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

James Bright arrested

Sometime during the disorder Detective Perretti of the 6th Division arrested James Bright, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, for allegedly breaking windows in the drug store at 339 Lenox Avenue, on the northwest corner of 127th Street. Perretti likely arrested a second man, Arthur Bennett, also a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, at the same time, also for breaking the store's windows. There was no information on the circumstances of the arrests. While other stores in the surrounding blocks of Lenox Avenue had windows broken and goods taken, police made few arrests as they lacked the numbers to control the many crowds on the streets. However, other officers made arrests for alleged looting at Frank De Thomas' candy store next to the drug store on West 127th Street and at Sol Weit and Isaac Popiel's grocery store two buildings north on Lenox Avenue, suggesting that officers were stationed near this intersection to complement those patrolling the avenue in radio cars and Emergency trucks. Bright did not live close to the store, but five blocks north, at 43 West 133rd Street. He could have made his way down Lenox Avenue as part of one of the groups moving through the area attacking businesses or as a spectator following the crowds.

A story in the Home News was the only evidence that connected Bright, and Arthur Bennett, to 339 Lenox Avenue. Bright appeared in lists of those charged with disorderly conduct published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. Inexplicably, the 28th Precinct Police blotter records "Annoyed pedestrians" as the charge against him; no one else arrested during the disorder other than Bennett was charged with that offense. Bright appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with disorderly conduct, with Detective Perretti recorded in the docket book as the arresting officer. Bright had allegedly thrown "stones through the window of the store at 339 Lenox Ave.," according to the Home News story on those proceedings. However, if police had evidence of such an attack Bright would have been charged with malicious mischief. Charging him instead with disorderly conduct generally indicated that they only had evidence that he had been in the crowd around the store when the windows were broken. The continued references to breaking windows as Bright's offense suggests that in his case he may have done insufficient damage to warrant being charged with the more serious offense. Magistrate Renaud convicted Bright of disorderly conduct. He returned to the court for sentencing on March 23, and received a term of one month in the workhouse "for breaking windows" from Magistrate Renaud in proceedings reported in the Afro-American, New York Age, Daily News, and New York Times. None of those stories gave an address for the store whose windows Bright had allegedly broken.

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