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

Looting of food and drink (22)

Business stocking food and drink make up the largest group of those who had goods stolen (22 of 54). There are also photographs of a meat market and of a grocery store that have been looted whose location is unknown, which be additional looted locations or images of already identified looting. Some of the looting of businesses categorized as selling miscellaneous consumer goods may also have involved taking food and drink. Both stationary stores and drug stores sometimes sold meals and drinks. So too apparently did 5 & 10c stores; among the items Arnold Ford allegedly took from Lash’s store was three packets of tea (but that business is not included as one looted for food and drink, but as one looted for miscellaneous goods, as those items made up the bulk of what was taken). The number of these types of business looted reflected in part that they comprised a large proportion of the stores in Black Harlem, with grocery stores the most frequently found business, and restaurants nearly as numerous. Food and drink being taken also fitted the portrayal of the disorder as motivated by economic grievances.

Newspaper accounts of the merchandise taken from businesses featured food and drink featured alongside clothing. In his "Hectic Harlem" column in the New York Amsterdam News, Roi Ottley highlighted food in his description of looting, writing “As Negroes snatched choice hams from butchers stores…lifted suits from tailor shops…and carried out bags of rice and other edables…the feeling, “here’s our chance to have some of the things we should have,” was often evidenced.” The New York Post also imputed motives while identifying food as a target, describing looting as “the glamorous opportunity of snatching food and coats and liquor and tobacco from behind the broken panes.” Food also featured in Louise Thompson’s account of what she saw during the disorder, as “People on the street were tossing up to [people...on the second floor of apartment buildings] groceries – flour – anything they could toss up.”

Adam Clayton Powell described what he saw in the form of vignettes rather than a general picture of looting, in the first of three articles published by the New York Post; two of the three scenes involved food: “Witness a man, tall, strong and well built, carrying through the murkiness of the Harlem morning two pieces of the twelve-cents-a-pound salt pork that he had taken from a butcher's broken window. Witness two young lads one of them just finished high schools-furtively sneaking home as the noise of March 19 subsided, lugging two sacks of rice and sugar.” The Daily Worker also published a story by an “Eye Witness” that recounted police violence against a “young Negro boy” arrested with two cans of vegetables in his possession.

Food also featured in stories about the police line-up the morning after the disorder. The New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun noted in general terms that many of those paraded before police and reporters admitted to stealing groceries. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle singled out one Black woman who “still had in her possession five milk bottles.” In addition, two men arrested for looting who appear in a New York Evening Journal photograph are carrying shopping bags labeled as coming from Rex Food Market at 348 Lenox Avenue.

Legal records offer a similar mix of broad and individual pictures of the merchandise taken. Eight business-owners selling food and drink are among those identified who sued the city for damages, with losses of $14,000 for George Chronis’ restaurant, $759.58 for Radio City Meat Market, $745 for Frank Dethomas' candy store, $721 for Manny Zipp's grocery store, $630 for William Feinstein's liquor store, $537 for Alfonso Avitable's Savoy Food Market, $453.90 for Alfonso Principe's saloon, and $146.75 for Michael D’Agostino’s market. Those losses, other than for Chronis, are lower than those claimed by the owners of stores selling clothing and miscellaneous other merchandise. (The nature of eleven of twenty-seven businesses identified in suits against city are unknown, so could include additional stores selling food and drink). Details of the losses of an additional eight businesses are identified in legal proceedings. The value of the merchandise in those cases is less than the losses of those who sued the city: $200 for Mario Pravia's candy store; $200 for J. P. Bulluroff's grocery store; $167.86 for Sol Weit and Isaac Popiel's grocery store, $100 for Jacob Solomon's grocery store; $50-75 for Sarah Refkin's delicatessen; $10-$12 for the San Antonio Market, and several bottle of liquor from the Mediavilla Liquor store. An indication of what items made up those totals is provided by the details Sol Weit gave to a Probation officer: the $167.86 of goods taken from the store he co-owned consisted of “126 pounds of butter, 90 dozen eggs, eight cartons of cigarettes, a ham and other food products, as well as $14 from the cash register.”

The individuals arrested for looting food and drink allegedly only had a small proportion of that merchandise in their possession, as the vignettes offered by Powell and the Daily Worker’s eye witness suggest. The man charged with looting Weit’s store, Arthur Merritt, allegedly had only "two cans of beans, a can of milk and a can of tuna.” There are only records of what police claimed five of the other ten men arrested for looting businesses selling food and drink had in their possession. Lawrence Humphrey had a 50lb bag of rice, Amie Taylor  eighteen packets of gum, Louis Cobb two bottles of whiskey, Theodore Hughes two pieces of pork, and Hezekiel Wright four lamps and two jars of food.

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