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• 1 2021-12-22T01:27:20+00:00 Koch Department store windows not broken 50 plain 2024-05-31T19:48:17+00:00 Koch's Department store at 132 West 125th Street "was unmolested" during the disorder, according to Morris Weinstein, the manager, interviewed after the disorder by a reporter for the New York Age. He called that "action of the mob" "one of the finest tributes that could be paid Koch's." For Weinstein, the reason his store had no windows broken or stock taken was that "since we reopened last May we have consistently striven to give not only jobs but positions as well to colored men and women." A "white worker, eye-witness for several hours of the scene along 125th Street and Seventh Avenue" also referred to Koch's store as "not molested," when interviewed in the Daily Worker, similarly explaining that situation as a result of the owners having been "forced to employ Negroes as a result of recent struggles." One Black employee, James Hughes, did tell his probation officer that he was on his way to Koch's store to protect it from the crowds breaking windows when he was arrested for allegedly throwing a stone that hit Detective Henry Roge in front of Kress' store. That claim may have reflected an effort to mitigate his sentence more than a widely shared recognition that the store warranted special treatment. The absence of damage to the store, if not the motive for it, was also indirectly confirmed by the La Prensa reporter who walked along this block of 125th Street recording store with damaged windows, and did not include Koch's Department store in their list. There were significantly fewer damaged stores reported in 125th Street east of 7th Avenue than in the block to the west, but several of those businesses were near Koch's department store: the Busch Kredit jewelry store two buildings east was the only store on the La Prensa reporter's list on that side of the department store; to the west of the store, the Hobbs dress shop at 150 West 125th Street also had windows broken. (The large white-owned Ludwig Baumann furniture store between the dress shop and Koch's store was not listed as being damaged.)
  
  
  
  Henry Koch opened the store in 1891, the first major business in what had until then been a residential area. In 1930, Henry's son William T. Koch had sold the department store, to A. Schaap and Sons, clothing jobbers, the New York Times reported. While that story quoted Koch as obliquely saying that the closing of the store was "but another token of the changed neighborhood," the New York Age more directly stated that as Black residents moved to the area, he showed them an "antagonistic attitude" and the store "became more and more exclusive, catering to the wealthier white residents," losing "so much trade they were forced out of business." The new owners operated it as "the 125th Street Store," which advertisements in the New York Amsterdam News indicate operated at least in part as a discount store, selling the stock of bankrupt businesses.
  
  Morris Weinstein leased the store in 1934, operating it under the Koch name. Shortly before the renovated store opened on June 14, Weinstein announced "a third of his clerical staff will be colored," the New York Age reported. That decision came just as a new wave of picketing and boycotts targeting white-owned businesses on West 125th Street that did not employ Black staff began. Sufi Abdul Hamid and members of his Negro Industrial and Clerical Alliance had begun picketing the Woolworth's 5c & 10c store a block west at 210 West 125th Street in mid-May, 1934, making their way on to the pages of the New York Amsterdam News when prominent clergyman Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. was photographed after he joined them two weeks later. Hamid's radicalism prompted an alliance of social and political organizations, fraternal lodges and churches to come together in the Citizens League for Fair Play (CLFP), first targeting Blumstein's department store with a boycott and picket campaign. Against that backdrop, the New York Age, a staunch proponent of the CLFP, reported Weinstein's decision to hire Black staff as a result of "admitting the justice of the Negro's demand that employment be given qualified Negroes in Harlem stores where the majority of the trade is colored." West Indian writer and social commentator Claude McKay presented Weinstein as motivated more by self-interest, that "the employment of colored clerks might effect not only better relations between white employers and colored consumers, but also bugger business." McKay added the rumor, "never admitted by either side," that Weinstein struck "a secret agreement that the Negro Industrial and Clerical Alliance should boost [Koch's Department store] among the people of Harlem." The New York Age claimed the role of selecting staff for the organizations it supported. One New York Age story, refuting attacks on the tactics of the CLFP by William H. Davies, identified Miller of the African Patriotic League as "the man chosen to select the Negro personell [sic] of Koch's." That organization took a leading role in organizing the pickets for the CLFP campaign. A week later, Vere Johns, a columnist for the New York Age, claimed Rev. Johnson, the leader of the CLFP, and the African Vanguard, helped choose the staff.
  
  After Blumstein agreed to hire Black staff in August 1934, Weinstein more prominently promoted the Black staff of Koch's store. Where the first advertisements for Weinstein's store somewhat generically announced that it was a "New Store; New Deal, New People; New Policy, The Store With a Heart," an August advertisement more directly addressed how different its staffing was to its neighbors on 125th Street, with a banner that read "We Lead For Fair Play! Let Others Follow! There is No Distinction of Race, Creed or Color at H. C. F. Koch & Co." That same month Weinstein told the New York Amsterdam News that the store had fifty-seven Black sales girls, stock men, porters, and elevator men in a staff of 125 employees, at least four or five times the proportion of Black employees as any other business on 125th Street that spoke to the reporter. Among the more prominent activities Weinstein undertook to further expand his appeal to Black shoppers was a "Three Day Scottsboro Rally" in November 1934, with a percentage of the sales receipts donated to the defense of the Scottsboro Boys.
  
  In 1937 Koch's store was sold to Samuel Kanter, who reopened it "redecorated, renovated and modernized" in April 1937 as Kanter's Department Store, a promotional story in New York Amsterdam News reported. He expected "to create more and better jobs for the people in the community," Kanter told the newspaper, going on to say "at the present time, I am in favor of employing at least twenty-five percent Negro help, perhaps more." The store does not appear to have promoted its Black staff to the same extent Weinstein had, as when a new wave of protests began in 1938, a spokesman contacted the New York Amsterdam News "seeking to clarify any mis-apprehension as to the number of Negro employees in their store." The list provided to the newspaper identified nearly thirty Black staff, "most of whom were employed in the same capacities as others." It is Kanter's Department store that was photographed by the Tax Department between 1939 and 1941.