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Joseph Mitchell, "Poor Housing and Idleness Cause Unrest," New York World-Telegram, March 20, 1935, 2.
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Black-owned business signs (6)
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2023-10-25T03:27:48+00:00
Six businesses were identified as having signs in their windows identifying them as Black owned. Stories in both white and Black newspapers presented such signs as a more widespread part of the disorder and as a key reason why Black-owned businesses were generally spared from damage and not looted. On placards and directly on windows with whitewash or soap were written “Colored,” "Black," and “This Store Owned by Colored,” the Afro-American reported. Three of the identified businesses fitted those generalizations, with a reporter for La Prensa describing signs that read "Colored" on a billiard hall and the Castle Inn on Lenox Avenue, and a sign reading "This is a Store Owned By Colored" in the Monterey Luncheonette reported by the Afro-American. Three other stores reportedly used a variation on those signs. Seven signs identifying a store named “Winnette’s Dresses” as a “Colored Store” are visible in both a photograph of an arrest taken during the disorder published in the Daily News, and a photograph taken the morning after the disorder showing a group of Black boys in front of the store published in the Afro-American.
The sign on the Williams's drug store used the same phrase, "Colored Store" with the additional phrase "Nix Jack," repeating the combination twice on its side windows. There is no information on the meaning of the phrase "Nix Jack." Roi Ottley, writing in his column in the New York Amsterdam News about the looting during the disorder as targeted at white-owned businesses, ended with an echo of that phrase: "THIS IS A COLORED COLUMN, NIX JACK!" The Cozy Shoppe customized the phrase to fit its name, rendering it as "Colored Shoppe." The Home News reporter departed from those descriptions, apparently confusing the nature of the signs displayed. Explaining how it was that "Most of the damage was done to shops which were known to be operated by white persons," the reporter claimed, "The colored persons who owned stores protected their shops against vandalism by picketing their establishments. They carried signs stating that the store was operated by colored people." No other sources mention pickets in front of Black-owned stores. There was no mention of signs being displayed in store windows in the Daily Mirror, New York American, New York Sun, or in Harlem's Black newspapers, the New York Age and New York Amsterdam News, or in the MCCH Report.
Signs appeared in Black-owned businesses as a response to windows being broken in nearby stores, providing material evidence that those throwing objects at windows chose their targets rather than being an irrational "mob." In some stories, those attacks were indiscriminate until signs appeared; other stories leave open the possibility that the signs reflected store owners' sense of the targets of those throwing objects at windows. "The mob made no choice, at first, of victims," in the most elaborate story, in the New York Evening Journal. "And then one colored man who owned a small restaurant pasted a sign in the window. It bore one word: 'Colored.' The mob passed him by and when others saw how the 'miracle' was worked, signs flashed up in store windows throughout West Harlem. Those owned by Negroes, in most cases, were not broken into." The dismissive tone of the story was typical of that newspaper's treatment of Black subjects; attributing the posting of signs to an individual and the protection from damage that resulted to a "miracle" diminished the decisions those on the streets made about what stores to target that Black store-owners recognized. By contrast, the Black reporter for the Afro-American, emphasized “Stores owned by colored persons in the rioting area had to rush improvised signs reading ‘Colored, “Black,” “This Store Owned by Colored," but cast the signs as based on an understanding of the intentions of those attacking stores, created "in order to be spared in the rain of bricks, whiskey bottles, and other missiles."
Briefer mentions in other newspaper stories generally echoed that framing. Among Black newspapers, the Norfolk Journal and Guide went furthest in emphasizing that Black-owned businesses initially were damaged: "Some Negro establishments were among the 200 which lost their plate-glass windows and had the window contents looted. Finally, some Negro stores in the affected area...had to resort to self preserving signs such as 'Colored' 'Owned by Colored' and 'Black.'" The Philadelphia Tribune ambiguously alluded to earlier attacks, while also erroneously expanding the violence to homes, reporting "Risks to live became so grave Tuesday night that Negroes put up signs on their stores and homes to indicate 'colored' lived there." Signs are simply presented as a response in the Indianapolis Recorder, "As the swarms of rioters swooped down upon the business district breaking store windows and stealing merchandise signs saying 'Colored Store' went up." Among white newspapers, those brief mentions emphasized the lack of damage to businesses that put up signs, without reference to what had happened earlier. Two such mentions came in additional stories in the New York Evening Journal. "The mob wrath in most instances touched no windows whose proprietors had had opportunity to scribble 'colored' in white chalk on the glass," wrote Joseph Mickler. Robert D. Levit similarly noted, "They carefully left unmolested those store which displayed hastily constructed signs with the word 'Colored.'" The story in the New York Post included a similar description, that "Many Negro storekeepers scrawled on their windows, with soap, the word 'colored' and the heat of the mob was never sufficient to cause the Negroes to attack their own." While stories in the Daily News did not mention signs, they appeared in the background of a photograph of two police officers making an arrest, drawing a mention in the caption: "On the dress store window are signs proclaiming it to be a ‘colored shop,’ to protect it from the raiding marauders."
Two more stories, in the New York Times and New York World-Telegram, described signs in windows the next day rather than during the disorder. Those signs may have gone up after the disorder, as storeowners became aware of details of the previous night's violence, or the white reporters may not have seen those signs during the disorder. The latter seems more likely. The signs in Winnette’s Dresses photographed after the disorder had been present, and photographed, during the disorder; likewise the sign on the Cozy Shoppe window filmed after the disorder was also reported during the disorder. In both the New York Times and New York World-Telegram stories, not only Black owners put up signs. "Negro proprietors had large white-washed signs on their windows announcing that 'This shop is run by COLORED people,'" the New York Times reported, adding, "Several white store owners took the cue and covered their windows with signs announcing that 'This store employs Negro workers.'" The previous year, the boycott campaign had tried to expand the number of stores with Black staff. Newspaper stories offered contradictory claims about whether such businesses were attacked during the disorder: the New York Post and Pittsburgh Courier reported they were spared, the Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide reported they were among those damaged.
A further set of store-owners' responses are included in the New York World-Telegram. "On every Negro store in Harlem today there were signs bearing this legend, 'Colored Store.' One said:-'Do not break this window. This is colored.'" Also, "There are many Chinese restaurants in Harlem, and they have placed similar signs on their windows. Chain stores have filled their windows with empty pasteboard boxes. Others have nailed boards across their windows." The only other mentions of Chinese-owned businesses as targets of attacks were of a single Chinese laundry posting a sign reading "Me Colored Too," reported by the Associated Press, in the New York Herald Tribune and Daily News (two newspapers that otherwise did not mention signs in their stories on the disorder), and in Time Magazine. That sign captured the issue raised by attention to those businesses: how did those attacking white-owned businesses regard those from other ethnic groups. The New York World-Telegram story implied that Chinese-owned businesses, of which there were 209 (3.5%, 209 of 5791) dispersed throughout Black Harlem, were not attacked, that those on the streets during the disorder agreed their owners were "colored too." Newspaper stories in the New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, and New York World-Telegram about the laundry contradicted that view, reporting that the business' windows were broken after the sign was displayed. However, there are no other reports of damaged or looted Chinese-owned stores. By contrast, La Prensa reported several Hispanic-owned businesses that suffered damage and looting, and no mention that such stores sought to identify themselves as a "colored store." The final response described by New York World-Telegram offered further recognition among storeowners of who the violence targeted. Rather than signs identifying why they should be spared from attack, white-owned stores barricaded their windows, seeking to prevent damage from objects that would be thrown at them.
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Looting of Black-owned businesses (?)
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2022-01-19T23:09:15+00:00
Black-owned businesses were not attacked to the same extent as white-owned businesses during the disorder, according to stories in a variety of newspapers and the MCCH report. At least five black-owned businesses did have their windows broken, but there are no reports of any having merchandise taken. Most reported looting occurred some time after attacks on store windows. In the interim, in response to windows being broken, staff and storeowners put up signs in their windows identifying their business as “Colored,” “Black,” and “This Store Owned by Colored,” according to the Afro-American. Seven signs identifying a store named “Winnette’s Dresses” as a “Colored Store” are visible in both a photograph of an arrest taken during the disorder published in the Daily News, and a photograph taken the morning after the disorder published in the Afro-American (the name can be seen in the uncropped version available in Getty Images; the store was at 340 Lenox Avenue, according to a column published in the New York Age in 1934). Embed from Getty Images
Also reported as having similar signs in their windows were Williams's drug store, the Monterey Luncheonette, the Cozy Tea Shoppe, the Castle Inn, and a billiard hall on Lenox Avenue. Such signs appear to have stopped attacks on stores and prevented looting. The extent to which that strategy spared business from damage tends to confirms claims made after the disorder that most of those on the street specifically white-owned businesses, at least when they were aware of the ownership.
Mentions of Black-owned businesses being spared from attack in the Home News, New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York World-Telegram and Afro-American focused on windows being broken, and did not mention looting. A story in the Atlanta World did specify that it was "stores belonging to white merchants" that were looted. Roi Ottley, in his column in the New York Amsterdam News also specified that it was looting that Black-owned businesses avoided: “The marauders, although without leadership, followed a studied program of exclusively looting white businesses.” He expressed the same assessment in more direct terms a week later: "The amazing discrimination manifested in deliberately choosing only stores owned by white people to loot...certainly indicated the direction the protest took...Years of pent-up emotion and resentment flashed their fangs in bitter opposition to the economic inequality imposed on a normally peaceful people." Only one newspaper explicitly contradicted that claim, the Norfolk Journal and Guide, which reported that "Some Negro establishments were among the 200 which lost their plate-glass windows and had the window contents looted." The MCCH Report also included Black-owned business among those looted, in a chronology of the disorder that does not fit with the appearance and impact of signs identifying those businesses reported in other sources. "While, of course, many motives were responsible for the actions of these crowds, it seems that as they grew more numerous and more active, the personality or racial Identity of the owners of the stores faded out and the property itself became the object of their fury. Stores owned by Negroes were not always spared if they happened to be in the path of those roving crowds, bent upon the destruction and the confiscation of property." The MCCH "Subcommittee which Investigated the Disturbances of March 19th" had been more definitive in its initial report on May 29, 1935, writing "Nor is it true that stores owned by Negroes were spared. There is no evidence of any program or leadership of the rioters." While the final version of the Report seems to recognize the evidence of Black-owned stores being spared from attack reported in the press, the fading of that distinction over time is not supported by the lack of reported looting.
The number, nature and location of those enterprises Black-owned businesses also contributed to them not being looted. The MCCH business survey identified 5971 businesses in the blocks of Black Harlem (110th Street to 155th Street, from east of Amsterdam Avenue to west of Madison Avenue); black-owned business constituted only 1690 (28%) of that total. (The survey was undertaken after the disorder, between June and December 1935, by which time there likely had been some changes in Harlem’s business landscape, but few businesses appear to have been forced to close as a result of the disorder). In categorizing business owners, the MCCH survey used "Spanish" (largely Puerto Rican) and Chinese as well as white and "colored" (and on occasion "Jewish" and "Italian"); as sources on looting emphasized that "Spanish" and Chinese businesses were not spared from attack, they are grouped with white-owned businesses in this analysis.
At least one-third of Black-owned businesses did not offer the food, drink or clothing that appear to have been the primary targets of looting. Beauty parlors and barbers were the most common Black-owned businesses; the 230 beauty parlors and 143 barbers made up more than one in every five (22%) of those businesses. The offices of physicians, dentists and lawyers represented another 10% (177 of 1690) of Black-owned businesses, including ninety-eight doctor's offices, fifty-eight dentist's offices, and twenty-one lawyer's offices. Beauty parlors were an overwhelmingly Black-owned enterprise (89.15%, 230 of 258); in the other groups, Black practitioners represented slightly more than half of the total -- 56.3% (143 of 254) of barbers, 55.06% (98 of 178) of physicians, 54.21% (58 of 107) of dentists and 53.86% (21 of 39) of lawyers -- and well above the overall Black-owned share of Harlem's businesses (28%, 1690 of 5971). By contrast, the types of businesses most often looted less often had Black owners than that overall distribution of ownership, with one exception, tailors: Black owners operated 13.96% of grocery stores (67 of 480); 27.75% of restaurants (101 of 364); 5.88% of liquor stores (2 of 34); 9.94% of clothing stores (17 of 171);14.63% of hat stores (6 of 41); 24.55% of shoe repair stores (41 of 167); 1.39% of shoe stores (1 of 72); 19.53% of laundries and cleaners (91 of 466); and 35.79% of tailors (107 of 299).
In addition to not containing the items looted during the disorder, many of those Black professional offices were located above street level, removed from the disorder. Similarly, a proportion of the beauty parlors operated in apartments, also located above street level. In all, between 125th and 135th streets, on 7th Avenue, fourteen of the one hundred Black-owned business (compared to 6 of 181 other businesses), and on Lenox Avenue, eleven of fifty-five Black-owned businesses (compared to 3 of 112 other businesses) were off the street and away from the disorder.
Moreover, a portion of those businesses were located on cross-streets rather than the avenues which ran north-south through Harlem on which attacks on stores and looting took place. Excluding West 116th, 125th, 135th and 145th Streets (which as both transport arteries and sites for businesses were akin to avenues), 767 of 1920 side street businesses were Black-owned (40%, compared to 28% of the total businesses). They made up 45% of all Black-owned businesses (767 of 1690), compared to 27% of businesses owned by other racial groups (1153 of 4281).
The blocks of the avenues on which looting was reported in particular had few Black-owned businesses. Most looting occurred on Lenox Avenue between 125th and 135th Streets, blocks which had fewer Black-owned businesses – 23% (55 of 236) - than those blocks on 7th Avenue to the west – 47% (100 of 212). (Those numbers somewhat exaggerate the possible targets of looting as almost one third of those businesses on 7th Avenue (32 of 100) and 27% (15 of 55) of those on Lenox Avenue were beauty shops or barbers). While a very high proportion of the businesses on 8th and 5th Avenues were also white-owned, there were far fewer businesses on those avenues between 125th and 135th Streets than on 7th and Lenox Avenues: only an average of 13.8 each block on 8th Avenue and 10.375 on each block of 5th Avenue (which had several blocks without any businesses); compared to 20.2 on each block on 7th Avenue and 22.7 on each block on Lenox Avenue. White residents predominatied west of 8th Avenue and east of 5th Avenue, particularly south of 125th Street, while 7th and Lenox Avenues were in the midst of the Black population.
Less looting was reported south of West 125th Street down to West 115th Street, where it was concentrated on 7th Avenue rather than Lenox Avenue. On both avenues there was a smaller proportion of Black-owned businesses than between West 125th and West 135th Streets -- 12.4%, 18 of 145 on Lenox Avenue and approximately 34%, 48 of 141, on 7th Avenue (one side of the street is missing from the survey for several blocks). What focused attention on 7th Avenue in these blocks was its greater number of businesses, on all the blocks down to West 115th Street, whereas Lenox Avenue had few businesses between 123rd and 120th Streets. Reported lootings on Lenox Avenue clustered in blocks which had the highest proportion of white businesses, those closest to the retail centers of 125th Street and 116th Street. South of 125th Street, 5th Avenue was interrupted by Mount Morris Park from 124th to 120th Streets, resulting in a similarly small number of businesses as north of 125th Street. 8th Avenue south of 125th Street was lined with businesses to the same extent as 7th Avenue, none of which were Black-owned (0 of 184), but around those blocks there were diminishing numbers of Black residents.
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Windows broken in Black-owned business (5)
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2022-01-20T18:52:52+00:00
At least five Black-owned businesses had windows broken during the disorder, 7% (5 of 69) of the businesses reported damaged. That proportion is far below the share of Harlem's businesses that had black owners, 28% (1690 of 5791) in the area from 110th Street to 155th Street, east of Amsterdam Avenue to west of Madison Avenue identified by the MCCH business survey taken after the disorder. The limited scale of that damage fits
The five Black-owned businesses that were reported damaged are not clearly at odds with a picture of those on the street directing violence at specific targets. The Manhattan Renting Agency storefront was the office of Everard M. Donald, a twenty-seven-year-old Black real estate broker and owner of a chain of barbers, but also where Hary Pomrinse, a sixty-six-year-old Jewish real estate broker did business. A similar ambiguity surrounded the ownership of the grocery store that had windows broken, a Peace Market operated by followers of Father Divine, a Black religious leader whose theology and claim to be God in a body drew criticism from Harlem's black clergy and leaders. The Peace Food Market name and sign would have identified the store as not being a white-owned business, but Divine's Peace Mission had white members in its Harlem ranks, historian Judith Weisenfeld has shown. That interracialism that may have made the store a target; so too might the controversy Divine provoked within Harlem's Black community.
The nature of the damage done to the other three Black-owned businesses reported to have had windows broken offers another manifestation of how confusion over the ownership of stores, rather than disregard for it, produced attacks on stores. After the front windows of the Williams Drug Store facing 7th Avenue were broken, the owner wrote “Colored Store, Nix Jack” on the side windows on West 127th Street. Those windows were not damaged. Two other businesses that a La Prensa reporter recorded as having damaged windows, a billiard parlor and the Castle Inn saloon on Lenox Avenue south of 125th Street, also put up signs, according to another story in La Prensa. That reporter did not appear to understand the intent of the signs, seeing them as an effort to establish a racial divide in the neighborhood, to segregate Black and white residents, and did not relate them to the damage suffered. However, as the reporters could see the signs as well as broken windows, those stores too had been able to prevent extensive damage by identifying themselves as having Black owners. Other businesses also put up signs, and at least three suffered no damage. The success of that strategy suggests that broken windows in Black-owned businesses resulted from ignorance of who owned them, produced perhaps by residents joining crowds that moved beyond the areas where they lived.
Black-owned businesses being spared from attack are mentioned in the Home News, New York Evening Journal, New York Times, New York Post, New York World-Telegram and Afro-American. [include details here that not in looting of Black owned business page]. The one contrary report was published in the New York Herald Tribune: 40 windows broken in the exclusively Negro section north of 130th St (of 8th Avenue). However, that story misrepresents those blocks, which remained overwhelmingly populated by white-owned businesses. The character of the street did change, but from entirely white-owned businesses from ? to ? Streets, to a small proportion of Black-owned businesses on blocks from ? to ? street. [The one arrest in this area for allegedly breaking windows, of Henry Stewart, involved a white-owned business] If there were another thirty-nine windows broken in this area they too were likely in white-owned businesses.
Police Report on riot for Mayor/MCCH = white stores. However, the MCCH initially concluded that the violence against businesses was indiscriminate: the "Subcommittee which Investigated the Disturbances of March 19th" reported on May 29, 1935, "Nor is it true that stores owned by Negroes were spared. There is no evidence of any program or leadership of the rioters." The final MCCH Report was less definitive, but argued that any discrimination displayed by those on the streets faded over time. "While, of course, many motives were responsible for the actions of these crowds, it seems that as they grew more numerous and more active, the personality or racial Identity of the owners of the stores faded out and the property itself became the object of their fury. Stores owned by Negroes were not always spared if they happened to be in the path of those roving crowds, bent upon the destruction and the confiscation of property." The reported events of the disorder contradict that claim. No Black-owned businesses are among those identified as looted.
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Billiard parlor windows broken
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The billiard parlor at 151 Lenox Avenue, between West 117th Street and West 118th Street, is one of the businesses in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa after he walked along West 116th Street, Lenox Avenue, and West 125th Street on the day after the disorder. The billiard parlor was one of at least six Black-owned businesses that responded to that damage by displaying signs identifying it as a "colored" business, according to another story published in La Prensa. (The MCCH business survey undertaken after the disorder also recorded the billiard parlor as having Black owners). Such signs were not an effort to establish a racial divide in the neighborhood, to segregate Black and white residents, as the author of that story claimed, but an attempt to protect stores from being the target of violence, according to stories in the Home News, New York Evening Journal, New York Times, New York Post, New York World-Telegram, and Afro-American. Those in the crowds on Harlem's streets appear to have largely avoided attacks on Black-owned businesses: only five appear in the sources as having windows broken. In the case of the billiard parlor, as happened with the Williams drug store, the signs may have stopped further damage and prevented looting. There were no Black-owned businesses among those identified as having been looted.
Two other business just north of the billiard parlor appear in the La Prensa reporter's list of those that had broken windows, a branch of the Wohlmuth Tailors chain at 157 Lenox Avenue and the Castle Inn at 161 Lenox Avenue. Additional businesses in the area also likely had broken windows, as the La Prensa reporter concluded the list by noting that it did not include those that had only suffered minor damage ("y otras mas que por ser los danos ocasionados relativamente pequeños no creimus de interes catalogar entre los establecimientos ya mencionados").
No one arrested during the disorder was identified as breaking the store's windows. -
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Castle Inn saloon windows broken
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2023-10-25T21:42:27+00:00
The Castle Inn saloon at 161 Lenox Avenue, between West 117th Street and West 118th Street, is one of the businesses in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa after he walked along West 116th Street, Lenox Avenue, and West 125th Street on the day after the disorder. The saloon was one of at least six businesses that responded to that damage by displaying signs identifying it as a "colored" business, according to another story published in La Prensa. Such signs were not an effort to establish a racial divide in the neighborhood, to segregate Black and white residents, as the author of that story claimed, but an attempt to protect stores from being the target of violence, according to stories in the Home News, New York Evening Journal, New York Times, New York Post, New York World-Telegram, and Afro-American. Those in the crowds on Harlem's streets appear to have largely avoided attacks on Black-owned businesses: only five appear in the sources as having windows broken. In the case of the saloon, as happened with the Williams drug store, the signs may have limited the damage and prevented looting. There are no Black-owned businesses among those identified as having been looted. However, it is possible that the Castle Inn was not a Black-owned business. The MCCH business survey undertaken after the disorder recorded the saloon as having white owners. A notice of a liquor license published in the New York Age in November 1934 identified the owner as John Diodato.
Two other business just near the saloon appear in the La Prensa reporter's list of those that had broken windows, a branch of the Wohlmuth Tailors chain at 157 Lenox Avenue and a billiard parlor at 151 Lenox Avenue. Additional businesses in the area also likely had broken windows as the La Prensa reporter concluded the list by noting that it did not include those that had only suffered minor damage ("y otras mas que por ser los danos ocasionados relativamente pequeños no creimus de interes catalogar entre los establecimientos ya mencionados").
No one arrested during the disorder is identified as having broken the store's windows.