This page was created by Anonymous.

This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

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

James Connel injured

James Connel, a twenty-three-year-old man of unknown race, was injured “in some unknown manner” at Lenox Ave and 125th Street according to a hospital admissions record. He was likely injured sometime around 1:00 AM, as Dr. Payne attended him at Harlem Hospital at 1:30 AM, according to that record. At that time there were assaults, injuries, and attacks on stores on all the blocks of Lenox Avenue from 125th Street up to 134th Street. The noise and crowds may have attracted Connel from his home, only a few blocks from where he was injured, at 62 West 129th Street. That address was in an area occupied almost entirely by Black residents, so Connel was likely a Black man. The hospital records included no information on race. His injury could have come from a police baton, a stone intended for a store window, or from shattering glass. His unwillingness to provide any details to the hospital staff make it more likely he was beaten by police or injured in circumstances related to participating in the disorder.

The hospital record described Connel’s injury was a laceration of the scalp, a head wound suffered by six of those injured (30%). He appeared only in the hospital records; Connel's name was not in any of the lists of those injured published in the press. After being seen by the physician, Connel went home, his injury evidently not serious enough for him to be admitted to the hospital.

This page has tags:

This page references:

"Hospital Admissions, 19-20 March 1935," Subject Files, Box 167, Folder 5 (Roll 76), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).