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Jacob Solomon's grocery store looted
The attack on Solomon's store was one of only four incidents reported on 5th Avenue; two occurred on blocks north of the grocery store, the other on West 116th Street. In part that absence of disorder reflected a lack of targets. 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 men who attacked the store may have come from Lenox Avenue, a block to the west, where multiple attacks on businesses were reported around this time. Humphrey lived at 55 West 132nd Street, in the middle of the block between 5th Avenue and Lenox Avenue three blocks north of Solomon's store, closer to the crowds and violence on Lenox Avenue than the apparently relatively incident-free 5th Avenue.
Humphrey appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, a proceeding reported only in the Home News. Magistrate Renaud held Humphrey for a grand jury on bail of $1000. There were no newspaper reports on the subsequent steps in his prosecution. His District Attorney's case file recorded that the grand jury sent him to the Court of Special Sessions rather than indicting him and sending him to the Court of General Sessions. Their decision to charge him with a misdemeanor rather than a felony likely reflected the low value of the goods - $2.50 - allegedly found in his possession. According to the 28th Precinct Police Blotter, the judges found Humphrey guilty and on April 17 sentenced him to thirty days in the Workhouse.
It is not clear if Solomon remained in business after the attack on his store. The store did not appear in the MCCH Business survey, which included no businesses at 2100 5th Avenue. However, the Tax Department photograph taken a few years later does showed a store with the window signs characteristic of grocery stores, and a truck parked outside filled with boxes and milk containers that could have been stock for the store.
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- "Transcripts of Police Blotter - Precinct 28, March 19 & 20, 1935," MCCH - Juvenile Delinquency - 1935-36, Departmental Correspondence. Box 34, Folder 1 (Roll 171), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945.
- Harlem Magistrates Court docket book
- District Attorney's Closed Case Files, 203991 (1935) (New York City Municipal Archives).
- Helen Worden, "Old Mott Home Proud in Its Harlem Setting," New York World-Telegram, March 21, 1925, 29.