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

Looting with staff or owners present (12)

When the disorder began in early evening, many stores in Harlem were still open for business, as a number remained open until late evening. As a result, some of the men and women working in those stores were present when they were attacked and looted (most around West 125th Street, where the disorder began, but others further away). Some of those in stores initially tried to move merchandise from display windows to prevent it from being taken. Both Jack Sherloff and Max Greenwald had to give up those efforts in the face of objects being thrown at the windows. More often stones thrown at the store windows kept those inside away from the storefront, driving them to hide in the rear rooms or to flee the building entirely before anyone actually entered the store. Mrs. Salefas fled flying glass from shattered windows to hide in a rear storeroom. Harry Piskin remained while stones were thrown through the windows of his laundry, but left when someone shot a bullet into the store. A white staff member in Chronis’ restaurant hid in the washroom, while two Black workers left the store. Four staff from the Greenfield auto equipment store fled the building into the rear yard after a group of men came through a broken window. Mario Pravia and his wife, Irving Stetkin, and clerks in Estelle Cohen’s store and Young’s hat store watched from the store as stones smashed the glass and goods were taken from window displays. Louise Thompson also recounted looking in a grocery store on West 124th Street and 7th Avenue that "was dark, all of the windows were broken and all I could see was a man peeking out from the back." Such accounts highlight that the objects thrown at stores cleared the way for looting not just by providing a means of entering the store but by ensuring there was no one inside to protect the merchandise.

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.

Irving Stetkin waited two hours before a police car containing two officers arrived in response to his call for help, a detail reported in the New York Sun, New York Post, and New York World-Telegram. When they arrived, he told the city comptroller that "The police didn't do anything. They couldn't do anything. The mob was too big for them," according to a report in the World-Telegram. Others working in stores received no help at all from police. The white worker in Chronis’ restaurant phoned 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 and 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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