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Looting with staff or owners present (12)
In only two instances were owners and staff apparently directly involved in merchandise being taken, circumstances that amounted to robbery rather than burglary. Morris Towbin alleged that Edward Larry and seven others came into store and threatened him and a clerk with knives as they attacked and looted the store, then forced them into the store basement. A second man, Louis Tonick, one of the ten white men arrested during the disorder, was also charged with robbery, but there is no information regarding the location or details of those events.
A handful of those working in stores fruitlessly phoned police for help. The white worker in Chronis’ restaurant called police before hiding; no one responded to his call. Estelle Cohen phoned both the police station and police headquarters after the staff member inside her store called her; she wrote to Mayor La Guardia that their responses was “that all the men were out and that all windows were being smashed." Harry Piskin left his laundry to go in search of police; neither the officer he found on post at a nearby corner nor an officer at the police stationhouse on West 123rd Street would come to the store. (Benjamin Zelvin waited for police to arrive before leaving his store, but those officers clearly did not remain to guard the business as he seemed to have expected as it was looted later in the disorder).
While almost all the white businessowners in Harlem lived outside the neighborhood, some did return to their closed businesses when they learned of the disorder. Herman Young was one of the few white storeowners who lived in Harlem, above his store; he came downstairs when he heard glass smashing and interrupted a group of men looting his hardware store. His arrival likely prevented that group from taking much merchandise, but Young was hit by a rock and taken to Harlem Hospital (likely leaving his damaged store exposed to looting by others, as his total loss of $500 is far more than the four men could have taken). After a call from a clerk in the store, Estelle Cohen sent someone, likely her sons, to board up the damaged windows of her store. That barrier did not prevent subsequent looting. George Chronis also likely received a call from his staff, but police prevented him from getting to his lunchroom until 1 AM, to find it completely destroyed and a white staff member still hiding. Anthony Avitable also arrived too late to protect his food market, seeing crowds attacking the store as he drove across the 138th Street bridge from the Bronx just after midnight, so went directly to the police station rather than to his business. It still took forty-five minutes for police to arrive at the business. Herbert Canter, who owned a pharmacy at 419 Lenox Avenue, arrived there at 11 PM, earlier than Chronis and Avitable, may have been more successful in protecting his business. He testified in the Municipal Court trial of Anna Rosenberg's suit for damages about what he saw on Lenox Avenue after he arrived, but there is no mention of damage to his store.
Black storeowners had more success than their white counterparts in protecting their stores from attack and looting. Several posted signs in their stores reading “Colored,” “Black,” and “This Store Owned by Colored,” according to the Afro-American, that caused crowds to pass them by. A Chinese storeowner who tried to emulate that tactic apparently did not have the same success, as the New York Herald Tribune reported that after he posted a sign reading “Me colored too” his store windows were broken. Some of the black storeowners who wrote signs may have been open for business when the disorder reached them, or could have returned to closed businesses, which they could do more readily than white storeowners as most lived in Harlem (Fred Campbell did not).
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- "'Me Colored Too' Sign Fails Chinese Harlem," New York Herald Tribune, March 21, 1935, 1.
- "Machine Guns Set Up in New York Streets. False Rumor Causes Death of One, Wounding of 50, and Looting of 300 Stores," Afro-American, March 23, 1935, 1.
- "Memoirs: chapter 6, "Harlem Riot of 1935," Box 20, Folder 5, Louise Thompson Patterson Papers (Emory University Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library).