This page was created by Anonymous. 

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

Lokos Clothes shop windows broken

Windows in the Lokos Clothes store at 2275 8th Avenue were broken sometime during the disorder. Located just north of West 122nd Street on the west side of 8th Avenue, the store was in an area with no other reported activity during the disorder other than rocks hitting Patrolman Harry Whittington as he traveled on an emergency truck. Officer Phillips of the 28th Squad arrested two men for allegedly having "thrown an ashcan through the window" of the store, according to a story in the Home News. One of those arrested, William Norris, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, gave his address as 201 West 122nd Street, only a block east of the clothing store. The other individual arrested, Charles Wright, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, was recorded as having "no home" in the 28th Precinct police blotter and the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, but with an address in Philadelphia in the Home News. There are no details of the time or circumstances of the arrests. They likely occurred around 10:30 PM as Max Newman was assaulted as he closed his grocery store across the street, at 2275 8th Avenue, indicating the presence of crowds in the area.

Pauline Lokos, a thirty-nine-year-old white woman, was identified as the storeowner in the Home News and recorded as the complainant in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book when Norris and Wright appeared in court on March 20. She and her husband Henry were listed in the 1933 City Directory as the owners of the men's clothing store at 2275 8th Avenue. The Home News story misidentified the business as a delicatessen. An advertisement in 1954 said the business had opened in 1914. In 1933 the Lokos family lived at 312 West 122nd Street, just a block west of the store, on the corner of Manhattan Avenue, a section of Harlem where the residents were white in the early 1930s.

When Norris and Wright appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court both men were charged with malicious mischief. Magistrate Renaud transferred them to the Court of Special Sessions for trial. The judges convicted them and on April 1st sentenced them each to three months in the Workhouse, according to the 28th Precinct police blotter.

The clothing store was recorded as a white-owned business in the second half of 1935 in the MCCH business survey, which mistakenly located the business at 2273 8th Avenue. By 1937, Lokos Clothes had relocated to 2285 8th Avenue, in the three-story building north of their location in 1935 (where the New York Amsterdam News reported a police officer had shot and killed Allen Bruce after allegedly seeing the twenty-five-year-old Black laborer smash the display window and take a coat). A "Henry Lokos Clothes" store sign was visible in a Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941, overhanging the street north of the one-story building in which it was located in 1935. The Lokos' two sons also gave 2285 8th Avenue as their place of employment when they registered for the draft in 1942. By April 6, 1940, when a census enumerator called, the family had moved to 285 St. Nicholas Avenue, between West 124th and West 125th Streets, still close to the store. Their new home was in a section of Harlem west of 8th Avenue where white residents remained the majority.



 

This page has tags:

This page references: