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

“List of Casualties in Riots,” New York Post, March 20, 1935, 6.

In the New York Post

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Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted 163 plain 2023-11-07T18:36:37+00:00
When Charles Hurley, a floorwalker, and a Kress' store detective confronted Lino Rivera, an unemployed sixteen-year-old Puerto Rican boy, about stealing a pocketknife in Kress’ store, and started pushing him out of the store, the boy bit the hands of Hurley and a white window dresser who came to their aid, Steve Urban. After initially indicating that they wanted Rivera charged with assault, the two men ultimately did not ask police to arrest him. The incident is treated here as an assault as the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York American, and Daily News listed the two men among the injured.

As the incident between Rivera and the store staff triggered the disorder, it was widely reported in the press and investigated by the MCCH. This analysis relies on testimony given in MCCH public hearings as that was by far the most complete and detailed evidence. Newspaper narratives varied in detail, consistently reporting only that a boy had been grabbed by store staff for taking merchandise, and later released, but omitting most other details. Several white newspapers also published separate stories based on statements made by Rivera at the West 123rd police station during the disorder or at his home the next day that included additional details of why he was in the store and his encounter with the store staff but not of subsequent events in the store.

Rivera had begun the day by taking the subway to Brooklyn, in pursuit of job as an errand boy, he told reporters for the New York American and New York Herald Tribune. Finding the job already filled, he returned to Harlem. Getting off the subway at West 125th Street, Rivera decided to go to a show or movie at one of the theaters that lined the street, perhaps at the Apollo Theater opposite Kress' store, as a story in the New York Evening Journal claimed. When the show ended, Rivera went into Kress' store, a detail also reported in the New York Sun. He said he did so because he had "nothing to do," according to the New York Post, "just to look around I guess," according to the New York World-Telegram, "to walk through to 124th Street," according to the New York American, and "to take a short cut home," according to the New York Herald Tribune.

Testifying in a public hearing of the MCCH, Hurley, a twenty-eight-year-old white resident of the Bronx, said he was with the store manager Jackson Smith in an office overlooking the rear of the store when he saw Rivera take a pocketknife from a counter around 2:30 PM. Calling down to the store detective, he pointed out Rivera and then headed to the floor himself. Rivera later admitted to reporters that he did take the knife, after it "caught his eye," according to the New York Post or "attracted" him according to the New York World-Telegram and New York American, or because it "matched a fountain pen set he had," according to the New York Herald Tribune. (The New York Sun mistakenly reported that it was chocolate that Rivera had taken.) When Rivera denied having the knife, Hurley took it from the boy’s pocket. Both Rivera and Hurley testified that the men started to push him out of the store. According to Hurley, near the front door Rivera became scared and started to lash out at them. Rivera reportedly told journalists from the New York World-Telegram, New York Post, and New York Evening Journal that he had told the men he could walk out on his own, and tried to shake free of their hold, "really started fighting" when, as he also testified in a MCCH hearing, Hurley said, "Let's take him down the cellar and beat hell out of him.” Hurley denied making that statement; he told the MCCH hearing that he held Rivera around his shoulders while the store detective tried to calm the boy. As a struggle developed, another store employee, Steve Urban, a thirty-nine-year-old white window dresser, also grabbed hold of Rivera, according to Hurley. Once the group was through the front door and into the store's vestibule, a recessed area of the street surrounded by display windows, the store detective went to get a Crime Prevention Bureau officer. That police agency provided an alternative to having children arrested; its officers instead undertaking investigations of their conditions in order to refer them to social agencies to better prevent “juvenile delinquency.” Kress store staff turned most of the boys they caught shoplifting over to the Crime Prevention Bureau, according to Hurley, and had police arrest only one or two a week.

Sometime after the store detective left, Rivera bit both Hurley and Urban on the hands and wrist while "trying to get away," he told a public hearing, reportedly explaining to journalists from the New York World-Telegram and New York Post that "I didn't want a licking." The struggle in the vestibule attracted the attention of Patrolman Donahue, who was the nearest of several police officers on West 125th Street at the time (identified in some newspapers as a traffic officer and by Rivera in a MCCH hearing as a mounted patrolman). Donahue took Rivera back into the store, to near the candy counter at the front, to get away from a curious crowd gathering on 125th Street, and sent an officer to get an ambulance to provide treatment for Hurley and Urban. (He told the MCCH hearing that the officer was his partner Keel, or another patrolman named Walton; the call log records the man's name as Miller, who was later identified by the store manager as a Black officer.) The telephone call to Headquarters was logged at 2:30 PM, followed by one from Police Headquarters to Harlem Hospital at 2:35 PM, with the ambulance bringing Dr. Sayet recorded in the hospital records as having arrived at 2:40 PM. Those records provide better evidence of the timing of the incident than Donahue’s testimony that he witnessed the struggle at 2:15 PM. Soon after the ambulance arrived, the manager, Jackson Smith, came to the front of the store, he testified in a public hearing, after being told a crowd had gathered by a staff member. Informed that a Crime Prevention Bureau officer had been called, Smith decided there was “nothing further for him to do,” and he returned to his office. A few minutes later Alfred Eldridge, a Black Crime Prevention Bureau officer, arrived. Usually the store staff would have turned Rivera over to Eldridge, who would have taken Rivera with him. However, on this occasion Hurley and Urban told Eldridge they wanted the boy arrested and charged with assault. Hurley told a public hearing he had gone to the rear of the store before Eldridge arrived, and did not want Rivera arrested, but the officer was clear that he spoke with both Hurley and Urban. The store manager similarly told a later public hearing that “Hurley wants to press charges for biting.” Eldridge could not take Rivera with him if he was arrested: “The job and purpose of our bureau is not to arrest a child," the told the MCCH hearing. He telephoned his superior, and told him that “the 5 & 10 wanted the boy arrested.” In response that officer told him to “let the patrolman take care of it due to the fact that he was first on case.” So after about twenty-five minutes at Kress, around 3:15 PM, Eldridge left the store.

However, Eldridge testified he later found out that soon after he left, “the store officials changed their mind.” Donahue simplified those events in the public hearing, testifying that “The boy was not arrested, but was taken through the basement to 124th Street and sent home.” He did not mention Eldridge or who reversed the decision to arrest Rivera. Hurley’s self-interested statement that he did not want him arrested made Urban responsible. Urban himself was not among those who testified before a MCCH public hearing. It does seem that it was Urban who Donahue said was with him when he released Rivera; the officer referred to him not by name but as “the window dresser.” They took Rivera out the rear rather than on to 125th Street as there was a crowd in front of the store and Donahue “didn’t want to start something,” he told a public hearing. He was clearly anxious enough about the situation in the store to ignore another option that Eldridge had given him, “that in the event that Kress Store did not want to press charges, that the boy could be handed over to us for supervision,” according to the Crime Prevention Bureau officer’s testimony. After releasing Rivera on to 124th Street, Donahue left the store, at around 3:30 PM. Many of the fifty or so mostly Black women shopping in the store observed these events, after their attention had been attracted by the struggle between the two men and Rivera, and the appearance of an ambulance. None of these women testified in a public hearing. A Black man named L. F. Cole told a MCCH public hearing that he saw Rivera being taken to the basement by two men. As they had not seen Rivera leave the store, groups of women concerned to find out what had become of him remained in the store until Smith closed it and police pushed them out sometime around 5:00 PM or 5:30 PM.

Bites are a relatively minor injury, and the hospital record indicates that both men received treatment at the scene and were not taken to the hospital. Hurley did still have a scar when he testified at a MCCH public hearing on April 20. Hays examined it, announcing that “I should say enough [of a scar] to indicate there was a bite,” adding in response to a question from the audience that he saw four teeth marks.” Only one other individual in the disorder was described as having been bitten, Arthur Block, a Black man. He appeared among lists of the injured in only three publications, with no details provided of the circumstances in which he was assaulted.

The significantly less detailed narratives of what happened between Rivera and the store staff published in newspapers largely reflected what Inspector Di Martini told a journalist working for the Afro-American and others in front of the store around 7:30 PM: "A boy stole some little article here this afternoon. The manager caught him, grabbed him by the arm, and was taking him in the back when a woman screamed. The crowd gathered. The manager did not press charges, and let the boy go home through the back.” (Di Martini’s information at that time came only from interviewing Jackson Smith and Hurley, as both Donahue and Eldridge were off duty and would not learn of the disorder until the next day.) Missing from his narrative was Rivera biting the men, a detail that was also missing from stories in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York World-Telegram, New York Evening Journal, and Daily Worker. However, the assault was mentioned in the New York American, Home News, New York Sun, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, Atlanta World, New York Age, Philadelphia Tribune, Pittsburgh Courier, La Prensa, and in Time magazine and the New Republic. Only the New York American, Daily News, and New York Herald Tribune included language that gave a particular slant to the assault. The New York American and Daily News describing Rivera as “hysterical” in his response to being grabbed by Hurley and the store detective, while the New York Herald Tribune labelled him pugnacious. The New York Age reported that “someone” had hit Rivera, the New York Herald Tribune and Brooklyn Daily Eagle that Hurley or Urban “slapped him," or “slugged him” according to the Pittsburgh Courier, with the New York Age mistakenly reporting that he was being treated at Harlem Hospital. That story was in a special edition of the New York Age published in the midst of the confusion early in the disorder. Two stories, in the New York American and New York Sun, had Rivera leave the store rather than being released. A story in The New Republic by white journalist Hamilton Basso included dialogue, almost certainly invented, between Rivera and the two men who grabbed him and comments from a crowd around him (Basso also mixed up the sequence of events inside and outside the store after Rivera's release).
- Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted (Part 2)
- Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted in secondary sources
Lloyd Hobbs killed Lloyd Hobbs, a sixteen-year-old Black teenager, was shot and killed by Patrolman John McInerney, who claimed Hobbs had been looting an auto supply store.

Around 7:30 PM, Hobbs and his fifteen-year-old brother Russell had made the short trip from their home on St. Nicholas Ave to the Apollo Theater on 125th Street for a show, not emerging until 12:30 AM. When they stepped back onto 125th St, they saw crowds down the block at the intersection with 7th Ave, and went to investigate. They followed as police pushed the crowd north on 7th Ave. As people milled in front of a damaged auto parts store at 2150 7th Avenue near 128th Street, a police radio car pulled up, and one of the officers inside, Patrolman John McInerney got out. Fearing that they would be beaten by the police, the boys and the others in front of the store ran up 7th Avenue. Here the accounts of the boys and seven Black eyewitnesses and those of the two white patrolmen diverged.

McInerney and his partner, Patrolman Watterson, claimed that as they were driving south, their attention had been drawn to the auto parts store by the noise of breaking glass, and they had seen Lloyd in the window handing items out to those on the street. Three of the eyewitnesses, Howard Malloy, Arthur Moore, and Marshall Pfifer, said all the windows of the store had been broken at least an hour earlier and nothing remained in the display by the time the Hobbs brothers arrived there. The patrolmen said that Lloyd climbed out of the window with items in his hands as they pulled up, and when McInerney pursued him up 7th Avenue and called on him to halt, continued to run. When those running from the patrolman got to 128th Street, Lloyd broke away from the group and turned west on to 128th Street. McInerney then shot the boy. Warren Wright, standing in the entrance of the apartments above 2150 7th Avenue, south of the store, Howard Malloy, Arthur Moore, and Samuel Pitts standing on the corner across 128th Street from the auto supply store, in front of Battle's Pharmacy, to which the crowd was running, John Bennett, in 201 West 128th Street toward which Lloyd turned and ran, and Marshall Pfifer, standing on the corner of West 128th Street on the other side of 7th Avenue, all testified that the boy had nothing in his hands as he ran and that McInerney did not call to him to halt before shooting him. After the bullet hit Hobbs and he fell to the ground, McInerney and Watterson, who had remained in the car, backing it into 128th Street, said Lloyd dropped a car horn and socket set, which McInerney picked up. Seven witnesses said that there was nothing on the ground next to the boy.

The two patrolman loaded Lloyd Hobbs into their car and drove him to Harlem Hospital. Russell Hobbs had kept running up 7th Avenue and had not seen the shooting. He learned from the crowd at the scene that it was his brother who had been shot and driven away and immediately ran home to tell his parents, Lawyer and Mary Hobbs. The family rushed to Harlem Hospital. When they found Lloyd, he told them, “Mother, the officer shot me for nothing. I was not doing anything.” McInerney, guarding the boy, said "Why didn't you halt when I told you to?" Lloyd offered the same account when questioned in the hospital by Homicide Bureau detectives, in a statement recorded by a police stenographer.

Lloyd Hobbs appeared in all seven published lists of those injured in the disorder, in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, Daily News, New York American, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

In the following days, Lawyer Hobbs went to the 28th Precinct several times trying to make a complaint against the officer who had shot his son. He also sought help from the New York Urban League, giving them a statement about what had happened to his son on March 28, which they sent to the MCCH. As a result, Hobbs and his family were among the witnesses asked to come to the MCCH's first public hearing on March 30. Only Russell testified that day, briefly describing how his brother had been shot. A few hours later, at 6:30 PM, Lloyd Hobbs died in Harlem Hospital, the fourth death resulting from the disorder. While the New York Times, Daily News, New York Age, New York Amsterdam News, and Afro-American referred to Russell's testimony in reporting Hobbs' death, the New York Herald Tribune, Times Union, Home News, Daily Mirror, New York American, and Chicago Defender reported only the boy's death in their stories.

The next week, at the MCCH hearing, Lawyer, Mary, and Russell Hobbs testified, together with three Black men who had witnessed the shooting, Howard Malloy, Arthur Moore, and Samuel Pitts, Dr. Arthur Logan, one of the physicians who treated Lloyd Hobbs, the police stenographer who had recorded a statement from the boy soon after he arrived at Harlem Hospital, and James Tartar, a Black investigator for the MCCH. Assistant District Attorney Saul Price heard the testimony of the three eyewitnesses soon after the hearing and had them appear before the grand jury on April 10 so they could consider charges against Patrolman McInerney. The grand jury also heard from Russell Hobbs, both his parents, McInerney's partner, Patrolman Watterson, the police stenographer, the detective who investigated the shooting, John O'Brien, and the owner of the automobile supply store. Patrolman McInerney also offered to testify, but the grand jury opted not to hear him. They dismissed the case.

The MCCH nonetheless continued to investigate the boy's killing, hearing testimony from McInerney's partner, Patrolman Watterson, and Detective O'Brien, who investigated the shooting, at a hearing on April 20 marked by angry interjections from the audience. Four additional witnesses to the shooting testified at an MCCH hearing on May 18. James Tartar, the MCCH investigator, also obtained information that McInerney had not turned in the items he claimed to have found next to Lloyd Hobbs until April 8, more than two weeks after he shot the boy. That interval raised the possibility that the patrolman had not found the items at the scene but had obtained them later, when he needed to justify the shooting. As a result of that information and the testimony of additional eyewitnesses, Assistant District Attorney Saul Price presented the case to the grand jury for a second time on June 10. After hearing from the new witnesses, and from Tartar about the absence of the allegedly stolen items from police records and the Police Property Department until April 8, the grand jury again dismissed the case without hearing testimony from McInerney.

The police department had committed to an internal hearing on the case before ADA Price had decided to resubmit it to the grand jury. The hearing took place on June 14; in attendance were James Tartar and E. Franklin Frazier, the Howard University sociologist who had recently started work leading the MCCH's investigation of Harlem. It was the first time that anyone outside the police department and the district attorney's office heard Patrolman McInerney's testimony. While Tartar and Frazier were unpersuaded, senior police officers found the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs was justified, reprimanding the patrolman only for his delay in handing in the items he claimed to have found at the scene.

While two grand juries and a police department hearing exonerated McInerney, the MCCH and the Black press did not share that view. Arthur Garfield Hays and Oscar Villard gave a central place to McInerney killing Hobbs in the report of the subcommittee submitted to Mayor La Guardia on June 11, 1935. The report of the subcommittee characterized the killing of Lloyd Hobbs as "inexcusable." E. Franklin Frazier included that material in the final report of the MCCH, framed in even harsher terms: the killing of the boy was "a brutal act on the part of the police." Police Commissioner Valentine was unmoved by that censure. He responded to both reports by asserting that Lloyd Hobbs had been looting the store and that two grand juries had exonerated McInerney.
In assessing the case, the two reports gave significant weight to the character of Lloyd Hobbs and his family. The subcommittee argued that "the record of Lloyd Hobbs and that of his family are presumptive evidence that he was not the kind of boy who would engage in looting." The final report of the MCCH described the boy as "having a good record in school and in the community, and being a member of a family of good standing and character." Lloyd Hobbs had been born in Brunswick County, Virginia, in 1916, the second youngest of five children of Mary and Lawyer Hobbs. (The story published in the New York Amsterdam News on April 6, 1935, accompanied by a photograph of Mrs. Hobbs, gave her first name as Carrie, but it was recorded as Mary in the census in 1930, 1940, and 1950). The boy's name was recorded as Lawyer in the 1930 census and as Lawyer, Jr in the "Social and Economical History" of the family written by James Tartar, but elsewhere in that document and in all other sources as Lloyd. The family farmed in Virginia until 1927, and still owned 83 acres there, when Lawyer's ill health required him to get work "which would not necessitate his being in the sun," according to his wife. He had worked previously in New York City, so the family relocated there. Lawyer found work first as a sexton at Union Baptist Church, then for a construction company. Mary Hobbs worked first as a domestic servant, the most common occupation for Black women, before becoming one of a much smaller group employed in factory work, in her case at a lampshade company. That was her occupation in the 1930 census; Lawyer's occupation was recorded as chauffeur. At that time the family lived at 228 West 140th Street, their home since they arrived in New York City. By April, 1931 both parents had lost their jobs, and the family joined many in Harlem applying for work and relief from private and government agencies. Sometime in the intervening years Lawyer Hobbs found some work as a helper on a truck owned by Charles Bell (perhaps a brother-in-law; a sister-in-law named Senora Bell lived with the family in 1930).

Lawyer Hobbs' income allowed the family to settle in a fourth-floor apartment at 321 St. Nicholas Avenue in 1932, having moved twice in the preceding year, as many in Harlem did during the Depression. A lodger helped pay the rent in 1935. James Tartar, the MCCH investigator, described the residence as "a comfortable apartment, clean, nicely arranged, nicely furnished and well ventilated."

Throughout their time in the city, the Hobbs children attended school. By 1935 the eldest, twenty-year-old Cassie, was working, but her twin sisters Hazel and Zenobia remained students at the Textile High School, Lloyd was a student at Haaren High School, and his younger brother Russell a student at Frederick Douglas Junior High School. Lloyd would have graduated in June, according to a story in the New York Amsterdam News.

After Lloyd's death, the family continued to live at 321 St. Nicholas Avenue until at least 1950. All the family members resided there in 1940. Fifty-six-year-old Mary, who provided the information to the census enumerator, did not identify an occupation. Lawyer was working as a laborer in a sugar refinery, Cassie and Zenobia as seamstresses in a dress factory, Hazel in a lampshade factory, and Russell as a clerk in a food store. All but Zenobia were still living in the apartment in 1950, although as Cassie was recorded as divorced she had likely not resided there for all of the intervening ten years. Neither Lawyer nor Mary, who was listed as sixty years old, were working by that time. Hazel had joined Cassie working as a seamstress, while Russell now worked as a driver for a construction company.
Charles Alston arrested Around two hours after police reported the neighborhoods street were quiet, at 5:00 AM on March 20, Patrolman Jerry Brennan arrested Charles Alston, Albert Yerber, Edward Loper, and Ernest Johnson for allegedly shooting at police stationed at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No police officers were reported injured, but Alston suffered a fractured skull as the men fled police. Trying to escape by leaping from the roof of a five-story building to the adjoining building, Alston fell to a second-floor ledge. He was a twenty-one-year-old Black man, as was Loper; Johnson was twenty-two years of age, and Yerber twenty years of age. Alston lived northwest of the alleged shooting, on the edge of Harlem at 512 West 153rd Street. The other men also lived west of where they were arrested, within Harlem, Johnson at 206 West 140th Street, Loper at 298 West 138th Street, and Yerber at 106 Edgecombe Avenue. Only a small proportion of those involved in the disorder lived above 135th Street. The apparent quiet may have made the men willing to travel some distance from where they lived to investigate conditions in the neighborhood. Their arrests starkly illustrated that the reimposition of order did not make Harlem's streets safe for Black residents in the way it did for the reporters who ventured uptown from 125th Street to document their arrest. Discrimination and violence at the hands of police were an everyday feature of the neighborhood's racial order not the result of its breakdown.

Newspaper stories contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language — for example, the New York World Telegram and Times Union reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” a "lone policeman." Stories in the New York World Telegram and Brooklyn Daily Eagle did offer the name of the officer allegedly targeted by Alston and his companions, Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station, and the same dramatic account that a bullet whistled past his ear as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street. Taking cover, he saw the men on the roof of the five-story building at 101 West 138th Street. Soon after, police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. One other story, in the Home News, identified Brennan, but cast him not as the target of the shooters but as one of the police who responded. In a radio car assigned to the area with his partner Patrolman McGrady, Brennan “heard the shots and sped to the scene. At the radio car's approach the four snipers [standing in the doorway] ran to the roof of the building.” This story provides the key detail that no guns were found on Alston and his companions.

On March 20, the other three men appeared in court charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book. The clerk annotated that charge with the word "annoy." Under that section of the statute, a person was guilty if they acted "in such a manner as to annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others." A separate clause punished disorderly or threatening conduct or behavior, so based on that annotation, the men were not charged with attacking Brennan. That charge of annoying better fit the circumstances described in the Home News. Whatever the patrolman alleged, Magistrate Ford did not find sufficient evidence of the men's guilt and acquitted the three men. Given that outcome, it is possible Brennan mistook some other noise for gunfire. Without any evidence of an assault in the sources, these events are treated here only as arrests. It was not until three weeks later that Alston appeared in court, on April 9. On that date he was discharged, an outcome recorded in the transcription of the 32nd Precinct blotter made by the MCCH's researchers. In releasing Alston without trial the Magistrate was following the decision made in the other men's acquittals.

Alston’s fall attracted more attention than the shooting. Again the Home News offers the most detail, noting that the leap that Alston had attempted was a distance of seven feet (the New York Post said six feet), and that after he landed on the ledge he managed to crawl through the window into an apartment and hide under a bed. His escape bid failed as the occupants of the apartment called police. The Home News report also made clear that Alston did not appear seriously injured at the time of his arrest. It was at the 135th Street police station that he collapsed and was found to have a fractured skull, the serious injury noted in less detailed stories and in lists of the injured. (The New York Evening Journal was the only other newspaper to report these details, although it mistakenly reported that the group arrested numbered three, not four. The New York Post did report that Alston hid under a bed.)

The Daily News published a photograph of Alston's arrest in which he is holding his head, suggesting he did appear injured at that time. The caption published with the photo drew attention to the “clubbed gun” held by the uniformed officer leading Alston to a patrol wagon (seeming to suggest that the officer had used the gun butt to hit Alston). It concludes starkly, “He’s dying.” The photo published in the Norfolk Journal and Guide and New York World-Telegram credited to the International Photo agency and likely taken with the camera visible in the foreground of the Daily News photo a few seconds earlier, also clearly shows Alston clutching his head, with marks on his trousers and jacket that may be evidence of his fall. The officer’s clubbed gun is also again visible, together with the night stick of his partner. The full photograph from which the published image is cropped, part of the Bettman Collection digitized by Getty Images, provides a clearer view of those gathered around the building.
Embed from Getty Images

Visible to the right of this group are three black men obscured in the Daily News photo, which shows only white men. Given the location of this arrest in the heart of Harlem, at 5:00 AM, the only white men likely to be present would be reporters and police detectives in plainclothes. The photographs are some of the few taken beyond the area around 125th Street. By the time of Alston’s arrest, the disorder was over, allowing white reporters to travel more freely in Harlem than they had earlier, when crowds had attacked them. The captions accompanying the published cropped versions of the photo in the Norfolk Journal and Guide and New York World Telegram misidentified Alston as a suspected looter.

The New York American, New York Evening Journal, and New York Post included Alston in their lists of the injured, as did the New York Herald Tribune on March 21, and the Black newspapers the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide several days later, all describing the nature of his injuries with no reference to the circumstances in which he suffered them. He was not listed among those arrested. A photograph published in the Daily News of four patrolmen carrying a stretcher containing an injured Black "victim of the rioting" out of the West 135th Street station may be an image of Alston being taken to the hospital. The photograph was not published until March 21, and the caption identified it as having been taken "early yesterday." As the location was the 135th Street station, the "victim" would have been injured above 130th Street, the southern boundary of that precinct. Most seriously injured individuals would have been taken directly to hospital.
August Miller killed Around midnight, August Miller, a fifty-six-year-old white handyman, suffered a head injury in the midst of a crowd at 126th Street and Lenox Avenue. A cab driver took him to the Joint Disease Hospital, according to the police complaint report. It was 12:30 AM when Dr. Millbank attended Miller, so likely around midnight when he collapsed in the crowd. Millbank diagnosed him as suffering a possible skull fracture "received in some unknown manner during disorder," according to hospital records, and admitted him for treatment. However, after Miller died on March 22, the medical examiner conducted an autopsy which he reported showed that the cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage, “a natural cause, nothing suspicious.”

Miller appeared in three of the seven newspaper lists of the injured published on March 20, those in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and New York American, among those the New York Herald Tribune reported still in hospital on March 21, and among those listed as injured in the Atlanta World on March 27. His death was widely reported on March 23, in some cases with information on how he had been killed. The most direct explanations came in stories published in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Journal, and Times Union, and in the Associated Press story, which reported Miller had been "beaten by rioters." The Home News offered the additional detail that Miller was "struck by several bricks, knocked down and kicked around by the mob." The New York Times and New York Sun did not attribute Miller's death to anyone, only going as far as saying Miller was "in the midst of rioters" when injured, while the Brooklyn Daily Eagle even more obliquely said his death came "during the height of the disorders." The New York Post implied he had been assaulted in a different way. Noting where he had been injured, the story added that, "He was one of the half a dozen white men seriously hurt during the disturbance." Lists of those killed in the Daily News and stories in the New York Herald Tribune and in the Black newspapers the New York Age and New York Amsterdam News, as well as the lists of those killed published in the Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide and Pittsburgh Courier simply listed Miller's injury, a fractured skull.

Miller himself never described what happened to him. It was the taxi driver who brought him to the hospital who provided the information on where he had collapsed to the nurse to whom he delivered Miller, according to the detective who investigated the case. Soon after Miller arrived in the hospital, he briefly regained consciousness. Patrolman Anthony Kaminsky, who had been called when the injured man was admitted, was able to question him. After asking his name, address and age, the officer told a hearing of the MCCH that he asked "how he received his injuries?" As Miller started to answer, he lost consciousness again. He died on March 22 without again regaining consciousness.

Detective John O'Brien was assigned to investigate Miller's injury at 2:00 AM; at the time he was in the midst of investigating the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs. He visited the location where Miller had been injured, questioning business owners, residents, and taxi drivers without finding witnesses to what had happened or locating the taxi driver who had brought him to the hospital. As a result, O'Brien was unable to establish the circumstances of Miller's injury. The detective also visited Miller's home, 1674 McCombs Road in the Bronx, and spoke with the superintendents of the building who employed him as a handyman. They had seen him there about midnight. There was also no information on why he traveled to Harlem, but he must have collapsed almost as soon as he arrived, likely by subway. His employers did report Miller had been “acting peculiar for some months previous.” His family were in Germany, so his employers identified the body. Confusingly, when O'Brien testified at a public hearing of the MCCH on April 20, he mentioned speaking to Miller's sister, who had seen him around 10:00 PM, a meeting not recorded in police records. When the medical examiner reported that he had not died as a result of a fractured skull or suspiciously, O'Brien closed his investigation on March 24.

The version of the case reported to Arthur Garfield Hays by Hyman Glickstein, the lawyer from his law firm working to gather evidence for the MCCH subcommittee on crime, gave the police a greater role that clearly raised their suspicions about the circumstances of Miller's injury: "According to police report [Miller] died of natural causes and was merely picked up by the police in a dead or dying condition." Once testimony in the public hearing put a taxi driver in the place of police in delivering the injured man to the hospital, little basis remained for holding them responsible for Miller's injuries. However, ILD lawyers who questioned Detective O'Brien when he testified about his investigation at a hearing of the MCCH remained unconvinced that Miller died of natural causes. Rather, they suggested he had been struck by police, and his injury had not been accurately reported to prevent officers from being charged. Eventually, Hays cut off their questioning of O'Brien, saying it had no basis unless somebody could "provide evidence how Miller came by his injuries."

Miller was included in lists of those killed in the disorder published on March 23 and 24, and in Black weekly newspapers on March 30, without mention of the autopsy. On March 31 the Home News also included him in its count of those killed in the disorder even while noting that Miller's death "was later found to have been due to heart disease, probably aggravated by exertion and excitement." The Daily News, New York American, Daily Mirror, Times Union, the Associated Press, Afro American, and Chicago Defender reported the death of Lloyd Hobbs on March 30 as the fourth death resulting from the disorder without specifying the other three individuals killed. None of those newspapers included Edward Laurie among those killed, so they also still included Miller after the autopsy, along with James Thompson and Andrew Lyons. So too did the New York Herald Tribune, which identified Hobbs as the fifth death resulting from the riot. (The Daily Worker initially reported Hobbs as the fourth death, on April 1, but a week later referred to him as the third death, while the New York Times reported his death without reference to how many others had been killed).
James Thompson killed & Detective Nicholas Campo shot Around 5:30 AM James Thompson, a nineteen-year old Black man, was shot and killed by Detectives Nicholas Campo and Theodore Beckler.

The officers claimed that while driving on 8th Avenue they heard breaking glass in a damaged grocery store at 2364 8th Avenue near the southeast corner of West 127th Street. Police crime scene photographs of the store taken later showed that there were several large holes in the windows and no merchandise left in their displays. However, like many other businesses, the shelves inside the store were untouched. To get inside, Thompson smashed the glass in one of the entrance doors, making the noise that the detectives heard. Investigating, they entered the store, a branch of the A & P chain. Press reports offered a variety of different accounts of what happened next. The New York American, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Post reported a gun battle between the officers and Thompson, during which he was shot in the chest and Detective Campo in the hand. The New York Evening Journal sensationally reported an even larger gunfight in which "other rioters" returned the officer's shots. The New York World-Telegram reported a struggle between Thompson and Campo during which Thompson was shot; the officer then dropped his gun, causing it to go off and a bullet to hit his fingers. The New York Amsterdam News reported, several days later, that the officer’s gun went off accidentally, hitting Thompson.

The arrest report and police blotter made no mention of Thompson having a gun or struggling with the officers. Instead, as Campo and Beckler moved through the store, Thompson burst out of the rear storeroom and ran for entrance. He collided with Campo, causing the detective’s pistol to fire and the bullet to hit two fingers on his left hand. When Thompson got out on to the street, he ran across 8th Avenue toward his home at 301 West 127th Street. As the two detectives followed, they both shot at him; Campo fired twice, Beckler five times. Only one of those bullets hit Thompson, but it struck him in the chest, perforating his liver. One of the other shots hit Stanley Dondoro, a white man walking along the west side of 8th Avenue, in his left leg. A resident of Hoboken, New Jersey, Dondoro was likely on his way to work in one of Harlem’s businesses. The Home News and New York Post added the detail that a third bullet had passed through the trousers of a man with Dondoro without injuring him. Campo and Beckler caught up with Thompson in front of the building where he lived and arrested him. A note at the end of the hospital admission records indicated that Thompson died at Harlem Hospital at 9:30 AM, four hours after the shooting, a time of death that led to him being listed as the only fatality of the disorder in newspapers published on March 20. Campo appeared in lists of the injured published by the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and New York American.

Police investigated the shooting after the disorder, according to the records gathered by the MCCH. A police blotter record of Captain Mulholland’s investigation identified the detectives as responsible for shooting Dondoro, specifying that Campo had shot twice at Thompson and his partner Detective Beckler had shot three times, as well as twice in the air, a warning to stop that was a common police practice. One of the bullets struck Thompson in the chest, killing him. The blotter also recorded Captain Mulholland’s conclusion that Campo sustained his injury “in proper performance of police duty and no negligence on the part of the aforesaid detective contributed thereto." Campo and Becker also appear not to have been disciplined or charged for killing Thompson. Asked in reference to the killing of Thompson and other Black men killed during the disorder in a hearing of the MCCH, “Has anyone been arrested, charged with using deadly weapons with which these men were killed?", Captain Rothengast replied, "Some of the detectives were exonerated."

Although the New York World-Telegram story reported Thompson as saying at the hospital that “he was hungry," “that others were stealing, anyway,” and that he was “long out of work,” there was no record of an admission in the report of the police investigation. James Tartar, an investigator for the MCCH, did interview Thompson’s aunt, Sarah Rhue, on April 20. She reported hearing from Thompson’s landlady that he had brought home canned goods during the disorder, with the implication that he had been looting prior to the shooting. However, she also reported that he worked at a barber’s shop, contradicting the statement that he was out of work in the admission reported in the New York World-Telegram.

The police records and newspaper for some reason all mistakenly identified the address of the grocery store as 2365 8th Avenue. However, a large bank building was at that address with no other businesses. The A & P grocery store was included in the MCCH business survey at 2364 8th Avenue and was visible in the Tax Department photograph of that address taken between 1939 and 1941. In addition, the NYPD crime scene photograph, taken soon enough after the shooting to show the damage to the store and debris still on the street, showed a distinctive raised stoop entrance to the upstairs apartments that was also visible in the Tax Department photograph of 2364 8th Avenue.
Timothy Murphy assaulted & Paul Boyett shot Around 9:00 PM, as police reinforcements tried to disperse the large crowds that had gathered on 7th and 8th Avenues around 125th Street, a few blocks northwest on West 127th Street between 8th Avenue and St Nicholas Avenue, a group of around Black men allegedly attacked Timothy Murphy, a twenty-nine-year-old white rock driller, on his way to his home at 44 Moylan Place. Murphy alleged that the men knocked him to the ground and then hit and kicked him. The men told him “they were beating me because I was a white man,” the Daily Mirror reported Murphy as saying. What they actually said was “You white son-of-a-bitch, take it now," according to his affidavit in the Magistrates Court. As a result of the beating Murphy suffered “lacerations, contusions [about his head, face and body], a broken nose and loss of hearing in his left ear.” Press reports simply said he received a broken nose.

The men beating Murphy allegedly attracted the attention of Patrolman George Conn from the 30th Precinct, immediately west of Harlem. He may have been in a radio car on his way to 125th Street, as the New York Amsterdam News reported "police drove up." His Magistrates Court affidavit described the crowd as numbering around ten men, a number reported by the New York Herald Tribune, Home News, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Other newspapers described larger crowds, twelve men according to the Daily Mirror, twenty men according to the Associated Press, and forty to fifty men in the sensationalized narrative published in the New York Evening Journal. The New York Times and New York Sun simply reported that several men had attacked Murphy. As Conn ran toward Murphy, newspaper stories and legal records agreed that he shot Paul Boyett, a twenty-year-old Black garage worker who lived only a few buildings away, at 310 West 127th Street. The New York Sun and New York Times reported Conn's statement that he had first fired a shot in the air to disperse the crowd and then ordered Boyett to halt and shot him only when he continued running. The Daily Mirror and Home News reported those details without making clear that Conn was the source of that information. The New York Evening Journal reported Conn fired two shots, one "in the air and then a second shot which struck Boyett in the back." A brief account in the New York Herald Tribune and Associated Press simply had Conn shooting Boyett, one of the group attacking Murphy. Several other newspapers did not mention that anyone else but Boyett had allegedly been involved in attacking Murphy: the New York American had Conn shooting Boyett "when he tried to flee," the Daily News "as he was about to strike" Murphy, and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle simply reported that Conn had shot Boyett. This incident was the most widely reported assault in the disorder, both because it occurred early in the evening, and because it fit the sensationalized narrative of racial violence which the Hearst newspapers and white tabloids employed.

Boyett testified at his trial that he had been “an innocent onlooker” drawn to the “disturbance,” and “struck no one at that time,” the New York Amsterdam News reported. In the confusion as the crowd rushed to leave as police appeared, a bullet hit him. While the newspaper stories on March 20 give the impression that Conn arrested Boyett where Murphy had been assaulted, testimony at the trial revealed that Boyett continued running back to his home, apparently pursued by Conn, who arrested him in the building's hallway. A trial jury accepted Boyett's account and acquitted him of assaulting Murphy. The only source on the trial, the story in the New York Amsterdam News, did not mention what evidence was presented. One issue may have been how Conn claimed he picked Boyett out of the crowd; only the Daily News explicitly mentioned that he saw Boyett beating Murphy, although the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded the charge against him as "kicked complainant." A likely alternative scenario to that offered by Conn was that he simply fired at the crowd rather than singling out Boyett and calling on him to halt, and that his shot hit Boyett, whose injury consequently led Conn to arrest him.

The New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Associated Press reported Boyett had been shot in the right shoulder, the Daily Mirror in the left shoulder, the New York American and Home News in the shoulder, and the New York Times, New York Sun, and New York Evening Journal reported the wound was in his back. Hospital records indicate that a doctor from Knickerbocker Hospital treated a wound to Boyett's right shoulder before he was placed in a cell. Conn was based at the 30th Precinct; St. Nicholas Avenue was the boundary between that precinct and the 28th Precinct. Rather than taking Boyett to his own precinct, Conn took him to the 28th Precinct station on West 123rd Street, as Boyett appeared in that precinct's police blotter. Both Murphy and Boyett appear in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, Daily News, and New York American. Only Murphy appears in the list of injured published in the Home News and New York Post and only Boyett, in a list of those shot, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Herald Tribune.

Groups of Black men allegedly targeted at least three other white men around this time, all, unlike Murphy, in the area where crowds were clashing with police. William Kitlitz reported being attacked by James Smitten in front of Kress’ store, Maurice Spellman being assaulted at 125th Street and 8th Avenue, and Morris Werner at 125th Street and 7th Avenue. All those white men lived west of Harlem, relatively close to where they were attacked, so were likely regular visitors to 125th Street, to shop, seek entertainment, or access public transport, on this evening caught up in the disorder. The area around 125th Street and 7th Avenue would continue to be the location of alleged assaults on white men and women for at least the next three hours, with three men and two women targeted. However, the assault on Murphy represented the western boundary of the disorder, the only event west of 8th Avenue. That section of Harlem was still an area of Black residents.

Murphy was one of four white men and women allegedly rescued from assaults by the intervention of police officers (with some press reports suggesting that this happened more frequently). Only in this case did police also make an arrest. In one of those other cases, an officer also fired shots at the crowd, but in that instance no one was reported as being injured. Police did shoot and kill two Black men, Lloyd Hobbs and James Thompson, in the latter case also injuring two white bystanders.
Injured (not in assaults) (21) The twenty-one injured individuals that are not linked to an assault or arrest are a mix of those reported as being hurt by flying glass and those reported without any explanation of the circumstances in which they were hurt. The injured had similar conditions to those assaulted. Head wounds made up the largest group, as was the case with those assaulted. Relatively more of the injured suffered wounds to the hands and legs than those assaulted, and relatively fewer wounds to the face. Nonetheless, the severity of their wounds is similar to those assaulted. The information is partial, available for only forty of the seventy-three injured (29 of 53 assaulted, 11 of 21 injured), and on first glance suggests relatively fewer severe wounds among the injured, with only 18% (2 of 11) sent to hospital after being attended by physicians compared with 31% (9 of 29) of those assaulted. However, five of those assaulted sent to hospital had gunshot wounds; of the remaining group, only 20% (4 of 20) were sent to hospital (these numbers exclude the two arrested men who were injured).

Five injuries are reported as lacerations caused by glass, terms that made clear they had not occurred in assaults. Those who threw objects at stores and passing cars and buses often emerged from the crowds that filled the sidewalks and streets during the disorder, leaving bystanders little opportunity to distance themselves from the windows and the shattered glass produced by those attacks. On the other hand, this group of injured could have been involved in those attacks, or in subsequent looting, which required moving through broken glass, or could have received the lacerations in assaults.

Similarly, two others of those counted here as injured appear in some sources as victims of assault, but the weight of evidence is against that picture. The New York Evening Journal and New York American reported that eighteen-year-old Nathaniel Powell had his nose cut off, with the New York American specifying that a razor had been used. However, as the New York Post, Daily News, and most importantly, the hospital record all simply reported cuts to his nose and face, those stories of an attack are likely another example of the white press falling back on tropes of racial violence rather than a reliable account of what happened to Powell. Similarly, Stanley Dondoro suffered a gunshot wound, but there is clear evidence that police shot him accidentally when pursuing James Thompson.

For the remaining thirteen counted as injured, there is no information as to cause or the circumstances of the injury. Some of these individuals could have been injured when knocked off their feet in the crowds on Harlem’s streets, a circumstance captured in several photographs of the disorder, including the most widely circulated.

Most of this group of injured received their wounds around the heart of the disorder, in the blocks around 125th Street, but there are a cluster along Lenox Avenue up as far north as 132nd Street. This area saw the most extensive attacks on stores and looting; it was also relatively close to Harlem Hospital, which was located on Lenox Avenue between 136th and 137th Streets. The two injuries outside this area, Giles Jackson hurt by flying glass at West 116th Street and 7th Avenue and Nathaniel Powell cut on the nose on Lenox Avenue between 116th and 117th Streets, also occurred in an area that saw significant amounts of looting and broken windows. The map also reveals that the injured lived relatively close to where they got hurt; only Clara Crowder came from as far away as some of those arrested for looting (although that group also included some from close to the site of their arrest). That proximity could indicate that this group of the injured were bystanders, parts of the crowds drawn to the streets from their homes by the disorder but not participating in it.

Three woman are among the twenty injured. One, Clara Crowder, is anomalous. A white clerk at Kress’ store, Crowder fainted when the crowd inside Kress' store knocked merchandise off displays as police cleared the store so it could be closed. The other injured women, of unknown race, appear to have been part of the crowds on Harlem’s streets. Photographs of the crowds show women scattered among the men. Most of those injured are not identified by race; of the five that are, the white individuals were injured in anomalous situations. In addition to Crowder fainting in a store, Stanley Dondoro was accidentally shot by police, while the third white individual, Salvatore Nicolette, suffered a fractured skull in unspecified circumstances.

The evidence of these events is very fragmentary. Twelve of the twenty-one cases are mentioned in only one source; six cases appear only in hospital records; and four cases appear only in a single list in the New York Post. Given the inconsistency of the details the newspapers published about individuals, this limited evidence likely contains errors.
Injured
Events
Isaac Daniels arrested
Isaac Daniels, a twenty-nine-year old Black man, was arrested for assaulting Herman Young, in his hardware store at 346 Lenox Avenue. After hearing glass smashing, Young and his wife, Rose, had come downstairs from their apartment to the store, whose windows had been looted and encountered a man on the stoop, trying to come through the door. The man allegedly cursed at Young — "You Goddam Jew I am going to kill you if you don’t get out of here” — and then threw a stone that smashed the glass in the door. Both the stone and flying glass hit Young. Taken to Harlem Hospital, Young was being stitched by a doctor when Daniels entered to receive treatment. Young identified him as the man who had assaulted him, and an officer at the hospital arrested Daniels. Another man, James Williams, was later arrested for looting the store. The affidavit in his case made no mention of Young being assaulted, instead recording that he had come downstairs to find four men in the store stealing merchandise.

Questioned in a lineup at the Manhattan Police HQ, Daniels denied throwing the stone at Young, and said he had been in the area because he was on his way home. Daniels, a native of Georgia who had come to New York City in 1928, lived with his wife only a few blocks from Young's store at 73 W. 130th Street. Later, at his trial, Daniels added the detail that he had gone out to buy cigarettes. His wife said that he had gone to the movies, and was listening to the radio at home at 1:00 AM when Young was attacked.

The report of the arrest in the Home News linked Daniels and Young and included the detail that Young had been cut by flying glass. Daniels also appeared in lists of those who arrested and charged with assault published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal, neither of which included the circumstances which led to his arrest. He also appeared in lists of the injured published in the Home News and New York Post, one of four men arrested for assault with injuries. In Daniels' case, the list identified him as having "contusions" on his left arm.

Daniels was one of the first of those arrested to appear in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, where he was charged with felonious assault. The Home News and New York Post reported he was back in the court two days later, joining James Hughes and Charles Saunders in being discharged as they had already been indicted by the grand jury and then rearrested and held for trial (which is likely why Daniels appears in the 28th Precinct police blotter as having been discharged, as did James Hughes). The indictment in the district attorney's case file has a charge of first degree assault, with intent to kill, struck out, leaving a charge of second degree assault, with intent to cause bodily harm. That change suggests that prosecutors reduced the charge after obtaining details of what happened (Young's wife had mentioned that the man who assaulted him had used a piece of pipe, but later reports mention only him throwing a stone). Indicted for assault, Daniels was one of the handful of individuals tried for alleged offenses during the disorder. On April 9, the district attorney's case file recorded that a jury acquitted Daniels, likely because of questions over Young's identification of him.
Paul Boyett arrested Around 9:00 PM, Patrolman George Conn arrested Paul Boyett, a twenty-eight-year-old Black garage worker, for assaulting Timothy Murphy, a twenty-nine-year-old white rock driller. Conn testified in the Magistrates Court that he had come upon a crowd attacking Murphy on West 127th Street between 8th Avenue and St. Nicholas Avenue. He may have been in a radio car as the New York Amsterdam News reported "police drove up." After firing his pistol into the air to scatter the crowd, he then called on Boyett to halt, and when he did not, shot him. Although the bullet struck Boyett in his back or shoulder, he was able to continue running toward his home, only a few buildings away at 310 West 127th Street. Conn pursued him, eventually catching him in the building hallway. Boyett denied assaulting Murphy, testifying that he had been “an innocent onlooker” drawn to the “disturbance," the New York Amsterdam News reported, and “struck no one at that time.” In the confusion as the crowd rushed to leave when police appeared, a bullet hit him.

Conn was based at the 30th Precinct; St. Nicholas Avenue was the boundary between that precinct and the 28th Precinct. Rather than taking Boyett to his own precinct, Conn took him to the 28th Precinct station on West 123rd Street, as Boyett appeared in that precinct's police blotter. Hospital records indicate that a doctor from Knickerbocker Hospital treated Boyett's wound before he was placed in a cell. That hospital record and New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Associated Press reported Boyett had been shot in the right shoulder. Several newspapers reported other locations for the injury: the Daily Mirror in the left shoulder, the New York American and Home News in the shoulder, and the New York Times, New York Sun, and New York Evening Journal reported the wound was in his back.

Boyett appear in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, Daily News, and New York American, and in a list of those shot in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Herald Tribune. He also appears in the lists of the arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, the Daily News, New York American, and New York Evening Journal.

Boyett appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with felonious assault. The docket book indicates that he was remanded until March 22, and then again on March 25 and April 1, before Magistrate Renaud sent him to the grand jury on April 9. Unusually, Boyett did not appear in any of the newspaper stories about the legal proceedings after the disorder. On April 23, the grand jury heard the case against Boyett, according to the district attorney's case file records; they indicted him for first degree assault. His trial in the Court of General Sessions occurred just over a month later, on May 29, where his lawyer was William T. Andrews, a prominent member of Harlem's elite elected to the New York State Assembly in 1934. Boyett testified he had been “an innocent onlooker” drawn to the “disturbance," the New York Amsterdam News reported, and “struck no one at that time.” In the confusion as the crowd rushed to leave as police appeared, a bullet hit him. There is no mention in that story of what evidence was presented at Boyett's trial. Whatever it was, the jury acquitted Boyett, an outcome that indicated they accepted his account.

The 28th Precinct police blotter recorded the outcome of that trial but the only source for details is that brief story in the New York Amsterdam News. Headlined "Wins Acquittal in Disturbance Charge," the story only summarized Boyett's testimony and included no details of the alleged assault on Murphy or Conn's account of the shooting. In that way it fit with the approach Black newspapers took of not reporting alleged violence against whites during the disorder. The story mistakenly identified the complainant as Kennedy Murphy rather than Timothy Murphy, and mispelled Boyett's last name as Boyette.
Hashi Mohammed arrested Officer Brown of the 40th Precinct arrested Hashi Mohammed, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, for inciting a riot and possession of a knife. Mohammed had allegedly smashed windows "along Lenox Avenue," according to a story in the Home News, the source of details of the charges made against him. Born in Abyssinia, according to the New York American and New York Evening Journal and Washington Heights Magistrate's Court docket book, he lived at 4 West 128th Street, a block east of an area of Lenox Avenue that saw extensive disorder from late on March 19 and into the early hours of March 20, and may have been drawn to join the crowds on that street at some point. The combination of charges suggest that after Mohammed's arrest, the police officer searched him and found the knife, "a large bread knife" according to Home News. Mohammed also appeared in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and New York American as having "internal injuries." While he was listed among those "Less Seriously Injured" in the New York American and New York Evening Journal, he was also identified as in Harlem Hospital (however, he does not appear in any of the records the MCCH obtained from the hospital). It is possible that Brown or other police officers involved in his arrest may have been responsible for those injuries.

Mohammed was included in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide as charged with inciting a riot and "also charged with, violation of Sullivan law (possession of firearms)." When Mohammed appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court, he faced both charges, but the weapon he was recorded in the docket book as possessing was a knife not a gun.

Mohammed did not appear in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court until March 22, whereas most of those arrested in the disorder had been in court on March 20. That delay may have been the result of his injury. On the charge of carrying a dangerous weapon, Magistrate Ford held him on bail of $2,500 to appear in the Court of Special Sessions, significantly more than the typical bail of $500. Mohammed pled guilty, according to the docket book, but that must have been to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct, as the Magistrate could not adjudicate a charge of riot. Ford sentenced him to thirty days in the Workhouse. The only reports of Mohammed's court appearance were in the New York Times and Daily Worker, which mentioned only the sentence and misreported the charge against him as burglary, and the Home News, which reported he had been convicted, not pled guilty. (The New York Times story mentioned Mohammed in the context of hearings in the Harlem court not the Washington Heights court.) Three weeks later, on April 17, the Magistrates in the Court of Special Sessions acquitted Mohammed of possessing a weapon, an outcome that appears only in the records of the 32nd Precinct.

The sources differ in how they record Mohammed's name. In the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide he appears as Sashi Mohammed, as Hashi Mohammed in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and New York American, as Hashi Mohamed in the Home News, and as Hashi Mohamid in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court docket book.The records of the 32nd Precinct record his name as "Koko Mohammed."
Lyman Quarterman shot At around 10:30 PM, Lyman Quarterman, a thirty-four-year-old Black man, was part of a crowd at 121st Street and 7th Avenue that police were struggling to disperse when he was shot in the abdomen. A few minutes earlier, Anthony Cados, a thirty-four-year-old white man, reported being assaulted nearby by "some unknown colored person or persons." While Cados lived approximately ten blocks to the south, Quarterman lived at the other end of Black Harlem, at 306 West 146th Street.

Hospital records of the ambulance called to attend Quarterman simply recorded he had a "gunshot wound of the abdomen received when shot by some unknown person at the scene of riot." The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, New York American, Brooklyn Citizen, and Daily Mirror, and the Associated Press, reported on March 20, and the Chicago Defender on March 23, that Quarterman had died, a mistake the Home News attributed to "many conflicting reports during the night," and the New York Evening Journal attributed more specifically to a "report having been sent out on the police teletype." By late on March 20 the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle listed Quarterman among the injured, as did the Atlanta World on March 27 and the Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide on March 30. He was one of eight men still in hospital on March 21, the New York Herald Tribune reported, and still there as late as April 8 according to the New York Age, but there are no reports that he died.

The New York Times headlined the story it published on March 20, "Police Shoot Into Rioters; Kill Negro in Harlem Mob." However, the story itself was less definitive, saying only that the "police launched an investigation to determine who fired the fatal shot." However, other white newspaper stories discounted in various ways the possibility police shot Quarterman. The New York Herald Tribune, reported that no policeman in the vicinity could remember discharging his revolver, whereas the Times Union said many had, but “only into the air to frighten the mob.” The New York Evening Journal story made an oblique reference to shots being fired into the crowd, as the culmination of a narrative justifying police actions as a response to escalating violence, in which officers from the 123rd Street station surrounded by a crowd, first drew their nightsticks “to save their own lives,” and when the crowd armed themselves with baseball bats and clubs, drew their guns and exchanged shots with the crowd. No other newspapers reproduced this narrative. The New York American simply said Quarterman had been shot by an unknown assailant, the Daily Mirror by a “stray bullet,” and the Daily News reported his assailant had escaped, stories which all implicitly assumed the police were not responsible for his death. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle explicitly expressed such an assumption in reporting Quarterman had been shot “presumably by rioters.” Only the Brooklyn Citizen stated directly that “Whether he had been shot by police or other rioters could not be determined.”

Four of the six others shot and wounded during the disorder were Black men like Quarterman, one of unknown race, and one white police officer. As in his case, no one was arrested for any of those shootings (the man with whom the police officer struggled, James Thompson, was shot and killed by police).
Herman Young assaulted Around 1:00 AM, Herman Young, a fifty-three-year-old Austrian-born white man who had lived in Harlem for twenty years, was cut on the head by flying glass after a stone was thrown through the glass door of his Lenox Avenue hardware store. Young and his wife Rose had come from their apartment directly above the store after hearing smashing glass and seeing four men taking merchandise from the window display. They rushed downstairs. Rose arrived at the store first, turning on the lights, but remained on the stoop while Herman went inside. A man came up behind her, she told police, "called her names," and tried to push past her into the store. Herman closed the door, stopping him from getting inside. The man then started cursing, according to Young, calling out "You Goddam Jew I am going to kill you if you don’t get out of here,” and smashed the glass in the door. Rose testified that the man used a piece of pipe; Herman said he used "some instrument." Police later reported a stone had been thrown through the door. Rose said she saw glass hit Herman; the stone may also have hit him.

Young appeared in lists of the injured published by the New York Post (mistakenly identified as a patrolman) and the Home News, and among those recorded as attended by physicians from Harlem Hospital. All three sources described the injury as a laceration of the scalp. The hospital record added the detail that it resulted from being hit with a stone, while the report of the arrest mentioned that Young had been cut by flying glass. The other details appeared in the district attorney's case file, which included notes on statements by Herman and Rose Young, an arresting officer, and the man arrested for the assault and his wife. Another man, James Williams, was later arrested for looting the store. The affidavit in his case made no mention of Young being assaulted by a man, instead recording that he had seen four men in the store windows stealing merchandise. The affidavit charging assault did refer to the couple finding the store “windows cleared out” when they got downstairs. Notes in the case file made by the district attorney during the subsequent trial included information from the couple's testimony that provided the details of the events missing from the court documents.

Isaac Daniels, a twenty-nine-year-old Black man, was arrested and charged with throwing the rock. According to notes in the district attorney's case file, when Young was having his wound stitched at Harlem Hospital around 1:30 AM, Daniels came in for treatment. Young identified him as the man who assaulted him, and an officer at the hospital arrested him. Young was certain of his identification because he had stared at the man who assaulted him through the glass in the hardware store door for several minutes.

Questioned in a lineup at the Manhattan Police headquarters, Daniels denied throwing the stone at Young. He had been in the area on his way home. Later, at his trial, he added the detail that he had gone out to buy cigarettes. Daniels, a native of Georgia who had come to New York City in 1928, lived with his wife only a few blocks from Young's store, at 73 West 130th Street. His wife said that he had gone to the movies, and was listening to the radio at home at 1:00 AM, when Young was attacked. Notes in the district attorney's case file say that neither statement was true without indicating the basis for that claim.

Daniels was one of the first of those arrested to appear in the Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with felonious assault. The Home News reported he was back in the court two days later, one of three men returned to have their original charges dismissed so they could be rearrested and new charges brought (which is likely why Daniels appears in the 28th Precinct police blotter as having been discharged). The indictment in the district attorney's case file has a charge of first degree assault, with intent to kill, struck out, leaving a charge of second degree assault, with intent to cause bodily harm, suggesting that prosecutors reduced the charge after obtaining details of what happened. Indicted for assault, Daniels was one of the handful of individuals tried for alleged offenses during the disorder. On April 9, the district attorney's case file recorded that a jury acquitted him of the charge of assault, likely because of questions over Young's identification of him.
Detective Henry Roge assaulted Just before 10 PM, police on 125th Street succeeded in dispersing the crowd in front of Kress’ store, moving them across the street and west on to 8th Avenue. Detective Henry Roge of the West 123rd Street Precinct and his partner, Raymond Gill, were among the police standing in front of the store, watching the crowd, backlit by the lighted store. A rock thrown from the crowd then struck Roge in the head, causing deep cuts to his eye and face. Gill claimed he saw a man appear from behind the cars parked on the street, look around, and throw the rock that hit Roge. At that moment there were no other objects being thrown at stores or police, so Gill was certain that it was that rock that hit his partner, and he was able to keep his eyes on the man who threw it. After chasing him through the crowd, he trapped him among the parked cars. Gill frisked the man, twenty-four-year-old James Hughes, and found five stones in his pockets; Hughes insisted the stones were to defend himself, and he had not thrown the rock that struck Roge.

As Hughes was being arrested, Roge's injuries were bleeding profusely. A call for medical assistance brought Dr. Fabian of the Joint Disease Hospital to attend to the detective. New York Evening Journal photographers captured two images of a uniformed officer helping a bleeding Roge from the scene (the only images of an injured police officer published). One photograph taken at the scene shows Roge and the officer from the side. The officer is in the foreground, supporting Roge, who is leaning forward, his left hand over his eyes and forehead. A store display window is in the background, with what appears to be broken glass in front of it. In a photograph that may have been taken somewhere inside, Roge is in the foreground of the image, with a handkerchief covering his forehead and eyes. Next to him, a white uniformed patrolman has one arm behind Roge's back, guiding him, and is holding the lapel of Roge's jacket with his other hand, in which he has his baton. Over the patrolman's left shoulder is a Black man. The Daily Mirror also published an image of Roge and the uniformed officer, which may have been taken on the street, There are two Black men in the image, one behind the officer and one to right of the detective holding a handkerchief he appears to be offering the officer. This image was not published until April 3, when the newspaper miscaptioned it as showing a white man rather than a police officer, "One of the casualties in the Riot. The man was struck over the eyes with a stick. The policeman holds him until an ambulance arrives. But the victim was only one of many white persons injured in the mad Harlem riot."

According to the record of medical attendances, Roge remained on duty after being attended by the doctor, but other sources reported that his injury required two stitches, which involved Roge being taken to Harlem Hospital. The Probation Department report recorded that Roge was on sick leave for ten days after his injury, making it more likely his injury required him to leave the scene for treatment.

Hughes was tried and convicted of misdemeanor assault. The prosecutor’s notes on the trial suggest that Gill’s testimony stressed that he was certain of his identification of Hughes as the man who threw the rock, against which Hughes offered his denial and a series of character witnesses. In response, the prosecutor argued that Hughes “saw plenty of trouble – went right into it.” At the sentencing hearing, the judge expressed belief that Hughes had thrown the rock at the store window, not Roge, so sentenced him to a term of only three months in the Workhouse.

As with other assaults, the press coverage of this case was fragmented. Roge appeared on the lists of those injured published by white newspapers the New York American (on both March 20 & 21), New York Evening Journal, Home News, Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Post, and in stories in the Daily Mirror. Hughes appeared in lists of those arrested published in the Black newspapers the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the white New York Evening Journal. The two were linked in only three stories, in the New York Times, Home News, and Daily Worker. Even when Hughes was tried, producing additional coverage, only two of the five stories mentioned Roge. But that legal process did generate case files in both the DA’s office and the Probation Department, which provided details that are available for only a handful of the events of the disorder.
Clara Crowder injured Around 5:00 PM, during the struggles inside Kress' store as police tried to clear out the customers who had remained after Patrolman Raymond Donahue took Lino Rivera into the basement, Clara Crowder, a twenty-year-old white woman employed as a clerk in the store, fainted. According to the Medical Attendance record of the ambulance that arrived at the store at 5:05 PM, she had been aiding another store employee at the time.

Jackson Smith, Kress' manager, had decided sometime after 4:30 PM that efforts to convince those in the store that Rivera had been released unharmed were failing and had called for additional police to help him close the store. When those officers began to move customers from the rear of the store, "they began to get rough," Louise Thompson wrote in the account of what she witnessed published in New Masses. Displays of pots and pans and glasses were knocked over and women screamed. Crowder and the unnamed colleague she tried to help were likely behind counters in the store, where the sales staff worked, perhaps counters whose displays were knocked to the ground. The noise and shouting led many customers to rush to leave the store, Thompson and Jackson Smith testified in the MCCH public hearings, so could also have led Crowder to faint. Neither Smith nor Thompson mentioned Crowder when describing what they saw happen in Kress' at that time.

Louise Thompson, on West 125th Street after being cleared from the store by police, did mention seeing the ambulance arrive, but testified in a public hearing of the MCCH that "we never knew whom he was going to treat." L. F. Coles, who, like Thompson, had been in the store, likewise told a MCCH hearing that none of those he asked knew why the ambulance was there, with a police officer telling them "it wasn't any of our business." In fact, only three narratives of the events in Kress' store mention Crowder. The New York Herald Tribune had her faint as Hurley and Urban grabbed Rivera: "[Rivera] bit two Kress employees on the hand when they hauled him from the counter and this, in turn, caused a woman clerk to faint." The story returned later to Crowder, in describing customers being cleared from the story, reporting “As police beat the crowd back it was discovered that Miss Clara Browder [sic], twenty, a clerk, of 473 West 158th Street, had fainted.” The story went on to say she was attended by the ambulance attending the two store employees bitten by Rivera. Had Crowder fainted when Rivera was grabbed, she could have been attended by that ambulance, but police did not clear the store until two hours after it had returned to Harlem Hospital. The Medical Attendances records indicate it was a second ambulance, carrying a different intern physician, that attended Crowder. That timing makes the clearing of the store, not Rivera being grabbed, the context in which the woman fainted. The Daily News did report that a second ambulance came to Kress, but offered a vaguer account of the circumstances, noting only that Crowder “fainted after the boy had been released.” The Daily Mirror mentioned Crowder without making clear whether she was in the store or on the street outside, but did sensationalize the circumstances, reporting she “fainted in that crush and was trampled upon until rescued, by a football wedge of police.”

While not including Crowder in their narratives, the New York American, New York Evening Journal, and New York Post did list her among the injured. As in the narratives and the hospital record, her injury was recording as fainting, other than by the New York Evening Journal, which listed her as “treated for shock,” which was also her injury in the Daily News list. Crowder, one of three women among those injured (14%, 3 of 21) is the only individual reported as having fainted. After being attended by the physician, Crowder left for home, 473 West 158th Street. Beyond Harlem to the north, that address was emblematic of the distance between Kress’ largely white staff and its Black customers.
Everett Breuer and Joseph Martin assaulted Everett Breuer, a twenty-eight-year-old white photographer working for the Daily News, was taking images of the crowd at 7th Avenue and 125th Street when a rock hit him in the head. It was likely one of several objects thrown in Breuer’s direction as the office boy carrying his plates, Joseph Martin, was also hit on the face. Breuer’s own publication reported he was “beaten,” not hit by a rock, as did the New York American, but the Daily Mirror, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Times all reported him being hit by an object. The New York Evening Journal and New York Post reported only the resulting cuts. According to all the publications but the New York Evening Journal, Breuer’s cuts were bad enough to require a trip to the hospital. The stories disagreed on where he received treatment. The New York American, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York Times, and Daily Mirror reported it was at Harlem Hospital, the Home News at Sydenham Hospital on Manhattan Avenue and West 124th Street, and the Daily News at the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled on 42nd St and Lexington Avenue.

James Martin attracted less attention than Breuer. Other than a mention in the story and an appearance in the list of the injured in the Daily News, Martin appeared only in the list of injured published by the New York Evening Journal. Both sources described him as having cuts on his face, with the latfter recording that an ambulance treated Martin.

The area around 7th Avenue and 125th Street saw a cluster of assaults during the disorder, with six other assaults reported there, including the beating of another reporter, Harry Johnson of the New York American. It was also at this location that Andrew Lyons was killed. All those events occurred despite police being deployed at the intersection. The attack on Breuer and Martin may have occurred during violence around 8:00 PM or when several other white men were assaulted around 9:00 PM.

A photograph Breuer took immediately before the rock struck him became the most widely reproduced image of the disorder. When it initially appeared in the Daily News, the caption noted “After making this picture, The News photographer was struck down and went to hospital. He suffered lacerations to the scalp.” In later editions that information was omitted, and it did not appear in the caption of the photograph when it was reprinted by other publications. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle list of the injured did report Breuer was "hit by a rock while taking pictures of a riotous group." The scene the photographer captured shows two black men apparently trying to move away from a uniformed police officer; one man has fallen, while the officer is trying to hold the other. Neither they nor the three men and two women in the background look poised to throw anything at the photographer.
De Soto Windgate shot At 1:15 AM, “some unknown person” shot a twenty-four-year-old Black man named De Soto Windgate as he walked along West 144th Street between Lenox and 7th Avenues. The shooting was one of only two reported incidents associated with the disorder north of West 138th Street, and one of only a handful of events that might have occurred away from the avenues on residential cross streets.

There was no information on the circumstances of the shooting. There was no evidence of any disorder in which he might have participated, that might have attracted his attention or have brought police into the area. Windgate lived at the opposite end of Harlem at 7 East 114th Street, a section mostly occupied by Puerto Rican and white residents. He may have come north to patronize one of the theaters on West 145th Street; the Roosevelt was on the corner of 7th Avenue. Or he may have been visiting friends. Given the location and limited evidence, there was some question about whether this shooting was part of the disorder.

Windgate appeared in the Aided Cases book of the 32nd Precinct, based on West 135th Street. Procedure required police to record all incidents reported to them in that book. Only three other cases appear in the 32nd Precinct book for the period of the disorder, the alleged assault on a white man named Julius Narditch by a group of Black men at 8th Avenue and West 147th Street, the assault on Thomas Suares on West 134th Street near Lenox Avenue, and the injury of Herbert Holderman near Lenox Avenue and West 132nd Street. Police appeared to have included his name in the list of those injured during the disorder they released to the press. Windgate was included in the list of those “near death” in the New York American, Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal’s list of the “dying.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Herald Tribune simply described his condition as “serious.” Those reports said the bullet hit Windgate in the abdomen causing a wound serious enough for him to be admitted to Harlem Hospital. However, he did not appear in the hospital records gathered by the MCCH.

The police record did not identify Windgate’s race, but the newspaper stories did. The New York American, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Home News, New York Daily News, New York Post, New York Times, and New York Sun all included information about his race; the New York Herald Tribune and New York Evening Journal did not. Four of the six others shot and wounded in the disorder were Black men, one of unknown race, and one white police officer. No one was arrested for shooting Windgate, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded. (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed.)
Detective William Boyle assaulted Detective William Boyle, a twenty-nine-year-old white officer, was allegedly assaulted "while attempting to rescue an unknown white man being assaulted at scene of riot,” according to the record of the ambulance that attended him. Dr. Sayet of Harlem Hospital treated Boyle at the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street, where he was based, at 9:15 PM, indicating that that assault took place sometime earlier, around 9:00 PM. The "scene of riot" where the alleged assault occurred was likely the block of 125th Street between 8th and 7th Avenues, where the disorder was concentrated around 9:00 PM. Two alleged assaults on white men on 125th Street around that time could be the incident in which Boyle was assaulted. Both men are described as being assaulted by groups of "unknown colored men" in Hospital Admission records, Maurice Spellman on the corner of 8th Avenue and Morris Werner on the corner of 7th Avenue. Those locations fit the details in Boyle's Medical Attendance record better than the location at which a story in the New York Times put the assault, the rear of Kress' store on West 124th Street. Boyle is one of three officers listed as injured after "a barrage of missiles fell on the ranks of the police who had caught up with the crowd" after it moved from the front of the store. However, that clash occurred around two hours before Boyle attended by an ambulance. Ambulances treated the two other officers on that list, Patrolman Michael Kelly and Detective Charles Foley, around two hours before Boyle was treated, although they received treatment at the scene, while Boyle was attended at the 28th Precinct. The story also mistakenly located Harry Gordon's alleged assault on Patrolman Young at the rear of this store around the same time, rather than in front of the store around forty-five minutes before police clashed with crowds at the rear of the store. No sources mention an attack on a white man at the rear of Kress' store.

The Medical Attendance record described Boyle's injury as "contusions and abrasions of left ankle." He also appeared on lists of the injured published by the New York American, Daily News, New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Evening Journal, in addition to the story in the New York Times and a story in the Daily Mirror. All but the Daily Mirror reported Boyle's injury as cuts to the left ankle, or "deep cuts" in the case of the New York Herald Tribune and New York Post. Both those lists and the stories in the New York Times and Daily Mirror included the information that Boyle had been hit by an object, a "rock," "hurled stone," "flying brick," and "thrown rock" respectively. The injury was not serious enough for Boyle to be taken to hospital; he "remained on duty," according to the Medical Attendance record. The Daily Mirror alone mistakenly reported that Boyle had "received a fracture of the left leg" and been "removed to Harlem Hospital." It seems likely given Boyle's injury that the unknown white man that he intervened to protect was the target of missiles rather than being beaten. As a detective, Boyle would not have been in uniform at the time.
Benjamin Bell shot Benjamin Bell, a thirty-two-year-old man of unknown race, was shot “when fired upon by some unknown person” outside his home at 73 West 128th Street, according to hospital records. Dr. Payne attended Bell at Harlem Hospital at 3:55 AM, so he was likely shot sometime around 3:30 AM. Given that he was shot in front of his home, Bell was likely a spectator rather than a participant in the disorder on Lenox Avenue. He may have been hit by a stray bullet fired by police officers shooting to disperse crowds. Police officers fired their weapons frequently in the hours after midnight. While there were no reports of violence near 128th Street at this time, three other men were injured around West 129th street just a block to the north sometime after 3:00 AM. That violence could have spread down to the area around Bell's home as police pursued people who had scattered down Lenox Avenue.

None of the sources that record the assault on Bell identified his race. His address did not provide clear evidence. The block on which Bell lived included white as well as Black residents.

The hospital record described Bell’s injury as a “gunshot wound in the left thigh” that was serious enough for him to be admitted to Harlem Hospital. The New York American and New York Evening Journal reported simply that he had been shot in the leg. The New York Post more dismissively listed the gunshot wound as “superficial.”

No one was arrested for shooting Bell, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded. (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed.)
Clarence London shot Sometime shortly before 1:00 AM, Clarence London, a thirty-four-year-old Black man, was shot in the leg while walking on the street near West 122nd Street and 7th Avenue. London lived in north Harlem, at 676 St Nicholas Avenue, so was far from home when the bullet hit him. Dr. Payne attended London at Harlem Hospital at 1:00 AM.

The location of the shooting was recorded in hospital admission records as West 122nd Street and 7th Avenue. That record was a more reliable source than the stories in the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune that located the shooting three blocks north, at 125th Street and 7th Avenue. An ambulance from Harlem Hospital also attended a white man, John Eigler, who reported being hit by an object thrown by a Black assailant at 122nd Street and 7th Avenue around the time London was shot. Fred Campbell's car was hit by a brick at the same intersection a few minutes earlier. He saw police officers with riot guns and heard shots being fired as he drove by. The New York American reported London had been “shot by an unidentified man” but offered no other details. Other newspapers simply listed him as “shot.” The hospital records further obscured the circumstances by describing London as “wounded.” His wound was consistently reported as in the right leg, although the Home News did report it was in the left leg. Given the evidence of both looting and the police response to it at the time, and the lack of any evidence that Black individuals on the streets during the disorder used guns, London was likely hit by shots fired by police — as were the other men reported as shot and wounded during the disorder.

The New York American, New York Post, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and New York Times all identified London as a Black man; only the Daily News and New York Evening Journal did not specify his race. Four of the six other individuals shot and wounded in the disorder were Black men; the others were one man of unknown race, and one white police officer.

No one was arrested for shooting London, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded. (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed.)
Injured and arrested (5) Four Black men arrested for assault, and one arrested for inciting a riot and possession of a firearm are recorded as being injured.

In two cases, that injury is mentioned in accounts of the assault. Paul Boyett was shot in the right shoulder by a policeman who alleged he was part of a group the officer interrupted assaulting Timothy Murphy. A physician from Knickerbocker Hospital attended him at the 30th Precinct, after which he was placed in a cell. Charles Alston allegedly fell when trying to escape police by jumping from the roof of one building to an adjacent building. He landed on a ledge three floors below, fracturing his skull. Photographs of Alston's arrest show him holding his head, but the severity of his injury only became apparent at the police station, when he passed out — a detail reported only in the Home News. Alston did appear in the lists of the injured published by several newspapers.

In two cases, accounts of the assault make no mention of an injury to the men arrested, which could indicate that they had been assaulted by police. James Smitten, arrested for assaulting William Kitlitz, had "lacerations of [sic] scalp" that may have come at the hands of Kitlitz during the alleged assault, or from police during his arrest. A physician from Harlem Hospital attended him at the 28th Precinct, where he remained after treatment. Isaac Daniels, arrested for assaulting Herman Young by throwing a stone through the window of his store, had "contusions" of his left arm that may have come from police during his arrest according to the list of the injured in the New York Post.

No details survive of the circumstances of the fifth case. Hashi Mohammed, a twenty-two-year-old Black man identified as of "Abyssinian" origin, charged with inciting a riot and possession of a firearm, also appeared in three newspapers' lists of the injured.
Injured
Stanley Dondoro injured Just after 5:30 AM, Stanley Dondoro, a thirty-four-year-old white chauffeur, was shot while walking on 8th Avenue near 127th Street. Two police detectives pursuing James Thompson, a nineteen-year-old black man they allegedly found looting a grocery store, fired multiple shots as he fled out the rear exit onto 127th Street. One of those shots struck Thompson in the chest, while another hit Dondoro in the left leg. Thompson died four hours later. Dondoro’s own injury, however, was superficial, as hospital records indicate that he was not admitted to Harlem Hospital. All the other men shot during the disorder had been admitted to the hospital except for one of the detectives who shot Dondoro, Nicholas Campo, who had accidentally shot himself in the finger when struggling with Thompson. The Home News and New York Post added the detail that a bullet had passed through the trousers of an unnamed man with Dondoro without injuring him.

A transcript of the police blotter record of Captain Mulholland’s investigation of the shooting among the records gathered by the MCCH identified the detectives as responsible for shooting Dondoro. The police record specified that Campo had shot twice at Thompson, and his partner Detective Beckler had shot three times, as well as twice in the air, a warning to stop that was required police practice. The blotter also recorded Captain Mulholland’s conclusion that Campo sustained his injury “in proper performance of police duty and no negligence on the part of the aforesaid detective contributed thereto.”

Newspaper stories and lists did not attribute Dondoro's shooting to police. The New York American, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, and New York Post described an exchange of shots between Thompson and the detectives that did not happen; neither did “other rioters” shoot at police, as the New York Evening Journal reported. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle simply listed Dondoro among the injured. Dondoro also appeared in lists of the injured in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and New York American. The hospital record described him as having been shot in “some unknown manner during an arrest at 126th St. and 7th Ave.” (The MCCH's transcript of the hospital record had the time Dr. Payne attended Dondoro at Harlem Hospital as 4:00 AM; that was likely a mistaken transcription of 6:00 AM).

Dondoro lived across the river in Hoboken, New Jersey. It is not clear why he was on the streets of Harlem. By the time of the shooting there was little disorder in the neighborhood, and police cars patrolled the streets — Campo and Beckler were traveling in one when the sound of breaking glass in the grocery store caused them to stop. The avenue on which the shooting happened was not a major thoroughfare like 7th Avenue to the east, and while an area of Black residences, was near the western boundary of Black Harlem, only three blocks from a white district. Dondoro may have been walking to or from the elevated train station on 8th Avenue and West 130th Street. He may have worked as a taxi-driver in Harlem, a job still largely held by white men.
Detective Charles Foley assaulted Detective Charles Foley, a thirty-two-year-old white officer from the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street, was "struck by a stone thrown by some unknown person while at scene of riot in rear of Kress’ Store" on 124th Street, according to the Medical Attendance record of the ambulance that attended him. Dr. Sayet of Harlem Hospital treated Foley in front of Blumstein's department store, on 125th Street, at 7:30 PM, so the assault likely took place around 7:15 PM. Around the same time, a second officer, Patrolman Michael Kelly, was hit by an object at the rear of the store, where police had followed a crowd drawn to 124th Street around 7:00 PM by the appearance of a hearse they assumed had come for the body of the boy rumored to have been killed. Foley was one of the officers listed in a story in the New York Times as injured after "a barrage of missiles fell on the ranks of the police who had caught up with the crowd" after it moved from the front of the store. The street had a narrower roadway and pavements than 125th Street, making officers easier to target with objects thrown from roofs as well as the street level.

The Medical Attendance record described Foley's injury as a "possible fracture of left shoulder." Lists in the Home News, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, and New York Evening Journal, and a story in the New York Times identified him as having a shoulder injury. Three other papers, the New York American on March 20 and 21, the Daily Mirror, and the New York Post, instead listed a head injury, the most common injury resulting from being hit by objects. According to the New York Times, Foley "refused medical attention." Given that an ambulance attended him, that claim is likely a misstatement of the fact that he was not taken back to Harlem Hospital, as Kelly was, but treated at the scene.

No one was arrested for assaulting Foley, as was the case in seven of the nine assaults on police.
Patrolman Michael Kelly assaulted Patrolman Michael Kelly, a thirty-year-old white officer, was hit on the leg "by a stone thrown by an unknown person" at the rear of Kress’ store on 124th Street, according to the record of the ambulance that attended him. Dr. Russell of Harlem Hospital treated Kelly at 7:15 PM, so the assault likely took place around 7:00 PM. That was the time newspaper stories reported that the crowd pushed from the front of Kress' store on 125th Street moved to the store's rear in response to the appearance of a hearse they assumed had come for the body of the boy rumored to have been killed in the store and began breaking windows. Kelly was one of the officers listed in a story in the New York Times as injured after "a barrage of missiles fell on the ranks of the police who had caught up with the crowd" after it moved from the front of the store. A similar account appeared in the New York Age, which described police arriving at the rear of the store as being "greeted with a fusillade of stone hurled by the crowd," as a result of which Kelly was one of two patrolmen "forced to undergo treatment for injuries." He was assigned to a radio car, the Medical Attendance record detailed, which may have allowed him to get to the rear of the store faster than other officers. The street had a narrower roadway and pavements than 125th Street, making officers easier to target with objects thrown from roofs as well as the street level. One other officer, Detective Charles Foley, was seriously injured enough to be attended by an ambulance after being hit by a stone thrown at him at the rear of the store around the same time as Kelly.

The Medical Attendance report described Kelly's injury as "contusion of muscle and right leg," serious enough that he was taken to Harlem Hospital for an x-ray and "surgical observation." The lists of the injured in the New York American on both March 20 and 21 and in the New York Herald Tribune, as well as the story in the New York Times echoed that information, while the lists in the Home News and New York Evening Journal reported the injury as a sprain without noting that Kelly was taken to the hospital. A story in the Daily Mirror, and lists in the Daily News and New York Post replaced the injury to the leg with a more dramatic head injury. The New York Age did not specify the nature of Kelly's injury.

No one was arrested for assaulting Kelly, as was the case in seven of the nine assaults on police.
Nathaniel Powell injured Nathaniel Powell, a nineteen-year-old Black man, suffered cuts to his nose and left wrist on Lenox Avenue between 116th and 117th Streets “in some unknown manner,” his hospital admission recorded. Dr. Payne attended Powell at Harlem Hospital, twenty blocks north on Lenox Avenue, at 1:00 AM, so Powell was injured sometime after 12:30 AM. Just after midnight, windows were broken in the San Antonio Market on West 116th Street just east of Lenox Avenue, and groceries valued at around $10 were taken. A restaurant on Lenox Avenue near West 117th Street and three businesses around West 118th Street also had windows broken some time during the disorder. Like many of those injured, Powell was close to home when hurt. He lived only two blocks to the north at 69 West 118th Street so may have been a spectator attracted by the noise and crowds rather than a participant in that violence.

If the phrasing of the hospital record indicated that Powell did not provide the medical staff with any details of the circumstances in which he had been injured, the context makes it likely he had been injured by glass flying from smashed windows. While he could have been watching as others broke windows, the severity of his wounds would suggest he was closer than that and involved in smashing the glass. While others treated by hospital staff did tell them they had been hit by glass, Powell would have had little incentive to reveal if that was the cause of his injuries. Police officers were stationed at Harlem Hospital during the disorder, where they arrested at least one Black man, Isaac Daniels, while he was being treated after a white storeowner identified him as the man who had assaulted him. Another possibility was that Powell had been beaten by police officers as they sought to disperse crowds on the street. While police violence intensified after midnight, Powell's injuries included more extensive lacerations than were seen in those hit with batons and gun butts. There was also no evidence of police in the area of Lenox Avenue where he was injured until more than an hour later when James Williams was arrested.

While the hospital record recorded Powell’s injuries as "laceration of nose and left wrist," the Daily News described them more broadly as cuts about the face, and the New York Post shifted the injury to his foot. The New York Evening Journal and New York American reported a more dramatic wound, that Powell’s nose had been cut off, with the New York American sensationally describing his nose as “severed by [a] razor.” That account cast Powell as having been assaulted with a weapon that whites associated with Black New Yorkers. While the hospital record provided no details of the circumstances of the injury, given that none of the other newspapers mentioned a weapon, the information in the New York American was likely an example of the Hearst press falling back on tropes of racial violence rather than a reliable account of what happened to Powell. Descriptions of his nose being cut off likely stemmed from the seriousness of the cuts. After Payne attended Powell, he was admitted to the hospital, one of only eleven among the injured known to have needed that additional care (11 of 42, 26%).
Patrolman Charles Robbins assaulted Patrolman Charles Robbins, a member of the 6th Emergency Squad (a riot squad), was "struck over head with an iron bar by some unknown person,” according to the record of the ambulance that attended him. Dr. Russell of Harlem Hospital treated Robbins at 124th Street and 7th Avenue, at 10:15 PM, indicating that that assault took place sometime earlier, around 10:00 PM. The location of the assault was the "scene of the riot," in the Medical Attendance record, likely where Robbins was treated. By 10:00 PM, police had established a perimeter around the block of 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues on which Kress' store was located. As a result crowds trying to get to the Kress store were stuck on those corners, leading some to leave in frustration and instead go up or down 7th Avenue. Emergency trucks were part of the police perimeter. While newspaper stories differed over precisely where the vehicles were stationed, both the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune located at least one truck on 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. (The New York Times put the others on 124th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, 126th Street between Lenox and Seventh Avenues, and at 130th Street and Lenox Avenue, while the New York Herald Tribune had them at Lenox Avenue and 125th Street, and 7th Avenue and 127th Street.)

Robbins was included in lists of the injured published in the press. Four of those lists provided details of the circumstances in which he was injured. The Home News and the New York American on March 20 described the injury as caused by an iron bar, following the Medical Attendance record. The New York Herald Tribune and Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which listed the injured policemen separately, included the detail that Robbins had been hit by a brick. An iron bar was not a typical weapon during the disorder; bricks, however, were frequently used as weapons. The New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York American (on March 21), and Daily News all listed Robbins among the injured without details of the circumstances. His injury was listed as a “possible fractured skull,” but the Medical Attendance record described Robbins' injury as only a "laceration of scalp." Nonetheless, it noted that Robbins was "removed" to Harlem Hospital for further treatment, which may be why newspapers identified him as having suffered a more serious injury.

No one was arrested for assaulting Robins, as was the case in seven of the nine alleged assaults on police.
John Hademan assaulted John Hademan, a twenty-six-year-old Black man, suffered a fractured skull at 126th Street and 7th Avenue. The circumstances in which he was assaulted are uncertain. The New York Herald Tribune and New York Times, the two reports that gave a location for the assault on Hademan, suggested that other violence occurred at the same time: the New York Times described Hademan as being assaulted “in a melee,” while the New York Herald Tribune described the context as “rioting.” Neither included a time for the assault on Hademan. The only group with whom Black residents fought during the disorder were police, who wielded batons that produced head injuries. One possible time for police to have assaulted Hademan was around 9:30 PM, when officers began to deploy north on 7th Avenue from 125th Street. By 9:45 PM, they were making an arrest a block further north, with another arrest in that area at 10:10 PM.

An ambulance attended Hademan after he was assaulted and then took him to Harlem Hospital, according to the report in the New York Times and the lists of the injured in the New York Evening Journal, New York Herald Tribune, and New York American. However, he did not appear in the hospital records. Those lists, and that in the New York Post, noted that no address was given for Hademan. The Daily News identified him as a resident of Castle Point in the Bronx, but that story was likely not reliable as it did not identify his race, was alone in not recording his injury as lacerations of his face and head, and spelled his name differently than the other reports. As with all the Black men assaulted during the disorder, no one was arrested or charged for assaulting Hademan.
Max Newman assaulted At 10:30 PM, Max Newman, a thirty-six-year-old white man, was closing his grocer’s store at 2274 8th Avenue when a group of Black men allegedly attacked him. They beat him around the head, leaving him with cuts and bruises on his forehead. An ambulance was called, and a doctor treated Newman’s injuries at the scene. Newman was one of three white business owners allegedly attacked by groups of Black men. Joseph Sarnelli was also closing his store, and his assailants allegedly tried to steal razors. Herman Young was hit by a rock thrown from a crowd during a period of looting.

Newman appeared only in lists of the injured. Two lists included some details of the circumstances in which he suffered those wounds. The New York Herald Tribune provided the details that he was beaten by a group of eight Black men, when the assault occurred, and that an ambulance treated him. The New York American described a smaller group of five men, and did not mention the timing or the ambulance. The reports in the Home News, New York Evening Journal, and New York Post only listed Newman’s injuries. The Home News and New York Evening Journal did include his home address, 3200 Rochambeau Avenue in the Bronx.

Two different locations for the assault were reported. The list published in the New York Herald Tribune reported the store was at 2774 8th Avenue, “near 138th St," but that address was actually near 148th Street, not 138th Street. It was too far north to fit the other events of the disorder around that time. However, the list in the New York American located the store at 2274 8th Avenue, which was near 122nd Street, not 138th Street. The MCCH business survey identified both addresses as white-owned grocery stores. The area around 122nd Street saw windows being broken and violence intensifying around 10:30 PM as groups moved away from 125th Street. The assault fits that context so has been mapped at 2274 8th Avenue.
Thomas Brown injured Thomas Brown, a twenty-year-old man of unknown race, was injured in “some unknown manner” at Lenox Avenue and 129th Street, according to hospital admission records. Dr. Payne attended Brown at Harlem Hospital at 3:30 AM, so he was likely injured sometime after 3:00 AM. Jack Ponder was also injured, and James White, a Black man, assaulted at the same place and treated by Payne at the same time. Brown lived only five blocks north, at 504 Lenox Avenue, so could have been part of the crowds of spectators drawn by the noise and activity.

The hospital admission records and the lists of the injured in the New York Post and New York Evening Journal agree that Brown suffered a lacerated forehead. Six of those injured (30%) suffered similar head wounds. After being seen by Dr. Payne, Brown went home, his injury evidently not serious enough for him to be admitted to the hospital.

Brown appeared only in the hospital records, which did not record information about his race.
Victor Fain shot Victor Fain, a nineteen-year-old Black man born in South Carolina, was shot in “some unknown manner during [the] disorder” at 128th Street and 7th Avenue, according to a hospital admission record. Dr. Payne attended Mitchell at Harlem Hospital at 2:30 AM, so he was likely shot sometime after 2:00 AM. The bullet almost certainly came from a police gun. The noise of police gunfire had been one of the sounds of the disorder from early on, with many of those shots fired in the air in an attempt to disperse groups who gathered on the street. Around midnight, police had begun shooting more indiscriminantly, aiming at those on the street and shooting sufficient rounds to prodice many stray shots.

Fain was shot some distance from his home fifteen blocks to the south, at 315 West 113th Street, in a section on the southern margins of Harlem mostly occupied by whites and Puerto Ricans. Sometime later in 1935 he relocated to section of Black Harlem, lodging at 208 West 141st Street. Fain was still at that address when a census enumerator called on April 30, 1940.

The hospital record described Fain as having been shot in the left ankle. All the newspaper lists of the injured, in the New York American, Home News, Daily News, New York Post, and New York Evening Journal, and a story in the New York Times, reported the same injury. That unusual consistency might result from him being admitted to the hospital after being attended.

The hospital record did not identify Fain’s race, but the newspapers did. The lists of the injured in the New York American, Home News and the story in the New York Times identified him as a Black man. The lists of injured in the Daily News, New York Post, and New York Evening Journal did not. Four Black men were among the six men shot and wounded in the disorder, with one man of unknown race, and one white police officer.

No one was arrested for shooting Fain, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded. (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed.)
Edward Genest assaulted Edward Genest, a thirty-two-year-old white sailor from the S.S. Virginia, was stabbed in the left arm on 7th Avenue at 123rd Street. Lists of the injured in two newspapers, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the New York Herald Tribune, added the detail that he had been stabbed by Black assailants. Five newspapers noted only that he had been stabbed: the New York American (on both March 20 and 21), Daily News, New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and Home News.

Genest was likely a visitor to Harlem seeking entertainment on 125th Street who became caught up in the disorder. He could have travelled by subway, unaware of what was happening until he arrived. There was no information on when Genest was assaulted. The area around 125th Street and 7th Avenue was the site of clashes between Black crowds and police from early in the disorder, and reported attacks on white men and women around 9:30 PM, 10:00 PM, 11:00 PM, 12:30 AM, and 1:00 AM. The attack on Genest could have occurred at any of those times.

The use of a knife in this assault was unusual; only one other of the fifty-four assaults in the disorder involved a stabbing, the attack on Morris Werner. In the rest of 1935, knives were a favored weapon of those committing acts of violence, used in two-thirds of felony assault cases.
Herbert Holderman injured Around 1:20 AM, Herbert Holderman was “cut by flying glass when some unknown persons broke windows of stores” on Lenox Avenue at 132nd Street. Alice Mitchell and Hugh Young were also injured by flying glass three blocks south around 1:00 AM, as part of an outbreak of violence on the blocks of Lenox Avenue from West 125th Street as far north as West 134th Street.

Holderman, like Mitchell and Young, was treated by Dr. Payne at Harlem Hospital. He did not appear in the hospital records, only in the 32nd Police Precinct book of aided cases. Three newspaper lists of the injured also included Holderman, but the only information that they provided on his identity was his home address, 73 East 128th Street, an area of mixed Black and white residences on the eastern boundary of Harlem. The police record did not specify where Holderman was cut. The lists disagreed on where he had been cut. The New York Post reported it as his hands, while the Daily News and New York Evening Journal reported it was his face. He was one of four of those injured with wounds to the hands (20%). After being attended by a physician, Holderman went home, indicating the wound was not serious enough to require him to be admitted to the hospital.
James Wrigley assaulted At 12:45 AM, forty-nine-year-old James Wrigley, a white security guard from Teaneck, New Jersey, suffered a serious head injury. Several newspaper reports identified Wrigley as an employee of the Holmes Protective Agency, which apparently provided private police officers (security guards) for one or more of the stores on 125th Street.

The conflicting press accounts of how he came to be injured put the case in different categories of assault. As only the New York Times provided a specific time for the assault on Wrigley, and a detailed account of his injuries, Wrigley has been categorized here as having been hit by rocks. The newspaper’s story included Wrigley among the victims of “stone-throwers,” “struck by a stone at 126th Street and Seventh Avenue, receiving cuts about both eyes and a serious head injury, possibly a concussion of the brain.” The Home News likewise cast him as “another victim of the rock hurlers,” but then proceeded to report Wrigley was “set upon by several colored men [and] beaten into unconsciousness before he was able to draw his gun.” The New York Evening Journal also reported Wrigley had been “seized and beaten,” an attack that apparently did not draw attention as the story went on to recount that “Radio patrol cars found him lying on the pavement, unconscious, suffering from concussion of the brain.” The Daily News, which published no details of the assault, was the only other publication to report Wrigley was found unconscious in an alley. The Associated Press reporter’s brief summary opted for this second narrative that Wrigley had been attacked by a gang. The New York American, Daily News, New York Post, New York Evening Journal, and Home News only included Wrigley in their lists of the injured. He also appeared in lists of the injured in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide. Wrigley's injury was apparently serious enough that he was one of the eight men that the New York Herald Tribune reported was still in the hospital on March 21.

The area around the intersection of 7th Avenue and West 125th Street where Wrigley was struck down saw a cluster of assaults on white men and women throughout the disorder, including other civilians and police hit by rocks, as well as crowds breaking windows and looting. Those hit by objects commonly suffered head injuries, as Wrigley did, although no others were reported as having been knocked unconscious.
Wilmont Hendricks shot Wilmont Hendricks, a twenty-five-year-old Black man, was shot on Lenox Avenue near 128th Street. Dr. Payne attended Hendricks at Harlem Hospital at 1:30 AM, the hospital staff recorded, so he was likely injured sometime around 1:00 AM (not around 2:00 AM, as a New York Times story reported). No details survived of the circumstances of Hendricks’ injury: the hospital record noted that he had been shot in “in some unknown manner,” while newspapers only reported he had been shot. There was considerable violence on the blocks of Lenox Avenue north of 125th Street around this time, including other assaults and looting. Police had begun shooting more indiscriminately after midnight than earlier in the disorder, and it is likely that Hendricks was shot by police. No one was arrested for shooting Hendricks, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded. (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed.)

After being seen by Dr. Payne, Hendricks' injury was sufficiently serious for him to be admitted to the hospital, and to still be there a day later, according to the New York Herald Tribune. While the hospital recorded his wound as being in his left shoulder, only the list of injured in the Home News echoed that report. The lists in the New York American, New York Post, Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide instead locating the gunshot in his chest, and the lists in the Daily News and New York Evening Journal, and a story in the New York Times reported it was in in his back.

The hospital record did not identify Hendricks' race, but the newspaper lists in the New York Post, Home News, New York American, and New York Evening Journal did. Four of the six other men shot and wounded in the disorder were Black, one of unknown race, and one white police officer. When he was shot, Hendricks was some distance from his home at 214 West 146th Street, which was almost twenty blocks to the north.
Julius Narditch assaulted At 11:30pm, as Julius Narditch, a thirty-four-year-old white man, walked on 8th Avenue near 147th Street, three Black men allegedly "jumped" him. His struggle with the men left him with head injuries and lacerations to his face and hands. A doctor from Knickerbocker Hospital attended Narditch, who was then taken to Harlem Hospital (although he did not appear in the hospital records obtained by the MCCH). Narditch lived at 400 West 128th Street, west of Harlem. No explanation was provided for why he was in a Black neighborhood, although many of the businesses on the avenue were white-owned. He may have come from the elevated train station on 8th Avenue and 145th Street.

The alleged assault on Narditch was the only event in the disorder north of 145th Street. Given that there were only four other events north of 135th Street (including a shooting), it was not certain that the assault was actually related to the events at the Kress store and to the south, in the sense that the assailants had been on 125th Street or been brought out on to the street by the disorder. Narditch was included in the one of the lists of the injured distributed to journalists, likely by police, published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, Daily News, New York American, and New York Herald Tribune. He likely was on that list because as he had reported the assault to police it was recorded in the Aided Cases book of the 32nd Precinct. Procedures required police to record all incidents reported to them in that book. Those records were among the material gathered by MCCH investigators. The other three other cases that appeared in the book for the period of the disorder all occurred closer to the other events of the disorder: the shooting of De Soto Windgate on West 144th Street between 7th and Lenox Avenues; the assault on Thomas Suares on 134th Street; and the injury of Herbert Holderman on 132nd Street.

Only the New York Herald Tribune mentioned that multiple assailants attacked Narditch. The New York American attributed the cuts on his face to stabbing, but there was no mention of weapons in the police record. Only two other assaults in the disorder involved knives, a striking contrast with the extensive use of knives in violence at other times in 1935. The mention in the New York American likely reflected assumptions from those larger patterns.

No one was arrested for the assault on Narditch.
William Burkhard assaulted Around 11:30 PM, William Burkhard, a forty-three-year-old white man, was “assaulted by some unknown colored persons," according to the record of ambulance attendances. An ambulance from Bellevue Hospital attended Burkhard in West 118th Street between Lenox and 7th Avenues at 11:45 PM, and Dr. Solomon proceeded to treat a "contusion and laceration" of his right cheek. Burkhard then left for his home, 533 East 12th Street, at the opposite end of Manhattan.

If the assault took place where the ambulance attended Burkhard, he was one of only two individuals assaulted off the avenues. However, he likely made his way to that location after being attacked on 7th Avenue. The assault on Burkhard was the part of a cluster of attacks on or near 7th Avenue in the blocks around West 116th Street beginning around 11:00 PM.

Burkhard appeared in the record of hospital attendances, and in lists of the injured in four newspapers. The New York Herald Tribune unusually provided the same details as the hospital records that Burkhard had been “assaulted by some unknown colored persons.” The Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and New York Post listed only his injuries to his cheek. Although the ambulance records did not include information on an individual's race, the description of his alleged attackers as "colored persons," together with his address, indicate that he was a white man.
Patrolman Harry Whittington assaulted Just after midnight, Patrolman Harry Whittington, a thirty-five-year-old white member of Emergency Squad 9 (a riot squad) was hit by a rock on 8th Avenue. The Daily Mirror provided the most details of the assault. The story reported that the attack came as the emergency truck on which Whittington rode passed West 123rd Street. Only Whittington and one other officer were reported as being assaulted after crowds moved away from 125th Street around 10:00 PM. The other seven reported assaults on police occurred in the initial disorder around Kress’ store.

After 10:00 PM, when the crowd moved away from 125th Street, police used patrolling radio cars and emergency trucks to respond to violence and to try to control crowds. Cars and buses driven by whites were also targets of rocks thrown by black crowds throughout the disorder. However, those attacks took place on 7th Avenue, the major route to the Bronx and northern neighborhoods, not the less traveled 8th Avenue. The one other police vehicle reported as being hit by rocks, a car driven by Detective Frank Lenahan, was also attacked on “a riotous section of Eighth Avenue” at an unspecified time. The windows of the car were smashed, but Lenahan was not injured. Whittington did not have windows to shield him from missiles. Most of the members of an emergency squad traveled on the outside of the vehicle.

As well as the detail that Whittington was assaulted while riding on an emergency truck, the Daily Mirror described the attack as a “sniping,” a sensational term used to heighten the threat associated with the violence.

Whittington appeared in lists of the injured published by the New York American (on March 20 & 21), Home News, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and New York Post, as well as the story published in the Daily Mirror. Although the New York American and the New York Herald Tribune reported he was treated at Harlem Hospital, he did not appear in either the list of admissions or the ambulance call-outs. The Home News and New York Evening Journal described his injuries simply as lacerations; the other lists specified a head injury.
William Brown injured William Brown, a twenty-year-old man of unknown race was "cut by flying glass" at Lenox Avenue and West 127th Street, according to hospital admission records. Dr. Payne attended Brown at Harlem Hospital at 2:30 AM, so he was likely injured sometime after 2:00 AM. Multiple people reported being hit by glass an hour earlier when violence on Lenox Avenue intensified. Brown could have been close to stores that were attacked or have participated in those attacks. Brown lived some distance to the south of where he was injured, at 26 West 118th Street, an area of mixed Black and Puerto Rican residences.

The hospital record and lists of the injured in the New York Post and New York Evening Journal agreed that Brown suffered lacerations to his leg, although they disagreed on which leg. The hospital records said the injury was to the left leg, the newspapers to the right leg. Brown was admitted to the hospital, indicating a relatively severe injury. The others injured by flying glass during the disorder treated at Harlem Hospital were sent home. The hospital record did not include information about an individual's race; although newspapers sometimes included that information, in Brown's case they did not.
Arthur Block assaulted Arthur Block, a twenty-two-year-old Black resident of 14 West 127th Street, was allegedly bitten on the hands. Block’s name appears only in lists of the injured published by the New York Evening Journal, Daily News, and New York Post. His injuries are different in each list, with the New York Evening Journal reporting Block was bitten on his fingers, the Daily News on his left hand, and the New York Post on his right hand. No details of when or where the incident took place are included, but being bitten was not an injury that could have been suffered incidentally, so the event was an assault.
Salvatore Nicolette injured Salvatore Nicolette, a thirty-two-year-old white resident of the Bronx, suffered a fractured skull during the disorder. There was no information on how, when, or where he was injured. As with a number of those listed only as having been injured, Nicolette had similar head injuries to those who had been assaulted and could himself have been attacked.

Nicolette appeared only in the lists of the injured published by the New York American, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Post, and the list of the “Critically Injured” or those “Near Death" published in the Black newspapers the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide. Only the New York Herald Tribune identified Nicolette as white, in a list of “Five Negroes and three white men [who] were still in Harlem Hospital” on March 21. However, he did not appear in records of those admitted to hospital.
John Hall injured John Hall appears just in lists of those injured published by the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and the New York American. The Evening Journal and American identified Hall as a Black man, one of only two among the injured (although the race of only five of the twenty injured individuals appears in the sources). The only other information the newspapers provided on his identity was his home address, 2155 Seventh Avenue, between West 127th and West 128th Streets, an area of Black residences near the southern boundary of Harlem.

All the listings describe Hall's injury as a fractured leg. The American and Evening Journal add the detail that he was attended at Harlem Hospital, but he does not appear in the hospital records obtained by the MCCH.
Charles Jackson injured Charles Jackson appears in a list of those injured published by the New York Post. He is one of four individuals who appear just in that list. The only information the newspaper provided on his identity was his home address, 73 West 127th Street, near the southern boundary of the area of black residence in Harlem.

The listing described his injury as a contusion, but provided no information on the part of Jackson’s body that had been wounded. (One of the others identified as injured (2/20), and four of those injured in assaults (4/49) also had unspecified injuries.) Jackson appeared in a section of the list headed "Harlem Hospital," indicating he had been attended by staff from that hospital, but he does not appear in the hospital records obtained by the MCCH.
Jerry Banks injured Jerry Banks appeared in a list of those injured published by the New York Post. He was one of four individuals who appeared only in that list. The only information the newspaper provided on his identity was his home address, 2016 Seventh Avenue, between 120th and 121st Streets, an area of Black and white residences in Harlem.

The listing described his injury as cuts to his left wrist. He was one of four of those injured with wounds to the hands (20%). Banks appeared in a section of the list headed Harlem Hospital, but he does not appear in the hospital records obtained by the MCCH.
James Joy injured James Joy appears in a list of those injured published by the New York Post. He is one of four individuals who appear only in that list. The only information the newspaper provided on his identity was his home address, 310 West 121st Street, an area of white residences on the western boundaries of Harlem.

The listing described his injury as lacerations, but provided no information on the part of Joy’s body that had been wounded. (One of the others identified as injured (2/20), and four of those injured in assaults (4/49) also had unspecified injuries.) Joy appeared in a section of the list headed Harlem Hospital, indicating he had been attended by staff from that hospital, but he does not appear in the hospital records obtained by the MCCH.
William Brook assaulted William Brook a twenty-five-year-old resident of 157 West 130th Street, appeared only in lists of the injured published by five papers. The New York Herald Tribune, New York American, and New York Post included that he was Black; the New York Evening Journal and New York Daily News did not. The reports all described Brook as having cuts to his head, with the Herald Tribune adding the detail that he had been “hit by rock.” None of the lists specified the location at which Brook was assaulted. The Herald Tribune and American listed him as having been treated at Harlem Hospital, but his name does not appear on the lists of those attended and treated.
Louise De Lancey injured Louise De Lancey appears in a list of those injured published by the New York Post. She is one of four individuals who appear only in that list. The only information the newspaper provided on her identity was her home address, 273 West 131st Street, an area of Black residences near the western boundary of central Harlem. De Lancey was one of only three women among the injured (15%).

The listing described her injury as a sprained wrist. She was one of four of those injured with wounds to the hands (20%). De Lancey appeared in a section of the list headed Harlem Hospital, indicating she had been attended by staff from that hospital, but she does not appear in the hospital records obtained by the MCCH.