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

James Hayes arrested

Some time during the disorder, Detective Balkin of the 5th Division arrested James Hayes, a sixteen-year-old Black youth, for allegedly breaking the window of a store at 2334 8th Avenue, and taking a baseball bat from the window, according to a report of his appearance in the Magistrates Court in the Home News. Although none of the sources that mention Hayes identify the business, other references identify it as branch of the Liggett Drug Store chain. There is no information on the circumstances of his arrest. The nearby intersection of 8th Avenue and West 125th Street, only a few buildings from Kress' store, saw some of the earliest crowds and violence of the disorder, and a concentration of police, who sought to clear West 125th Street by pushing people on to the avenue. However, there are few other reports of broken windows or looting on 8th Avenue, with most of those attacks on Lenox and 7th Avenues, notwithstanding that almost all the businesses on 8th Avenue were white-owned.

James Hayes is named among those charged with burglary in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Gazette, and in the New York Evening Journal. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, where the charge was recorded as petit larceny not burglary. That charge did not require evidence that Hayes had entered the store to take the bat, as a charge of burglary did. Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions and held him on $500 bail. The 28th Precinct Police Blotter, which also recorded the charge against Hayes as burglary and misspelled his name as Hazel, is the only source for the outcome of that proceeding: a conviction and suspended sentence given on April 1. The blotter also added the detail that he broke the window, rather than reaching through an already broken window. The Home News reported only that "he is said to have stolen a baseball bat from a store window." The article also gave his age as seventeen years, while the blotter and the list in the New York Evening Journal gave his age as sixteen years (the list published in the Black newspapers did not include age or home address). The age in the Magistrates Court docket book is difficult to decipher, appearing to be "10," but is likely a hastily written "16." He was one of the youngest arrested during the disorder, together with John Henry, also aged sixteen years.

Hayes lived at 476 West 141st Street, on Black Harlem's northwest boundary, further from the location of his arrest than most of those caught in the disorder, most of whom lived south of 125th Street or near Lenox Avenue south of 135th Street. 

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