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

Frendel's meat market windows broken and looted

Some time during the disorder, the windows of Frendel's meat market at 2360 8th Avenue were broken. Officer Carrington of the 32nd Precinct arrested Emmet Williams, a twenty-eight year-old Black man, for allegedly breaking the store window, and Theodore Hughes, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, for allegedly taking two pieces of salt pork from the store window, according to a story in the New York Herald Tribune and a list in the New York American. Located between West 126th and West 127th Streets, the store was in the midst of the blocks of 8th Avenue on which there are reports of violence during the disorder: the arrest of James Hayes for allegedly looting the Danbury Hat store at 2334 8th Avenue near 125th Street; the arrest of Rose Murrell for breaking windows in a grocery store three buildings to the north; the arrest of Thomas Babbitt for taking soap from Thomas Drug store a block north; and at the very end of the disorder, the arrest of Jean Jacquelin for looting at 128th Street and police shooting and killing James Thompson after allegedly finding him looting a grocery store across the street from the meat market. The businesses on the blocks of 8th Avenue north of 125th Street were almost entirely white-owned when the MCCH Business survey was taken in the second half of 1935.

Hughes appears in the lists of those charged with larceny published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal and in the New York Daily News. He was among the first of those arrested in the disorder to appear in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20. Sent to the Court of Special Sessions by Magistrate Renaud, Hughes was held on $500 bail. There is no evidence of the outcome of his trial.

Williams appears in the list of those charged with inciting a riot published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide,, and as charged with disorderly conduct in the list published in the New York Daily News. Arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, directly after Hughes, with the same complainant, the charge against Williams was malicious mischief, on offense involving damage to property. Like Hughes, Magistrate Renaud sent him to the Court of Special Sessions and held him on bail of $500. There is also no evidence of the outcome of his trial.

The store continued in business after the disorder. The complaint in the Magistrate's Court was made by Leo Halberg, a white butcher who worked in the store and lived at 1767 Fulton Avenue in the Bronx, who was still employed at the store when he registered for the draft in 1942. He gave the name of his employer as "Frendel Inc.." The MCCH Business survey records a white-owned "Pork (Meat) Market" at 2360 8th Avenue and a store with signs indicating that it is a meat market is visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. A photograph of the meat market, with a sign reading "Frendel Market," accompanied a New York Amsterdam News story about rationing in Harlem in 1943. By then the store was owned by (Sigmund) Fred Garb, a Jewish refugee from Austria, and his wife Claire, who identified a cousin named "S. Frendl" when they arrived in the United States in 1939. Twice, in 1941 and again in 1943, Fred Garb was convicted of fixing their scales to cheat customers.

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