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

Joseph Payne arrested

Officer Archbold of the 30th Precinct arrested fifty-year-old Joseph Payne some time during the disorder for smashing the store window and taking food from "a chain store at 135th St. and Lenox Ave," according to a story in the Home News. The store was likely the A & P grocery store at 510 Lenox Avenue, the only chain grocery store near that intersection in the MCCH business survey. The only reference to the looting is a Home News report of the appearance in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court of Payne and two other Black men, twenty-eight-year-old Raymond Taylor and forty-two-year-old Preston White. Like Payne, White allegedly smashed the store window and took food, whereas Taylor was arrested for "stealing a quantity of groceries." All three men were arrested "in the store." While Officer Archbold also arrested White, Officer D. Conn of the 24th Precinct is recorded as having arrested Taylor in the Magistrates Court docket book. There is no mention of the value of the merchandise the men allegedly stole. Only one other reported event occurred on Lenox Avenue north of West 135th Street, the arrests of Charles Alston, Edward Loper, Albert Yergen, and Ernest Johnston for allegedly shooting at police at 138th Street at the very end of the disorder. Police likely arrested Payne after 12:30 AM, when officers appear to have begun patrolling this far north on Lenox Avenue. Payne lived at 28 East 128th Street, on Harlem's eastern boundary and much farther from the grocery store than Taylor or White.



Payne, White, and Taylor appeared in the lists of those charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. When they appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge against them was originally recorded as burglary, with Payne and White denied bail, and Taylor held on bail of $1,000. The Home News mistakenly reported Payne as younger, twenty-three years-of-age, and different bail decisions for Payne and Taylor: $1,500 for Payne and $500 for Taylor.

The three men returned to the Magistrates Court on March 26, at which point all had the charge against them reduced from burglary to disorderly conduct. That change is recorded in the docket book in the same handwriting as the outcome of the case, a quite different hand than the original entry. The new charge indicated that police did not have evidence either that the men had damaged the store or taken merchandise from it. Instead, typically those who faced that charge had been part of crowds in the area of attacks on businesses and looting. Police could have found them in the damaged and looted store, if the Home News reported that detail of their arrest accurately.

Magistrate Ford convicted all three men, sending Payne and White to the Workhouse for five months and twenty-nine days, and suspending Taylor's sentence. There is no information on why Taylor received a different sentence.

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