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

Morris Werner assaulted

Morris Werner, a fifty-six-year-old white man, was attacked around 9.30 pm at 125th Street and 7th Avenue “by several unknown colored men.” He suffered a stab wound in the assault, which was treated at the Vanderbilt Clinic in Presbyterian Hospital on West 168th Street. After being attended by Dr White he left for his home at 537 West 127th Street.

Werner was attacked early in the disorder, when it was still centered on Kress’ store. While the largest crowd was at the other end of the block, at 125th Street and 8th Avenue, crowds had been moving along the street. Blacks targeted at least three other white men around this time. William Kitlitz reported being attacked by James Smithies in front of Kress’ store, Maurice Spellman at 125th St and 8th Avenue, and Timothy Murphy a few blocks further west. All these men lived west of Harlem, relatively close to where they were attacked, so were likely regular visitors to 125th Street, to shop, seek entertainment or access public transport, on this evening caught up in the disorder. The area around 125th St and 7th Avenue would continue to be the location of assaults on whites for at least the next three hours, with three men and two women targeted.

The use of a knife in this assault was unusual; only one other of the 54 assaults in the disorder involved stabbings, distinguishing this violence from what occurred at other times. In the rest of 1935, knives were a favored weapon of those committing acts of violence, used in ?% of felony assault cases.

The hospital admission record is the only evidence of the assault on Werner. For some reason Werner traveled more than forty blocks north the Vanderbilt Clinic on West 168th Street for treatment, even though there were several closer hospitals. No one else injured in the disorder is recorded as having been treated at that hospital. Maurice Spellman, assaulted at around the same time went to one of those, Sydenham Hospital at 123rd Street and Manhattan Avenue, near his home. The attacks on Murphy and Kitlitz were assaulted in locations where they attracted police, who made arrests, creating legal records and helping those men appear in newspaper lists of the injured, and in Murphy’s case, newspapers stories. Werner, like Spellman, appears to have been caught up in the crowds, and to have sought medical attention without attracting police attention.

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Assaults on whites (29) 38 plain 2020-05-05T17:36:44+00:00
At least twenty-nine whites were assaulted during the disorder, in addition to nine white police officers. This violence has been overlooked in most scholarship on the disorder, following the lead of the report of the MCCH, which mentions assaults only obliquely, in emphasizing attacks on property: “In fact, the distinguishing feature of this outbreak was that it was an attack upon property and not upon persons. In the beginning, to be sure, the resentment was expressed against whites—but whites who owned stores and who, while exploiting Negroes, denied them an opportunity to work” (11).

Newspapers, tell a different story, particularly the New York Evening Journal, a Hearst afternoon paper that sought out and gave prominence to whites assaulted by blacks, reporting four assaults that do not appear in any other source. [Several papers reported clashes between bands of blacks and whites, in line with patterns from earlier racial disorders, but none offered details and there are no reports of blacks injured in those circumstances]. Violence against whites took place throughout the disorder (perhaps fading by 2 AM, around three hours before the final events of the disorder) and across a wide area centered on 125th Street. Assaults on whites are thus woven into the disorder, not so marginal as to distinguish the disorder from outbreaks earlier in the century.

White men and women on the street, newspaper reporters and photographers, storeowners, and passengers in vehicles traveling through Harlem all allegedly suffered injuries at the hands of black assailants.

Crowds threw stones and rocks at whites. In some cases, whites in cars and buses traveling through the neighborhood were targets. In other cases, whites standing apart, observing crowds came under attack, including a newspaper photographer and his assistant, and a security guard. Others appeared at the hospital with similar injuries resulting from flying glass and rocks that they did not report as assaults, that did not result from efforts to injure them but from the attacks on property.

The remaining assaults involved attacks by individuals or groups, targeting whites apparently observing the crowd like those hit by objects or whites walking Harlem’s streets, either around the entertainments of 125th Street or near the areas where whites lived north of 116th Street. Almost all those attacks took the form of beatings, with only two men stabbed. In four of those cases attacks only ended when either the police, or in one case, black co-workers, intervened.

In addition to whites on the streets, white storeowners also appear among those assaulted, but in very small numbers not as the focus of violence as the MCCH report claimed. In one case, the injury resulted from glass from a smashed window rather than a direct attack. In two other cases storeowners were attacked as they closed their stores, with one an attempted robbery.

Four women appear among the whites assaulted in Harlem. Two of the women attacked were in cars, one driving through Harlem, one parked. The third was assaulted by a group on the street (Gordon); one was reported simply as having been “beaten”.

Attacks on whites occurred throughout the disorder (perhaps fading by 2 AM, around three hours before the final events of the disorder - information about timing is missing for 13/29), but were more geographically contained than in race riots in the north earlier in the twentieth century: other than man and storekeeper attacked north of 145th Street, most attacks occurred around 125th Street, with a small number further south, around the stores on 116th Street. The first reported assaults came early in the disorder as the crowd on 125th Street clashed with police and began smashing windows. William Kitlitz was allegedly assaulted by James Smitten around 8.30 PM and Timothy Murphy and Maurice Spellman by different groups of men around 9 PM, and Morris Werner around 9.30 PM. All these men lived west of Harlem, relatively close to where they were attacked, so were likely regular visitors to 125th Street, to shop, seek entertainment or access public transport, on this evening caught up in the disorder. Around 11 PM a small cluster of assaults took place on or near 7th Avenue north of 116th St, as crowds moved away from 125th Street into an area where whites still lived in 1935. Further assaults occurred north of 125th Street around 1 am, back near the entertainment district frequented by whites. The final assault whose timing is known was of a storekeeper during the looting that began after midnight.

Most assaults on whites left few traces in the official record: police made arrests in only five cases (there is no information on the circumstances that led to the arrest of one of the men charged with assault). Seven victims of alleged assaults appear only in records of ambulance callouts and hospital admissions. Fifteen assaults are reported only in newspapers. Four cases appear in only the New York Evening Journal, a publication that reported the disorder with an emphasis on violence against whites distinct from the rest of the press, using sensational language and invoking racist stereotypes of blacks.

Only one of the five black men arrested for assaulting whites, Rivers Wright, was convicted, but only summarily by a Magistrate for the misdemeanor offense of disorderly conduct, for which he received a sentence of ten days in the Workhouse. In one case, there is no evidence of the outcome, one was dismissed by the Grand Jury, and two acquitted by trial juries.
Related Categories:
- Assaults by groups (17/17)
- Assaults by individuals (3/7)
- Hit by objects (7/19)
- Assaults in unknown circumstances (1/3)
- Assaults on women (4/5)
- Injured in assaults (29/53)
- Assault in the courts (5/9)