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

John Eigler assaulted

John Eigler, a forty-five-year-old man, was walking on 7th Avenue near 122nd Street, only a few feet from his home at 163 West 122nd Street, when he was "struck by an unknown object...thrown by some unknown colored men," according to a hospital record. Dr Payne attended Eigler at Harlem Hospital, fourteen blocks north on Lenox Avenue, at 1:00 AM, so he was likely injured sometime around 12:30 AM. At that time the intersection was the site of attacks on passing cars driven by whites and nearby stores and efforts by police to disperse those crowds that by this time involved extensive gunfire.

The hospital record described Eigler's injury as a "laceration of scalp." He did not appear in any of the lists of the injured published in the press. After being seen by the physician, Eigler went home, his injury evidently not serious enough for him to be admitted to the hospital.

The hospital records did not include information on Eigler's race. However, his identification of his alleged assailants as "colored" suggested that he was a white man. The block of 122nd Street east of 7th Avenue where Eigler lived was in transition in the 1930s, from mostly white and Puerto Rican residents in 1930 to all Black residents by 1940.

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"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).