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

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).

E. Franklin Frazier Papers

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Kress 5, 10 & 25c store front windows broken 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 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 close to hand on 125th Street, other than the whiskey bottle. A whiskey bottle fit 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 were broken, police officers moved in to arrest Miller and push people away from the store, most of whom 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 appeared 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 appeared 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 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 were 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 appeared in the MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935 and was still visible in the Tax Department photograph from 1939–1941.
Lafayette Market looted The Lafayette Market at 2044 7th Avenue, on the northwest corner of West 122nd Street, was looted at sometime during the disorder. The Daily News published a photograph of the damaged store on March 21. All the market's display windows were missing in the photograph, although there was no glass and little other debris visible. It was 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 had 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 left 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, indicated 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 was not specified in the sources, but a cluster did occur between 11:00 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. The gunshots he heard suggested that looting of the store began around midnight, the time observers noticed such attacks intensified.

Almost as many Black-owned as white-owned businesses operated on the block on which the Lafayette Market was located. The stationery store visible in the storefront next to the market was one of those Black-owned business, according to the MCCH business survey. It was a "[n]eat store, carries full line of cigars, cigarettes and candies" according to the investigator who visited it. That store did not appear to have been attacked or looted, as the windows visible in the photograph were intact, offering evidence that crowds avoided 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 stood 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 sometime after midnight. Salvatore Marrone, with his address recorded as 2044 7th Avenue, was the complainant against Bass in the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book. While both the list published in the New York Evening Journal and the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded the charge against Bass as burglary, when he was arraigned in the Magistrate's Court he was charged with Disorderly Conduct. That change indicated that police had encountered Bass been on the street in the area of the looted store but had no evidence he had either broken windows or taken merchandise. Magistrate Renaud convicted Bass and ordered him to pay a $50 or spend five days in the Workhouse, according to the docket book. The 28th Precinct police blotter recorded the sentence as a fine of $25, which suggested he took that option.

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 described it as "Very neat - hires one Negro as clerk." It was also visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941.
12:30 AM to 1:00 AM

By 12:30 AM, it was on the blocks of 7th Avenue immediately south of 125th Street that large amounts of police gunfire could be heard as significant numbers of police sought to disperse groups breaking windows and taking merchandise from stores. Captain Conrad Rothengast, who had been in Harlem since around 8:30 PM leading the police in front of Kress’ store, was one of the officers in the area by this time. His presence suggested both that he was no longer needed on 125th Street and that a large number of officers had been deployed on 7th Avenue. Fred Campbell first noticed large numbers of patrolmen and officers carrying riot guns when he stopped his car at the traffic light at West 121st Street. The thirty-one-year-old Black businessmen was on his way to pick up the day's receipts from the two barber’s shops he owned at 2213 7th Avenue and 2259 7th Avenue. As he drove toward West 122nd Street, the noise of shots being fired and glass breaking drew his attention to store windows shattering and police trying to disperse crowds. A brick then hit the rear window of his car, shattering it. Looking around as he continued north, he noticed other cars with damaged windows and realized that the cars with white drivers were being targeted. Even though Black drivers like Campbell were evidently not the intended targets, another brick hit Campbell’s car as he passed 123rd Street but did not damage any of the windows. Neither brick injured Campbell himself. Two other men not in cars but on the sidewalk near the intersection of 7th Avenue and 122nd Street were hurt.

John Eigler, a forty-five-year-old white man, was hit by an object only a few feet from his home at 163 West 122nd Street sometime after 12:30 AM. He had been targeted by a group of Black men who likely were also among those throwing bricks at the passing cars, continuing the attacks on white men and women on the streets, which had marked the disorder since groups left 125th Street. A second white man, B. Z. Kondoul, claimed he was attacked by a crowd of "40–50" Black men and women at the same corner. The thirty-five-year-old Kondoul fled down West 122nd Street, as William Burkhard had fled down West 118th Street when attacked earlier. However, Kondoul's assailants pursued him. When he reached Lenox Avenue, Kondoul saw a uniformed patrolman guarding a grocery store on the corner of West 123rd Street and sought his protection. Patrolman Clements fired his pistol to deter and disperse the group chasing the white man, first in the air, and when that did not have the desired effect, at the crowd reportedly without hitting anyone. That was not dramatic enough for the sensational white newspapers who reported the incident; their stories portrayed an extended clash between a crowd threatening death and the patrolman that ended only when a radio car arrived to rescue them. Later, shortly before 1:00 AM, Clarence London, a thirty-four-year-old Black man, was shot in the leg. London was further from his home than Eigler. A resident of 676 St Nicholas Avenue in Harlem’s north, he was likely among those who had come to 125th Street to investigate the rumors about events at the Kress store. The bullet was almost certainly fired by one of the armed patrolmen observed by Campbell as part of the increasingly violent police response that saw officers fire their guns more often and indiscriminately. Channing Tobias, in his apartment in the building on the corner of Lenox Avenue and West 123rd Street, reported that he heard the “firing of guns” from midnight until he went to sleep around 1:00 AM.

The gunshots Tobias heard were accompanied by the noise of glass shattering. Among the stores being looted at this time would have been the business on the street level of his building, the Lafayette Market at 2044 7th Avenue. While it suffered sustained attacks that left all the glass in its windows gone, next door the windows of the Black-owned stationery store were intact. Groups on the street in this area were evidently distinguishing between white-owned and Black-owned businesses even this late in the disorder. Police officers trying to stop the attacks on white business continued to show a contrasting lack of discrimination in making arrests. Officer Ferry of the 28th Precinct arrested Albert Bass, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man, for allegedly being one of those taking merchandise from the Lafayette Market. However, the charge against Bass was changed to disorderly conduct when he appeared in the Magistrates Court, making him another of those Harlem residents for whom police lacked evidence that they had participated in the violence of the disorder. Bass lived only a half block west of the market at 238 West 122nd Street, so had likely come to the corner of 7th Avenue nearest to his home to see what was happening as many of Harlem’s residents did.

A block further north across 7th Avenue another local resident, a thirty-six-year-old Black janitor named Hezekiah Wright, was arrested in front of Sarah Refkin’s delicatessen. He had encountered a crowd in front of the store when he was returning home to the building where he lived and worked having gone out to buy cigarettes. Gunshots drew Captain Conrad Rothengast’s attention to the group of men, shots likely fired by another officer trying to disperse them. As Rothengast, likely with other officers, approached the delicatessen, he allegedly saw Wright kick in the store window, reach in, and take out four lamps and two jars of food. While the other men ran when they saw police officers approaching, Wright dropped those items and raised his hands. Rothengast responded by hitting Wright with his baton, unnecessary violence that the senior officer treated as unremarkable. Wright claimed he had not run with the others as he was a passerby not involved in attacks on the store or taking merchandise from it. Unlike Bass, he was prosecuted and convicted for burglary. Given the assessment of both the probation officer and the psychiatrist from the Court clinic that Wright was a “quiet, inoffensive” and “cooperative” individual, and that he was one of the small number of residents with stable work and housing, it seems likely that he was a passerby, perhaps mistaken for the man who kicked in the store window as police tried to apprehend those attacking the delicatessen.

Even as violence intensified in the blocks of 7th Avenue south of 125th Street, the disorder apparently had yet to reach as far south as West 116th Street. Around 12:30 AM, Jack Garmise, a twenty-two-year-old white clerk, locked the cigar store his father Emmanuel owned at 1916 7th Avenue, in the Regent Theatre building, on the corner of West 116th Street and likely went across town to the family home at 1274 5th Avenue. Most businesses were already closed by that time; the cigar store may have remained open to cater to movie-goers leaving the theater. It had not yet suffered any damage. Theater shows ending would have added new groups, including white men and women, to those on the street who were unaware of the violence of the last several hours.

On Lenox Avenue north of 125th Street, the other area where the disorder was concentrated at this time, fewer details of the ongoing violence were reported. Businesses around West 126th continued to be targeted despite the presence of police officers around the intersection. A large group of people gathered in front of William Gindin’s shoe store just north of the intersection at 333 Lenox Avenue around 12:30 AM. The display windows had been broken several times already and some merchandise taken from them. Gindin lived nearby at 346 Lenox, one of few white business owners with residences in Harlem, but there were no reports he came back to try to protect his store. As Patrolman James Lamattina watched, John Kennedy Jones, a twenty-four-year-old-Black laborer, motioned to others in the crowd, called “Come on," and threw a rock that broke some of the remaining glass. More bricks and stones then struck the glass as others in the group followed Jones’ lead. Whether their goal was to do more damage to white-owned property or to gain access to merchandise in the window was left uncertain as Lamattina moved to arrest Kennedy. He must have come from the intersection as he did not arrive in time to prevent the attack or apprehend any other members of the group. Jones was not a local resident; he lived on West 119th Street midway between Lenox and 7th Avenues, and must have joined crowds moving through the streets earlier in the evening.

A similar scenario played out across Lenox Avenue from the shoe store. Detective Phillips must have seen a crowd in front of the grocery store on the corner of West 127th Street, some of whom were reaching through glass broken earlier in the disorder to take merchandise from the display. When he reached the store to stop the looting, he arrested Elizabeth Tai, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman, Arthur Davis, a thirty-six-year-old Black man, and probably another Black man, eighteen-year-old Herbert Hunter. He must have had the help of other officers to make multiple arrests. However, evidently none of those he arrested had actually been among those taking merchandise as the charge they faced in court was disorderly conduct, not burglary. Again, police officers had arrested those they could apprehend, not those participating in the looting. The group highlighted the diverse origins of those on the streets during the disorder. While Davis and Hunter lived on West 126th Street, Tai's home was on the Upper East Side.

By this time, when more police officers would have been patrolling further north on Lenox Avenue, similar arrests were likely being made around West 135th Street. Patrolmen Archbold and Conn arrested three Black men in a branch of the A & P grocery store chain at 510 Lenox Avenue, perhaps after noticing a group in front of the store or hearing breaking glass while driving by in a radio car. Forty-two-year-old Preston White, they alleged, had smashed holes in the store window and taken food; the other two men, twenty-eight-year-old Raymond Taylor and fifty-year-old Joseph Payne, had had taken advantage of already broken windows to take groceries. While the store had clearly been damaged and looted, police ultimately lacked evidence that the three men were among those responsible rather than part of the crowds on the street. They too would only be charged with disorderly conduct.

With the police presence increasing and violence intensifying, some of those on the street may have moved east to 5th Avenue. Around 12:40 AM, Patrolman Rock saw six men run out of Jacob Solomon’s grocery store at 2100 5th Avenue on the corner of West 129th Street. Solomon had closed the business at 9:00 PM. By the time Rock arrived, the windows had been broken and the door broken. He chased the men and caught a thirty-five-year-old Black laborer named Lawrence Humphrey, perhaps because he was carrying a fifty-pound bag of rice. In all, $150 of groceries were missing when Solomon returned to the store just over six hours later. The six men Rock pursued could not have been carrying all that merchandise; the bag of rice had a value of only $2.50. Others in the area must also have taken food without interference from police. Humphrey lived only three blocks away on West 132nd Street in the overcrowded section between Lenox and 5th Avenues. The blocks around the grocery store contained very few businesses. Only the block north of 125th Street, and the blocks from 131st Street to 138th Street, were lined with stores. The stores targeted were businesses that contained food and clothing that residents of the area lacked.

Those stores on 5th Avenue would be attacked with little interference from police. An unclaimed laundry store on the corner of West 131st Street and another grocery store on the corner of West 137th Street already had broken windows and missing merchandise by the time patrolling police made arrests there at some time during the disorder. Patrolman Adamie found Elva Jacobs, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, in the grocery store. However, he had no evidence she was responsible for either the broken windows or the items missing from the store, so Jacobs was charged only with unlawful entry for being inside the damaged business. Patrolman Jackson found Lamter Jackson, a twenty-four-year-old Black man, taking a bag of laundry, evidence for a charge of larceny but not that he had broken the windows of the store from which he was taking the bag. Both Jacobs and Jackson lived east of Lenox Avenue on streets several blocks north of where they were arrested. A fire was lit on the roof of the building containing the store selling unclaimed laundry. Unlike those set in stores on Lenox Avenue, the purpose of the rooftop fire was not to destroy white-owned property. Instead, it was intended to produce a reaction from those on the street: “to stir up excitement” in spectators, according to the Home News, and to draw police officers attacking people on the street away from Lenox Avenue, according to the probably better-informed Daily Worker.

The attacks on businesses on Lenox Avenue around West 116th Street that had begun after midnight likely continued. On the block between West 116th and West 117th Streets, Nathaniel Powell suffered injuries that suggested that glass was being shattered. The nineteen-year-old Black man, who lived nearby on West 118th Street, suffered cuts to his nose and left wrist in circumstances that he did not reveal to the hospital staff who treated him. While Powell could have been watching as others broke the windows, the severity of his wounds suggested he was closer than that and involved in breaking the glass. Julia Cureti’s restaurant on that block had windows broken sometime during the disorder. Two days later, Cureti would identify a homeless twenty-eight-year-old Black man named Jackie Ford as one of those responsible, indicating that she was still in her business when some of its windows were broken. Several businesses a block to the north also had windows broken. Some of the people who attacked the branch of the Wohlmuth Clothing store, a billiard parlor, and a saloon around West 118th Street may have come along the street from 7th Avenue to avoid the increasing police violence on that street. The billiard hall and saloon both responded to being targeted by displaying signs identifying them as “colored” businesses.

In contrast to the continuing disorder on the avenues, West 125th Street had become relatively quiet by the time sixteen-year-old Lloyd Hobbs and his fifteen-year-old brother Russell came out of the Apollo Theater when the show ended at 12:30 AM. They had seen broken windows in some stores and unusually large numbers of people and police on 125th Street west of 8th Avenue on their way to the theater. Leaving four hours later, they and the other audience members encountered “general disorder.” A crowd on the corner of 7th Avenue drew the boys’ attention, and they went to find out what was happening. As they walked toward 7th Avenue, Fred Campbell drove through the intersection. Before the boys could see anything at the corner, police pushed the group up 7th Avenue, moving people away from 125th Street as they had been doing throughout the disorder. As the Hobbs brothers were carried along the sidewalk up 7th Avenue by the crowd and Campbell drove up the avenue in his car, they saw businesses with broken windows as far north as 128th Street.

As Campbell collected the receipts from his barber’s shop at 131st street about 12:35 AM, he watched as a group of Black men and women broke the display windows of a butcher shop on the other side of 7th Avenue. They took hams from the window without interference before police arrived. What Campbell saw was likely a radio car containing Patrolman McInerney and Watterson. Around this time they encountered “quite a crowd breaking windows” around 130th Street. After the crowd scattered uptown, the patrolmen drove south on 7th Avenue. As they came to 128th Street around 12:45 AM, the patrolmen crossed paths with the Hobbs brothers at 2150 7th Avenue, Louis Eisenberg’s auto parts store. The boys had encountered a group of people milling about in front of the store talking. The patrolmen decided to disperse the crowd. Although they would later claim that the noise of breaking glass drew their attention to the store where they saw Lloyd Hobbs in the window display passing out merchandise, seven witnesses said the boy was among the group standing on the street when the radio car pulled up. Marshall Pfifer and Samuel Pitts were still on opposite sides of that intersection watching events on 7th Avenue. By this time other local residents had joined them. Howard Malloy and Arthur Moore were out on the street to get ice-cream for their wives, who were in the Moore's apartment in 213 West 128th Street, drawn into the disorder like Charles Saunders and Hezekiah Wright had been while getting cigarettes. As they arrived at the northwest corner of 128th and 7th Avenue, they saw a "commotion" on the block of 7th Avenue to the south. So too did John Bennett, who lived at 2154 7th Avenue, and was likely on the corner with Malloy, Moore and Pitts. Joseph Hughes was watching from his apartment in 201 West 128th Street. Warren Wright was standing in the entrance to the apartments above 2150 7th Avenue on the other side of the group in front of the auto parts store.

As the police radio car came to a stop, Patrolman John McInerney jumped out with his pistol in his hands. Fearing a beating from the police, the boys and the others in front of the store ran up 7th Avenue. McInerney chased after them; Waterson remained in the car, reversing it back up 7th Avenue behind his partner. When the fleeing group got to West 128th Street, Lloyd Hobbs turned left on to West 128th Street, breaking from the others including his brother Russell, who crossed the street and continued running up 7th Avenue. He may have decided to head back towards his family’s home on St. Nicholas Avenue. When McInerney reached the corner, he raised his pistol and shot the boy. He later claimed that he saw that Hobbs had items from the store in his hands and called out to him to stop. The Black men watching saw nothing in the boy’s hands and heard no call from the patrolman. They did see Hobbs fall to the ground after the bullet hit his right side, went through his abdomen, and lodged in his right wrist. The gunshot would not have been the only one echoing around Harlem at this time, noise that signaled that McInerney’s action was part of the intensifying violence of the police response.

Waterson reversed the radio car into 128th Street, grabbed a rifle, and went to McInerney’s aid. As the residents on the street looked on, the two patrolman loaded Lloyd Hobbs into their car and drove him to Harlem Hospital. Russell Hobbs had not seen the shooting. When he returned to 128th Street after the police car left, he learned from the crowd at the scene that it was his brother who had been shot. He immediately ran home to tell his parents, Lawyer and Mary Hobbs.

Around the same time that McInerney shot Lloyd Hobbs, James Wrigley was struck on the head by a stone thrown at him at 7th Avenue and 126th Street. The forty-nine-year-old white manager of a security guard service had come to Harlem when he heard of the disorder to supervise staff protecting stores in the area. He suffered a head injury and cuts about both eyes and may have been knocked unconscious. Police found Wrigley lying on the street. He, like Hobbs, was loaded into a radio car and transported to Harlem Hospital.
10:00 PM to 10:30 PM Around 10:00 PM, violence away from 125th Street intensified. That change marked a shift in the disorder from a protest focused on the Kress store to a broader attack on Harlem’s white businesses and white men and women on the streets. The correspondent for the Afro-American and other journalists on 125th Street noticed what he described as a change to “promiscuous stoning and destruction of property” although they appear to have remained with police in the vicinity of the Kress store. The spreading violence also attracted the attention of the residents of the neighborhood, with some gathering on 7th Avenue to see what was happening.

While some of those in the crowds unable to get near the Kress store had been moving south on 7th Avenue since around 8:30PM, it was not until 10:00 PM that violence was reported below 125th Street. Some of that violence targeted police. Patrolman Charles Robbins, a crew member of one of the emergency trucks that served as the Police Department’s riot squad, was hit over the head with an iron bar in the vicinity of 124th Street by someone who police did not apprehend. Those circumstances indicated considerable disorder in the area despite the presence of police. Somehow Robbins must have ended up in the midst of the people on the sidewalks and in the street, as he was hit by someone rather than by an object thrown from a distance, as Detective Roge had been minutes earlier at the other end of the block. Police must have been outnumbered and not in control of the area to be unable to identify and arrest the person who hit the patrolman. It may have been during these clashes between police and some of those on the streets that Joseph Sarnelli was attacked while closing his barber shop in the Hotel Theresa, which spanned the block of 7th Avenue between 125th and 124th Streets. Three Black men smashed their way into the business, he alleged, and demanded his razors. As Sarnelli struggled with the men, Patrolman Thomas Jordan came to his aid. While he was able to prevent the attempted robbery, the officer failed to arrest any of the men. The struggles of police to control crowds outside the barber shop made this a possible time for robbery of Sarnelli, which was otherwise difficult to reconcile with the large number of police in the area. It could have happened earlier while crowds at 125th and 7th Avenue were at their height, although they were focused on police. The direct confrontations with store owners involved in a robbery were rare during the disorder, but could be examples of those willing to break the law taking advantage of the disorder.

If police were not in control of the area around 124th Street, officers had yet to be deployed further south around 121st Street where one or more Black individuals allegedly attacked another white man, thirty-four-year-old Anthony Cados. He reported the assault only to the ambulance doctor called to treat him for cuts to his head. Cados lived a little over ten blocks to the south, so was likely walking somewhere on the street or perhaps coming from work at a business that had recently closed. Those who targeted him were echoing the attacks on white men encountered on the street on 125th Street and in the blocks of 7th Avenue to its north. With groups only beginning to move from 125th Street, white residents and visitors were still likely unaware of the disorder and the danger it could pose to them. Edward Genest, a white sailor likely visiting the neighborhood, may also have been assaulted around this time. He was stabbed, allegedly by Black assailants, closer to 125th Street, at 7th Avenue and 123rd Street. Stabbing, typical at other times, was unusual during the disorder, when most assaults involved throwing objects or beatings. Whenever the assault occurred, no police were present to intervene or arrest whoever targeted the sailor. Groups moving down 7th Avenue likely also broke windows at this time. Channing Tobias, back at his home at 203 West 122nd Street, just off 7th Avenue, after being on 125th Street, heard “the real smash” of windows begin after 10:00 PM. Just which businesses were damaged was not reported.

Another attack on a white man encountered on the street occurred on 7th Avenue north of 125th Street around the same time. Forty-four-year-old George Anton suffered cuts on his hands, head, and knees at the hands of several allegedly Black assailants on the block between 126th and 127th Streets. Like Genest, he had come from outside Harlem, either to visit or to work. Police were beginning to be deployed in this area at the time of the attack but were not close enough to intervene or for Anton to report the assault. Again, only hospital staff who treated him recorded the attack.

Increasing numbers of residents began to appear on the street in response to noise of the crowds and breaking glass as well as the spread of news about events on 125th Street. Not everyone who became aware of the disorder was moved to investigate. “The real smash” of windows Channing Tobias heard begin after 10:00 PM did not cause him to venture back to the street, perhaps because he already knew the cause. Mary Hobbs, whose sons Lloyd and Russell had walked through the crowds and passed damaged windows to go to a show at the Apollo Theatre at 7:30 PM, heard about the “riot” at her home on St. Nicholas Avenue and 126th Street around 10:00 PM. Although she “got all excited,” Hobbs decided it was a “fake.” Samuel Pitts, however, decided to “go and see what it’s all about.” His wife had woken him at 10:00 PM to tell him “she heard that a kid was killed in Kress store.” He went to the western corner of 7th Avenue and 128th Street to investigate. There he joined others standing on the wide sidewalk and sometimes in the street watching the crowds and police and “talking about the riot.” Pitts remained at the corner for around two hours. Marshall Pfifer arrived on the corner across 7th Avenue opposite Pitts, having come from his home to the east on 128th Street around the same time. A crowd of spectators gathered there too. Pfifer would watch events on the avenue for even longer than Pitts, not leaving until 2:30 AM.

As Pitts, Pfifer, and the other spectators arriving on 7th Avenue watched, more windows were broken in Lazar’s cigar store and Alfonso Principe’s saloon in the block between 127th and 128th Streets. Spectators would also have seen more police deployed from 125th Street arriving and driving by in radio cars. Residents watching events added to the complexity of the disorder. Not only did their presence make it difficult to assess how many people participated in the violence, they also contributed to the fluidity of that violence. Watching provided the opportunity to participate. A change from breaking windows to taking merchandise from those windows was likely fueled in part by spectators who decided to act. Leroy Gillard, a forty-six-year-old unemployed Black man, may have been one such resident. He lived on 128th Street just off 7th Avenue so may have been drawn to the street as Pitts and Pfiffer had been. Gillard would have been familiar with the tailor’s shop behind the building that faced 7th Avenue, across 128th Street from where Pitts stood. While staff remained in the businesses in the block of 7th Avenue to the south whose windows had been broken, the owner of the tailor's shop, Morris Sankin, had closed his business at 9:00 PM and left for his home in the Bronx. Likely because he was not there, when a group of people broke the store windows at 10:10 PM, several people went into the store. Gillard was allegedly among them, taking two suits of clothing, items of which he was likely in need. Patrolman Irwin Young saw that happen and arrested Gillard. Police must have only recently arrived at the intersection from 125th Street as the arrest was the first this far north on the west side of 7th Avenue. It was not, however, the patrolman’s first arrest of the evening. Young had arrested Harry Gordon on 125th Street four hours earlier. Further south, in the block north of 125th Street, where Max Greenwald had given up moving merchandise out of his window displays when repeated attacks left him exposed to being hit by rocks and stones being thrown at the store, it would have become possible for individuals to enter the store and begin to take the “about twenty suiting lengths of woolens” that Greenwald reported he lost.

What was happening on 8th Avenue to the west was less clear. Narrower and with the elevated railroad line looming over it, the street was not a major thoroughfare like 7th Avenue and was near the boundary of the area of Black population, so would have been accessible to Black residents. On the other hand, white-owned businesses predominated to a greater degree than on 7th Avenue. The groups of people that James Hughes had passed around 9:30 PM moving up the avenue from 125th Street breaking windows likely continued north but there are no reported incidents to confirm that. The broadening shift to a more general attack on white businesses and individuals on the street saw groups also moving south with similar results. Andy's Florist on the southeast corner of 125th Street, the Arrow Sales 5 & 10c store at 2318 8th Avenue, and vacant storefronts at 2314 8th Avenue, 2320 8th Avenue, and 2324 8th Avenue all likely had windows broken around this time. There were now sufficient police on 125th Street to respond to those attacks, making it likely that it was around this time that Officer St. Louis of the 28th Precinct arrested Viola Woods, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman, for allegedly smashing the window of a vacant store at 2314 8th Avenue with an umbrella. Her arrest also indicated that women remained a prominent part of the crowds around 125th Street even as observers associated the increasing violence with men. Woods, however, proved not to be involved in the damage to the store. The charge against her was later reduced to disorderly conduct, placing her in the crowd near the store, and then dismissed by the magistrate, leaving Woods as simply a bystander mistakenly arrested by police.
Child's restaurant windows broken 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 was "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 Child's 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.”
7:00 PM to 7:30 PM Just after 7:00 PM, a woman on 8th Avenue cried out that a hearse had pulled up at the rear entrance of the Kress store on 124th Street to get the body of the dead boy. Thanks to police clearing the sidewalk in front of the store, there were groups of people on 8th Avenue to hear her call. Some responded by moving to the rear of the store. They may have been joined by residents of a Salvation Army hostel for homeless men located opposite the store. Several police officers had been stationed at the rear entrance earlier by Inspector Di Martini; additional officers followed the crowd from 8th Avenue. Stones were soon being thrown, breaking windows in the Kress store and hitting at least two police officers, Patrolman Michael Kelly, assigned to a radio car, and Detective Charles Foley. Whether the officers were targeted or caught between the crowd and store windows is unclear. Police did not arrest anyone for throwing the stones. Two mounted policemen were moving the crowd away from the rear of the store when Joe Taylor, the Black leader of the Young Liberators, arrived at 124th Street, on his way to 125th Street, having been “put out” of the West 123rd St police station together with others seeking information.

By 7:15 PM, there were no longer groups of people on 124th Street at the rear of the store; the crew of an emergency truck that arrived at 8th Avenue and 124th Street at that time as part of the reinforcements called by Inspector Di Martini found that “everything was quiet.” An ambulance from Harlem Hospital arrived at the same time to treat Patrolman Kelly. His injury was serious enough that he was taken to the hospital for an x-ray. Joe Taylor also left 124th Street around that time, moved on by police he said were shooting their guns in the air. He had heard a rumor that the boy who had been beaten lived at 410 Manhattan Avenue, so headed south to investigate.

Around the same time, 7:15 PM, Inspector Di Martini returned to 125th Street. He found that there too “everything was calm.” There were no people in front of the Kress store, small groups gathered elsewhere on the street, but no “mass demonstration.” Di Martini thought that, as “the people of this part of the city of N. Y. have been very friendly with me,” “they would take my word that no child had been injured.” However, although he “spoke to all of the groups on 125th Street until [he] was hoarse,” they were not convinced.

As Di Martini was futilely speaking with groups gathered around the Kress store, Louise Thompson walked from 7th Avenue to 8th Avenue. With police not permitting people to stand in front of the Kress store, she found “numerous people who were on the corner” and spent “a length of time” talking with them. There were white men and women among the groups Thompson encountered, but “not very many.” More Black residents joined Thompson on 125th Street as rumors spread further through the neighborhood. Charles Romney, a Black West Indian activist involved in a range of political organizations, who was returning home from the YMCA on 135th Street, had noticed crowds on West 117th Street running uptown around 7:00 PM. When he asked “what it was all about,” he was told “that a boy in Kress store was murdered.” Romney followed them “to go to 125th Street to see if I could get any information."

Additional members of the Young Liberators had also arrived on 125th Street. At 7:15 PM, a Black reporter for the Afro-American encountered “some white youngsters [who] were passing out handbills” at the corner of 7th Avenue, a leaflet based on the information brought to their office. The mimeographed page had handwritten text at the top that read, “Child Brutally Beaten. Woman attacked by Boss and Cops = Child near DEATH.” The remaining typewritten text read:
ONE HOUR AGO A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD NEGRO BOY WAS BRUTALLY BEATEN BY THE MANAGEMENT OF KRESS FIVE-AND-TEN-CENT STORE.
THE BOY IS NEAR DEATH
HE WAS MERCILESSLY BEATEN BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT HE HAD ‘STOLEN’ A FIVE CENT KNIFE.
A NEGRO WOMAN WHO SPRANG TO THE DEFENSE OF THE BOY HAD HER ARMS BROKEN BY THESE THUGS AND WAS THEN ARRESTED.
WORKERS, NEGROES AND WHITE, PROTEST AGAINST THIS LYNCH ATTACK ON INNOCENT NEGRO PEOPLE. DEMAND THE RELEASE OF THE BOY AND WOMAN.
DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE ARREST OF THE MANAGER RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS LYNCH ATTACK.
DON'T BUY AT KRESS'S. STOP POLICE BRUTALITY IN NEGRO HARLEM.
JOIN THE PICKET LINE

While small groups of people were also gathered on the corner of 7th Avenue and 125th Street, as they were at the other end of the block, the Afro-American reporter found “all was quiet.” However, as he walked along the block toward the Kress store, he found a different situation, “a large number of people between Seventh and Eighth Avenues” and Inspector Di Martini and numerous police. He joined a group asking Di Martini what had happened in the store. A boy caught shoplifting had been let go, but rumors were being spread that he had been beaten or killed, the inspector told them. He also showed them the store window that had been broken. But he would not let reporters into the store or answer their question, "Well, where is the boy?”

When Louise Thompson walked in the opposite direction to the reporter, from 8th Avenue to 7th Avenue, just before 7:30 PM, she saw windows broken in businesses on the same side of 125th Street as the Kress store. As yet, that damage had not spread the length of the block. Channing Tobias, who returned to 125th Street around the time Thompson left, found no windows broken yet east of Blumstein’s store, about halfway between the Kress store and that corner. The scene had “quieted down” from the threatening crowds Tobias had encountered an hour or so earlier. Likely that lack of activity was why Thompson decided now was the time to go to her home, a ten-minute walk from 125th Street, to “tell my people what had happened.”

At 7:30 PM an ambulance arrived in front of Blumstein’s department store on 125th Street, several buildings east of the Kress store. Police had called it to treat Detective Foley, who had an injured shoulder after being hit earlier by a stone thrown by someone in the crowd that attacked the rear of the Kress store. By that time at least some of the police officers who had dispersed that crowd had returned to 125th Street.
6:00 PM to 6:30 PM James Parton and Daniel Miller arrived in front of the Kress store around 6:15 PM. Louise Thompson returned to 125th Street around the same time, making her way from 7th Avenue toward 8th Avenue a little behind the two men. She encountered more people on that block than when she had been pushed out of the Kress store. Small groups talked more excitedly about a range of grievances in addition to the treatment of the boy grabbed in the store: against the agency providing relief for those without work, high rents, prices charged by white businesses and their lack of Black staff. Harry Gordon, a twenty-year-old white student and member of the New York Student League, an organization affiliated with the Communist Party, and two (likely white) companions walking along this block of 125th Street also encountered groups of “excited” people. Unlike Thompson, Gordon claimed he did not know that something had happened in the Kress store. Nor could he get “anything at all” from the groups on the street about the cause of their agitation, likely because he was a white man. He and his companions may have actually have been in the area as part of the Communist Party response to the rumors circulating in Harlem, or, like Channing Tobias, have come for the entertainments of 125th Street at the end of their workday. When Tobias completed his shopping, he came back to 125th Street and 7th Avenue and continued along the street “to go the theatre.” However, he found “the crowd was pretty thick” and “so threatening” that he reconsidered those plans. Although Black residents made up the majority of those who patronized 125th Street in 1935, white men and women from neighborhoods further west and east would have been among the crowds on the street.

Parton and Miller set up their stepladder and banner in front of the Kress store. While street speakers typically set up on the corners on 7th Avenue and Lenox Avenue, speaking elsewhere on the street as Parton and Miller did was not uncommon even if it offered less space for an audience. Communist Party speakers set up in front of the offices of affiliated organizations and had spoken in front of the Empire Cafeteria during their boycott campaign the previous year. Inside the Kress store, the ladder being placed in front of the store caused one of the four staff who remained to call the manager, Jackson Smith, to the front to see what was happening.

Parton climbed the ladder and spoke first. Few in the small groups around the Kress store stopped talking to listen to him, making it difficult to hear his brief appeal for Blacks and whites to come together against the trouble in the store. He then introduced Miller, who climbed the stepladder and started to speak. The white man had spoken only a few words when someone in the crowd threw an object at the Kress store, breaking one of the display windows. Such attacks had not occurred during the campaigns targeting white businesses on 125th Street the previous year; however, windows in the Empire Cafeteria had been broken during the protests organized by the Communist Party. Both Black and white men and women were on street around Miller when he spoke, including Louise Thompson and Harry Gordon.

The sound of breaking glass brought an immediate reaction from the police in front of the store entrance. Patrolman Shannon pulled Miller down from the stepladder and arrested him. Other patrolmen cleared the sidewalk as the people around Miller scattered. Channing Tobias watched from that side of the street as “a policemen came up on the sidewalk on his horse and attempted to charge through the crowd.” Seeing the crowd come back after the officer went by, Tobias “decided it was going to be some real trouble,” and left for home. Police officers followed some of the scattering crowd, including Louise Thompson and Harry Gordon, across 125th Street, pushing groups east away from the Kress store and towards 7th Avenue. About 300 feet further down the block, Parton climbed a lamppost and again spoke to the crowd, saying “that a boy had been killed and that a crowd should gather in protest.”
5:30 PM to 6:00 PM 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 what had happened, he interviewed Jackson Smith, the store manager, and Charles 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 Communist Party message. In contrast, the Garveyites and Sufi Abdul Hamid’s Negro Industrial and Clerical Alliance 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.