2154 7th Avenue, c. 1939-1941.
1 media/nynyma_rec0040_1_01933_0036_thumb.jpg 2024-05-29T02:15:41+00:00 Stephen Robertson a1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bf 1 2 The store on the corner was the Cozy Tea Shoppe. The store to its left was Lazar's cigar store. Lloyd Hobbs ran across 128th Street to the right of the Cozy Tea Shoppe before being shot by a police officer. Source: DOF: Manhattan 1940s Tax Photos (New York City Municipal Archives). plain 2024-05-29T02:16:03+00:00 20180308 085221+0000 Stephen Robertson a1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bfThis page has tags:
- 1 2023-12-13T11:08:55+00:00 Anonymous Department of Finance, Manhattan 1940s Tax Photos: 7th Avenue Anonymous 4 plain 2023-12-13T16:17:45+00:00 Anonymous
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2020-02-25T18:03:35+00:00
Lloyd Hobbs killed
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2024-05-30T21:16:33+00:00
Lloyd Hobbs, a sixteen-year-old Black teenager, was shot and killed by Patrolman John McInerney, who claimed Hobbs had been looting an auto supply store.
Around 7:30 PM, Hobbs and his fifteen-year-old brother Russell had made the short trip from their home on St. Nicholas Ave to the Apollo Theater on 125th Street for a show, not emerging until 12:30 AM. When they stepped back onto 125th St, they saw crowds down the block at the intersection with 7th Ave, and went to investigate. They followed as police pushed the crowd north on 7th Ave. As people milled in front of a damaged auto parts store at 2150 7th Avenue near 128th Street, a police radio car pulled up, and one of the officers inside, Patrolman John McInerney got out. Fearing that they would be beaten by the police, the boys and the others in front of the store ran up 7th Avenue. Here the accounts of the boys and seven Black eyewitnesses and those of the two white patrolmen diverged.
In assessing the case, the two reports gave significant weight to the character of Lloyd Hobbs and his family. The subcommittee argued that "the record of Lloyd Hobbs and that of his family are presumptive evidence that he was not the kind of boy who would engage in looting." The final report of the MCCH described the boy as "having a good record in school and in the community, and being a member of a family of good standing and character." Lloyd Hobbs had been born in Brunswick County, Virginia, in 1916, the second youngest of five children of Mary and Lawyer Hobbs. (The story published in the New York Amsterdam News on April 6, 1935, accompanied by a photograph of Mrs. Hobbs, gave her first name as Carrie, but it was recorded as Mary in the census in 1930, 1940, and 1950). The boy's name was recorded as Lawyer in the 1930 census and as Lawyer, Jr in the "Social and Economical History" of the family written by James Tartar, but elsewhere in that document and in all other sources as Lloyd. The family farmed in Virginia until 1927, and still owned 83 acres there, when Lawyer's ill health required him to get work "which would not necessitate his being in the sun," according to his wife. He had worked previously in New York City, so the family relocated there. Lawyer found work first as a sexton at Union Baptist Church, then for a construction company. Mary Hobbs worked first as a domestic servant, the most common occupation for Black women, before becoming one of a much smaller group employed in factory work, in her case at a lampshade company. That was her occupation in the 1930 census; Lawyer's occupation was recorded as chauffeur. At that time the family lived at 228 West 140th Street, their home since they arrived in New York City. By April, 1931 both parents had lost their jobs, and the family joined many in Harlem applying for work and relief from private and government agencies. Sometime in the intervening years Lawyer Hobbs found some work as a helper on a truck owned by Charles Bell (perhaps a brother-in-law; a sister-in-law named Senora Bell lived with the family in 1930).
McInerney and his partner, Patrolman Watterson, claimed that as they were driving south, their attention had been drawn to the auto parts store by the noise of breaking glass, and they had seen Lloyd in the window handing items out to those on the street. Three of the eyewitnesses, Howard Malloy, Arthur Moore, and Marshall Pfifer, said all the windows of the store had been broken at least an hour earlier and nothing remained in the display by the time the Hobbs brothers arrived there. The patrolmen said that Lloyd climbed out of the window with items in his hands as they pulled up, and when McInerney pursued him up 7th Avenue and called on him to halt, continued to run. When those running from the patrolman got to 128th Street, Lloyd broke away from the group and turned west on to 128th Street. McInerney then shot the boy. Warren Wright, standing in the entrance of the apartments above 2150 7th Avenue, south of the store, Howard Malloy, Arthur Moore, and Samuel Pitts standing on the corner across 128th Street from the auto supply store, in front of Battle's Pharmacy, to which the crowd was running, John Bennett, in 201 West 128th Street toward which Lloyd turned and ran, and Marshall Pfifer, standing on the corner of West 128th Street on the other side of 7th Avenue, all testified that the boy had nothing in his hands as he ran and that McInerney did not call to him to halt before shooting him. After the bullet hit Hobbs and he fell to the ground, McInerney and Watterson, who had remained in the car, backing it into 128th Street, said Lloyd dropped a car horn and socket set, which McInerney picked up. Seven witnesses said that there was nothing on the ground next to the boy.
The two patrolman loaded Lloyd Hobbs into their car and drove him to Harlem Hospital. Russell Hobbs had kept running up 7th Avenue and had not seen the shooting. He learned from the crowd at the scene that it was his brother who had been shot and driven away and immediately ran home to tell his parents, Lawyer and Mary Hobbs. The family rushed to Harlem Hospital. When they found Lloyd, he told them, “Mother, the officer shot me for nothing. I was not doing anything.” McInerney, guarding the boy, said "Why didn't you halt when I told you to?" Lloyd offered the same account when questioned in the hospital by Homicide Bureau detectives, in a statement recorded by a police stenographer.
Lloyd Hobbs appeared in all seven published lists of those injured in the disorder, in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, Daily News, New York American, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
In the following days, Lawyer Hobbs went to the 28th Precinct several times trying to make a complaint against the officer who had shot his son. He also sought help from the New York Urban League, giving them a statement about what had happened to his son on March 28, which they sent to the MCCH. As a result, Hobbs and his family were among the witnesses asked to come to the MCCH's first public hearing on March 30. Only Russell testified that day, briefly describing how his brother had been shot. A few hours later, at 6:30 PM, Lloyd Hobbs died in Harlem Hospital, the fourth death resulting from the disorder. While the New York Times, Daily News, New York Age, New York Amsterdam News, and Afro-American referred to Russell's testimony in reporting Hobbs' death, the New York Herald Tribune, Times Union, Home News, Daily Mirror, New York American, and Chicago Defender reported only the boy's death in their stories.
The next week, at the MCCH hearing, Lawyer, Mary, and Russell Hobbs testified, together with three Black men who had witnessed the shooting, Howard Malloy, Arthur Moore, and Samuel Pitts, Dr. Arthur Logan, one of the physicians who treated Lloyd Hobbs, the police stenographer who had recorded a statement from the boy soon after he arrived at Harlem Hospital, and James Tartar, a Black investigator for the MCCH. Assistant District Attorney Saul Price heard the testimony of the three eyewitnesses soon after the hearing and had them appear before the grand jury on April 10 so they could consider charges against Patrolman McInerney. The grand jury also heard from Russell Hobbs, both his parents, McInerney's partner, Patrolman Watterson, the police stenographer, the detective who investigated the shooting, John O'Brien, and the owner of the automobile supply store. Patrolman McInerney also offered to testify, but the grand jury opted not to hear him. They dismissed the case.
The MCCH nonetheless continued to investigate the boy's killing, hearing testimony from McInerney's partner, Patrolman Watterson, and Detective O'Brien, who investigated the shooting, at a hearing on April 20 marked by angry interjections from the audience. Four additional witnesses to the shooting testified at an MCCH hearing on May 18. James Tartar, the MCCH investigator, also obtained information that McInerney had not turned in the items he claimed to have found next to Lloyd Hobbs until April 8, more than two weeks after he shot the boy. That interval raised the possibility that the patrolman had not found the items at the scene but had obtained them later, when he needed to justify the shooting. As a result of that information and the testimony of additional eyewitnesses, Assistant District Attorney Saul Price presented the case to the grand jury for a second time on June 10. After hearing from the new witnesses, and from Tartar about the absence of the allegedly stolen items from police records and the Police Property Department until April 8, the grand jury again dismissed the case without hearing testimony from McInerney.
The police department had committed to an internal hearing on the case before ADA Price had decided to resubmit it to the grand jury. The hearing took place on June 14; in attendance were James Tartar and E. Franklin Frazier, the Howard University sociologist who had recently started work leading the MCCH's investigation of Harlem. It was the first time that anyone outside the police department and the district attorney's office heard Patrolman McInerney's testimony. While Tartar and Frazier were unpersuaded, senior police officers found the shooting of Lloyd Hobbs was justified, reprimanding the patrolman only for his delay in handing in the items he claimed to have found at the scene.
While two grand juries and a police department hearing exonerated McInerney, the MCCH and the Black press did not share that view. Arthur Garfield Hays and Oscar Villard gave a central place to McInerney killing Hobbs in the report of the subcommittee submitted to Mayor La Guardia on June 11, 1935. The report of the subcommittee characterized the killing of Lloyd Hobbs as "inexcusable." E. Franklin Frazier included that material in the final report of the MCCH, framed in even harsher terms: the killing of the boy was "a brutal act on the part of the police." Police Commissioner Valentine was unmoved by that censure. He responded to both reports by asserting that Lloyd Hobbs had been looting the store and that two grand juries had exonerated McInerney.
Lawyer Hobbs' income allowed the family to settle in a fourth-floor apartment at 321 St. Nicholas Avenue in 1932, having moved twice in the preceding year, as many in Harlem did during the Depression. A lodger helped pay the rent in 1935. James Tartar, the MCCH investigator, described the residence as "a comfortable apartment, clean, nicely arranged, nicely furnished and well ventilated."
Throughout their time in the city, the Hobbs children attended school. By 1935 the eldest, twenty-year-old Cassie, was working, but her twin sisters Hazel and Zenobia remained students at the Textile High School, Lloyd was a student at Haaren High School, and his younger brother Russell a student at Frederick Douglas Junior High School. Lloyd would have graduated in June, according to a story in the New York Amsterdam News.
After Lloyd's death, the family continued to live at 321 St. Nicholas Avenue until at least 1950. All the family members resided there in 1940. Fifty-six-year-old Mary, who provided the information to the census enumerator, did not identify an occupation. Lawyer was working as a laborer in a sugar refinery, Cassie and Zenobia as seamstresses in a dress factory, Hazel in a lampshade factory, and Russell as a clerk in a food store. All but Zenobia were still living in the apartment in 1950, although as Cassie was recorded as divorced she had likely not resided there for all of the intervening ten years. Neither Lawyer nor Mary, who was listed as sixty years old, were working by that time. Hazel had joined Cassie working as a seamstress, while Russell now worked as a driver for a construction company.
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2021-10-14T12:36:35+00:00
Cozy Shoppe windows not broken
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2024-05-29T02:19:55+00:00
Sometime during the disorder, "Colored Shoppe" was written in white on the window of the Cozy Shoppe at 2154 7th Avenue, on the southwest corner of 128th Street. That wording was reported in a story in the New York Post, and is visible in newsreel footage shot on 7th Avenue in front of the cleaning company two shopfronts to the south looking toward the Cozy Shoppe. The New York Evening Journal described alternative wording, "Colored Tea Shoppe," adding the sarcastic commentary that the owners had been "consistent even in the midst of the riot," "the need for speed apparently not making for simplified spelling" [i.e., shop rather than shoppe]. Both newspapers identified the business as the "Cozy Tea Shoppe," but the signage visible on the windows in the newsreel footage reads "Cozy Shoppe," with "Tea Room" in the windows running across the top of the entrance doors. The MCCH business survey and the drawing of the block by MCCH investigator James Tartar both recorded the business name as "Cozy Shop."
Both the New York Evening Journal and New York Post stories reported that the business suffered no damage, which the newsreel footage confirms. It shows both windows of the Cozy Shoppe intact and no debris in front of the store, in contrast to the two stores to the restaurant's south visible in the image, Lazar's cigar store and K. Percy's tailor and cleaning store. The glass is gone from the window to the right of the cigar store's entrance, and parts of the display are hanging out over the street, suggesting its contents have been taken, while a large hole is visible in the window to the left. The one visible window of the cleaning store closest to the camera is also missing a large section, with debris scattered on the street in front of it. The other three white-owned businesses in this block of 7th Avenue suffered similar damage and loss of merchandise. Unlike those five businesses, neither the condition of the Cozy Shoppe nor the other Black-owned business, a beauty parlor, was recorded in the survey undertaken by MCCH investigator James Tartar gathering information on police shooting Lloyd Hobbs on 128th Street just west of the intersection, suggesting that the beauty parlor was also undamaged. Across 7th Avenue from the Cozy Shoppe, the Black-owned Williams drug store did have windows broken, but those which had "Colored Store, Nix Jack!" written on them. So too did the Black-owned Battle's Pharmacy across 128th Street from the restaurant at 2156 7th Avenue.
The MCCH business survey misrecorded the address of the Cozy Tea Shoppe as 2158 7th Avenue, on the north rather than south side of 128th Street (there are several other mistakes and businesses missing from the MCCH survey for this block). The shop owners were part of the group of Black business-owners interviewed by MCCH staff conducting the business survey. The investigator described the Cozy Shoppe as "a moderate-sized restaurant, containing booths and tables for 30 people, & counter chairs for 8 or 9 more. It is quite clean, attractively furnished, & quality of food & service is high." The business had opened at this address six years ago, with three owners and five staff.
The business at 2154 7th Avenue in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941 has signwriting on the windows in a different style than appeared in the newsreel footage but must still be the Cozy Shoppe, as the restaurant appears in an advertising story in the New York Age in 1949. -
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2022-05-23T17:58:54+00:00
8:30 PM to 9:00 PM
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2024-05-29T02:51:39+00:00
As people in the groups around the northeast corner of 125th St and 7th Avenue began to throw rocks at the windows of the Herbert’s Blue Diamond Jewelry store, store staff rushed to remove the merchandise from the window displays. Businesses on 125th Street remained opened until late in the evening, so there were staff in all the stores whose windows were being broken. Some of those staff may also have cleared the window displays in their store; they almost certainly did what the Herbert’s jewelry staff did after emptying the windows -- gathered in the rear of the store, away from the objects coming through the windows. Outside, nearby police moved to disperse the people around the store, another clash in which twenty-eight-year-old Andrew Lyons may have been hit on the head by a police baton, an injury that would eventually be fatal. Several patrolmen armed with rifles, which identified them as crew from emergency trucks, took up positions in front of the broken windows. They remained there, guarding the store, throughout the disorder, protection that few businesses received. Newspaper photographers recorded the presence of those officers and the damage to the store’s windows. Large holes could be seen behind a patrolman in one image, and an equally large section of smashed glass in the other photographed window, indications that multiple objects had hit the store. However, only some of business’s extensive expanse of display windows suffered such damage before police intervened, and no merchandise was taken. As a result, Bernard Newman, the store manager, was one of the very few Harlem business owners “deeply impressed with the police” handling of the disorder.
As police moved to protect Herbert’s jewelry store, at the opposite end of the block in front of the Kress store, Patrolman Gross arrested James Smitten, a twenty-six-year-old Black man, for allegedly assaulting a twenty-four-year-old white mail clerk named William Kitlitz. There were no details of the alleged violence other than the men’s injuries, bruises on Kitlitz’s face and cuts on Smitten’s scalp — although Smitten’s injuries might have come after his arrest, at the hands of police. As one report of Kitlitz’s injury described him as “beaten on head,” Smitten may have hit him — or he may have been hit by the rocks being thrown at store windows at this time. Both men lived within a few blocks of 125th Street, Smitten on 123rd Street to the south and Kitlitz on St Nicholas Avenue to the west, close enough for them to have heard rumors about a boy being beaten or killed, or to have been shopping or going to a theater. While white men and women like Kitlitz who visited 125th Street had not been targets of the complaints of the groups gathered on the street in the preceding hours, they were implicated in the broadening anger that Louise Thompson and Carlton Moss had recently begun to hear from some of those on 7th Avenue. If Smitten did assault Kitlitz, he may have been acting on calls like the one heard by Moss, to “Run dem white folks outa Harlem." However, with no record of the outcome of his arrest, there is no basis for assessing the validity of the charges against Smitten. After Patrolman Gross arrested Smitten, he took him the short distance to the police station on West 123rd Street and called for an ambulance from Harlem Hospital, which arrived at 8:45 PM, to treat his injuries.
Soon after Smitten’s arrest, Captain Conrad Rothengast joined the police in front of the Kress store. Telephoned at home by his office, he came straight to Harlem, in plainclothes not his uniform. On 125th Street he found groups of people, around 250 in total, “trying to get close to [the] Kress store.” Speaking to several women, he was told that “a young colored boy had been beaten.” Rothengast told them that “was not so,” but to his frustration they did not accept what he said. “It was impossible to reason with most of them. It was impossible to do anything with them.”
Further east, at 7th Avenue, mounted police and patrolmen continued to move people away from 125th Street. Louise Thompson, part of a group in front of the branch of the Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant chain on the southwest corner, watched as police repeatedly pushed people back from the corner. However, the officers could not move them as far as the entrance to the Hotel Theresa midway down the block of 7th Avenue to the south. Like other businesses on 125th Street, the Chock Full O'Nuts remained open for business at this time – and for some time longer, as Thompson later went into the “Nut Store.” The restaurant, like its neighbors, also had windows broken sometime during the disorder, some perhaps at this time.
Even as police struggled to keep groups of people off the corners of 125th Street, they did prevent any from going along the street to the Kress store. Around 8:45 PM, some groups began instead to move up 7th Avenue to the north, a decision that Thompson attributed to police not allowing them on to 125th Street. Carlton Moss decided to follow one of those groups, about twenty men, women and children, up 7th Avenue, and watched as they broke windows in stores. Unlike on 125th Street, there were Black-owned businesses on 7th Avenue. While the block between 125th and 126th Streets housed only white-owned businesses, in the next block to the north seven of the twenty stores at street level had Black owners. That proportion increased to eleven of twenty stores a block further uptown. Those businesses were not targeted by the groups of Black men and women who focused their attacks on white-owned stores – although Moss did see “some ill-directed missels [sic] crash colored owned shops.” The “resentment” felt by those breaking windows had shifted from the rumored specific incident of violence by the staff of the Kress store against a boy to the white control of Harlem’s businesses, of which the boy’s fate was just the latest consequence.
Many of the stores on 7th Avenue were still open for business, like their competitors on 125th Street. As rocks broke the windows of Jack Sherloff’s small jewelry store midway between 125th and 126th Street, he jumped into the window display and began throwing merchandise back into the store. He was soon hit himself by objects thrown at the windows, or perhaps directly at him, as his clerk, John Wise, watched from inside the store. Eventually Sherloff was injured badly enough that Wise pulled him back inside. While merchandise was taken from the store, that likely did not happen until later given that only windows were being broken in nearby stores at this time. Across the street, almost opposite Sherloff’s store, tailor Max Greenwald had a similar experience, likely around the same time. When bricks starting hitting the windows of his store, he shut off the lights so he was not “such a good target,” and began moving merchandise from the window into the store. Greenwald was able to move “a lot of merchandise” before so much material was being thrown through the windows that he decided it was too dangerous to continue. He then retreated inside the store, avoiding the injuries suffered by Sherloff. A shoe store on this block several buildings closer to 125th Street than Sherloff’s store that had windows broken during the disorder was also likely attacked around this time.
At the same time, windows were being broken in stores two blocks further north, between 127th and 128th Streets. On the west side of the street, where five of the seven businesses were white-owned, both J. P. Bulluroff’s grocery store on the corner of 127th Street and K. Percy’s tailor and cleaning store in the middle of the block had a window broken around 8:45 PM. A few minutes later, as Lewis Eisenberg and three of his staff finished changing the window display and began cleaning up inside his auto equipment business next to Percy’s store, they “heard a terrific crash at the front door” as a window broke and saw an “angry crowd” on the street. Unlike Sherloff and Greenwald and their neighbors on this block, Eisenberg and his staff did not try to protect merchandise or remain in the business. Instead, they left out a rear exit into the backyard. From there, the men made their way to the street and hailed a taxi to get them out of Harlem. As they drove away, Eisenberg saw one window broken in his store. Even without any apparent police presence to deter those throwing rocks at the store windows, there was not a sustained or systematic attack on the stores in this area. Nor were windows targeted repeatedly at this time. Additional windows would be broken in these stores, but not until sometime later. These attacks did not appear to be the actions of a large crowd acting together, but of small groups and individuals. Police still concentrated on 125th Street did not respond to these windows being broken.
At least some Black storeowners and staff reacted differently than their white counterparts to the windows in their businesses being attacked. One of the owners or staff of the Black-owned Cozy Shoppe restaurant in the building next to Percy’ store, on the southwest corner of 128th Street, wrote “Colored Shoppe” on one of the business’s windows. None of the restaurant’s windows were broken during the disorder, even as all the white-owned businesses on that block had windows broken. Across the street, on the southeast corner of 128th Street, the owner of Black-owned Williams Drug Store or his niece, his only staff member, responded the same way, painting “Colored Store, Nix Jack” in each of the two window panes that faced 128th Street. That message likely went up after the front windows of the drug store were broken sometime during the disorder. Only recently opened, the drug store may not have been widely known to be a Black-owned business. The windows on which the sign was painted were not damaged. In Battle's Pharmacy on the northeast corner of 128th Street across 7th Avenue from the Cozy Shoppe, the staff did not follow their neighbors in putting up signs to identify it as Black-owned. It had been open for three years, but it too had windows broken.
Even as some groups left 125th Street and windows were broken on 7th Avenue, individuals did get through the police perimeter to break windows on 125th Street. Around 8:50 PM, a window was broken in the Willow Cafeteria at 207 West 125th Street, at the western end of the building that occupied the northwest corner of 7th Avenue. The presence of Patrolman Eppler, a member of the crew of Emergency Truck #5 stationed in front of the cafeteria at this time, did not protect the business from damage, but he did arrest Frank Wells, a twenty-six-year-old Black man, for breaking the window. Wells lived nearby, on 123rd Street near 7th Avenue, two blocks to the south. He may have been on 125th Street as part of the protests by the Young Liberators and other Communist Party affiliated organizations, as he was later represented by an ILD lawyer. Wells may not have actually broken the cafeteria window but instead have been picked out of a group on the street by Eppler given that the offense with which he was later charged was not breaking windows. -
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2021-05-21T21:17:37+00:00
Lazar's cigar store looted
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2024-05-29T02:20:39+00:00
Around 9:30 PM, an object thrown from the street broke a window in Lazar's cigar store at 2154 7th Avenue, the owner told James Tartar, an investigator for the MCCH. By 10:30 PM, objects thrown at the store had broken two more windows. Newsreel footage shot on 7th Avenue in front of the cleaning company to the south of the cigar store looking toward the corner showed the glass gone from window to the right of the store's entrance, whose contents appear to have been taken, and a large hole in the window to the left. Lazar's losses totaled $33, Tartar recorded. He also spoke to the white owners of four of the other six occupied stores on this block of 7th Avenue, between West 127th Street and West 128th Street. They reported windows broken sometime between 8:45 PM and 11:00 PM, and stock losses ranging from $150 at the cleaning company at 2152 7th Avenue, $200 at the grocery store at 2140 7th Avenue, $700 at the saloon next to the grocery store at 2140 7th Avenue, to $850 at the auto equipment store at 2150 7th Avenue. The Black-owned Cozy Shoppe on the right side of the cigar store was undamaged; someone from that store had written "Colored Shoppe" on the store window. Tartar included the "Cozy Shop" on his drawing of the block, together with a Black-owned beauty parlor to the left of the auto equipment store, but neither appeared in his list of looted businesses, suggesting the beauty parlor may also have been undamaged. Lazar was not among the twenty-seven owners identified as having sued the city for failing to protect their businesses, but an additional eighty-five owners who brought suits were not identified. Tartar recorded "losses" rather than "stock losses" in the case of the cigar store, raising the possibility that only Lazar's windows were damaged, rather than the store being looted. However, one window visible in the newsreel appeared to have items taken from it, with parts of the display hanging out over the street.
The times that the windows were broken was early enough in the evening that most of those stores would still have been open for business, or at least still staffed, as the cigar store apparently was. That all those interviewed by Tartar could give a time when people threw objects that broke their store windows indicated that they witnessed the attacks. Someone was also in the Cozy Shoppe to write on its window that it was a "Colored Shoppe." It was not clear if the white business were occupied when they were looted. Tartar recorded the value of the stock stolen from their stores, suggesting that looting may have happened some time after windows were broken, as more general narratives in the press relate. Crowds smashed windows in stores on the opposite side of the street apparently without looting them around 9:45 PM, when a police officer arrested Leroy Brown for urging a group of people to follow his lead after he threw a tailor's dummy through a window. No one arrested for looting is identified as having stolen goods from the store.
James Tartar's survey was the only source that mentioned the grocery store. His investigation was related to what happened after the looting, or at least after the looting had started. Around 12:55 AM, two police officers in a squad car traveling south on 7th Avenue reported hearing smashing glass and seeing Lloyd Hobbs, a sixteen-year-old Black student, standing in the window of the auto equipment store at 2150 7th Avenue passing merchandise to a crowd of people on the street. Hobbs and witnesses at the scene said he had been passing by not taking goods from the store. After stopping their car, one of the officers, Patrolman John McInerney, chased after the crowd and fatally shot Hobbs.
It was not clear if Lazar was able to remain in business. The MCCH business survey did not record any stores at 2154 7th Avenue, but given that the survey located the Cozy Shoppe at 2158 7th Avenue, instead of 2154 7th Avenue, the white-owned stationery store recorded as being at 2156 7th Avenue may have been Lazar's business. The nature of the businesses at 2154 7th Avenue was not visible in the Tax Department photograph taken in 1939–1941.