This page was created by Anonymous. 

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

Leo Smith arrested

Sometime during the disorder, Officer Williams of the 6th Detective Division arrested Leo Smith, an eighteen-year-old white man, for allegedly "throwing a stone through a Seventh Avenue window," according to a story in the New York Herald Tribune. The specific location of the damaged store is not given. However, Smith was one of three men arrested during the disorder arraigned in the Night Court, during the disorder on March 19, the New York Herald Tribune reported, so was likely arrested near 125th Street, where the initial events were concentrated. In reporting that Smith was "accused of smashing a store window," a story in the Home News gave the address as 3180 7th Avenue, a non-existent address. He lived well to the east of Harlem, at 305 East 118th Street, between Second and First Avenues, an area with only white residents.

Smith is included in lists of those arrested in the disorder charged with disorderly conduct published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, in the New York Evening Journal, and in the New York American, and without a charge in a list published in the New York Daily News. He is not included, however, in the 28th Precinct Police blotter, likely because he was arrested and sent to the Night Court on March 19. There Magistrate Capshaw held him for the Magistrates Court, on bail of $500. On March 20, Smith appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court, charged with disorderly conduct. Magistrate Renaud tried and convicted him that day, holding him for sentence, according to the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book and a story in the Home News. When Smith returned to court on March 23, it was for sentencing, stories in the Afro-American, New York Age, New York Daily News and New York Times reported. Magistrate Renaud sent him to the Workhouse for one month.

Smith is recorded as white in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, and in stories about his sentencing in the Afro-American, New York Age, New York Daily News and New York Times. Only the lists published in the New York Evening Journal  and New York Daily News did likewise. Neither story about his first appearance in court, in the New York Herald Tribune and the Home News, mentioned his race. His address, well east of the areas of Black residences in Harlem, fitted with his recorded race (although the New York Evening Journal, New York Herald Tribune and New York Daily News mistakenly recorded his address as West 118th Street). None of the newspaper reporting offered any comment regarding Smith's race.

This page has tags:

This page references: