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James Wrigley assaulted
Press reports offered conflicting accounts of how he came to be injured that put the case in different categories of assault. As only the New York Times provided a specific time for the assault on Wrigley, and a detailed account of his injuries, Wrigley has been categorized as having been hit by rocks. The newspaper’s story included Wrigley among the victims of “stone-throwers,” “struck by a stone at 126th Street and Seventh Avenue, receiving cuts about both eyes and a serious head injury, possibly a concussion of the brain.” The Home News likewise cast him as “another victim of the rock hurlers,” but then proceeded to report Wrigley was “set upon by several colored men [and] beaten into unconsciousness before he was able to draw his gun.” The New York Evening Journal also reported Wrigley had been “seized and beaten,” an attack that apparently did not draw attention as the story went on recount that “Radio patrol cars found him lying on the pavement, unconscious, suffering from concussion of the brain.” The Daily News, which published no details of the assault, is the only other publication to report Wrigley was found unconscious in an alley. The AP reporter’s brief summary opted for this second narrative, reporting that Wrigley had been attacked by a gang. The New York American, Daily News, New York Post, New York Evening Journal, and Home News only included Wrigley in their lists of the injured. He also appeared in lists of the injured in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide. Wrigley's injury was apparently serious enough that he was one of the eight men that the New York Herald Tribune reported as still in hospital on March 21.
The area where Wrigley was struck down saw a cluster of assaults on whites throughout the disorder, including other civilians and police hit by rocks, as well as crowds breaking windows and looting. Those hit by objects commonly suffered head injuries, as Wrigley did, although no others are reported as having been knocked unconscious.
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- "Injured," Daily News, March 20, 1935, 3
- "5 dying and Scores Wounded as Race Riots in Harlem Subside," Home News, March 20, 1935 [clipping]
- “List of Victims," New York Evening Journal, March 20, 1935, 1, 3.
- “List of Casualties in Riots,” New York Post, March 20, 1935, 6.
- “Riot’s Casualties," New York American, March 21, 1935, 2.
- "Police Shoot Into Rioters; Kill Negro in Harlem Mob. 3,000 Storm Store After Boy Knife Thief, 16, Is Reported Lynched-Several Shot - Many Felled by Stones," New York Times, March 20, 1935, 1.
- "650 Police Patrol Harlem to Block Renewed Rioting," New York Herald Tribune, March 21, 1935, 1, 2.
- "Harlem Race Riot: 1 Dead; Cops Fire; Women Join Mob of 4,000 in Battering Stores," Daily News, March 20, 1935, 3.
- Percy Gould, "20,000 Fight Police in Orgy of Looting," New York Evening Journal, March 20, 1935, 1.