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Lafayette Market looted
Crowds pushed off the block of West 125th Street around the Kress store toward 7th Avenue later moved up and down the avenues, leading to multiple reports of assaults, broken windows and looting in the area around the Lafayette Market. When some of that violence took place is not specified in the sources, but a cluster did occur between 11 PM and 12.30 AM, including the assault of a white man a few buildings west of the market on 122nd Street and rocks thrown at Fred Campbell's car as he sat stopped at the traffic lights at the intersection across the avenue from the market, as well as the looting of a delicatessen a block north. Campbell described considerable disorder in the area around Lafayette Market, crashes and shots being fired, store windows shattering and police trying to disperse crowds. Channing Tobias, awake in his home in the next building, heard "smashing of glasses [sic] and the firing of guns" between midnight and 1:00 AM.
Almost as many Black-owned as white-owned businesses operated on the block on which the Lafayette Market was located. The stationary store visible in the storefront next to the market was one of those Black-owned business, according to the MCCH Business survey, a "Neat store, carries full line of cigars, cigarettes and candies" according to the investigator who visited it. That store does not appear to have been attacked or looted, as the windows visible in the photograph are intact, offering evidence of the pattern of crowds avoiding Black-owned businesses during the disorder.
Although the caption described the police officer standing in front of the market's doors as "guarding" the store, he was more likely to have been patrolling the area monitoring passersby, or stationed at the intersection, behind where the photographer took to take the image. There were far too many damaged and looted businesses in Harlem for police to be guarding them individually the day after the disorder. Police officers featured in several other photographs of damaged buildings taken after the disorder (and some taken during the night).
Albert Bass, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man, was likely arrested in the vicinity of the market during the disorder. Salvatore Marrone, with the address of 2044 7th Avenue, was recorded in the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book as the complainant against Bass. Both the list published in the New York Evening Journal and the 28th Precinct Police blotter recorded the charge against Bass as burglary, with the blotter noting that he allegedly "In concert with others burglarized stores." However when Bass was arraigned in the Magistrate's Court he was charged with Disorderly Conduct. Such a charge suggests that he may have allegedly broken the store windows but not attempted to take any merchandise. Magistrate Renaud held Bass in custody until March 26, then convicted him and fined him $50 or five days in the Workhouse if he did not pay the fine, according to the docket book. The 28th Precinct Police blotter recorded the sentence as a fine of $25.
The Lafayette Market continued to operate after the disorder. The store was included in the MCCH Business survey in the second half of 1935, categorized as a white-owned Meat Market. The investigator's notes describe it as "Very neat - hires one Negro as clerk." It was also visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941.
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This page references:
- "Transcripts of Police Blotter - Precinct 28, March 19 & 20, 1935," MCCH - Juvenile Delinquency - 1935-36, Departmental Correspondence. Box 34, Folder 1 (Roll 171), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945.
- 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).
- Harlem Magistrates Court docket book
- US Census, 1930, Enumeration District 31-913, Sheet 7B, New York, New York City, New York (Ancestry.com).
- [Photograph] "Many a larder was filled during the all-night riot....," Daily News, March 21, 1935, 30.
- "Harlem: Survey - Census Tract #221-222 (26)," 1935, Roll 80, Subject Files, Office of the Mayor, Fiorello H. La Guardia records (New York City Municipal Archives).