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Injured [not in assaults] (20)
Five injuries (two to the legs, two to the hands, and one to the face) 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 NYAm and NYEJ report that eighteen-year-old Nathaniel Powell had his nose cut off, with the NYAm specifying that a razor had been used. However, as the NYP, NYDN, 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 in the crush of the crowd of women customers inside the store when they initially reacted to reports Rivera had been beaten or killed. 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. Eleven of the twenty cases are mentioned in only one source: five cases appear only in hospital records; and six cases appear only in one newspaper (four in a single list in the New York Post, two in a single list in the New York Daily News). Given the inconsistency of the details the newspapers published about individuals, this limited evidence likely contains errors.
The evidence of these events is very fragmentary. Eleven of the twenty cases are mentioned in only one source: five cases appear only in hospital records; and six cases appear only in one newspaper (four in a single list in the New York Post, two in a single list in the New York Daily News). Given the inconsistency of the details the newspapers published about individuals, this limited evidence likely contains errors.