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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, based on the claims for damages made by owners. Zipp was one of seven business owners mentioned in stories published in the New York Post, New York Sun and World-Telegram on July 23 describing 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. No one among those arrested for looting was identified as taking goods from this store.

The three stories all reported his 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.

Zipp sought $721 of damages, close to the median reported claim of $733. He was one of two businessmen suing the city who listed 383 Lenox Avenue as the location of their stores. The New York Daily News published a photograph of the clean-up on the section of Lenox Avenue containing his grocery store the morning after the disorder that shows the other business, the Savoy Food Market, at 383 Lenox Avenue. To its left is a grocery store that must be Zipp's business, notwithstanding that the address appears to be 381 Lenox Avenue. The sign identifies it as part of the Krasdale grocery chain. The store windows are missing, and both the display and the shelves within the store are empty. Some goods appear to have been thrown on to the street; a man is clearing debris with a shovel. The two businesses either side of Zipp's store also have no windows and empty displays and shelves. Both Anthony Vitable, who owned the Savoy Food Market, and Jacob Saloway, who owned the cigar store on the corner, also sued the city for damages. Although Zipp went out of business, the store continued to operate: there is still a branch of the Krasdale grocery chain at the address in the MCCH business survey taken between June and December 1935, and visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941.

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