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

Looting of miscellaneous consumer goods (14)

Aside from food and drink and clothing, businesses selling a variety of other consumer goods had stock stolen (14 of 54). There also a photograph of a looted jewelry store at an unidentified location, which may be an additional looted business or an image of an already identified looting. The merchandise sold by these businesses is a mix of household items akin to food and clothing, such as cigarettes, soap and pots, and goods such as jewelry likely taken for their value rather than for everyday use.

Newspaper accounts of looting mentioned only two items other than food and clothing: cigarettes and toothbrushes. The New York Post  imputed motives while identifying cigarettes as a target, describing looting as “the glamorous opportunity of snatching food and coats and liquor and tobacco from behind the broken panes." Cigarettes also featured in stories about the police line-up the morning after the disorder. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted that many of those paraded before police and reporters admitted to taking cigarettes. Neither of the other stories about the line-up mentioned cigarettes; instead both the New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun listed toothbrushes alongside clothing and groceries. Those items capture only some of the businesses selling miscellaneous goods that are reported as having being looted to do these match with reported looting; drug stores and cigar stores (some stationary stores also sold cigarettes and tobacco products, and 5c and 10c stores possibly sold toothbrushes). Jewelry, hardware, auto supply and optician stores did not attract the attention of newspaper reporters, but items likely from a hardware store are visible in the photographs of men being arrested. A tall bin containing at least four or five pots of various sizes, with perhaps more merchandise not sticking out the top appear in one photograph published in the New York Evening Journal. A clock and three cash boxes are visible in another photograph in the New York Evening Journal.

Legal records offer a similar mix of broad and individual pictures of the merchandise taken. Two business-owners not selling food and clothing are among those identified who sued the city for damages, with losses of $2685 for Benjamin Zelvin's jewelry store and $572 for the Sav-On Drug store. Zelvin's damages are significantly higher than those suffered by all but two of the nine owners of stores selling food and drink who also sued the city, and than the damages suffered by most of the clothing stores. (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 seven 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: $1000 for Lash's 5c & 10c store; $850 for the Greenfield Auto Equipment store, $500 for Herman Young's hardware store; $300 for Harry Farber's stationary store, $100 for Jack Garmise's cigar shop and $33 for Lazar's cigar store.

Eight individuals arrested for looting miscellaneous items allegedly only small amounts of that merchandise in their possession. With the exception of the $75 of unspecified jewelry that police claimed John Henry and Oscar Leacock had in their possession when arrested, that merchandise had little value: Thomas Babbitt had two cases of soap; James Williams had four pots of different sizes, two pans, a pitcher, two pails, a bread box and a cloth lamp, with a value of $12.55; Arnold Ford had three cakes of soap, a can of shoe polish, two pairs of garters, six spools of thread, a jar of vaseline and three packets of tea, with a value of $1.15; Raymond Easley had an unspecified number of cigars; Milton Ackerman had two rolls of paper and napkins; James Hayes had a baseball bat; and Robert Tanner had a pipe.

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