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

Mario Pravia's candy store looted

Around 11.30 PM, Mario Pravia and his wife Gertrude were in their candy store at 1953 7th Avenue when a group of around five people on the street outside began throwing stones at the store window. Crowds had started to move down 7th Avenue from 125th Street around 10.00 PM, with reports of attacks on whites and stores before and after stones were thrown at the store window. Why the Pravias were in their store is not mentioned in the sources; the store was unlikely to have been open that late, so they may have remained inside after closing the store as the crowds gathered. The couple may also have lived above or behind the store, as it is the address given for Mario in his Magistrates Court affidavit (by 1942, when he registered for the draft, they lived nearby at 126 West 119th Street, but he no longer worked at the store).

When the store window shattered, members of the crowd began to take goods from the window display. Officer Harmon of the 18th Division witnessed the attack on the store, reporting seeing Amie Taylor, a twenty-one-year-old Black butcher, throw a stone and reach into the window to take something. Taylor lived south of the store, at 1800 7th Avenue, so may not have been part of the crowd from 125th Street. He was the only member of the group in front of the store arrested, despite at least one other police officer being at the scene, Detective Harry Wolf of the 28th Precinct, listed as a witness on the Magistrates Court affidavit and an arresting officer with Harmon on Taylor's criminal record. The New York Evening Journal identified a different officer as making the arrest, Deputy Chief Inspector John Ryan. In a vignette within the paper’s narrative of the disorder, that senior officer observed the attack on the store while driving to 125th Street, pulled over and attempted to round up the thieves in “a terrific battle”  from which “Ryan emerged...with Amie Taylor, 21, as his prisoner.” No other sources support that account.

Harmon allegedly found eighteen packets of chewing gum, valued at 3 cents each, in Taylor’s possession. Struck out information on the Magistrates Court affidavit suggests $200 worth of merchandise was stolen from Pravia’s store. Pravia appears to have remained in business despite those losses, perhaps because he had insurance, although that would have been unusual for such a small-scale business. The MCCH business survey does identify a white-owned business operating at 1953 7th Avenue in the second half of 1935, although it is categorized as a stationary store. Pravia, born in Uruguay in 1899, had arrived in New York City from Chile in 1925, and married his German-born wife Gertrude in 1929. His naturalization petition identified him as white. While the building had black residents, it was located just a block north of an area populated by Spanish speakers. A business advertising candy and other merchandise also appears in the tax photograph of the building taken sometime between 1939 and 1941. But by 1942, whatever business was at 1953 7th Avenue, Pravia was not its owner. He was working as a butcher, according to his naturalization petition, and his draft registration records his place of employment as a hotel in East Orange, New Jersey.

Taylor appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, when Magistrate Renaud remanded him until March 22. When he appeared again in court, Renaud sent him to the grand jury, which transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions. The Police Blotter records that the judges in that court acquitted Taylor. The sources are silent on what alternative account of events Taylor offered, but others arrested in the disorder claimed to have been bystanders mistakenly grabbed by police trying to pick offenders out of crowds.
 

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