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Assaulted
1 media/All Assaults Table_thumb.jpg 2020-02-24T20:48:31+00:00 Anonymous 1 3 All the individuals assaulted during the disorder that can be identified in legal records, hospital records, and newspaper reports. plain 2023-10-06T02:59:12+00:00 AnonymousThis page is referenced by:
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2020-02-24T20:40:41+00:00
Assaults (54)
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At least forty-five people and nine police officers were allegedly assaulted during the disorder in Harlem in 1935.
The records of these events were highly fragmentary, so more assaults could have taken place. Newspapers published separate lists of those arrested and those injured in the disorder with few accounts of events that connected an injured individual to an individual charged with assault. Nineteen additional people were reported as being injured without any source that described the circumstances, leaving the possibility that some may have been assaulted. No individuals assaulted by police were identified in the historical record despite evidence that numerous people suffered injuries at the hands of police officers. One white man was included here among the assaulted even though he died in Bellevue Hospital three months after the disorder without regaining consciousness. As the attack on Thomas Wijstem led to an arrest and prosecution for assault, he was included as assaulted and killed (but not among those injured in assaults).
The nature of the violence that took place during the disorder also made it likely to escape the historical record. Most assaults took the form of objects thrown from a distance or attacks by groups. In both cases, it was difficult to identify and apprehend the individuals responsible. Even the nature of some assaults was uncertain. In several instances, journalists disagreed over whether an individual had been hit by an object or attacked by a group.
As a result, police arrested only thirteen people for assault, all Black men. Further demonstrating the difficulty of prosecuting crowd violence, only James Hughes, a man charged with assaulting a police officer, was convicted of assault. Three others were convicted of the lesser offense of disorderly conduct which indicated that they had not participated in the alleged assaults for which police arrested them but had only been in the area at that time. Twelve assaults appeared only in records of ambulance call outs and hospital admissions and are not mentioned in any newspaper reports of the riot. Six assaults appeared in only one newspaper story, all but one cases that involved white victims reported by white publications that emphasized that dimension of the disorder. Such fragmentary sources suggest that it was likely that other cases may not have been captured in the historical record as those assaulted were either not treated at the hospital, did not receive medical treatment at all, or did not attract the attention or interest of reporters.
Notwithstanding these limitations, the alleged assaults for which there was evidence established continuities with earlier racial disorders and "riots." The interracial violence that defined those events was still present in Harlem, and it took place in the same areas as other forms of violence (with two incidents further north in Harlem), pushing us to understand what happened in 1935 as something more than the emergence of a new form of disorder focused on white property and police.
Those assaults on whites in the disorder were out of the ordinary in 1935; the rest of the year saw very few attacks on whites outside of robberies. At the same time, the assaults in the disorder took different forms of violence at other times. Participants did not use the knives and razors that featured in two-thirds of the incidents that resulted in felony prosecutions at other times that year but instead threw objects at individuals, a form of assault not evident in the rest of 1935. -
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2020-02-24T21:51:52+00:00
Assaults on white men and women (29)
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2023-11-14T17:40:37+00:00
At least twenty-nine white men and women were assaulted during the disorder, in addition to nine white police officers. This violence has been overlooked in most scholarship on the disorder, which has followed the lead of the final report of the MCCH. Assaults were only obliquely mentioned in that document, which instead emphasized 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."
Newspapers told a different story, particularly the New York Evening Journal, a Hearst afternoon publication that sought out and gave prominence to white men and women assaulted by Black men. The most sensational and racist example of that emphasis was a story by Richard Levitt published under the page-spanning headline, “Kill the Whites Roar Maddened Harlem Mobs.” It was more a litany of racist fears and stereotypes than an account of the events of the disorder, with the phrase "kill the whites" used as a refrain to separate different elements of the story not in descriptions of specific events. In none of instances was the alleged call associated with the events being described. Invoking Black violence, or fears of Black violence, was a longstanding racist trope, employed in white narratives about the race riots of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Only two specific cases that include such threats were reported in the newspaper. A call to “Kill him” is attributed to a crowd of Black men and women that the New York Evening Journal described threatening B. Z. Kondoul, a thirty-five-year-old white man. Again, only one story mentioned that detail. So too the alleged assault on Betty Willcox, as she waited in a parked car. The story that quoted Willcox appeared alongside Levitt's article. The Black men she described surrounding the car screamed "White- we'll get you' We'll get all of them around here!"
While the New York Evening Journal slanted its coverage to emphasize interracial violence, there was other evidence for all but four of the incidents that it reported. Other white publications reported that violence more sporadically, while the Black press generally did not report it at all. At the other end of the political spectrum, the Daily Worker dismissed the claims of the Hearst press that the disorder had been a race riot and gave credit to Communists on the streets and the leaflets they and the Young Liberators distributed for urging the "unity of black and white workers." However, the radical newspaper obliquely allowed that attacks on whites did take place: "In a few instances where small turbulent groups were suspicious of whites and disposed to attack them, white Communists were pointedly excluded from attack." 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. Those claims appeared to reflect tropes about racial violence not descriptions of events during the disorder. Violence against whites took place throughout 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. While the account offered by a white Columbia University student indicated that additional violence went unreported or was limited by police intervention, it was nonetheless clear that not all the white men and women on the streets were attacked.
Crowds threw stones and rocks at whites. The occupants of vehicles traveling through the neighborhood became targets, with Patricia O'Rourke hit in her car and Joseph Rinaldi in a Boston-bound bus. In other cases, whites standing apart, observing crowds came under attack, including a newspaper photographer Everett Breuer and his assistant Joseph Martin, and security guard James Wrigley. 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. One of them was likely the unidentified white man with a bleeding head wound after being hit by an object who appeared in a photograph published in the Daily News.
The remaining assaults involved attacks by individuals or groups who targeted white individuals they encountered on the street. The victims of those assaults were apparently observing the events, like those hit by objects or walking Harlem’s streets either around the entertainments of 125th Street or near the areas of white residents north of 116th Street. Almost all those attacks took the form of beatings, with only two men stabbed, Edward Genest and Morris Werner. Attacks on Betty Willcox, B. Z. Kondoul, and Timothy Murphy only ended when police officers intervened, while William Ken was saved by Black coworkers. Such violence was not endemic to the disorder. "All night until dawn on the Tuesday of the outbreak white persons, singly and in groups, walked the streets of Harlem without being molested," Claude McKay reported in an article in The Nation. While McKay insisted that "there was no manifest hostility between colored and white," it was clear that he mistook the lack of attacks on whites at some times and places for a general attitude. A Columbia University student's experience captured the intermittent presence of violence against whites among the variety of behavior during the disorder. Hector Donnelly reported being hit on the shoulder by a milk bottle while walking on West 135th Street and Lenox Avenue having gone to the neighborhood unaware of the disorder. As several members of the crowd on the street then moved toward him, he knew he was "in for it." A policeman came running, however, and dragged Donnelly away. Although the officer told him, "You better stay out of here," the white student met a reporter he knew so decided to stay "to watch the excitement." He remained despite further warnings from police until he "got into more trouble." A group of four or five men bumped him as they passed him on the sidewalk and then stopped and continued to push him. Again, a police officer came and "broke up the trouble." After that encounter, Donnelly decided that he needed to leave the neighborhood.
White storeowners also appear among those assaulted, but in very small numbers not as the focus of violence as the MCCH report claimed. Herman Young's injuries resulted from glass from a smashed window rather than a direct attack. Max Newman was attacked as he closed his store, as was Joseph Sarnelli, with his assailants also attempting to rob him.
Four white women appear among those assaulted in Harlem. Two of the women were attacked in cars, Patricia O'Rourke while driving through Harlem, Betty Willcox while parked. Alice Gordon was assaulted by a group on the street. Elizabeth Nadish was reported simply as having been “beaten."
Attacks on white men and women occurred throughout the disorder (information about timing is missing for thirteen of the twenty-nine assaults), but were more geographically contained than in race riots in the north earlier in the twentieth century. Other than one man attacked north of 145th Street in an assault likely unrelated to the disorder, 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, 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, and on this evening caught up in the disorder. Around 11:00 PM, a small cluster of assaults took place on or near 7th Avenue north of 116th Street, as crowds moved away from 125th Street into an area with white residents. Further assaults occurred north of 125th Street around 1:00 AM, back near the entertainment district frequented by whites. The final assault the timing of which is known was of a storekeeper during the looting that intensified after midnight.
Most assaults on white men and women left few traces in the official record: police made arrests in only seven cases (there was no information on the circumstances that led to the arrest of two of the men charged with assault). Seven victims of alleged assaults appeared only in records of ambulance callouts and hospital admissions. Fifteen assaults are reported only in newspapers. Four cases appeared 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.
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. That charge likely indicated that Wright had not been involved in the assault, but had been on the street nearby and been mistakenly arrested by police pursuing the assailants. In one case, there was no evidence of the outcome, one case was dismissed by the grand jury, and two men were acquitted by trial juries.As Part of Related Categories:
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2020-02-24T23:08:33+00:00
Hit by Objects (18)
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2023-10-30T04:04:37+00:00
The most common assault involved throwing a stone, rock, or bottle. Such attacks made up 33% of the assaults in the sources (18 of 54); however, that proportion is somewhat distorted by six instances of assaults on police officers. Throwing objects made up 30% (12 of 45) assaults not targeted at police. Most of those attacked in this way were white men, but five were Black men (and one man of unknown race); by contrast, all of those shot and wounded were Black men, and all of those assaulted by groups of people were white men. Two of the attacks on Black men involved objects thrown at a car; there are no details of the circumstances of the other three assaults. Only one of those hit by an object was a woman, struck by glass when a rock shattered a window in a moving car.
Almost all (10 of 12) of the civilians hit by objects appear either only in reports of hospital admissions (4 of 12) or only in newspaper reports (6 of 12); only two appear in both sources (one whose assault led to an arrest). That discrepancy did not result from reporters ignoring the hospital, as five photographs appear in the Daily News, taken both inside and outside the facility. But reporters do not appear to have been able to systematically gather the names of those being treated, notwithstanding newspapers' practice of publishing lists that had the appearance of being comprehensive. Clearly the hospital records did not include everyone treated for an injury. Patricia O’Rourke appears in a photograph published in the Daily News leaving the hospital bandaged, but is not in the hospital’s admission records. Likewise, lists of the injured in newspapers recorded numerous individuals as having been treated at Harlem Hospital who do not appear in the admission records. Journalists also noted that ambulances called during the disorder treated more people than made it into their records. Of the six police officers, four appear in hospital records and in newspaper lists of the injured, while the remaining two appear only in newspaper reports.
O’Rourke’s injuries are typical of those resulting from these assaults — cuts to the eye, forehead, and cheek, which most of the papers described as “lacerations” rather than cuts, as hospital records did. Cuts produced by rocks, stones, bottles, and shattered glass produced significant bleeding, as photos show. The impact of being hit by an object also knocked at least some off their feet, a detail missing from reports but evident in photographs. The white man being helped up by a police patrolman in this image published in the Daily News had been hit in the head with a bottle (a piece of which is identified as visible in the published photograph, highlighted with an arrow). Several cars traveling along the street are visible in this uncropped version of the image previously available in the Daily News archive. Another Daily News photograph taken sometime earlier from in the street showed the man down on the ground with a bloodied face. Two police officers suffered injuries to their legs rather than heads, and one to his hands. However, three attacks on individuals in cars did not result in reported injuries, two on Fred Campbell as he drove up 7th Avenue, and one on Detective Frank Lenahan.
It was not always clear that those hit were actually the intended targets of the objects. Rocks, stones, and bottles were also being thrown at store windows. The Home News account of Isaac Daniel’s alleged assault on Herman Young explicitly identified a store window as Daniel’s target; Young, the storeowner, was not injured by the stone Daniel’s threw but by the glass sent flying when it hit and shattered a window. Young was likely behind the window, inside his store. Others hit by objects were standing in front of windows, potentially between those throwing and their targets. That was the case with Detective Henry Roge, who was in front of Kress' store when hit by a rock allegedly thrown by James Hughes. Police witnesses were certain that Roge was the target, although two newspaper reports said the rock hit the store window after striking Roge. Hughes denied throwing the rock, and although convicted, received a sentence of only three months in the Workhouse, which the assistant district attorney explained reflected the judge’s belief that the store window, not Roge, was his target.
In other cases, there is evidence that those throwing objects hit their targets. The Daily News photographer Ebbs Breuer and his assistant made their identity obvious by setting up to take images, prompting some members of the crowd to bombard them with rocks. Breuer suffered cuts to the head, Martin a broken nose, injuries that required a trip to Harlem Hospital. None of the black journalists on 125th Street reported being attacked.
Similarly, cars and buses traveling along Harlem’s streets were clearly the targets of the objects that hit them. Lenox and 7th Avenues were major traffic routes, with almost all of the vehicles, private and commercial, driven by whites. One Black driver, Fred Campbell, was caught up in the disorder. A brick smashed the rear window of Campbell’s car as he drove up 7th Avenue at the same time as windows smashed on both sides of the street — but the width of Harlem’s avenues made it unlikely he had been hit by someone trying to throw from one side of the street at a window on the other side. In the streets rather than on the sidewalks, vehicles represented targets similarly distant from the crowd as bystanders in front of stores, police and reporters. Campbell reported being hit by more bricks before he reached his destination, and seeing cars driven by whites with broken windows, but on finishing his errand to pick up the day’s receipts from his two barber’s shops, he returned home. Likely so too did the drivers of the other cars Campbell saw. Two buses likewise were bombarded with stones as they drove through the disorder on 7th Avenue, one part of the local service, one on its way out of the city to Boston, but continued on to their destinations. Only the injured were drawn into the historical record. Joseph Rinaldi, a passenger traveling to Boston, was hit by flying glass; the bus stopped at a drug store outside Harlem so he could treat his injuries. Patricia O’Rourke was also in a car hit by bricks while traveling on 7th Avenue, toward her home in the West Bronx, but in her case the front window smashed, leaving her with cuts to her eyes, forehead, and cheeks. The Daily News put a photograph of O’Rourke leaving Harlem Hospital with bandages obscuring much of her face on its front page (the caption highlighting the fur coat and wealthy father made her entirely unrepresentative of those caught up in the disorder.)
Police riding on riot trucks were more exposed than passengers inside cars; at least one officer, Henry Whittington, was hit. According to the Daily Mirror, he “was “sniped” off of the emergency truck he was riding at 8th Ave and 123rd St.” No such details appear in other newspapers, which simply include Whittington in their lists of the injured, with a head wound. Police in cars do not seem to have been subject to the same attacks as other whites driving through Harlem. The only reported instance of such an attack appears only in the New York Herald Tribune, a brief note that “The automobile of Detective Lieutenant Frank Lenahan was badly battered by rocks and most of its glass shattered when Lenahan drove through a riotous section of Eighth Avenue” in the early hours of the disorder. -
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2020-02-24T23:10:53+00:00
Shot & wounded (7)
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2023-11-09T05:45:52+00:00
Seven individuals were shot during the disorder, and two others shot and killed. The targets of five of the seven shootings were Black men, whereas those hit by objects were mostly white men and women. Few details exist of who shot the Black men or the man of unknown race. The police officer was shot by his own gun in a struggle with James Thompson, during his arrest and fatal shooting by police. No one was arrested for the other shootings. (Not included in that total was an incident in which four men allegedly shot at, but did not hit, a police officer. The men were not charged with assault, only disorderly conduct, and were acquitted.)
The shooting of Lyman Quarterman attracted the most attention largely because newspapers initially reported that the thirty-four-year-old Black man had been killed, but also because his shooting occurred early in the riot, around 10:30 PM, in the midst of a crowd at 7th Avenue and 121st Street. Hospital records indicated that twenty-five-year-old Wilmont Hendricks was shot on Lenox Ave between 128th and 129th Streets “in some unknown manner," as was Victor Fain. Clarence London was shot “while walking,” as was De Soto Windgate, according to the records of the 32nd Precinct. In Benjamin Bell’s case, the language of the hospital record was more specific if not more revealing; his wound was received “when fired upon by some unknown person.” Those shot and wounded in the disorder also appeared in the lists of the injured published by newspapers, their names accompanied only by brief descriptions of the nature of their wounds, about which different publications rarely agreed.
It is likely that police were responsible for most of these shootings. Officers assigned to control the disorder carried pistols and the crews of Emergency trucks carried “riot guns” — rifles. Images of armed officers are a staple of the photographs that accompanied newspaper stories. That some police fired their guns in the air as part of their efforts to disperse crowds was widely reported. The New York Times reported officers who “fired their pistols into the air, frightening away various groups of would-be disturbers,” as did the New York Herald Tribune and Afro-American. That narrative fit claims in the New York Times, New York Evening Journal and New York Post that officers were under orders not to fire at crowds, or only “in the greatest emergency,” according to the New York Post. Inspector Di Martini told a hearing of the MCCH that he "gave instructions to police not to do any shooting." Instead, they used the butts of their guns as clubs (as can be seen in photographs of the arrest of Charles Alston and of an arrest on Lenox Avenue). However, the shooting of Lyman Quarterman was an awkward fit with that narrative. Police were struggling with the crowd of which he was part, but the white press overwhelmingly chose to address the possibility that an officer had shot him only obliquely. Those stories offered conflicting details, with the New York Herald Tribune reporting that no officers fired their weapons, the Times Union that many had, but only into the air, and the New York Evening Journal that they had exchanged gunfire with the crowd. An exception was the headline the New York Times published for its story on the disorder on March 20, "Police Shoot Into Rioters; Kill Negro in Harlem Mob." However, the story itself only reported that the "police launched an investigation to determine who fired the fatal shot."
By later in the disorder, police were shooting at people on the streets according to a variety of sources. The New York Herald Tribune reported that around midnight, “as looting developed, the police began shooting.” As well as looting, it was violence directed against white men and women that led officers to use their guns according to the New York Evening Journal: “But as the night wore on and the looting and violence increased to a point never before reached in New York City, the police were forced to use their guns-were forced to use them to protect helpless whites from being beaten and kicked and stamped to death under the feet of the stampeding blacks.” That was the time period in which the other shootings, and the two additional fatal shootings by police, took place; after 1:00 AM, and with one exception in areas where looting occurred. The exception was De Soto Windgate, who was shot while walking on West 144th Street, six blocks from any other incident in the disorder. Details of his shooting appeared only in the 32nd Precinct records of individuals aided by officers. The only connection to the disorder was the timing of his shooting, so it may be unrelated. The New York Sun somewhat obliquely linked those shootings to the police by presenting officers as using their guns in response to the increasing “fury of the mob" "The crack of revolver shot bit into the din. Seven men reeled under the impact of the bullets.” Eunice Carter asked Captain Rothnengast for details of those shootings during a MCCH hearing, suggesting that they had been shot by police: “Officer, you stated that other people were shot but who shot them? Was there any effort to find out who shot them? Was any check made on the bullets to ascertain whether they came from police guns?” He replied simply that “No bullets were recovered.” If these Black men were hit by police bullets, they may not have been the targets of those shots. When officers shot at James Thompson as he fled a building on 8th Avenue, stray bullets hit two white men on the other side of the street. Police firing into crowds to disperse them could also have hit bystanders.
One incident of Black men firing guns was reported by white newspapers and the Associated Press as involving a group of men firing on police from a rooftop on 138th Street and Lenox Avenue at the very end of the disorder. But the fullest account of those events, in the Home News, did not offer clear evidence that a shooting took place: the officers who made the arrests responded to the sound of gunshots rather than seeing a shooting, and found no guns on the four men they arrested — “During the chase they are said to have thrown away their pistols.” Charged only with disorderly conduct, annotated as "annoy," three of the men, Albert Yerber, Edward Loper, and Ernest Johnson, were tried and acquitted in the Magistrates Court, and the fourth, Charles Alston, whose injuries suffered trying to escape police delayed his appearance, discharged — hardly lending credence to their involvement in shooting at police. Similarly, while Inspector Di Martini told a hearing of the MCCH that he heard gunshots fired around 130th Street at some point in the disorder, he could not establish who fired them: "I tried to see where they came from. Apparently they came from some roof or window on the side streets." Those shots were more likely fired by police.
Two men arrested in the disorder were charged with possession of a firearm, one white and one Black. No stories about the circumstances of their arrests appeared in the press, as you would expect had they been involved in shootings.
In two striking examples, white newspapers reported gun fights that did not happen. When Stanley Dondoro was hit by shots fired by two detectives pursuing James Thompson, an New York Evening Journal story reported Dondoro had been hit by “other rioters [who] returned the fire.” The Associated Press story had only (the unarmed) Thompson involved in a “gun battle” with the detectives that saw “ten persons” shot.As Part of Related Categories:
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2020-02-24T23:09:46+00:00
Assaults by groups (17)
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2023-10-24T17:01:56+00:00
During the disorder, seventeen individuals were allegedly attacked by groups of people. All those reported attacked were white, fifteen men and two women, and all the groups that allegedly attacked them were made up of Black men and women. In these attacks, rather than throwing rocks and stones from a distance, assailants came close enough to hit their targets with their fists and other weapons. That distinction was not always clear cut: in the case of the assault on James Wrigley, newspaper reports differed on whether he had been beaten or had objects thrown at him. Such attacks on individuals by groups were characteristic of the mass racial violence of the early twentieth century, evidence of continuity rather than change.
Sources disagreed about the size of groups who committed assaults. Small groups committed five of the sixteen assaults, two specified as involving three people, three others as involving “several” people. Attacks by groups of this size regularly occurred in Harlem outside the disorder. Larger groups committed eight assaults, two specified as involving five or eight people and ten people, and six involving groups described in general terms (“group,” “number," “some,” and “Negroes”). These attacks highlight the fragmented nature of the disorder, in which groups emerged from the larger crowds on the streets. “Mobs,” and a “gang of 40 or 50,” committed the remaining four assaults, all reported only in the NYEJ or NYP, white papers which presented violence against whites in sensational terms (and did not show any concern with reporting more specific numbers).
A number of the attacks by groups occurred near 125th Street, where crowds concentrated and other assaults and attacks on stores took place. Despite the presence of those crowds, several of the assaults involved only small groups: just three men attacked Joseph Sarnelli in his store, “several” assaulted Morris Werner, and a “number” assaulted Maurice Spellman. Likewise, the areas where groups of men allegedly attacked Krim Shamhal, William Burkhard, Alice Gordon, and William Ken also saw other forms of disorder. On the other hand, the two assaults in the north of Harlem, on Max Newman and Julius Narditch, occurred in an area that saw no other reported disorder or reports of crowds on the streets. Attacks on Timothy Murphy and B.Z. Kondoul fall in between these spaces, on the fringes of the disorder.
The most reported attack by a group occurred early in the disorder. A group of around ten Black men attacked Timothy Murphy on West 128th Street between 8th Avenue and St. Nicholas Avenue. They beat him, knocked him down, and kicked him, until Patrolman George Conn arrived on the scene and dispersed the crowd (in the process shooting Paul Boyett, a twenty-eight-year old Black man, who was arrested for assaulting Murphy, but testified he was simply a bystander and was acquitted at trial). One other attack by a group was widely reported, in which group of four men shot at police on post at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No one was injured by the alleged shooting, so it is not included in this category as no victim of the attack was identified. While police arrested four men, they did not find any guns on them and all were acquitted in the Magistrates Court, raising questions about the validity of the reports.
Police made an arrest in just one other alleged assault by a group. After a “mob” attacked Thomas Wijstem in front of W. T. Grant’s department store on 125th Street, police arrested twenty-two-year-old Douglas Cornelius for assaulting him. The HT reported Cornelius allegedly struck Wijstem with a rock; however inflicted, Wijstem’s injuries left him unconscious. That this attack occurred near the origins of the disorder, where police concentrated their forces, likely contributed to an arrest being made. But as in the case of Paul Boyett and the four men arrested on West 138th Street, it appears that police could not prove that Cornelius was actually involved in the assault. A grand jury dismissed the charges against him.
Evidence exists of the details of only two other assaults, each reported in similar sensational language in only a single story in the New York Journal: a “gang of 40 or 50 Negroes pursued B. Z. Kondoul up Lenox Ave; and a group surrounded Betty Willcox as she sat in a parked car at 125th St. and 7th Avenue. Both stories refer to mobs, shouting and screaming threats to kill whites. In both cases it takes police wielding clubs and shooting guns to save the white victims, an explicit justification of police violence against the crowds, notwithstanding that the stories make clear that no one in the crowds had a weapon. In neither case do police make any effort to arrest members of the mob. Betty Willcox’s first person account of being attacked is even more sensational and steeped in racist tropes than the story about Kondoul. The mob is “howling” and “roar for blood,” and all have “murderous rage” in their faces. When police drive the crowd back, they stay nearby, with an “undertone of ominous muttering and shuffling.”
Two other victims were also rescued from attacks by groups. The New York Post published the only report of a “group” of men attacking Joseph Sarnelli as he closed his barber’s shop in the Hotel Theresa. Refusing to give up his razors, Sarnelli fought the men, and “was being badly pummeled” until Patrolman Thomas Jordan came to his aid. As happened when Murphy, Kondoul, and Willcox were rescued, no one was arrested, an indication of the limited control police had over the crowds. In a third case reported only in the New York Journal, William Ken was rescued not by white police officers but by two of his Black coworkers. According to the story, Ken was “seized” as he entered the Blue Heaven Restaurant at 378 Lenox Ave, punched a couple of times, but then dragged to safety by two Black employees who convinced the crowd to “spare him.”
The fact that these details are reported only in the NYJ and NYP, newspapers whose coverage of the riot stands out for its emphasis on violence against whites and sensational language, raises some questions about their reliability. In other cases, the evidence is again fragmented: victims of assault appear in lists of the injured, with details of how they were injured only in one or two papers. The HT and AM reported that a group of either eight or five men attacked Max Newman, like Joseph Sarnelli, as he closed his store. Only the HT explained the injuries of Julius Narditch as the result of being attacked by three men just across the street from Newman’s store.
There are no details of the circumstances of the remaining attacks other than that they involved groups. Three of those attacked are described as having been stabbed, the only reports of knives being used in the disorder. All the reports of injuries to Edward Genest, a white sailor, mention him being stabbed, as does the only source mentioning Morris Werner, his hospital record. Only one of the multiple sources that mention Julius Narditch report him as being stabbed, a story in the New York American, and the police report of his case just describes him as being “jumped” and suffering head wounds and lacerations of the kind that resulted from beatings. A knife allegedly taken from one of those arrested during the disorder is also displayed in this photograph from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. -
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2020-02-24T23:30:14+00:00
Assaults on Black men (13)
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2023-12-06T22:05:38+00:00
The fifty-four alleged victims of assault included thirteen Blacks, all men. The assaults occurred throughout the area of the disorder and in a variety of circumstances. Five individuals were hit by objects (Fred Campbell's car was hit twice), five shot, two assaulted by an individual, and one assaulted in unknown circumstances. Only one of the reports included any kind of identification of the assailant: James White told staff at Harlem Hospital that he was injured in an altercation with an unknown white man. None of the assaults resulted in arrests or prosecutions.
Generalized reports of police violence towards the crowds on Harlem’s streets make it likely that many, if not all, of these assaults were committed by uniformed or plainclothes officers. This is most likely the case in regards to the five men shot, as there is little evidence that Black residents used guns during the disorder, and one shooting occurred in the midst of a clash between police and a crowd and the others after looting began and police shot more indiscriminately at crowds. The white man who assaulted James White was also likely a plainclothes police officer, given that few other whites were in Harlem by around 3:00 AM, when he was assaulted. Although the nature of the assault that left John Hardeman with a fractured skull is not specified, he was assaulted in a “melee at 126th and Seventh Avenue,” which newspaper reports failed to specify resulted from police efforts to move crowds away from 125th Street and Kress’ store.
Other assaults on Blacks are less clearly the work of police. William Brook, Henry Blackwell, and Thomas Suarez, reported as being hit by rocks or bottles may have been caught in attacks on stores or police (or they could have been offering explanations for the cuts to their heads or legs that avoided implicating them in clashes with police). All three men appeared in newspaper lists because an ambulance attended them. Thomas Suarez, who reported being hit by a bottle while walking on the street near his home, on the margins of the disorder, also appeared in the blotter recording individuals aided by police. Arthur Block is reported as having been bitten on his hand, a relatively rare form of assault, and one unlikely to have been used by police officers who carried nightsticks and guns.
The final two assaults on Blacks definitely did not involve police. Fred Campbell reported twice having his car hit by objects thrown by Black crowds as he drove up 7th Avenue to collect the day’s takings from the two barber shops he owned. It is possible that in the dark those who bombarded his car thought Campbell was white. He reported numerous other cars being attacked, all driven by whites; the other vehicles that feature in reports of assaults, two buses, another car and two police vehicles, all had white drivers.As Part of Related Categories:
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1
2020-02-24T22:18:05+00:00
Assaults by individuals (7)
19
plain
2023-10-24T19:12:57+00:00
During the disorder, seven individuals, including two police officers, were attacked by individuals, a far smaller group than those attacked by groups, hit by objects, or shot. Most violence in a disorder is collective in some sense, and it's possible that these assaults by individuals are elements of group attacks isolated for the purposes of identification and prosecution. Five of the seven assaults are in or around Kress' store on 125th Street, where the disorder began. The other incident that can be located, an assault of a Black man, occurred further uptown on Lenox Ave and 129th Street, in another area of concentrated violence, mostly looting (one case appears only in the lists of the injured, without a location).
Two assaults are clearly ascribed to an individual. One is an alleged assault on a police officer during an arrest in the very early stages of the disorder. Harry Gordon, a white member of the Young Liberators, was one of group that picketed Kress’ store around 6 PM. When a member of the group began to speak to the crowd gathered there, someone threw a rock through the window of the store, prompting police moved to arrest the speaker. In the ensuing struggle, Gordon allegedly grabbed Patrolman Irwin Young’s nightstick and used it to hit the officer.
The second assault mostly clearly ascribed to an individual is reported only in hospital admission records, a record that does not need to extrapolate an individual from a group. It is also one of the small number of reported assaults of Blacks during the disorder, in this case explicitly by a white man. Staff at Harlem Hospital recorded that James White was treated for “laceration of the scalp, received during an altercation with an unknown white man at 129th Street and Lenox Ave.” This location was at the heart of the area where the most extensive looting tookplace.
The hospital record for Patrolman Charles Robins reports his injury as the result of having been attacked “by some unknown person,” but locates that attack “at scene of riot,” suggesting the assault occurred in an encounter between a group of police and a crowd rather than two isolated individuals. Robins was “struck over the head with an iron bar,” an unusual weapon in the context of the disorder, according to the hospital report and one newspaper account. Two other papers reported him being “hit over the head with a brick,” a more common weapon. Treated at 124th St and 7th Avenue, he had likely been involved in efforts to keep crowds from 125th Street. Images of police trying to hold back crowds show officers moving into the midst of groups of people, potentially exposing themselves to attacks such as Robbins suffered – and allowing their assailants to disappear into the crowd before they could be apprehended.
William Kitlitz, a white clerk, was also allegedly assaulted at the heart of the disorder, “beaten on the head” in front of Kress’ store on 125th Street around 8:30 PM. The assault report comes from a legal proceeding, one of the few (4?) reports that link a victim and an alleged assailant, in this case James Smitten, a twenty-two-year-old black man. Given that the police were concentrated on 125th Street at that time, it is not surprising that this assault is one of the very few that led to an arrest. Few sources exist on this case as it occurred very early in the riot and Smitten was arraigned in the Night Court that evening, not the next day, when almost all those arrested appeared in court. (Only the HT appears to have had a reporter in the Night Court, although Smitten does appear in several lists of those arrested in the disorder). Smitten, not Kitlitz, also appears in hospital records: doctors were called to treat him at the 28th Precinct after his arrest “for lacerations to the scalp he received in some unknown manner.”
One additional assault is reported in terms of an individual act that caused injury without more explicit details of the circumstances of the assault. Arthur Block, a Black man, is reported having been bitten on the hand, again with no details of the circumstances, only in lists of the injured not in stories. Biting rarely appears as a form of assault. There are two other men listed as having been bitten, but those assaults are not part of the disorder. Lino Rivera allegedly bit both Charles Hurley and Steve Urban, clerks in Kress’ store, when they held him after he was caught stealing a pocketknife, in the incident that became a trigger for the disorder. Hurley and Urban were treated at Kress’ for their injuries at 2:30 PM, several hours before crowds gathered.As Part of Related Categories: -
1
2020-03-09T18:51:00+00:00
Assaults in unknown circumstances (4)
11
plain
2023-10-24T18:41:38+00:00
In four instances, there is not sufficient evidence to establish the circumstances of the assault.
Two of those events are recorded only in hospital records. An ambulance twice attended Anthony Cados, a thirty-four-year-old white man, for injuries suffered when "assaulted by some unknown colored person or persons." Emma Brockson, a twenty-six-year-old woman of unknown race, received treatment at Knickerbocker Hospital for injuries suffered “when assaulted by some unknown person or persons." Both assaults could have been by an individual, a group, or by being hit by an object.
The assault on John Hademan, a twenty-six-year-old Black man, was more widely recorded, in hospital records and in lists in five newspapers. But the only details of the circumstances of the assault are two mentions that it occurred “in a melee” and “rioting” at 126th Street and 7th Avenue, where police clashed with crowds early in the disorder. Hademan could have been assaulted by an individual, a group, been hit by an object, or assaulted by police.
Unlike those cases, the possible assault of Vito Capozzio did result in the arrest of two Black men, Richard Jackson and Salathel Smith, somewhere north of West 130th Street. However, those men are absent from most lists of those arrested in the disorder. Charged only with disorderly conduct, which the clerk annotated with the word "fight," they may have been arrested as the result of a fight in a business that Capozzio owned or worked in, not for attacking him.
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