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Kress 5, 10 & 25c store front windows broken
After the windows were broken, police officers moved in to arrest Miller and push people away from the store, most of whom ran across 125th Street to the opposite sidewalk. No one was arrested for breaking the window. Harry Gordon was arrested soon after trying to speak to the crowd on 125th Street east of Kress' store. A few minutes later, around 6:45 PM, three men began picketing in front of Kress' store. They too were soon arrested by police. Three to five police radio cars, an emergency [riot] truck, and six mounted policemen struggled to keep people from the store. No further objects appear to have been thrown at Kress' store front windows at this time. Soon after West 125th Street was cleared, around 7 P.M., people pushed on to 8th Avenue saw a hearse stop behind the store on West 124th Street, triggering rumors it had come to pick up the body of the boy who had been arrested, and a rush to the rear of the store that saw windows there broken.
Sustained and extensive attacks on stores on 125th Street came sometime after those rear windows were broken. Another brick hit Kress' front windows around 10:40 PM, allegedly thrown by William Ford, who then called for others on the street to attack police. Louise Thompson described a group breaking though the police cordon around 125th Street to break all but a few windows in the store, in the context of an exaggerated claim about the extent of smashed windows, and Kress' store does appear on the list of businesses with broken windows compiled by a La Prensa reporter who walked down 125th Street. But a reporter for the Afro-American wrote that the store "suffered very little loss on the front." The store manager, Jackson Smith, confirmed that later in a public hearing of the MCCH. Of the eighteen windows facing 125th Street and in the vestibule, only four were damaged. Repairs to the front of the store next day appeared to have focused on only two sections of the store window on the right side of the left entrance, in a photograph published in the New York American, and on the left side of the right entrance, where a ladder can be seen in Universal newsreel footage. Those repairs cannot have taken long. A photograph of Kress' store published in the Daily News on March 21 showed intact store windows guarded by two police officers. A sustained police presence during the disorder appeared to have protected the front of the store. That was the opinion of Channing Tobias, the fifty-three-year-old Black secretary of the Colored Division of the National Council of the YMCA, who told E. Franklin Frazier that "I guess it was because police were on guard" that Kress' store "got only a small window smashed." Police established a cordon in front of the store after it closed. Officers were still there around 10 PM, when Detective Henry Roge was hit by a rock while standing in front of the store, and after a window was broken at 10:40 PM, there were officers able to arrest William Ford. Later in the evening, the police cordon extended to cover 125th Street from 8th Avenue to Lenox Avenue, with Kress' store remaining at its center, and as the base for police responding to the disorder.
A window being smashed as a speaker began to address a crowd in front of Kress' store featured in narratives in the New York Times, New York Sun, and Home News. Only the New York Times and New York Sun mentioned the second object and smashed window. A broken window, without reference to a speaker, is reported by the Daily News, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York Age, and Pittsburgh Courier. No mention of a window in Kress' store being smashed at the beginning of the disorder appears in the narratives published in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Journal, New York American, Daily Mirror, and New York Post, and the Afro-American reported only the damage visible the next day. In the MCCH public hearings, Inspector Di Martini, Patrolman Moran, Jackson Smith, the store manager, and Louise Thompson all discussed how the window was broken. In the MCCH's final report, the arrests of Miller and Gordon police made in the aftermath of the window being broken were included as examples of "actions on the part of the police [that] only tended to arouse resentment in the crowd."
The Kress 5, 10 & 25c store appeared in the MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935 and was still visible in the Tax Department photograph from 1939–1941.
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This page references:
- "5 Dying and Scores Wounded as Race Riots in Harlem Subside," Home News, March 20, 1935 [clipping].
- Interview of Channing Tobias by E. Franklin Frazier, August 10, 1935, Harlem Survey: March 19th, Box 131-123, Folder 7, E. Franklin Frazier Papers (Moorland Spingarn Research Center, Howard University).
- "Numerosos Establecimientos Hispanos Apedreados y Saqueados por la Turba," La Prensa, March 21, 1935, 1.
- "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.
- [Photograph] "Where the Riot rumor started," New York American, March 21, 1935.
- "Dodge Begins Investigation of Worst Disorders Here in Years," New York Sun, March 20, 1.
- "False Report Held Cause of Harlem Race Riot," Pittsburgh Courier, March 23, 1935, 1.
- "Harlem Race Riot: 1 Dead; Cops Fire; Women Join Mob of 4,000 in Battering Stores," Daily News, March 20, 1935, 3.
- [Photograph] "Where the trouble started...," Daily News, March 21, 1935, 30-31.
- Public Hearings - Riot (May 1935), 8, Subject Files, Box 410, Folder 7 (Roll 195), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
- "Twelve-Year Old Lad Starts Riot On 125th Street," New York Age, March 23, 1935, 1.
- Louise Thompson, "What Happened in Harlem: An Eye-Witness Account," New Masses (April 2, 1935): 16.
- The Negro in Harlem: A Report on Social and Economic Conditions Responsible for the Outbreak of March 19, 1935 (1935), 9, Subject Files, Box 167, Folder 8 (Roll 76), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
- S. H. Kress & Co. 5-10-25c store, 256 West 125th Street, c. 1939-1941.
- "Highlights on the Harlem Front," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 20, 1935, 2.
- [Newsreel] "Harlem Heavily Guarded After Night of Riots," Universal Newsreels, March 20, 1935, 00:08 (YouTube).