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Interview of Channing Tobias by E. Franklin Frazier, August 10, 1935, Harlem Survey: March 19th, Box 131-123, Folder 7, E. Franklin Frazier Papers (Moorland Spingarn Research Center, Howard University).
1 2022-04-09T19:55:43+00:00 Anonymous 1 5 plain 2022-09-27T01:47:29+00:00 AnonymousE. Franklin Frazier Papers
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- 1 2023-07-05T20:55:35+00:00 Anonymous Investigations of the events of the disorder Anonymous 31 plain 2023-07-10T21:46:12+00:00 Anonymous
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2021-11-24T18:22:42+00:00
Kress 5, 10 & 25c store front windows broken
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2022-08-04T20:24:41+00:00
Around 6.15 PM, a step was set up on the sidewalk in front of the Kress 5, 10 & 25c store. A Black man climbed up, spoke briefly to the crowd of about 100 gathered there, and then had Daniel Miller, a twenty-four-year-old white man take his place on the step. As Miller began to speak, someone threw an object through one of the store windows. A second object quickly followed, smashing another window, according to the New York Times and New York Sun. Different objects are identified as having smashed the store window. A bottle was the most common, identified in the New York Times and Home News, and more precisely as a milk bottle in the New York Sun and a whiskey bottle in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and by a police inspector quoted in the Afro-American. The Daily News identified the object as a brick, as did the New York Sun in the case of the second object, while Louise Thompson described it as a stone. The MCCH report opted to simply say "a missile" hit the window. These are all everyday objects, likely to hand on 125th Street, other than the whiskey bottle. A whiskey bottle fitted with portrayals of those who attacked white businesses as hoodlums and played to racist stereotypes about African Americans, as was evident in the appearance of this detail in a list of brief items headlined "Highlights on the Harlem Front." Picketing of white-owned businesses on 125th Street by Black organizations in 1934 had not resulted in any broken windows; concern about what had become of the boy arrested at Kress' may have caused this crowd to react differently. There may also have been members of groups affiliated with the Communist Party in the crowd; when those groups picketed the Empire Cafeteria in 1934, they did break windows.
After the windows was broken, police officers moved in to arrest Miller and push people away from the store, most of who ran across 125th Street to the opposite sidewalk. No one was arrested for breaking the window. Harry Gordon was arrested soon after trying to speak to the crowd on 125th Street east of Kress' store. A few minutes later, around 6.45 PM, three men began picketing in front of Kress' store. They too were soon arrested by police. Three to five police radio cars, an emergency [riot] truck, and six mounted policemen struggled to keep people from the store. No further objects appear to have been thrown at Kress' store front windows at this time. Soon after West 125th Street was cleared, around 7 P.M., people pushed on to 8th Avenue saw a hearse stop behind the store on West 124th Street, triggering rumors it had come to pick up the body of the boy who had been arrested, and a rush to the rear of the store that saw windows there broken.
Sustained and extensive attacks on stores on 125th Street came sometime after those rear windows were broken. Another brick hit Kress' front windows around 10:40 PM, allegedly thrown by William Ford, who then called for others on the street to attack police. Louise Thompson described a group breaking though the police cordon around 125th Street to break all but a few windows in the store, in the context of an exaggerated claim about the extent of smashed windows, and Kress' store does appear on the list of businesses with broken windows compiled by a La Prensa reporter who walked down 125th Street. But a reporter for the Afro-American wrote that the store "suffered very little loss on the front." The store manager, Jackson Smith, confirmed that later in a public hearing of the MCCH. Of the eighteen windows facing 125th Street and in the vestibule, only four were damaged. Repairs to the front of the store next day appear to have focused on only two sections of the store window, on the right side of the left entrance, in a photograph published in the New York American, and on the left side of the right entrance, where a ladder can be seen in Universal newsreel footage. Those repairs cannot have taken long. A photograph of Kress' store published in the Daily News on March 21 showed intact store windows, guarded by two police officers. A sustained police presence during the disorder appears to have protected the front of the store. That was the opinion of Channing Tobias, the fifty-three-year-old Black secretary of the Colored Division of the National Council of the YMCA, who told E. Franklin Frazier that "I guess it was because police were on guard" that Kress' store "got only a small window smashed." Police established a cordon in front of the store after it closed. Officers were still there around 10 PM, when Detective Henry Roge was hit by a rock while standing in front of the store, and after a window was broken at 10:40 PM there were officers able to arrest William Ford. Later in the evening the police cordon extended to cover 125th Street from 8th Avenue to Lenox Avenue, with Kress' store remaining at its center, and as the base for police responding to the disorder.
A window being smashed as a speaker began to address a crowd in front of Kress' store featured in narratives in the New York Times, New York Sun, and Home News. Only the New York Times and New York Sun mentioned the second object and smashed window. A broken window, without reference to a speaker, is reported by the Daily News, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York Age, and Pittsburgh Courier. No mention of a window in Kress' store being smashed at the beginning of the disorder appears in the narratives published in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Journal, New York American, Daily Mirror and New York Post, and the Afro-American reported only the damage visible the next day. In the MCCH public hearings, Inspector Di Martini, Patrolman Moran, Jackson Smith, the store manager, and Louise Thompson (who also mentioned it in her account published in New Masses) all discussed how the window was broken. In the MCCH's final report, the arrests of Miller and Gordon police made in the aftermath of the window being broken are included as examples of "actions on the part of the police [that] only tended to arouse resentment in the crowd."
The Kress 5, 10 & 25c store appears in the MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935 and was still visible in the Tax Department photograph from 1939-1941.
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2021-08-19T17:29:52+00:00
Lafayette Market looted
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2022-12-15T20:02:04+00:00
The Lafayette Market at 2044 7th Avenue, on the northwest corner of West 122nd Street, was looted at some time during the disorder. The Daily News published a photograph of the damaged store on March 21. All the market's display windows are missing in the photograph, although there is no glass and little other debris visible. It is likely that store staff had cleaned up and swept the street before the photograph was taken, sometime the day after the disorder given that the image was taken in daylight and published the next day. The window displays have been emptied of goods, but the photograph did not offer a clear view of the extent of the looting of the store's interior - although it did indicate that the store could have been accessed through the corner window display. The caption's phrasing also leaves ambiguous the extent of the looting; the statement that "windows were smashed and contents looted" could refer to the contents of the windows or the store more broadly. (The caption of the photograph in the Afro-American described the business as a "poultry store." The signage, cropped out of that version of the photograph, indicates it sold a wider range of groceries). Channing Tobias, the fifty-three-year-old Black secretary of the Colored Division of the National Council of the YMCA, lived in the building next to the Lafayette Market, at 203 West 122nd Street. Interviewed there after the disorder by E. Franklin Frazier, he mentioned that "there was not a whole window in this store right here" after the disorder, likely a reference to the market.
Crowds pushed off the block of West 125th Street around the Kress store toward 7th Avenue later moved up and down the avenues, leading to multiple reports of assaults, broken windows and looting in the area around the Lafayette Market. When some of that violence took place is not specified in the sources, but a cluster did occur between 11 PM and 12.30 AM, including the assault of a white man a few buildings west of the market on 122nd Street and rocks thrown at Fred Campbell's car as he sat stopped at the traffic lights at the intersection across the avenue from the market, as well as the looting of a delicatessen a block north. Campbell described considerable disorder in the area around Lafayette Market, crashes and shots being fired, store windows shattering and police trying to disperse crowds. Channing Tobias, awake in his home in the next building, heard "smashing of glasses [sic] and the firing of guns" between midnight and 1:00 AM.
Almost as many Black-owned as white-owned businesses operated on the block on which the Lafayette Market was located. The stationary store visible in the storefront next to the market was one of those Black-owned business, according to the MCCH Business survey, a "Neat store, carries full line of cigars, cigarettes and candies" according to the investigator who visited it. That store does not appear to have been attacked or looted, as the windows visible in the photograph are intact, offering evidence of the pattern of crowds avoiding Black-owned businesses during the disorder.
Although the caption described the police officer standing in front of the market's doors as "guarding" the store, he was more likely to have been patrolling the area monitoring passersby, or stationed at the intersection, behind where the photographer took to take the image. There were far too many damaged and looted businesses in Harlem for police to be guarding them individually the day after the disorder. Police officers featured in several other photographs of damaged buildings taken after the disorder (and some taken during the night).
Albert Bass, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man, was likely arrested in the vicinity of the market during the disorder. Salvatore Marrone, with the address of 2044 7th Avenue, was recorded in the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book as the complainant against Bass. Both the list published in the New York Evening Journal and the 28th Precinct Police blotter recorded the charge against Bass as burglary, with the blotter noting that he allegedly "In concert with others burglarized stores." However when Bass was arraigned in the Magistrate's Court he was charged with Disorderly Conduct. Such a charge suggests that he may have allegedly broken the store windows but not attempted to take any merchandise. Magistrate Renaud held Bass in custody until March 26, then convicted him and fined him $50 or five days in the Workhouse if he did not pay the fine, according to the docket book. The 28th Precinct Police blotter recorded the sentence as a fine of $25.
The Lafayette Market continued to operate after the disorder. The store was included in the MCCH Business survey in the second half of 1935, categorized as a white-owned Meat Market. The investigator's notes describe it as "Very neat - hires one Negro as clerk." It was also visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. -
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2021-11-14T21:49:24+00:00
Child's restaurant windows broken
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2023-07-27T19:54:09+00:00
The branch of the Child's restaurant chain at 272 West 125th Street had windows broken during the disorder. Spectators told a reporter from the Afro-American that they "watched a crowd of men break the windows and destroy food." The restaurant "one of the first marks for rioters," according to that story. Located only three buildings west of Kress' store, the restaurant would have been in the path of crowds pushed toward 8th Avenue by police in their early attempts to clear West 125th Street. One witness on 125th Street at that time, Channing Tobias, then secretary of the Colored Division of the National Council of the YMCA, told E. Franklin Frazier, the head of the MCCH investigation, that Child's windows were "smashed up" after crowds "went all the way down the line," although the damage was "not much of a smash." More than location caused the windows to be broken, according to those quoted in the Afro-American. Child's was "a lily-white restaurant," so those watching "approved this vandalism because of the refusal of Child's to serve them." Along the same lines, Carlton Moss, a Black playwright, heard someone at 125th Street and 7th Avenue during the disorder claim, “We got Childs – Bastards don’t ‘llow Niggahs in dare, we got ‘em.” L. F. Cole expressed the same opinion in a letter to Arthur Garfield Hays during the MCCH investigation of the disorder, noting "Of course they do not tell us that they will not serve us, they just refuse to serve us." A New York Age reporter echoed that perception of the restaurant in reporting a survey of businesses on 125th Street a month after the disorder, noting "For a long time the opinion has prevailed in Harlem that this restaurant does not desire the patronage of Negroes." A manager's response did little to contradict that view. Noting that "colored people were welcomed as customers" as required by the Civil Rights law, he went on to say that "no effort was made to cater to their trade." Channing Tobias was confused by charges that Child's did not serve Black customers, as he had been served there, suggesting to Frazier that those who made that allegation were "too chicken hearted and assumed they would not serve colored people.”
Windows were broken in large numbers of businesses on this block of West 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues, where police clashed with crowds gathered in front of Kress' store. Two newspapers reported very extensive damage. "Practically every store window on the block had been shattered by 10 PM, according to the Home News; that damage was both less extensive and took longer in the New York Herald Tribune story: "By midnight one or more windows had been smashed in almost every storefront" on that block between 7th and 8th Avenues (although in another mention of that damage in the story it had been done by 8 PM). However, the businesses identified in the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, and Daily Mirror as having windows broken were east of Kress' store, near the intersection with 7th Avenue rather than 8th Avenue. No reason is given in those stories for why that mix of businesses were singled out. The reporter for La Prensa who walked along 125th Street from Lenox Avenue to 8th Avenue listed only one business west of Kress' store, the branch of London Shoes at 276 West 125th Street. The scale of damage described in the Afro-American should have warranted inclusion in that list; it may have been repaired before the reporter walked by.
No other sources mentioned broken windows in Childs restaurant. No one among those arrested during the disorder was identified as having broken windows in the restaurant. The restaurant does not appear in the MCCH business survey. It was no longer at this location by the time that the Tax department photograph was taken between 1939 and 1941, which instead showed Gonshaks department store, opened in August 1938, in a new building on the site. The restaurant closed in late May, 1935, according to a story in the Pittsburgh Courier, which reported that it had been subject to a boycott over its refusal to serve Black customers, a change that had been made by "several other white restaurants in the same block, which had formerly discriminated against Negroes." Channing Tobias told Frazier the restaurant went out of business because it was "not getting enough business from whites to keep it open and Negroes did not go there – It was just losing all the time. It went out very suddenly.” -
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2022-05-23T17:57:25+00:00
5:30 PM to 6:00 PM
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2023-07-27T21:22:08+00:00
Just after 5:30 PM, Inspector John Di Martini arrived at the Kress store. The officer, in charge of the 6th Division, which included the 28th Precinct that took in 125th Street, he had come to investigate the “disorder” at the store. His appearance signaled police awareness of the how white staff assaulting a Black boy could inflame the tensions between the area’s businesses and its Black residents. Di Martini found the store closed, its entrance guarded by several patrolmen. Going inside, he found only a small number of employees. To find out had happened he interviewed Smith, the store manager, and Hurley, the floorwalker who had grabbed Rivera. Satisfied that store staff had not beaten Rivera, he returned to 125th Street. Although he said there were no people at either of the store’s entrances, Di Martini was still concerned enough that something might happen to station several mounted police and uniformed patrolman under the command of a sergeant outside the store on both 125th Street and 124th Street. He instructed those officers to keep people from gathering in front of the store; anyone who stopped, they told to move on. Di Martini then left the area, just before 6:00 PM.
At the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue, likely too far east on 125th Street for Di Martini to see as he was leaving, several groups of people were gathered, some likely sharing rumors about what had happened in the Kress store. There were also groups a block south, on the corner of 124th Street and 7th Avenue. Channing Tobias, the fifty-three-year-old Black secretary of the YMCA’s Department of Interracial Affairs, encountered a crowd there on his way to shop on 125th Street. When he asked why they were gathered, he “was told that a boy had been killed in Kress’s store and was secreted in the basement.” Tobias continued to 125th Street, turning away from the Kress store to visit the Davega store on the block to the east. Not long before 6:00 PM, James Parton, a Black Communist, arrived at the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue with a stepladder and an American flag banner. He likely had come from the Young Liberators office. As Parton prepared to set up to speak, Daniel Miller, a twenty-four-year-old white member of the Nurses and Hospital League, a Communist affiliated organization, passed on his way home. Parton told Miller there had been “a little trouble” and asked for his help calling for a boycott of the Kress store. The corner was a frequent venue for the street speakers that had been a feature of Harlem life for almost twenty years. Political organizations were an increasingly large presence among those speakers in the 1930s, including mostly white Communist Party members deployed as a central part of a campaign to win over the Black community. In attacking the practices of a white business such as the Kress store, Parton and Miller would have been delivering a message those on the street could have heard from many street speakers, even as each organization promoted a different response. Appealing to Black and white workers to unite, as Parton and Miller planned to do, was the core of the CP message. In contrast, the Garveyite APL and Sufi Abdul Hamid’s NICA promoted “race consciousness” across class lines. As it happened, Parton and Miller did not speak on the corner. Told to move to the Kress store by a traffic police officer (or perhaps deciding it would be more effective to speak in front of the location they were targeting), they relocated to the store.
As Parton and Miller walked along 125th Street, Joe Taylor, the Black leader of the Young Liberators, arrived at the West 123rd St police station, and succeeded in getting inside to seek information from police on what had happened in the Kress store.