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Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935

Injured in assaults (53)

Assaults other than shootings resulted primarily in head injuries of various kinds.

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Assaults on whites (29) 41 plain 2020-08-07T18:53:46+00:00
At least twenty-nine whites were assaulted during the disorder, in addition to nine white police officers. This violence has been overlooked in most scholarship on the disorder, following the lead of the report of the MCCH, which mentions assaults only obliquely, in emphasizing attacks on property: “In fact, the distinguishing feature of this outbreak was that it was an attack upon property and not upon persons. In the beginning, to be sure, the resentment was expressed against whites—but whites who owned stores and who, while exploiting Negroes, denied them an opportunity to work” (11).

Newspapers, tell a different story, particularly the New York Evening Journal, a Hearst afternoon paper that sought out and gave prominence to whites assaulted by blacks, reporting four assaults that do not appear in any other source. [Several papers reported clashes between bands of blacks and whites, in line with patterns from earlier racial disorders, but none offered details and there are no reports of blacks injured in those circumstances]. Violence against whites took place throughout the disorder (perhaps fading by 2 AM, around three hours before the final events of the disorder) and across a wide area centered on 125th Street. Assaults on whites are thus woven into the disorder, not so marginal as to distinguish the disorder from outbreaks earlier in the century.

White men and women on the street, newspaper reporters and photographers, storeowners, and passengers in vehicles traveling through Harlem all allegedly suffered injuries at the hands of black assailants.

Crowds threw stones and rocks at whites. The occupants of vehicles traveling through the neighborhood became targets, with Patricia O'Rourke hit in her car and Joseph Rinaldi in a Boston-bound bus. In other cases, whites standing apart, observing crowds came under attack, including a newspaper photographer Ebbs Breuer and his assistant Joseph Martin, and security guard James Wrigley. Others appeared at the hospital with similar injuries resulting from flying glass and rocks that they did not report as assaults, that did not result from efforts to injure them but from the attacks on property.

The remaining assaults involved attacks by individuals or groups, targeting whites apparently observing the crowd like those hit by objects or whites walking Harlem’s streets, either around the entertainments of 125th Street or near the areas where whites lived north of 116th Street. Almost all those attacks took the form of beatings, with only two men stabbed, Edward Genest and Morris Werner. Attacks on Betty Willcox, B. Z. Kondoul, and Timothy Murphy only ended when police officers intervened, while William Ken was saved by black co-workers.

In addition to whites on the streets, white storeowners also appear among those assaulted, but in very small numbers not as the focus of violence as the MCCH report claimed. Herman Young;s resulted from glass from a smashed window rather than a direct attack. Max Newman was attacked as he closed their stores, as was Joseph Sarnelli, with his assailants also attempting to rob him.

Four women appear among the whites assaulted in Harlem. Two of the women attacked were in cars, Patricia O'Rourke driving through Harlem, Betty Willcox while parked. Alice Gordon was assaulted by a group on the street; Elizabeth Nadish was reported simply as having been “beaten”.

Attacks on whites occurred throughout the disorder (perhaps fading by 2 AM, around three hours before the final events of the disorder - information about timing is missing for 13/29 assaults), but were more geographically contained than in race riots in the north earlier in the twentieth century: other than man and storekeeper attacked north of 145th Street, most attacks occurred around 125th Street, with a small number further south, around the stores on 116th Street. The first reported assaults came early in the disorder as the crowd on 125th Street clashed with police and began smashing windows. William Kitlitz was allegedly assaulted by James Smitten around 8.30 PM and Timothy Murphy and Maurice Spellman by different groups of men around 9 PM, and Morris Werner around 9.30 PM. All these men lived west of Harlem, relatively close to where they were attacked, so were likely regular visitors to 125th Street, to shop, seek entertainment or access public transport, on this evening caught up in the disorder. Around 11 PM a small cluster of assaults took place on or near 7th Avenue north of 116th St, as crowds moved away from 125th Street into an area where whites still lived in 1935. Further assaults occurred north of 125th Street around 1 am, back near the entertainment district frequented by whites. The final assault whose timing is known was of a storekeeper during the looting that began after midnight.

Most assaults on whites left few traces in the official record: police made arrests in only five cases (there is no information on the circumstances that led to the arrest of one of the men charged with assault). Seven victims of alleged assaults appear only in records of ambulance callouts and hospital admissions. Fifteen assaults are reported only in newspapers. Four cases appear in only the New York Evening Journal, a publication that reported the disorder with an emphasis on violence against whites distinct from the rest of the press, using sensational language and invoking racist stereotypes of blacks.

Only one of the five black men arrested for assaulting whites, Rivers Wright, was convicted, but only summarily by a Magistrate for the misdemeanor offense of disorderly conduct, for which he received a sentence of ten days in the Workhouse. In one case, there is no evidence of the outcome, one was dismissed by the Grand Jury, and two acquitted by trial juries.
As Part of Related Categories:
- Assaults by groups (17/17)
- Assaults by individuals (3/7)
- Hit by objects (7/19)
- Assaults in unknown circumstances (1/3)
- Assaults on women (4/5)
- Injured in assaults (29/53)
- Assault in the courts (5/9)
Assaults on police (9) 39 plain 2020-08-07T18:56:14+00:00
Nine police officers were among those reported as injured, six hit by objects thrown at them. One was attacked by an individual likely from the same crowds that threw objects at police. Another officer was allegedly shot by a group of men, although he was never identified and the men were acquitted in the Magistrates Court. The final assault occurred during an arrest, a circumstance that owed little to the disorder. Six of the assaults occurred around 10 pm, when police sought to disperse crowds around Kress’ store. Only two assaults occurred after 10 pm, when the crowd broke up and smaller groups spread north and south on Harlem’s avenues, suggesting that the later disorder and police response did not involve the same violence directed at police.

Most of the assaults on police occurred in the period before 10 PM, when the disorder was focused on Kress’ store and 125th Street, where large crowds gathered and police struggled to disperse them and protect the avenues on the streets. Although police several times succeeded in moving crowds away from Kress’ and off the roadway of 125th Street, there were too few officers to hold and control the crowds until after 9PM. As 125th Street and 7th and 8th Avenues were major thoroughfares accommodating buses and streetcars, they had wide roadways, with two lanes of traffic traveling in each direction, as well as wide pavements. That created significant distances between police and crowds when officers set up cordons in front of Kress’ store and at the intersections of 125th Street and the avenues. As a result much of the violence directed against police came in form of objects thrown at them. Patrolman Michael Kelly was assaulted behind Kress’ around 7 PM, where police had followed a crowd drawn there by the appearance of a hearse they assumed had come for the body of the boy rumored to have been killed in the store. Hit on the right leg by a stone, Kelly's injury was serious enough that he was taken to Harlem Hospital for an x-ray and observation. Detective Charles Foley was hit on the left shoulder, possibly suffering a fracture, a few minutes after the assault on Kelly, also at the rear of Kress’ store on 124th Street. This was the only time police and crowds clashed off a major thoroughfare, on a narrower cross street that exposed officers to objects thrown from roofs as well as the street level.

While news reports include the assault on Detective William Boyle with those on Kelly and Foley the hospital records tell a slightly different story, with Boyle treated around 9 PM, two hours later than Kelly and Foley, for injuries “received while attempting to rescue an unknown white man being assaulted at scene of riot.” Several of the whites assaulted during the riot did report being rescued by police officers, and the New York Times reported that police also broke up additional attacks on whites at this time. None of these officers suffered the head injuries that predominated among the civilians who sought medical treatment during the disorder.

Two other officers were assaulted several hours later, around 10PM, in a later stage of police efforts to control the disorder around 125th Street. At 9 PM, after additional reinforcements arrived, police tried to further extend their cordon and disperse crowds on 7th Avenue and 8th Avenue. Detective Henry Roge was hit by a rock allegedly thrown by James Hughes as he stood in front of Kress just after police had cleared 125th Street. Unusually, Roge’s partner claimed that as there were no other objects being thrown at the time he was able to see who threw the rock and apprehend the man, James Hughes. Roge himself had been hit in the head, and was bleeding profusely. The NYEJ published two different photographs of a bleeding Roge being helped by a uniformed officer, the only images of injured police published. While Hughes pled guilty to misdemeanor assault the presiding judge believed his target had been the store windows not the police officer, and sentenced him to only three months in the workhouse.

Around the same time someone hit Patrolman Charles Robbins over the head by an iron bar, or a brick in some accounts. Being hit by a weapon not a thrown object required being in closer proximity to your assailant. Treated at 124th St and 7th Avenue, he had likely been involved in efforts to keep crowds from 125th Street. Images of police trying to hold back crowds show officers moving into the midst of groups of people, potentially exposing themselves to attacks such as Robbins suffered – and allowing their assailants to disappear into the crowd before they could be apprehended. However, it should be noted that in both the images, it is police officers who are wielding weapons or moving against the crowd, not the other way around. The caption to one photo also indicates that objects were thrown from the crowd at such moments: NYDN photographer was hit on the head soon after taking the photo.

The very first alleged assault on a police officer of the evening also involved police dealing with a crowd, but was less obviously shaped by the the circumstances of disorder. It occurred during the arrest of five members of the Young Liberators, an organization associated with the Communist Party, who picketed Kress’ store. Soon after one of the men began to speak to the crowd, someone threw a rock through one of the store windows. Police responded by moving to arrest the speaker and his companions. (it’s not clear if police would have had to move the crowd to make these arrests. They would have been alongside the first speaker, on the sidewalk in front of Kress’s store. But if Gordon did climb a lamppost across the street before being arrested, police may have had to deal with the crowd to arrest him). In the ensuing struggle, one of the men, a white student named Harry Gordon allegedly grabbed Patrolman Irwin Young’s nightstick and used it to hit the officer. Police hurried all five men into waiting cars and booked them at the station on West 123rd Street. Gordon would later charge that Young beat him on the journey to the station and again later while he was in custody. Violence during arrests (particularly of Communists) was nothing out of the ordinary???

The attack on Detective Lt Frank Lenahan as he drove his car along 8th Avenue, likely also occurred around 10 PM, as it was at this time that crowds gathered on 8th Avenue, but there is no evidence of its timing. According to the HT, the only report of the incident, Lenahan’s car “was badly battered by rocks and most of its glass shattered.” Apparently the officer himself was unscathed, as he does not appear in lists of the injured.

Once the crowds fragmented and spread, the police response changed and offficers do not appear to have been targets of violence to the extent they had been. While police maintained a cordon around 125th Street, and guarded some stores, their presence in other parts of the neighborhood took the form of mobile patrols in radio cars or emergency trucks. On one occasion a police vehicle was targeted in the same way that other vehicles driven by whites were, with the DM reporting “Harry Whittington, an emergency policeman, was "sniped" off of the emergency truck he was riding at 8th Ave. and 123rd St. by a rock that felled him unconscious.” While cars driven by whites were frequent targets, this is the only reported attack on a police vehicle.

There was a second, widely reported, incident of alleged “sniping” at police at the very end of the disorder. It does not appear in the count of assaults on police as there are no reported injuries other than to one of the four purported assailants, Charles Alston, who fell from a roof fleeing police. In fact, the evidence that police were actually targets of a shooting is limited. Stories in the WT and BDE did report that a bullet whistled past the air of Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street, after which he saw the four men on the roof of the six-story building at 101 West 138th. Soon after police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. But in the Home News story Brennan is not the target of the shooters but one of the police who responded after hearing shots. This report provides the key detail that no guns were found on Alston and his companions, explaining both police charged them with the lesser charge of disorderly conduct and their acquittal, and giving the report some more credibility than other accounts.

More officers may have been assaulted during the disorder. The NYJ reported bandaged officers as well as prisoners in court the next day. However, while news photographs confirm the presence of bandaged prisoners, no injured officers appear in those images.
As Part of Related Categories:
- Assaults by individuals (2/7)
- Hit by objects (6/19)
- Shot & Wounded (1/6)
- Injured in assaults (9/53)
- Assault in the courts (3/9)
- Images of Injured Police (3/3)
Shot & wounded (6) 26 plain 2020-08-07T18:56:43+00:00
In addition to the three individuals shot and killed, only six individuals were shot during the disorder, notwithstanding the extensive press reporting of gunfire during the disorder. The targets of four shootings were black men, whereas those hit by objects were mostly white men and women. Like attacks with objects, shootings were attacks from a distance, so assailants who could not be easily identified. Police made arrests in only one shooting, an alleged attack on police that caused no injuries, and those men were acquitted in the Magistrates Court

Those shot and wounded in the disorder appear in the lists of the injured published by newspapers, and, with two exceptions, in hospital admissions records. In the press the names are accompanied only by brief descriptions of the nature of their wounds, about which different publications rarely agreed. Twenty-five-year-old Wilmont Hendricks was shot in the chest according to AA, Am, AW, HT, NJG, and NYP; in the back according to the NYDN, NYJ, and NYT; and in the left shoulder according to the HN – and the admission record. That source included the details that the shooting had occurred on Lenox Ave between 128th and 129th Streets “in some unknown manner.” Hospital staff recorded that Victor Fain likewise received his wound in “an unknown manner, and Clarence London “while walking,” as did De Soto Windgate according to the records of the 32nd Precinct. In Benjamin Bell’s case, the language is more specific if not more revealing; his wound was received “when fired upon by some unknown person.”

It is likely that police were responsible for most of these shootings. Officers assigned to control the disorder carried not just pistols but also “riot guns” — rifles. Images of armed officers are a staple of the photographs that accompanied newspaper stories. At least by the time looting started around midnight, a range of sources record that police were firing at crowds in an effort to disperse them. (The only individuals identified as having shot someone during the disorder were police officers, those who killed Lloyd Hobbs and James Thompson and wounded Paul Boyett). All these shootings took place after 1 am, and with one exception, in areas where looting occurred, or in case of 125th and 7th Avenue, where police were stationed. The one exception is De Soto Windgate, who was shot while walking on West 144th Street, six blocks from any other disorder. Details of his shooting appear only in the 32nd Precinct records of individuals aided by officers; the only connection to the disorder is the timing of his shooting. That leaves open the possibility it could be unrelated to the disorder. If they were hit by police bullets, the men may not have been the targets of those shots. When officers shot at James Thompson as he fled a building on 8th Avenue, stray bullets hit two white men on the other side of the street. Police firing into crowds to disperse them could also have hit bystanders.

Only one shooting involved shots allegedly fired by blacks. Several white newspapers and the Associated Press reported a group of men firing on police from a rooftop on 138th St. and Lenox Avenue at the very end of the disorder. But the fullest account of those events, in the Home News, does not offer clear evidence that a shooting took place: the officers who made the arrests responded to the sound of gunshots rather than seeing a shooting, and found no guns on the four men they arrested – “During the chase they are said to have thrown away their pistols.” Charged only with disorderly conduct, three of the men, Albert Yerber, Edward Loper and Ernest Johnson, were tried and acquitted in the Magistrates Court – hardly lending credence to their involvement in shooting at police.

The only other evidence that members of the crowd were firing guns during the disorder is a report that a Boston-bound bus traveling through the neighborhood left with eleven bullet holes. In addition, two men arrested in the disorder were charged with possession of a firearm, one white and one black. No stories about the circumstances of their arrests appear in the press, as you would expect had they been involved in shootings.

In two striking examples, white papers reported gun fights that did not happen. When Stanley Dondoro was hit by shots fired by two detectives pursuing James Thompson, an New York Evening Journal story reported Dondoro had been hit by “other rioters [who] returned the fire.” The Associated Press story had only (the unarmed) Thompson involved in a “gun battle” with the detectives that saw “ten persons” shot.
As Part of Related Categories:
- Assaults on blacks (4/12)
- Assaults on police (1/9)
- Assault in the courts (1/9)
- Injured in assaults (6/53)
- Assaults by police (?)
Assaults by groups (17) 24 plain 2020-08-07T18:54:25+00:00
During the disorder seventeen individuals were allegedly attacked by groups of people. All those reported attacked were white, fifteen men and two women all the groups that allegedly attacked them were made up of black men and women. In these attacks, rather than throwing rocks and stones from a distance, assailants came close enough to hit their targets with their fists and other weapons. That distinction was not always clear cut: in the case of the assault on James Wrigley, newspaper reports differed on whether he had been beaten or had objects thrown at him. Such attacks on individuals by groups were characteristic of the mass racial violence of the early twentieth century, evidence of continuity rather than change.

Sources disagreed about the size of groups who committed assaults. Small groups committed five of the sixteen assaults, two specified as involving three people, three others as involving “several” people. Attacks by groups of this size regularly occurred in Harlem outside the disorder. Larger groups committed eight assaults, two specified as involving five or eight people and ten people, and six involving groups described in general terms (“group”, “number, “some,” and “Negroes”). These attacks highlight the fragmented nature of the disorder, in which groups emerged from the larger crowds on the streets. “Mobs,” and a “gang of 40 or 50”, committed the remaining four assaults, all reported only in the NYEJ or NYP, white papers which presented violence against whites in sensational terms (and did not show any concern with reporting more specific numbers).

A number of the attacks by groups occurred near 125th Street, where crowds concentrated and other assaults and attacks on stores took place. Despite the presence of those crowds, several of the assaults involved only small groups: just three men attacked Joseph Sarnelli in his store, “several” assaulted Morris Werner, and a “number” assaulting Maurice Spellman. Likewise, the areas where groups of men allegedly attacked Krim Shamhal, William Burkhard, Alice Gordon and William Ken also saw other forms of disorder. On the other hand, the two assaults in the north of Harlem, on Max Newman and Julius Narditch, occurred in an area that saw no other reported disorder or reports of crowds on the streets. Attacks on Timothy Murphy and B.Z. Kondoul fall in between these spaces, on the fringes of the disorder.
The most reported attack by a group occurred early in the disorder. A group of around ten black men attacked Timothy Murphy on West 128th Street between 8th Avenue and St Nicholas Avenue. They beat him, knocked him down, and kicked him, until Patrolman George Conn arrived on the scene and dispersed the crowd (in the process shooting Paul Boyett, a twenty-eight-year old black man, who was arrested for assaulting Murphy, but testified he was simply a bystander and was acquitted at trial). One other attack by a group was widely reported, in which group of four men shot at police on post at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No one was injured by the alleged shooting, so it is not included in this category as no victim of the attack was identified. While police arrested four men, they did not find any guns on them and all were acquitted in the Magistrates Court, raising questions about the validity of the reports.

Police made an arrest in just one other alleged assault by a group. After a “mob” attacked Thomas Wijstem in front of W. T Grant’s department store on 125th Street, police arrested twenty-two-year-old Douglas Cornelius for assaulting him. The HT reported Cornelius allegedly struck Wijstem with a rock; however inflicted, Wijstem’s injuries left him unconscious. That this attack occurred near the origins of the disorder, where police concentrated their forces, likely contributed to an arrest being made. But as in the case of Paul Boyett and the four men arrested on West 138th St., it appears that police could not prove that Cornelius was actually involved in the assault. A grand jury dismissed the charges against him.

Evidence exists of the details of only two other assaults, each reported in similar sensational language in only a single story in the New York Journal: a “gang of 40 or 50 Negroes pursued B. Z. Kondoul up Lenox Ave; and a group surrounded Betty Willcox as she sat in a parked car at 125th St. and 7th Avenue. Both stories refer to mobs, shouting and screaming threats to kill whites. In both cases it takes police wielding clubs and shooting guns to save the white victims, an explicit justification of police violence against the crowds, notwithstanding that the stories make clear that no one in the crowds had a weapon. In neither case do police make any effort to arrest members of the mob. Betty Willcox’s first person account of being attacked is even more sensational and steeped in racist tropes than the story about Kondoul. The mob is “howling” and “roar for blood,” and all have “murderous rage” in their faces. When police drive the crowd back, they stay nearby, with an “undertone of ominous muttering and shuffling.”

Two other victims were also rescued from attacks by groups. The New York Post published the only report of a “group” of men attacking Joseph Sarnelli as he closed his barber’s shop in the Hotel Theresa. Refusing to give up his razors, Sarnelli fought the men, and “was being badly pummeled” until Patrolman Thomas Jordan came to his aid. As happened when Murphy, Kondoul and Willcox were rescued, no one was arrested, an indication of the limited control police had over the crowds. In a third case reported only in the New York Journal, William Ken was rescued not by white police officers but by two of his black co-workers. According to the story, Ken was “seized” as he entered the Blue Heaven Restaurant at 378 Lenox Ave, punched a couple of times, but then dragged to safety by two black employees who convinced the crowd to “spare him.”

Given that these details are reported only in the NYJ and NYP, newspapers whose coverage of the riot stands out for its emphasis on violence against whites and sensational language, raises some questions about their reliability. In other cases, the evidence is again fragmented: victims of assault appear in lists of the injured, with details of how they were injured only in one or two papers. The HT and AM reported that a group of either 8 or 5 men attacked Max Newman, like Joseph Sarnelli, as he closed his store. Only the HT explained the injuries of Julius Narditch as the result of being attacked by 3 men just across the street from Newman’s store.

There are no details of the circumstances of the remaining attacks other than that they involved groups. Three of those attacked are described as having been stabbed, the only reports of knives being used in the disorder. All the reports of injuries to Edward Genest, a white sailor, mention him being stabbed, as done the only source mentioning Morris Werner, his hospital record. Only one of the multiple sources that mention Julius Narditch report him as being stabbed, a story in the New York American, and the police report of his case just describes him as being “jumped” and suffering head wounds and lacerations of the kind that resulted from beatings. A knife allegedly taken from one of those arrested during the disorder is also displayed in this photograph from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
As Part of Related Categories:
- Assaults on whites (17/29)
- Assaults on women (2/5)
- Assaults in the courts (2/9)
- Injured in assaults (17/53)
Assaults on women (5) 22 plain 2020-08-07T18:55:01+00:00
The fifty-three alleged victims of assault included five women. Two of the women were allegedly attacked by groups, one “beaten” by an individual or group, one hit by an object and one assaulted in unknown circumstances. Details exist of only two of those assaults. This small proportion of women does not appear to reflect their presence in the disorder.

Patricia O’Rourke was hit by glass after a bottle was thrown at the car in which she was traveling on 7th Avenue toward her home in the Bronx, leaving her with cuts to her eyes, forehead and cheeks. Betty Willcox was also traveling on 7th Avenue, in a car that stopped at 7th Avenue and 125th Street so her companion could buy cigarettes. A crowd of black men attacked the car as she sat in it, until a group of police appeared and drove them away. Willcox was uninjured. Alice Gordon was also allegedly assaulted by a group of black men, also on 7th Avenue, eight blocks to the south at 117th Street, only a block south of where O’Rourke was assaulted. She was treated for lacerations to her face. The alleged assault on Emma Brockson occurred at 125th St and 7th Avenue, the same location as that described by Willcox, but there is no evidence indicating the form of the assault. She suffered an injured hand. The final assault, on Elizabeth Nadish, is described as her being “beaten,” a term that encompasses assaults by an individual and by groups while excluding being hit by objects or shot. Her injury was to her eye.

Four of the women are white and one of unknown race. Two of the women were traveling through neighborhood rather than present there. However, white women could be found among the staff of businesses in Harlem, and among those who patronized the theaters on 125th Street and 116th Street. That the four assaults with locations all occurred on 7th Avenue, at 125th Street or further south, fits that pattern. Nonetheless, white women do not appear in any images of the crowds in Harlem’s streets.

Although no black women are identified as victims of assault in any of the sources, they do appear in images of crowds and of the injured. One photograph printed in several newspapers shows a black woman being helped up from the pavement, reportedly after being knocked down by “rioters.”
Two men have hold of her arms, a black man looking directly at the camera and a partly visible white police officer. Offering additional evidence of the presence of black women on the streets, three of the four figures in the background are black women. While the woman in that photograph does not appear to be seriously injured, a black woman was photographed being treated in Harlem Hospital – although no black women appear in the list of those treated sent to the MCCH.

(There are additional photographs published, that are largely illegible in microfilm copies, showing an injured woman being loaded into a vehicle, and another of a woman knocked to the ground). Black women can also be seen in the front ranks of the crowd a police officer is attacking with a night stick and there is a woman in background of another photo of a crowd being dispersed.

There are also three photographs of women who were allegedly assaulted. O’Rourke is bandaged, leaving hospital, her fur coat attracting particular attention from NYDN (The only other bandaged individual is among those arrested being transported to court; otherwise injured are bleeding or being treated). Only Nadish’s head appears in her photographed, with her “puffed up eye” visible, not bandaged. Willcox is photographed striking a pose and smiling while seated on a desk -- an image that on its own contains nothing to associate it with assault or the disorder.

The reporting of assaults on women varies little from that on men. Several stories do frame women victims of assault as indicating the indiscriminate nature of the violence of the disorder. The NYDN titled the photograph it published of a woman in Harlem Hospital “Sex was disregarded in riot” and in the body of its coverage wrote “Men and women alike were attacked by hoodlums” (NYDN, 3/20/35, 3a,).
As Part of Related Categories:
- Assaults by groups (2/17)
- Hit by objects (1/19)
- Assaults in unknown circumstances (1/3)
- Assaults on whites (4/29)
- Injured in assaults (5/53)
- Images of women (2/9)
- Images of the injured (20)
Hit by Objects (19) 20 plain 2020-08-07T18:55:37+00:00
The most common assault involved throwing a stone, rock or bottle. Such attacks made up 35% of the assaults in the sources (19/54); however, that proportion is somewhat distorted by six instances of assaults on police officers. Throwing objects made up 29% (13/45) assaults not targeted at police. Most of those attacked in this way were white, but five were black (and one of unknown race); by contrast all of those shot were black and all of those assaulted by groups of people were white. Two of the attacks on blacks involved objects thrown at a car; there are no details of the circumstances of the other three assaults. Only one of those hit by an object was a woman, struck by glass when a rock shattered a window in a moving car.

Almost all (11/13) of the civilians hit by objects appear only in reports of hospital admissions (5/13) or only in newspaper reports (6/14); only two appear in both sources (one whose assault led to an arrest). That discrepancy did not result from reporters ignoring the hospital, as five photographs appear in the New York Daily News taken both inside and outside the facility. But reporters do not appear to have been able to systematically gather the names of those being treated notwithstanding the their practice of publishing lists that had the appearance of being comprehensive. Clearly the hospital records did not include everyone treated for an injury. Patricia O’Rourke appears in one of the New York Daily News photographs, leaving the hospital bandaged, but is not in the hospital’s admission records. Likewise, lists of the injured in newspapers recorded numerous individuals as having been treated at Harlem Hospital who do not appear in the admission records. Journalists also noted that ambulances called during the disorder treated more people than made it into their records. Of the six police officers, four appear in hospital records and in newspaper lists of the injured, while the remaining two appear only in newspaper reports.

O’Rourke’s injuries are typical of those resulting from these assaults – cuts to the eye, forehead and cheek, which most of papers described as “lacerations” rather than cuts, as hospital records did. Cuts produced by rocks, stones, bottles and shattered glass produced significant bleeding, as photos show. The impact of being hit by an object also knocked at least some off their feet, a detail missing from reports but evident in photos. Two police officers suffered injuries to their legs rather than heads, and one to his hands.

It was not always clear that those hit were actually the intended targets of the objects. Rocks, stone and bottles were also being thrown at store windows. The Home News account of Isaac Daniel’s assault on Herman Young explicitly identified a store window as Daniel’s target; Young, the storeowner, was not injured by the stone Daniel’s threw but by the glass sent flying when it hit and shattered a window. Young was likely behind the window, inside his store. Others hit by objects were standing in front of windows, potentially between those throwing and their targets. That was the case with Detective Henry Roge, who was in front of Kress store when hit by a rock allegedly thrown by James Hughes. Police witnesses were certain that Roge was the target, although two newspaper reports said the rock hit the store window after striking Roge. Hughes denied throwing the rock, and although convicted, received a sentence of only 3 months in the workhouse, which the DA explained reflected the judge’s belief that the store window, not Roge, was his target.

In other cases, there is evidence that those throwing objects hit their targets. The New York Daily News photographer Ebbs Breuer and his assistant made their identity obvious by setting up to take images, prompting some members of the crowd to bombard them with rocks. Breuer suffered cuts to the head, Martin a broken nose, injuries that required a trip to Harlem Hospital. None of the black journalists on 125th Street reported being attacked.

Similarly, cars and buses traveling along Harlem’s streets were clearly the targets of the objects that hit them. Lenox and 7th Avenues were major traffic routes, with almost all of the vehicles, private and commercial, driven by whites. One black driver, Fred Campbell, was caught up in the disorder. A brick smashed the rear window of Campbell’s car as he drove up 7th avenue at the same time as windows smashed on both sides of the street – but the width of Harlem’s avenues made it unlikely he had been hit by someone trying to throw from one side of the street at a window on the other side. In the streets rather than on the sidewalks, vehicles represented targets similarly distant from the crowd as bystanders in front of stores, police and reporters. Campbell reported being hit by more bricks before he reached his destination, and seeing cars driven by whites with broken windows, but on finishing his errand to pick up the day’s receipts from his two barber’s shops, he returned home. Likely so too did the drivers of the other cars Campbell saw. Two buses likewise were bombarded with stones as they drove through the disorder on 7th Avenue, one part of the local service, one on its way out of the city to Boston, but continued on to their destinations. Only the injured were drawn into the historical record. Joseph Rinaldi, a passenger traveling to Boston, was hit by flying glass; the bus stopped at a drug store outside Harlem so he could treat his injuries. Patricia O’Rourke was also in a car hit by bricks while traveling on 7th Avenue, toward her home in the West Bronx, but in her case the front window smashed, leaving her with cuts to her eyes, forehead and cheeks. The New York Daily News put a photograph of O’Rourke leaving Harlem Hospital with bandages obscuring much of her face on its front page (the caption highlighting the fur coat and wealthy father that made her entirely unrepresentative of those caught up in the disorder).

Police riding on riot trucks were more exposed than passengers inside cars; at least one officer, Henry Whittington, was hit. According to the Daily Mirror, he “was “sniped” off of the emergency truck he was riding at 8th Ave and 123rd St.” No such details appear in other newspapers, which simply include Whittington in their lists of the injured, with a head wound. Police in cars do not seem to have been subject to the same attacks as other whites driving through Harlem. The only reported instance of such an attack appears only in the HT, a brief note that “The automobile of Detective Lieutenant Frank Lenahan was badly battered by rocks and most of its glass shattered when Lenahan drove through a riotous section of Eighth Avenue” in the early hours of the disorder.
As Part of Related Categories:
- Assaults on whites (7/29)
- Assaults on blacks (5/12)
- Assaults on women (1/5)
- Assaults on police (6/9)
- Injured in assaults (19/53)
- Assault in the courts (2/9)
- Images of injured police (3/3)
- Images of the injured (20)
- Images of women (1/9)
Assaults by individuals (7) 15 plain 2020-08-07T18:53:06+00:00
During the disorder seven individuals, including two police officers, were attacked by an individual, a far smaller group than those attacked by groups, hit by objects, or shot. Most violence in a disorder is collective in some sense, and it's possible that these assaults by individuals are elements of group attacks isolated for the purposes of identification and prosecution. Five of the seven assaults are in or around Kress' store on 125th Street, where the disorder began. The other incident that can be located, an assault of a black man occurred further uptown on Lenox Ave and 129th Street, in another area of concentrated violence, mostly looting (one case appears only in the lists of the injured, without a location).

Two assaults are clearly ascribed to an individual. One is an alleged assault on a police officer during an arrest in the very early stages of the disorder. Harry Gordon, a white member of the Young Liberators, was one of group that picketed Kress’ store around 6pm. When a member of the group began to speak to the crowd gathered there, someone threw a rock through the window of Kress’ store, prompting police moved to arrest the speaker. In the ensuing struggle, Gordon allegedly grabbed Patrolman Irwin Young’s nightstick and used it to hit the officer.

The second assault mostly clearly ascribed to an individual is reported only in hospital admission records, a record that does not need to extrapolate an individual from a group. It is also one of the small number of reported assaults of blacks during the disorder, in this case explicitly by a white man. Staff at Harlem Hospital recorded that James White was treated for “laceration of the scalp, received during an altercation with an unknown white man at 129th Street and Lenox Ave.” This location was at the heart of the area where the most extensive looting took place.

The hospital record for Patrolman Charles Robins reports his injury as the result of having been attacked “by some unknown person,” but locates that attack “at scene of riot,” suggesting the assault occurred in an encounter between a group of police and a crowd rather than two isolated individuals. Robins was “struck over the head with an iron bar,” an unusual weapon in the context of the disorder, according to the hospital report and one newspaper account. Two other papers reported him being “hit over the head with a brick,” a more common weapon. Treated at 124th St and 7th Avenue, he had likely been involved in efforts to keep crowds from 125th Street. Images of police trying to hold back crowds show officers moving into the midst of groups of people, potentially exposing themselves to attacks such as Robbins suffered – and allowing their assailants to disappear into the crowd before they could be apprehended.

William Kitlitz, a white clerk, was also allegedly assaulted at the heart of the disorder, “beaten on the head” in front of Kress’ store on 125th Street around 8.30PM. The assault report comes from a legal proceeding, one of the few (4?) reports that link a victim and an alleged assailant, in this case James Smitten, a twenty-two-year-old black man. Given that the police were concentrated on 125th Street at that time, it is not surprising that this assault is one of the very few that led to an arrest. Few sources exist on this case as it occurred very early in the riot and Smitten was arraigned in the Night Court that evening not the next day, when almost all those arrested appeared in court. (Only the HT appears to have had a reporter in the Night Court, although Smitten does appear in several lists of those arrested in the disorder). Smitten, not Kitlitz, also appears in hospital records: doctors were called to treat him at the 28th Precinct after his arrest “for lacerations to the scalp he received in some unknown manner.”

One additional assault is reported in terms of an individual act that caused injury without more explicit details of the circumstances of the assault. Arthur Block, a black man, is reported having been bitten on the hand, again with no details of the circumstances, only in lists of the injured not in stories. Biting rarely appears as a form of assault. There are two other men listed as having been bitten, but those assaults are not part of the disorder. Lino Rivera allegedly bit both Charles Hurley and Steve Urban, clerks in Kress’ store, when they held him after his was caught stealing a pocketknife, in the incident that became a trigger for the disorder. Hurley and Urban were treated at Kress’ for their injuries at 2.30PM, several hours before crowds gathered.
As Part of Related Categories:
- Assaults on whites (3/29)
- Assaults on police (2/9)
- Assaults on blacks (2/12)
- Injured in assaults (7/53)
- Assault in the courts (2/9)
Assaults in unknown circumstances (3) 6 plain 2020-08-12T21:46:36+00:00
In three instances, there is not sufficient evidence to establish the circumstances of the assault.

Two of those events are recorded only in hospital records. An ambulance twice attended Anthony Cados, a thirty-four-year-old white man for injuries suffered when "assaulted by some unknown colored person or persons." Emma Brockson, a twenty-six-year-old woman of unknown race, received treatment at Knickerbocker Hospital for injuries suffered “when assaulted by some unknown person or persons." Both assaults could have been by an individual, a group or by being hit by an object.

The assault on John Hademan, a twenty-six-year-old Black man, was more widely recorded, in hospital records and in lists in five newspapers. But the only details of the circumstances of the assault are two mentions that it occurred “in a melee” and “rioting” at 126th Street and 7th Avenue, where police clashed with crowds early in the disorder. Hademan could assaulted by an individual, a group, been hit by an object, or assaulted by police.

As Part of Related Categories:
- Assaults on whites (1/29)
- Assaults on women (1/5)
- Assaults on blacks (1/12)
- Injured in assaults (3/53)