-20T21:10:22+00:00
Patrolman Charles Robbins, a member of the 6th Emergency Squad (a riot squad), was "struck over head with an iron bar by some unknown person,” according to the record of the ambulance that attended him. Dr Russell of Harlem Hospital treated Robbins at 124th Street and 7th Avenue, at 10.15 PM, indicating that that assault took place sometime earlier, around 10.00 PM. The location of the assault was the "scene of the riot," in the Medical Attendance record, likely where Robbins was treated or a block north on West 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. By 10.00 PM time police had established a perimeter around the block of 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues on which Kress' store was located, producing crowds on those corners and causing some groups of people to move up and down 7th Avenue. Emergency trucks were part of that perimeter, and while newspaper stories differed over precisely where they were stationed, both the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune located at least one truck on 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. (The New York Times put the others on 124th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, 126th Street between Lenox and Seventh Avenues, and at 130th Street and Lenox Avenue, while the New York Herald Tribune had them at Lenox Avenue and 125th Street, and 7th Avenue and 127th Street).
Robbins was included in lists of the injured published in the press. Four of those lists provided details of the circumstances in which he was injured. The Home News and the New York American on March 20 described the injury as caused by an iron bar, following the Medical Attendance record. The New York Herald Tribune and Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which listed the injured policemen separately, included the detail that Robbins had been hit by a brick. An iron bar was not a typical weapon during the disorder; bricks, however, were frequently used as weapons. The New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York American (on March 21) and Daily News all listed Robbins among the injured without details of the circumstances. His injury was listed as a “possible fractured skull,” but the Medical Attendance record described Robbins' injury as only a "laceration of scalp." Nonetheless, it notes that Robbins was "removed" to Harlem Hospital for further treatment, which may account for newspapers identifying a more serious injury.
No one was arrested for assaulting Robins, as was the case in seven of the nine assaults on police. -
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2020-03-09T19:39:02+00:00
B. Z. Kondoul assaulted
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2022-07-03T22:03:02+00:00
B. Z. Kondoul, a thirty-five year-old white man living at 55 West 110th Street, was allegedly assaulted by a crowd of "40-50" Black men and women on 7th Avenue near 122nd Street.
According to a report in the New York Evening Journal, Kondoul fled from the crowd until he saw a police officer guarding a grocery store, part of the James Butler chain, at West 123rd St and Lenox Avenue. The officer, Patrolman William Clements, drew his revolver and fired at the crowd to hold them back. After he fired two shots, the crowd backed away from the two white men, and turned to throwing objects at them: stones, fruit, garbage can lids. When the crowd closed in again, Clements "emptied his gun." The shots kept the crowd at bay long enough for a police radio car to arrive and "rescue" Clements and Kondoul. The New York Evening Journal reports the event in the sensational language it favored for alleged attacks by Black man on white men and women: Clement's "heroism" saved Kondoul from "probable death" at the hands of a "gang" crying "Kill him."
A brief report in the New York American is more to the point, simply stating Kondoul was "rescued by a patrolman who fired several shots at his assailants without hitting anyone." Police officers commonly fired shots in the air to attempt to disperse crowds. In this case, however, the reports suggest that Clements fired at the crowd. It is not clear when the event took place, but it does offer evidence that police shooting at residents might have been responsible for the unattributed injuries from gunfire during the disorder.
Neither story mentions any injury suffered by Kondoul, but he does appear in lists of the injured in the New York Evening Journal and New York Daily News, described as having bruises to the face for which he was treated at Harlem Hospital, and the Home News, "Among the white persons injured by rocks, flying glass or in personal encounters," with "lacerations and bruises." (He does not appear in the New York American list of the injured).
Note: The spelling of Kondoul's name is different in all the reports: Kondoul and Kendul in the Journal and Daily News, Kendel in the Home News, and Aambel in the American. -
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2020-03-11T21:19:54+00:00
Edward Genest assaulted
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2020-11-13T19:19:35+00:00
Edward Genest, a thirty-two-year-old white sailor from the S.S. Virginia, was stabbed in the left arm on 7th Avenue at 123rd Street. Lists of the injured in two newspapers, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the New York Herald Tribune, added the detail that he had been stabbed by Blacks; five newspapers noted only that he had been stabbed (New York American (March 20 & 21), New York Daily News, New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and Home News).
Genest’s assault took place near a cluster of assaults on whites and other events around 7th Avenue and 125th Street. Genest was likely a visitor to Harlem seeking entertainment around 125th Street, caught up in the disorder. He could have arrived by subway, unaware of what was happening until he arrived, at an unknown time.
The use of a knife in this assault was unusual; only one other of the 54 assaults in the disorder involved a stabbing, the attack on Morris Werner 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 felony assault cases.
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2020-03-11T21:36:29+00:00
Julius Narditch assaulted
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2020-09-25T19:30:40+00:00
At 11.30pm, as he walked on 8th Avenue at 147th Street, Julius Narditch was “jumped” by three black men. The struggle with the men left him with head injuries and lacerations to his face and hands. A doctor from Knickerbocker Hospital attended Narditch, who was then taken to Harlem Hospital (although he does not appear in the hospital records obtained by the MCCH).
The alleged assault on Narditch is one of only two events north of 145th Street, the other an assault on Max Newman across the street at 2774 8th Avenue an hour earlier. Given that there are only four other events north of 135th Street (including a shooting), there is some question about whether the assaults on Narditch and Newman are actually part of the disorder, in the sense that their assailants were part of crowds moving up from 125th Street or brought out on to the street by the disorder.
Narditch appears in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York Daily News, New York American and New York Herald Tribune. Only the Herald Tribune mentions that he was assaulted by a group of men. The New York American attributes the cuts on his face to stabbing, but there is no mention of weapons in the police report. Only two of the fifty-three assaults in the disorder involved knives, a striking contrast with the extensive use of knives in violence at other times in 1935. The New York American report seems likely to reflect assumptions from those larger patterns.
Narditch also appeared in a record gathered by the MCCH, information extracted from the Aided Cases book of the 32nd Precinct, based on West 135th Street. Procedures required police to record all incidents reported to them in that book. The entry makes no mention of stabbing. Only three other cases appear in the 32nd Precinct book for the period of the disorder, the shooting of De Soto Windgate on West 144th Street between 7th and Lenox Avenues, the assault on Thomas Suarez on 134th Street and the injury of Herbert Holderman on 132nd Street.
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2020-04-09T18:55:16+00:00
John Hademan assaulted
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2020-09-29T23:04:04+00:00
John Hademan, a twenty-six-year-old Black man suffered a fractured skull at 126th Street and 7th Avenue. The circumstances in which he was assaulted are uncertain. The New York Herald Tribune and New York Times, the two reports that gave a location for the assault on Hademan, suggest other violence occurred at the same time: the New York Times described Hademan as being assaulted “in a melee,” while the New York Herald Tribune described the context as “rioting.” Neither gave a time for the assault on Hademan, but this intersection saw clashes between crowds and police around 10PM that seem likely to have been when he was assaulted. In that case, it seems likely that police assaulted Hademan, but he could have been assaulted by an individual, a group or hit by an object.
After being assaulted, an ambulance attended Hademan, and took him to Harlem Hospital, according to the report in the New York Times and the lists of the injured in the New York Evening Journal, New York Herald Tribune, and New York American However, he does not appear in the hospital records. Those lists, and that in the New York Post, noted that no address was given for Hademan. The New York Daily News identified him as a resident of Castle Point in the Bronx (but did not identify his race, was alone in recording his injury not as a fractured skull but as lacerations of his face and head, and spelling his name differently). As with all the Black men assaulted during the disorder, no one was arrested or charged for assaulting Hademan.
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2020-03-11T21:50:13+00:00
Patrolman Harry Whittington assaulted
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2022-04-18T21:48:25+00:00
Just after midnight, Patrolman Harry Whittington, a thirty-five-year-old white member of Emergency Squad 9 (a riot squad) was hit by a rock on 8th Avenue. The Daily Mirror provided the most details of the assault, reporting that the attack came as he rode on an emergency truck at 123rd Street. Only Whittington and one other officer are reported as being assaulted after crowds moved away from 125th Street around 10PM; the other seven assaults in the initial disorder around Kress’ store.
After 10 PM, when the crowd moved away from 125th Street, police used radio cars and emergency trucks to respond to violence and to try to control crowds. Cars and buses driven by whites were also targets of rocks thrown by black crowds throughout the disorder, but those attacks took place on 7th Avenue, the major route to the Bronx and northern neighborhoods, not the less travelled 8th Avenue. The one other police vehicle reported as being hit by rocks, a car driven by Detective Frank Lenahan, was also attacked on “a riotous section of Eighth Avenue,” at an unspecified time. The windows of the car were smashed but Lenahan was not injured. Whittington did not have windows to shield him from missiles. Most of the members of an emergency squad traveled on the outside of the vehicle.
As well as the detail that Whittington was assaulted while riding on an emergency truck, the Daily Mirror described the attack as a “sniping.”
Whittington appeared in lists of the injured published by the New York American (March 20 & 21), Home News, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, New York Evening Journal and New York Post, as well as the story published in the Daily Mirror. Although the New York American and the New York Herald Tribune reported he was treated at Harlem Hospital, he does not appear in either the list of admissions or ambulance call-outs. The Home News and New York Evening Journal described his injuries simply as lacerations; the other lists specified a head injury.
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2020-03-11T21:55:53+00:00
William Burkhard assaulted
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2022-04-19T20:45:58+00:00
Around 11.30 PM, William Burkhard, a forty-three-year-old white man, was “assaulted by some unknown colored persons," according to the record of ambulance attendances. An ambulance from Bellevue Hospital attended Burkhard in West 118th Street between Lenox and 7th Avenues at 11.45 PM, and Dr. Solomon proceeded to treat "contusion and laceration" of his right cheek. Burkhard then left for his home, 533 East 12th Street, at the opposite end of Manhattan.
If the assault took place where the ambulance attended Burkhard, he was one of only two individuals assaulted off the avenues. However, he likely made his way to that location after being attacked on 7th Avenue. The assault on Burkhard was the first in a cluster of attacks on or near 7th Avenue north of 116th Street and later up around 125th Street in the hours before 1 AM, suggesting the presence of groups of people in this area in the hours immediately after the disorder spread from 125th Street.
Burkhard appears in the record of hospital attendances, and in lists of the injured in four newspapers. The New York Herald Tribune unusually provided the same details as the hospital records, that Burkhard had been “assaulted by some unknown colored persons.” The Daily News, New York Evening Journal and New York Post listed only his injuries to his cheek. Although the ambulance records did not include information on an individual's race, the description of his alleged attackers as "colored persons," together with his address, indicate that he was a white man.
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2020-04-09T18:44:38+00:00
Arthur Block assaulted
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2022-06-09T15:59:43+00:00
Arthur Block, a twenty-two-year-old Black resident of 14 West 127th Street, was allegedly bitten on the hands. Block’s name appears only in lists of the injured published by the New York Evening Journal, Daily News and New York Post. His injuries are different in each list, with the New York Evening Journal, reporting Block was bitten on his fingers, the Daily News on his left hand, and the New York Post on his right hand. No details of when or where the incident took place are included, but being bitten was not an injury that could have been suffered incidentally, so the event was an assault.
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2020-08-20T20:52:32+00:00
Paul Freeman injured
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2020-09-29T22:50:15+00:00
Paul Freeman appears in lists of those injured published by the New York Daily News and the New York Evening Journal. Both newspapers identified him as fifty-year-old man living at 310 West 170th Street, well to the north of Harlem in the Washington Heights neighborhood.
The Daily News described his injury as a “laceration of forehead,” the Evening Journal less elaborately as "cuts on head." Freeman was one of six of those injured with wounds to the head (30%).
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2020-04-09T18:33:56+00:00
William Brook assaulted
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2020-09-23T21:19:35+00:00
William Brook a twenty-five-year-old resident of 157 West 130th Street, appeared only in lists of the injured published by five papers. The New York Herald Tribune, New York American and New York Post included that he was Black; the New York Evening Journal and New York Daily News did not. The reports all described Brook as having cuts to his head, with the Herald Tribune adding the detail that he had been “hit by rock.” None of the lists specified the location at which Brook was assaulted. The Herald Tribune and American listed him as having been treated at Harlem Hospital, but his name does not appear on the lists of those attended and treated.
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2020-08-20T20:53:02+00:00
William Gross injured
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2020-09-29T22:55:15+00:00
William Gross appears in a list of those injured published by the New York Evening Journal and New York Daily News. Both newspapers identified Grossl as twenty-six years of age and living at 152 West 103rd Street, well to the south of Harlem.
The Daily News described Gross's injury as a “laceration of head,” the Evening Journal more simply as cuts to the head. Gross was one of six of those injured with wounds to the head (30%).