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

Manny Zipp's grocery store looted

Manny Zipp's grocery store at 383 Lenox Avenue was looted during the disorder. There are no details of those events other than Zipp's statement to the city comptroller that "everything in his store was taken," forcing him out of business, as the New York Post reported it. He had been operating the store for only three days. That section of Lenox Avenue was one in which businesses suffered extensive damage and looting beginning around 11:30 PM; the intersection likely saw particularly extensive violence around 1:00 AM when Alice Mitchell and Hugh Young were injured by flying glass. No one among those arrested for looting was identified as taking goods from this store.

Zipp was one of seven business owners mentioned in stories published in the New York Post, New York Sun, and New York World-Telegram on July 23 that described testimony to the comptroller from white businessmen suing the city for damages based on the failure of police to protect their stores. He was not in the list of those who brought the first twenty suits published earlier in the New York Sun and New York Amsterdam News, but included in that list was the Savoy Food Market. Newsreel footage from the day after the disorder showed a banner reading "Grand Opening" hanging over the entrance to the Savoy Food Market, fitting with Zipp's account of having opened his store only three days earlier (in the photograph discussed below, a piece of dark fabric had been hung to obscure that banner or perhaps the banner had simply been reversed). While the New York Sun identified Anthony Avitable as the owner of the Savoy Food Market, the New York Post and New York World-Telegram identified him only as the owner of a grocery store at 383 Lenox Avenue. Photographs of 383 Lenox Avenue show only one business at that address, but there was a grocery store next door, with a Krasdale sign, at 381 Lenox Avenue. That appeared to be the store that Avitable owned; the Krasdale company were wholesalers in 1935, not store operators. Avitable appeared separately from the Savoy Food Market in the New York Sun and New York Amsterdam News stories about those who brought the first twenty suits. Avitable also ultimately claimed a lesser amount of damage than Zipp, $537 compared to $721, which did not seem enough to have been enough to wipe out a business. It was the Savoy Food Market that went out of business, fitting with Zipp's story. There was a different business than the Savoy Food Market at 383 Lenox Avenue in both the MCCH business survey taken between June and December 1935, and the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. The grocery store with the Krasdale sign did appear in both the MCCH business survey and the Tax Department photograph.

Zipp's claim of $721 was close to the median reported claim for damages of $733. An unpublished image taken by a photographer for the Hearst newspapers, and a similar image published in the Daily News, captured the clean-up on the section of Lenox Avenue containing the Savoy Food Market. To its left was the grocery store that must be Avitable's business, with the Krasdale grocery chain sign visible. The market's windows had been smashed and the display emptied. Some goods appear to have been thrown on to the street; a man was clearing debris with a shovel. Another man can be seen through the window inside the store; that may be Avitable cleaning up. The two other businesses visible beyond the market also had no windows and empty displays and shelves. Jacob Saloway, who owned the cigar store on the corner, as well as Avitable, also sued the city for damages.

The three newspaper stories all reported the storeowner's name differently: the New York Sun called him "Manny Zipp," the New York Post reported his name as "Manning Zipp," and the World-Telegram "Manny Vitt." The name used here, Manny Zipp, combines the most frequently repeated elements of those variations.

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