Garmise Cigar Store, 1916 7th Avenue, c. 1939-1940.
1 media/nynyma_rec0040_1_01831_0033_thumb.jpg 2024-05-30T19:52:28+00:00 Stephen Robertson a1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bf 1 2 The building, the Regent Theater, is 1906-1916 7th Avenue, so the cigar store is on the corner. Source: DOF: Manhattan 1940s Tax Photos (New York City Municipal Archives). plain 2024-05-30T19:52:49+00:00 nynyma_rec0040_1_01831_0033 20180322 133037+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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By 12:30 AM, it was on the blocks of 7th Avenue immediately south of 125th Street that large amounts of police gunfire could be heard as significant numbers of police sought to disperse groups breaking windows and taking merchandise from stores. Captain Conrad Rothengast, who had been in Harlem since around 8:30 PM leading the police in front of Kress’ store, was one of the officers in the area by this time. His presence suggested both that he was no longer needed on 125th Street and that a large number of officers had been deployed on 7th Avenue. Fred Campbell first noticed large numbers of patrolmen and officers carrying riot guns when he stopped his car at the traffic light at West 121st Street. The thirty-one-year-old Black businessmen was on his way to pick up the day's receipts from the two barber’s shops he owned at 2213 7th Avenue and 2259 7th Avenue. As he drove toward West 122nd Street, the noise of shots being fired and glass breaking drew his attention to store windows shattering and police trying to disperse crowds. A brick then hit the rear window of his car, shattering it. Looking around as he continued north, he noticed other cars with damaged windows and realized that the cars with white drivers were being targeted. Even though Black drivers like Campbell were evidently not the intended targets, another brick hit Campbell’s car as he passed 123rd Street but did not damage any of the windows. Neither brick injured Campbell himself. Two other men not in cars but on the sidewalk near the intersection of 7th Avenue and 122nd Street were hurt.
John Eigler, a forty-five-year-old white man, was hit by an object only a few feet from his home at 163 West 122nd Street sometime after 12:30 AM. He had been targeted by a group of Black men who likely were also among those throwing bricks at the passing cars, continuing the attacks on white men and women on the streets, which had marked the disorder since groups left 125th Street. A second white man, B. Z. Kondoul, claimed he was attacked by a crowd of "40–50" Black men and women at the same corner. The thirty-five-year-old Kondoul fled down West 122nd Street, as William Burkhard had fled down West 118th Street when attacked earlier. However, Kondoul's assailants pursued him. When he reached Lenox Avenue, Kondoul saw a uniformed patrolman guarding a grocery store on the corner of West 123rd Street and sought his protection. Patrolman Clements fired his pistol to deter and disperse the group chasing the white man, first in the air, and when that did not have the desired effect, at the crowd reportedly without hitting anyone. That was not dramatic enough for the sensational white newspapers who reported the incident; their stories portrayed an extended clash between a crowd threatening death and the patrolman that ended only when a radio car arrived to rescue them. Later, shortly before 1:00 AM, Clarence London, a thirty-four-year-old Black man, was shot in the leg. London was further from his home than Eigler. A resident of 676 St Nicholas Avenue in Harlem’s north, he was likely among those who had come to 125th Street to investigate the rumors about events at the Kress store. The bullet was almost certainly fired by one of the armed patrolmen observed by Campbell as part of the increasingly violent police response that saw officers fire their guns more often and indiscriminately. Channing Tobias, in his apartment in the building on the corner of Lenox Avenue and West 123rd Street, reported that he heard the “firing of guns” from midnight until he went to sleep around 1:00 AM.
The gunshots Tobias heard were accompanied by the noise of glass shattering. Among the stores being looted at this time would have been the business on the street level of his building, the Lafayette Market at 2044 7th Avenue. While it suffered sustained attacks that left all the glass in its windows gone, next door the windows of the Black-owned stationery store were intact. Groups on the street in this area were evidently distinguishing between white-owned and Black-owned businesses even this late in the disorder. Police officers trying to stop the attacks on white business continued to show a contrasting lack of discrimination in making arrests. Officer Ferry of the 28th Precinct arrested Albert Bass, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man, for allegedly being one of those taking merchandise from the Lafayette Market. However, the charge against Bass was changed to disorderly conduct when he appeared in the Magistrates Court, making him another of those Harlem residents for whom police lacked evidence that they had participated in the violence of the disorder. Bass lived only a half block west of the market at 238 West 122nd Street, so had likely come to the corner of 7th Avenue nearest to his home to see what was happening as many of Harlem’s residents did.
A block further north across 7th Avenue another local resident, a thirty-six-year-old Black janitor named Hezekiah Wright, was arrested in front of Sarah Refkin’s delicatessen. He had encountered a crowd in front of the store when he was returning home to the building where he lived and worked having gone out to buy cigarettes. Gunshots drew Captain Conrad Rothengast’s attention to the group of men, shots likely fired by another officer trying to disperse them. As Rothengast, likely with other officers, approached the delicatessen, he allegedly saw Wright kick in the store window, reach in, and take out four lamps and two jars of food. While the other men ran when they saw police officers approaching, Wright dropped those items and raised his hands. Rothengast responded by hitting Wright with his baton, unnecessary violence that the senior officer treated as unremarkable. Wright claimed he had not run with the others as he was a passerby not involved in attacks on the store or taking merchandise from it. Unlike Bass, he was prosecuted and convicted for burglary. Given the assessment of both the probation officer and the psychiatrist from the Court clinic that Wright was a “quiet, inoffensive” and “cooperative” individual, and that he was one of the small number of residents with stable work and housing, it seems likely that he was a passerby, perhaps mistaken for the man who kicked in the store window as police tried to apprehend those attacking the delicatessen.
Even as violence intensified in the blocks of 7th Avenue south of 125th Street, the disorder apparently had yet to reach as far south as West 116th Street. Around 12:30 AM, Jack Garmise, a twenty-two-year-old white clerk, locked the cigar store his father Emmanuel owned at 1916 7th Avenue, in the Regent Theatre building, on the corner of West 116th Street and likely went across town to the family home at 1274 5th Avenue. Most businesses were already closed by that time; the cigar store may have remained open to cater to movie-goers leaving the theater. It had not yet suffered any damage. Theater shows ending would have added new groups, including white men and women, to those on the street who were unaware of the violence of the last several hours.
On Lenox Avenue north of 125th Street, the other area where the disorder was concentrated at this time, fewer details of the ongoing violence were reported. Businesses around West 126th continued to be targeted despite the presence of police officers around the intersection. A large group of people gathered in front of William Gindin’s shoe store just north of the intersection at 333 Lenox Avenue around 12:30 AM. The display windows had been broken several times already and some merchandise taken from them. Gindin lived nearby at 346 Lenox, one of few white business owners with residences in Harlem, but there were no reports he came back to try to protect his store. As Patrolman James Lamattina watched, John Kennedy Jones, a twenty-four-year-old-Black laborer, motioned to others in the crowd, called “Come on," and threw a rock that broke some of the remaining glass. More bricks and stones then struck the glass as others in the group followed Jones’ lead. Whether their goal was to do more damage to white-owned property or to gain access to merchandise in the window was left uncertain as Lamattina moved to arrest Kennedy. He must have come from the intersection as he did not arrive in time to prevent the attack or apprehend any other members of the group. Jones was not a local resident; he lived on West 119th Street midway between Lenox and 7th Avenues, and must have joined crowds moving through the streets earlier in the evening.
A similar scenario likely played out around this time across Lenox Avenue from the shoe store. Detective Phillips must have seen a crowd in front of the grocery store on the corner of West 127th Street, some of whom were reaching through glass broken earlier in the disorder to take merchandise from the display. When he reached the store to stop the looting, he arrested Elizabeth Tai, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman, Arthur Davis, a thirty-six-year-old Black man, and probably another Black man, eighteen-year-old Herbert Hunter. He must have had the help of other officers to make multiple arrests. However, evidently none of those he arrested had actually been among those taking merchandise as the charge they faced in court was disorderly conduct, not burglary. Again, police officers had arrested those they could apprehend, not those participating in the looting. The group highlighted the diverse origins of those on the streets during the disorder. While Davis and Hunter lived on West 126th Street, Tai's home was on the Upper East Side.
By this time, when more police officers would have been patrolling further north on Lenox Avenue, similar arrests were likely being made around West 135th Street. Patrolmen Archbold and Conn arrested three Black men in a branch of the A & P grocery store chain at 510 Lenox Avenue, perhaps after noticing a group in front of the store or hearing breaking glass while driving by in a radio car. Forty-two-year-old Preston White, they alleged, had smashed holes in the store window and taken food; the other two men, twenty-eight-year-old Raymond Taylor and fifty-year-old Joseph Payne, had had taken advantage of already broken windows to take groceries. While the store had clearly been damaged and looted, police ultimately lacked evidence that the three men were among those responsible rather than part of the crowds on the street. They too would only be charged with disorderly conduct.
With the police presence increasing and violence intensifying, some of those on the street may have moved east to 5th Avenue. Around 12:40 AM, Patrolman Rock saw six men run out of Jacob Solomon’s grocery store at 2100 5th Avenue on the corner of West 129th Street. Solomon had closed the business at 9:00 PM. By the time Rock arrived, the windows had been broken and the door broken. He chased the men and caught a thirty-five-year-old Black laborer named Lawrence Humphrey, perhaps because he was carrying a fifty-pound bag of rice. In all, $150 of groceries were missing when Solomon returned to the store just over six hours later. The six men Rock pursued could not have been carrying all that merchandise; the bag of rice had a value of only $2.50. Others in the area must also have taken food without interference from police. Humphrey lived only three blocks away on West 132nd Street in the overcrowded section between Lenox and 5th Avenues. The blocks around the grocery store contained very few businesses. Only the block north of 125th Street, and the blocks from 131st Street to 138th Street, were lined with stores. The stores targeted were businesses that contained food and clothing that residents of the area lacked.
Those stores on 5th Avenue would be attacked with little interference from police. An unclaimed laundry store on the corner of West 131st Street and another grocery store on the corner of West 137th Street already had broken windows and missing merchandise by the time patrolling police made arrests there at some time during the disorder. Patrolman Adamie found Elva Jacobs, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, in the grocery store. However, he had no evidence she was responsible for either the broken windows or the items missing from the store, so Jacobs was charged only with unlawful entry for being inside the damaged business. Patrolman Jackson found Lamter Jackson, a twenty-four-year-old Black man, taking a bag of laundry, evidence for a charge of larceny but not that he had broken the windows of the store from which he was taking the bag. Both Jacobs and Jackson lived east of Lenox Avenue on streets several blocks north of where they were arrested. A fire was lit on the roof of the building containing the store selling unclaimed laundry. Unlike those set in stores on Lenox Avenue, the purpose of the rooftop fire was not to destroy white-owned property. Instead, it was intended to produce a reaction from those on the street: “to stir up excitement” in spectators, according to the Home News, and to draw police officers attacking people on the street away from Lenox Avenue, according to the probably better-informed Daily Worker.
The attacks on businesses on Lenox Avenue around West 116th Street that had begun after midnight likely continued. On the block between West 116th and West 117th Streets, Nathaniel Powell suffered injuries that suggested that glass was being shattered. The nineteen-year-old Black man, who lived nearby on West 118th Street, suffered cuts to his nose and left wrist in circumstances that he did not reveal to the hospital staff who treated him. While Powell could have been watching as others broke the windows, the severity of his wounds suggested he was closer than that and involved in breaking the glass. Julia Cureti’s restaurant on that block had windows broken sometime during the disorder. Two days later, Cureti would identify a homeless twenty-eight-year-old Black man named Jackie Ford as one of those responsible, indicating that she was still in her business when some of its windows were broken. Several businesses a block to the north also had windows broken. Some of the people who attacked the branch of the Wohlmuth Clothing store, a billiard parlor, and a saloon around West 118th Street may have come along the street from 7th Avenue to avoid the increasing police violence on that street. The billiard hall and saloon both responded to being targeted by displaying signs identifying them as “colored” businesses.
In contrast to the continuing disorder on the avenues, West 125th Street had become relatively quiet by the time sixteen-year-old Lloyd Hobbs and his fifteen-year-old brother Russell came out of the Apollo Theater when the show ended at 12:30 AM. They had seen broken windows in some stores and unusually large numbers of people and police on 125th Street west of 8th Avenue on their way to the theater. Leaving four hours later, they and the other audience members encountered “general disorder.” A crowd on the corner of 7th Avenue drew the boys’ attention, and they went to find out what was happening. As they walked toward 7th Avenue, Fred Campbell drove through the intersection. Before the boys could see anything at the corner, police pushed the group up 7th Avenue, moving people away from 125th Street as they had been doing throughout the disorder. As the Hobbs brothers were carried along the sidewalk up 7th Avenue by the crowd and Campbell drove up the avenue in his car, they saw businesses with broken windows as far north as 128th Street.
While Campbell collected the receipts from his barber’s shop at 131st street around 12:35 AM, he watched as a group of Black men and women broke the display windows of a butcher shop on the other side of 7th Avenue. They took hams from the window without interference before police arrived. It was likely a radio car containing Patrolman McInerney and Watterson that Campbell saw. Around this time those officers encountered “quite a crowd breaking windows” around 130th Street. After the crowd scattered uptown, the patrolmen drove south on 7th Avenue. As they came to 128th Street around 12:45 AM, the patrolmen crossed paths with the Hobbs brothers at 2150 7th Avenue, Louis Eisenberg’s auto parts store. The boys had encountered a group of people milling about in front of the store talking. The patrolmen decided to disperse the crowd. Although they would later claim that the noise of breaking glass drew their attention to the store where they saw Lloyd Hobbs in the window display passing out merchandise, seven witnesses said the boy was among the group standing on the street when the radio car pulled up. Marshall Pfifer and Samuel Pitts were still on opposite sides of that intersection watching events on 7th Avenue. By this time other local residents had joined them. Howard Malloy and Arthur Moore were out on the street to get ice-cream for their wives, who were in the Moore's apartment in 213 West 128th Street, drawn into the disorder like Charles Saunders and Hezekiah Wright had been while getting cigarettes. As they arrived at the northwest corner of 128th and 7th Avenue, they saw a "commotion" on the block of 7th Avenue to the south. So too did John Bennett, who lived at 2154 7th Avenue, and was likely on the corner with Malloy, Moore and Pitts. Joseph Hughes was watching from his apartment in 201 West 128th Street. Warren Wright was standing in the entrance to the apartments above 2150 7th Avenue on the other side of the group in front of the auto parts store.
As the police radio car came to a stop, Patrolman John McInerney jumped out with his pistol in his hands. Fearing a beating from the police, the boys and the others in front of the store ran up 7th Avenue. McInerney chased after them; Waterson remained in the car, reversing it back up 7th Avenue behind his partner. When the fleeing group got to West 128th Street, Lloyd Hobbs turned left on to West 128th Street, breaking from the others including his brother Russell, who crossed the street and continued running up 7th Avenue. He may have decided to head back towards his family’s home on St. Nicholas Avenue. When McInerney reached the corner, he raised his pistol and shot the boy. He later claimed that he saw that Hobbs had items from the store in his hands and called out to him to stop. The Black men watching saw nothing in the boy’s hands and heard no call from the patrolman. They did see Hobbs fall to the ground after the bullet hit his right side, went through his abdomen, and lodged in his right wrist. The gunshot would not have been the only one echoing around Harlem at this time, noise that signaled that McInerney’s action was part of the intensifying violence of the police response.
Waterson reversed the radio car into 128th Street, grabbed a rifle, and went to McInerney’s aid. As the residents on the street looked on, the two patrolman loaded Lloyd Hobbs into their car and drove him to Harlem Hospital. Russell Hobbs had not seen the shooting. When he returned to 128th Street after the police car left, he learned from the crowd at the scene that it was his brother who had been shot. He immediately ran home to tell his parents, Lawyer and Mary Hobbs.
Around the same time that McInerney shot Lloyd Hobbs, James Wrigley was struck on the head by a stone thrown at him at 7th Avenue and 126th Street. The forty-nine-year-old white manager of a security guard service had come to Harlem when he heard of the disorder to supervise staff protecting stores in the area. He suffered a head injury and cuts about both eyes and may have been knocked unconscious. Police found Wrigley lying on the street. He, like Hobbs, was loaded into a radio car and transported to Harlem Hospital.
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Garmise's cigar shop looted
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Around 12:30 AM, Jack Garmise, a twenty-two-year-old white clerk, locked the cigar store his father Emmanuel owned at 1916 7th Avenue, in the Regent Theatre building, according to the Probation Department investigation, and likely went across town to the family home at 1274 5th Avenue. Most businesses were already closed by that time; the cigar store may have remained open to cater to movie-goers leaving the theater. By the time Garmise left, crowds and disorder had been spreading from 125th Street ten blocks to the north for at least two to three hours, although may not yet have reached as far south as the store, which was near the corner of West 116th Street. Lyman Quarterman was shot while part of a crowd at 121st Street and 7th Avenue, five blocks north of the store, at 10:30 PM. Alice Gordon had allegedly been assaulted a block north at 11:20 PM, and a candy store looted a block further north at 11:45 PM. Around the time Garmise left, Fred Campbell drove up 7th Avenue and reported attacks on stores around 121st Street, despite the presence of unusual numbers of police. He did not report noticing similar disorder around the Garmises’ store at 116th Street. However, Garmise would not have encountered those crowds when he left the store as his route home was in the opposite direction, to the southeast.
Both crowds and police arrived in the area of the cigar store not long after Garmise closed it and appeared to have remained for several hours. Store windows were broken on the opposite corner, and along West 116th Street to the east, and around 3:00 AM Giles Jackson was injured by flying glass in the area of the intersection. The cigar store became a target around 1:45 AM. Patrolmen Kalsky and Holland of the 28th Precinct saw a group of people around the store, and then a milk can thrown through the plate glass windows. In the Magistrate Court affidavit, Kalsky alleged that he saw Thomas Jackson, a thirty-four-year-old Black driver, throw the milk can. Jackson denied thowing anything at the store, or being part of an attack on it, when questioned by a probation officer. Instead, he claimed he had been walking along the street to visit a friend on West 116th Street when he had become caught in a crowd moving toward the store, and someone in the crowd had then pushed him through the smashed window. Throwing an object would have been more difficult for Jackson than most in the crowd; after an accident in 1930, his left arm had been amputated above the elbow. Kalsky also alleged he saw Jackson reach his hand through the smashed window and take merchandise from the display. Garmise reported pipes, clocks, watches, razors, and other goods worth about $100 were stolen. Neither the affidavit nor the Probation Department Investigation specify what, if any, of that merchandise was found on Jackson. Kalsky told a probation officer that as he approached, Jackson threw “some of the merchandise” back in the window. That phrasing suggests Jackson may not have had any merchandise on him when Kalsky arrested him, as does his later agreement to plead guilty to unlawful entry, rather than petit larceny, as others arrested for looting who made plea bargains did. However, the report in the Daily News of Jackson's appearance in the Court of General Sessions to plead guilty, and the New York Times report of his sentencing, attributed all $100 of the stolen goods to Jackson. (The only other newspaper story to include details, the report of the sentencing in the New York Age, mentioned only that Jackson had admitted throwing a milk bottle through the store window.)
The other officer, Holland, arrested a second man, Raymond Easley, a twenty-one-year-old Black man. He allegedly took cigars from the store window, according to a report in the Home News, wording that suggests the officers reported seeing him reaching into the window and found cigars in his possession. Holland also alleged that Easley was carrying a razor. (Easley was not mentioned in the affidavit in the district attorney’s case file in which he and Jackson were recorded as co-defendants, nor was there an examination of him. The only document in the case file referring to Easley was a criminal record; he had no previous prosecutions.) Two arrests at the same incident of alleged looting was unusual during the disorder, suggesting that the officers were closer to the store than in other instances, perhaps only having to cross West 116th Street rather than 7th Avenue.
While the appearance of the two patrolmen clearly stopped the group attacking the store, the broken window made it easier for others to take more merchandise. (A reporter for La Prensa who walked by the store the day after the disorder recorded that all its windows were demolished.) Police guarded only a small number of damaged businesses during the disorder, but the Garmises’ store had the advantage of being near a major intersection, close to the commercial blocks of West 116th Street, an obvious place for police to be stationed. At 3:00 AM, just over an hour after the arrests of Thompson and Easley, when the level of disorder was diminishing, Officer Charles Necas allegedly saw Robert Tanner, a seventeen-year-old Black student, put his hand through the broken window and take a pipe, according to the Magistrates Court affidavit. Necas then arrested Tanner. That Tanner allegedly took a single pipe suggests that there was little merchandise in the window at that time, that most of the looting had occurred earlier. Tanner lived only three buildings west of 7th Avenue, at 218 West 116th Street. There is no mention of a crowd.
The Garmises’ total loss of $100 of merchandise was well below the damage in stores whose interiors were looted, so only the window displays may have been looted. The Garmises were not among those identified as suing the city for damages for failing to protect their business. Unlike many other businesses, they did not have insurance for their store windows, they told a probation officer. However, as part of the United Cigar chain, they did have burglary insurance. However, they could collect that insurance only if the disorder was assessed not to be a “riot,” an unlikely determination after the city lost in the civil courts. Nonetheless, the Garmises were able to remain in business. The MCCH business survey found a United Cigar Store in the same building (although it misidentified the address as 1910 not 1916 7th Avenue). In 1940, Jack Garmise listed the store as his place of employment in his draft registration. The Garmises had opened the store and moved to Manhattan sometime after 1930; the family appeared in the 1930 and 1920 censuses living in the Bronx, with Russian-born Emmanuel working in linen supply and as a laundry salesman. They were still at 1974 5th Avenue in the 1940 census.
Thomas Jackson (whose name was technically Thomas Dean, but who used his stepfather's last name), Raymond Easley, and Robert Tanner all appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20. Magistrate Renaud sent all three to the grand jury on the charge of burglary, and Easley also to the Court of Special Sessions charged with carrying a dangerous weapon, a misdemeanor. While Jackson and Tanner were indicted, and then agreed to plead guilty, Easley had the charges against him dismissed. There is no evidence to explain that decision. Neither the 28th Precinct police blotter nor the district attorney’s case file recorded the outcome of his prosecution for carrying a razor. Judge Donellan sentenced Jackson to six months in the Workhouse, and Judge Nott sentenced Tanner to the New York City Reformatory, in line with his age.
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Attacks on white-owned businesses continued on Lenox Avenue north of 125th Street, but without the reported injuries seen in the previous half hour. Fewer people and more police were now on the street. Even the groups who attacked businesses seem to have been smaller. Some of those who had participated in the violence had left to return home with items they had taken from white-owned businesses. Police stopped and arrested several Black men outside the area of the disorder, as they had Edward Larry. On 7th Avenue around West 116th Street by contrast, groups of people gathered; some attacked the businesses around the intersection despite the presence of police.
On Lenox Avenue, there were now police stationed on some of the blocks where businesses had been attacked. Officer George Nelson was on one of the corners of West 127th Street when he saw a group of about five people gathered around the grocery store owned by Sol Weit and Isaac Popiel at 343 Lenox Avenue, one building north of the intersection. As he watched, Arthur Merritt used a hammer to break the window to create a way into the store, and he and the others climbed inside. Nelson must have been across 7th Avenue from the store as all the group had grabbed groceries and come back out on to the street before he got to the store. He pursued them along Lenox Avenue and caught up with Merritt. The forty-two-year-old Black painter allegedly had two cans of beans, a can of milk, and a can of tuna in his possession, as well as the hammer Nelson claimed had been used to break into the store. Merritt denied having participated in the attack on the store. Rather, he had been walking down Lenox Avenue to his home on West 121st Street after visiting his sister on West 130th Street. Merritt would not have been the only person going about his usual activities in the midst of the disorder. Although Merritt would later agree to a plea bargain, Nelson could very well have confused him for one of the men who had looted the grocery store as they ran through the groups of people still on the street.
Around fifteen minutes later, it was an officer stationed on the eastern corner of 130th Street who responded to an attack on Harry Farber’s stationary store at 391 Lenox Avenue. Patrolman Raymond Early saw Carl Jones, an eighteen-year-old Black man, pick up an object from the street and throw it through the store window. He ran across the street and arrested Jones as he was putting his hands in the window and removing some merchandise. Jones admitted breaking the window but denied trying to steal any merchandise. A regular customer of the business, he may have been seeking to damage the store to express grievances against the storeowner, although Jones denied that motive when a probation officer later suggested it.
Additional police were at Harlem Hospital between West 136th and West 137th Streets. By 1:30 AM, Herman Young had made his way from his hardware store to the hospital to get treatment for the injuries he had suffered when allegedly attacked by a man trying to get into the store. While he was having his wound stitched, Isaac Daniels, a twenty-nine-year-old Black man, came into the hospital to get treatment for contusions on his arm. Young claimed he recognized Daniels as the man who had assaulted him and had a police officer in the hospital arrest him. Daniels insisted he was not that man. He had been at home listening to the radio when Young was assaulted, having gone to the movies earlier in the evening, an account supported by his wife. Later he went out to get cigarettes, like several other men arrested by police, and was on his way back to his home at 73 West 130th Street, not far from the hardware store when he was injured. Just how he was hurt is not described in any of the surviving evidence. While Young insisted he had been face to face with the man who assaulted him for several minutes and Daniels was that man, he ultimately could not convince a jury. They acquitted Daniels.
Two Black men who had been on Lenox Avenue north of West 125th Street encountered police officers on the Third Avenue Bridge that connected the eastern end of West 130th Street in Harlem with the Bronx. Both Arnold Ford and Joseph Moore lived in the Bronx not far from the bridge. Around 1:50 AM, Patrolman Louis Frikser stopped nineteen-year-old Ford after seeing that he was carrying a package. Inside were three cakes of soap, a can of shoe polish, two pairs of garters, six spools of thread, a jar of vaseline, and three packets of tea, with a value of $1.15. Ford admitted those items had come from Harry Lash's 5 & 10c store at 400 Lenox Avenue, five blocks west of the bridge on the corner of West 130th Street. Frisker said Ford admitted being part of a group of men who had entered the store and taken merchandise sometime earlier. In court, Ford would insist he had not broken windows to gain access but simply joined others taking advantage of windows broken by others. Talking with a probation officer after the disorder, Ford denied going into the store at all, claiming instead he found the goods in the street. Five minutes later, Frisker stopped a second man and also arrested him for taking items from Lash’s store. What caused the patrolman to stop Joseph Moore is unknown. The forty-six-year-old West Indian carpenter did not know Ford and did not admit to taking merchandise as Ford did. He apparently had ties to the Communist Party as ILD lawyers represented him at trial. Their defense led the judge to direct the jury to acquit Moore.
As some of those who had been on Lenox Avenue left that area, groups were gathering on 7th Avenue around West 116th Street. At least some of those people would have been involved in attacks on businesses and traffic in blocks of 7th Avenue to the north. Around 1:45 AM, a group gathered in front of Jack Garmise’s cigar store on the southwest corner of West 116th Street, which had closed a little over an hour earlier. Thomas Jackson, a thirty-four-year-old Black driver, claimed the group had come along West 116th Street to the store, likely from 8th Avenue, pulling him in as he drunkenly walked to visit a prizefighter who owed him money. Two patrolmen watching the scene must have been standing on one of the other corners. They saw a member of the group throw an ashcan through the window, which broke enough of the glass to let the others take cigars, pipes, clocks, watches, razors, and other goods from the displays. Patrolmen Kalsky and Holland ran to the store in time to apprehend two men. Kalsky arrested Jackson, who he alleged had thrown the ashcan and then reached his hand through the broken window to take merchandise. Jackson had thrown some of those items back into the window when he saw Kalsky approaching. Jackson’s left arm was amputated below the elbow, which made him unlikely to have managed to throw the ashcan. He insisted he had been pushed into the window by someone in the crowd. Patrolman Holland arrested Raymond Easley, a twenty-one-year-old Black man, whom he charged with taking cigars from the window. When Holland searched Easley and found a razor, he also charged him with possession of a weapon. While the officers’ intervention limited how much merchandise was stolen on this occasion, it only brought a temporary halt to the attacks on the store. By the morning, the glass in the store windows would be completely gone and merchandise worth about $100 would have been taken.
Across 7th Avenue, other businesses on West 116th Street suffered damage that would have required sustained attacks that would have started around this time. Four of the display windows of the branch of the Liggett’s drug store on the southwestern corner would be “completely demolished” by the morning. So too were the windows of a radio store on West 116th Street to the east in the commercial district in which Hispanic-owned businesses predominated.
Episodes of looting also continued on 7th Avenue nearer to West 125th Street. Around 1:30 AM, Detective George Booker claimed he saw Horace Fowler, a thirty-two-year-old Black laborer, break the window of Nicholas Peet's tailor's shop at 2063 7th Avenue, reach inside, and take several articles of clothing. Businesses in this area had been subject to attacks for several hours by this time, so Fowler’s insistence that he had been able to take two coats without needing to break the window is credible. He had attached himself to the crowds on the streets moving through Harlem’s streets some time earlier and joined in taking merchandise when he saw it happening. Fowler said he took items indiscriminately, so more as an act of protest than to meet needs as many of those on Lenox Avenue were doing.
Patrolmen and detectives stationed on street corners and patrolling in radio cars were not the only police officers south of 125th Street after 1:30 AM. Alfred Eldridge, the Criminal Protection Bureau officer who had spoken to Lino Rivera at the Kress store was on his way to the boy’s home at 272 Manhattan Avenue. A 1:30 AM phone call, waking him and telling him to report to the chief inspector at the West 123rd Street station, was the first he had heard of the disorder in Harlem. Police had been fruitlessly searching for Rivera since around 9:00 PM so they could show he was alive and uninjured. They were unable to find him because his home address had been incorrectly recorded as 272 Morningside Avenue by the officer at the 28th Precinct who had spoken with Eldridge when he was in the Kress store. Eldridge had the correct address and headed directly there from his home in the Bronx.
On the other side of West 125th Street, Detective John O’Brien arrived on 7th Avenue looking for information about another boy, sixteen-year-old Lloyd Hobbs. Having spoken to Patrolman McInerney and Hobbs at Harlem Hospital, he was seeking witnesses to the shooting. Arriving at 128th Street around 1:45 AM, O'Brien found bits of glass in the street, together with bricks, stones, and other heavy objects. Over the next thirty minutes his efforts to find witnesses to the shooting, however, would be fruitless. -
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2022-07-14T17:09:44+00:00
3:00 AM to 3:30 AM
18
plain
2024-05-31T02:24:11+00:00
The apparent ebb in violence in the areas where the disorder had become concentrated lasted only until around 3:00 AM. While police made only one arrest, injuries suffered by several men indicated that they clashed with groups on Lenox Avenue around West 129th Street and West 128th Street as well as on 7th Avenue around West 116th Street. Lt. Samuel Battle would later tell his biographer, Langston Hughes, that he cautioned the patrolmen and detectives on the streets that “there were to be no wholesale clubbings of Negroes.” His account seems more a product of the criticism Battle would face for police brutality against Harlem residents in the aftermath of the disorder than a description of his actions at the time. The mostly white officers deployed in Harlem during the disorder, many from outside the district so without experience of serving under a Black officer, would likely have reacted dismissively if not with hostility to such advice.
Lenox Avenue around West 129th Street appeared to have been the site of the largest outbreak of violence. James White, a twenty-nine-year-old Black man, had an “altercation” with a white man, likely a detective in plainclothes, that left him with cuts to his head. Forty-year-old Jack Ponder received cuts to his ear and twenty-year-old Thomas Brown cuts to his forehead in unspecified circumstances. None of the men lived nearby. The most likely cause of their injuries were batons swung by police seeking to clear crowds off the street. There were no reported arrests. Had the police been responding to looting, officers were present in the area to have made an arrest. Louis Levy, who returned to the dry goods store he owned at 374 Lenox Avenue around this time, made no mention of seeing any looting or attacks on businesses. Rather, he had found his store “entirely cleaned out of its stock,” suggesting few opportunities for such attacks remained. Police efforts to clear the streets extended down Lenox Avenue toward West 128th Street. Just off that intersection, Benjamin Bell was shot in the thigh. The thirty-two-year-old man was standing in front of his home so might have been hit by a stray bullet fired by police on Lenox Avenue or by gunshots aimed at people on the street.
In the area around West 116th Street and 7th Avenue, businesses were still being attacked and looted despite the presence of police at the intersection. Officer Necas saw Robert Tanner reach through the broken windows of Garmise’s cigar store on the southwest corner of West 116th Street and take a pipe. The store windows had first been broken a little over an hour earlier. The seventeen-year-old Black student lived nearby so may have been among those on 7th Avenue watching what was happening for some time before looking to take advantage of the damage done to the store, as had been the case with Joseph Wade half an hour or so earlier.