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

Battle's Pharmacy, 2156 7th Avenue, c. 1939-1941.

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Lloyd Hobbs killed 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.

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.
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).

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.
10:00 PM to 10:30 PM Around 10:00 PM, violence away from 125th Street intensified. That change marked a shift in the disorder from a protest focused on the Kress store to a broader attack on Harlem’s white businesses and white men and women on the streets. The correspondent for the Afro-American and other journalists on 125th Street noticed what he described as a change to “promiscuous stoning and destruction of property” although they appear to have remained with police in the vicinity of the Kress store. The spreading violence also attracted the attention of the residents of the neighborhood, with some gathering on 7th Avenue to see what was happening.

While some of those in the crowds unable to get near the Kress store had been moving south on 7th Avenue since around 8:30PM, it was not until 10:00 PM that violence was reported below 125th Street. Some of that violence targeted police. Patrolman Charles Robbins, a crew member of one of the emergency trucks that served as the Police Department’s riot squad, was hit over the head with an iron bar in the vicinity of 124th Street by someone who police did not apprehend. Those circumstances indicated considerable disorder in the area despite the presence of police. Somehow Robbins must have ended up in the midst of the people on the sidewalks and in the street, as he was hit by someone rather than by an object thrown from a distance, as Detective Roge had been minutes earlier at the other end of the block. Police must have been outnumbered and not in control of the area to be unable to identify and arrest the person who hit the patrolman. It may have been during these clashes between police and some of those on the streets that Joseph Sarnelli was attacked while closing his barber shop in the Hotel Theresa, which spanned the block of 7th Avenue between 125th and 124th Streets. Three Black men smashed their way into the business, he alleged, and demanded his razors. As Sarnelli struggled with the men, Patrolman Thomas Jordan came to his aid. While he was able to prevent the attempted robbery, the officer failed to arrest any of the men. The struggles of police to control crowds outside the barber shop made this a possible time for robbery of Sarnelli, which was otherwise difficult to reconcile with the large number of police in the area. It could have happened earlier while crowds at 125th and 7th Avenue were at their height, although they were focused on police. The direct confrontations with store owners involved in a robbery were rare during the disorder, but could be examples of those willing to break the law taking advantage of the disorder.

If police were not in control of the area around 124th Street, officers had yet to be deployed further south around 121st Street where one or more Black individuals allegedly attacked another white man, thirty-four-year-old Anthony Cados. He reported the assault only to the ambulance doctor called to treat him for cuts to his head. Cados lived a little over ten blocks to the south, so was likely walking somewhere on the street or perhaps coming from work at a business that had recently closed. Those who targeted him were echoing the attacks on white men encountered on the street on 125th Street and in the blocks of 7th Avenue to its north. With groups only beginning to move from 125th Street, white residents and visitors were still likely unaware of the disorder and the danger it could pose to them. Edward Genest, a white sailor likely visiting the neighborhood, may also have been assaulted around this time. He was stabbed, allegedly by Black assailants, closer to 125th Street, at 7th Avenue and 123rd Street. Stabbing, typical at other times, was unusual during the disorder, when most assaults involved throwing objects or beatings. Whenever the assault occurred, no police were present to intervene or arrest whoever targeted the sailor. Groups moving down 7th Avenue likely also broke windows at this time. Channing Tobias, back at his home at 203 West 122nd Street, just off 7th Avenue, after being on 125th Street, heard “the real smash” of windows begin after 10:00 PM. Just which businesses were damaged was not reported.

Another attack on a white man encountered on the street occurred on 7th Avenue north of 125th Street around the same time. Forty-four-year-old George Anton suffered cuts on his hands, head, and knees at the hands of several allegedly Black assailants on the block between 126th and 127th Streets. Like Genest, he had come from outside Harlem, either to visit or to work. Police were beginning to be deployed in this area at the time of the attack but were not close enough to intervene or for Anton to report the assault. Again, only hospital staff who treated him recorded the attack.

Increasing numbers of residents began to appear on the street in response to noise of the crowds and breaking glass as well as the spread of news about events on 125th Street. Not everyone who became aware of the disorder was moved to investigate. “The real smash” of windows Channing Tobias heard begin after 10:00 PM did not cause him to venture back to the street, perhaps because he already knew the cause. Mary Hobbs, whose sons Lloyd and Russell had walked through the crowds and passed damaged windows to go to a show at the Apollo Theatre at 7:30 PM, heard about the “riot” at her home on St. Nicholas Avenue and 126th Street around 10:00 PM. Although she “got all excited,” Hobbs decided it was a “fake.” Samuel Pitts, however, decided to “go and see what it’s all about.” His wife had woken him at 10:00 PM to tell him “she heard that a kid was killed in Kress store.” He went to the western corner of 7th Avenue and 128th Street to investigate. There he joined others standing on the wide sidewalk and sometimes in the street watching the crowds and police and “talking about the riot.” Pitts remained at the corner for around two hours. Marshall Pfifer arrived on the corner across 7th Avenue opposite Pitts, having come from his home to the east on 128th Street around the same time. A crowd of spectators gathered there too. Pfifer would watch events on the avenue for even longer than Pitts, not leaving until 2:30 AM.

As Pitts, Pfifer, and the other spectators arriving on 7th Avenue watched, more windows were broken in Lazar’s cigar store and Alfonso Principe’s saloon in the block between 127th and 128th Streets. Spectators would also have seen more police deployed from 125th Street arriving and driving by in radio cars. Residents watching events added to the complexity of the disorder. Not only did their presence make it difficult to assess how many people participated in the violence, they also contributed to the fluidity of that violence. Watching provided the opportunity to participate. A change from breaking windows to taking merchandise from those windows was likely fueled in part by spectators who decided to act. Leroy Gillard, a forty-six-year-old unemployed Black man, may have been one such resident. He lived on 128th Street just off 7th Avenue so may have been drawn to the street as Pitts and Pfiffer had been. Gillard would have been familiar with the tailor’s shop behind the building that faced 7th Avenue, across 128th Street from where Pitts stood. While staff remained in the businesses in the block of 7th Avenue to the south whose windows had been broken, the owner of the tailor's shop, Morris Sankin, had closed his business at 9:00 PM and left for his home in the Bronx. Likely because he was not there, when a group of people broke the store windows at 10:10 PM, several people went into the store. Gillard was allegedly among them, taking two suits of clothing, items of which he was likely in need. Patrolman Irwin Young saw that happen and arrested Gillard. Police must have only recently arrived at the intersection from 125th Street as the arrest was the first this far north on the west side of 7th Avenue. It was not, however, the patrolman’s first arrest of the evening. Young had arrested Harry Gordon on 125th Street four hours earlier. Further south, in the block north of 125th Street, where Max Greenwald had given up moving merchandise out of his window displays when repeated attacks left him exposed to being hit by rocks and stones being thrown at the store, it would have become possible for individuals to enter the store and begin to take the “about twenty suiting lengths of woolens” that Greenwald reported he lost.

What was happening on 8th Avenue to the west was less clear. Narrower and with the elevated railroad line looming over it, the street was not a major thoroughfare like 7th Avenue and was near the boundary of the area of Black population, so would have been accessible to Black residents. On the other hand, white-owned businesses predominated to a greater degree than on 7th Avenue. The groups of people that James Hughes had passed around 9:30 PM moving up the avenue from 125th Street breaking windows likely continued north but there are no reported incidents to confirm that. The broadening shift to a more general attack on white businesses and individuals on the street saw groups also moving south with similar results. Andy's Florist on the southeast corner of 125th Street, the Arrow Sales 5 & 10c store at 2318 8th Avenue, and vacant storefronts at 2314 8th Avenue, 2320 8th Avenue, and 2324 8th Avenue all likely had windows broken around this time. There were now sufficient police on 125th Street to respond to those attacks, making it likely that it was around this time that Officer St. Louis of the 28th Precinct arrested Viola Woods, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman, for allegedly smashing the window of a vacant store at 2314 8th Avenue with an umbrella. Her arrest also indicated that women remained a prominent part of the crowds around 125th Street even as observers associated the increasing violence with men. Woods, however, proved not to be involved in the damage to the store. The charge against her was later reduced to disorderly conduct, placing her in the crowd near the store, and then dismissed by the magistrate, leaving Woods as simply a bystander mistakenly arrested by police.
Battle's Pharmacy windows broken Sometime during the disorder, windows were broken in Battle's Pharmacy at 2156 7th Avenue, on the northwest corner of 128th Street. The only mention of that damage is in a story in the New York Evening Journal focused on Communist activities in Harlem. In arguing that "the riot [was] conducted on the best Communist lines," the reporter pointed to how "the Negro merchant's property was destroyed as well as that of the white." Three Black-owned businesses close together on 7th Avenue that had windows broken were identified in the story. Battle's Pharmacy was mentioned together with the Williams drug store, across 7th Avenue on the southeast corner of 128th Street. "Both of these stores were damaged by the rioters although virtually everyone in Harlem knows who operates them." Signs were painted on the Williams drug store identifying it as a "colored store," a set of windows that were not broken. The third store was the Burmand Realty office at 2164 7th Avenue, two buildings north of the pharmacy. Not mentioned in the New York Evening Journal story was the Cozy Shoppe restaurant at 2154 7th Avenue across the street from Williams drug store which also had a sign on its window identifying it as Black-owned, and had no windows broken.

Residents of nearby buildings stood on the corner from around 10:00 PM, "looking after people and cops shooting[, and] talking about the riot," as Samuel Pitts put it. The pharmacy windows likely were broken before that time, by the groups who came from 125th Street around 8:30 PM, 9:00 PM, and 9:30 PM. It was unlikely that the windows would have been broken once there was a crowd of residents who knew it was a Black-owned business standing nearby.

No one arrested during the disorder was identified as charged with breaking windows in the pharmacy. The MCCH business survey misidentified Battle's Pharmacy as a white-owned business. Walter Battle's obituary in the New York Amsterdam News identified him as a Black man born in North Carolina, educated at Biddle University and Columbia University, who opened the drug store in 1932. He was named as the pharmacist at the store in a New York Amsterdam News advertisement in 1936. The store was still visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941.

Patrolman John McInerney shot and killed Lloyd Hobbs, a sixteen-year-old Black boy, as he ran across West 128th Street toward the pharmacy around 12:45 AM. Four men who testified about the shooting witnessed it from the corner in front of the pharmacy, as part of a crowd watching the disorder on 7th Avenue.