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

Hotel Theresa Building, 2082-2096 7th Avenue, c. 1939-1941.

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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.
Maurice Gilden's Optician's store looted Some time during the disorder, optometrist Maurice Gilden's shop at 2084 7th Avenue, in the Hotel Theresa just south of the corner of 7th Avenue and West 125th Street, was looted. Gilden claimed that several thousand dollars of optical supplies were stolen. The first arrest for looting around the intersection was around 11:00 PM, across the street at the Regal Shoe Store. Individuals likely began taking merchandise from Gilden's store around that time and extended perhaps as late as 3:00 AM. No one arrested during the disorder was recorded as being charged with breaking the shop's windows or taking merchandise from it.

Only the New York Post and New York Sun mentioned the attack on Gilden's store, as an aside when reporting that Gilden was organizing a group of businessmen to visit the mayor to complain that he was to blame for the disorder. Gilden told the New York Sun:
We are wondering if the Mayor's lenient attitude toward communistic groups in the city is not responsible for the soft treatment meted out to the rioters by the police. I was informed that high ranking police officials went among the uniformed men and advised them to talk to the members of the mob rather than to use force.

An immigrant from Russia who arrived in 1906, the thirty-seven-year-old Gilden had served his apprenticeship as an optician in Harlem in 1911, according to an advertisement in the New York Amsterdam News. In 1918 he worked for an optician on Columbus Avenue, according to his registration for the draft. By 1926, when he ran advertisements in the New York Amsterdam News, he had his taken over the optometrist's office established in the Hotel Theresa building in 1899. His main office was at 344 Madison Avenue, in midtown. Gilden lived in the Bronx, as many of the white business owners in Harlem did.

Despite the scale of damage Gilden claimed, his office continued to operate after the disorder. It appeared in the MCCH business survey, and is likely the business with the "Eyes Examined" sign visible near the corner of 125th Street in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. The shop also featured in an advertisement in the New York Amsterdam News in 1939.
Joseph Sarnelli assaulted As Joseph Sarnelli was closing his barber’s shop in the Hotel Theresa at 2088 7th Avenue near 125th Street, a group of Black men reportedly “smashed into his shop… and demanded that he give up his razors.” Sarnelli fought with the men and “was being badly pummeled” until Patrolman Thomas Jordan came to his aid, according to the New York Post.

Attacks by groups were the most common form of assault on whites during the disorder, but the only other instance that also involved an attempted robbery was the assault on Max Newman in his grocery store (there is also one robbery, which involved threats by men armed with knives but no assault). The presence of a police officer able to come to Sarnelli’s assistance was not surprising given that the intersection of 125th Street and 7th Avenue was part of the police perimeter around Kress' store. Nonetheless, multiple assaults took place there during the disorder. Just when this assault occurred was not clear. Harlem’s businesses could remain open until 9:00 PM, 11:00 PM, or even midnight, and this area was a site of disorder throughout that period. One possible time was around 10:00 PM, when Patrolman Charles Robbins was hit over the head with an iron bar by someone police did not apprehend, the first reported violence south of 125th Street. The circumstances of that attack indicated that police were at best struggling to control the area at that time, perhaps creating the opportunity for some of those on the street to attempt a robbery. The shop’s location might have made it a particular target; the Hotel Theresa did not accept Black guests, a situation that would not change until 1940. Sarnelli was unlikely to have kept his business open until the time of other attacks in the area given the increasing disorder.

This assault was mentioned only in the New York Post and Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The Brooklyn newspaper included the case as one of ten brief "Highlights on the Harlem Front" and identified Sarnelli as white and as being attacked by three Black men. No one was arrested for the assault, and Sarnelli did not appear in any of the lists of those injured despite the claim in the New York Post story that he was “badly pummeled.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle described Sarnelli only as struggling with the men. Brief accounts of assaults on whites such as this were a feature of the reporting of the New York Post and the New York Evening Journal, which emphasized racial violence. The Black men's alleged desire to obtain razors conformed to racist stereotypes that featured in those newspapers, which held the razor was the preferred weapon of Black men. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle presented the assault in those terms: "One policeman probably can be credited with saving considerable bloodshed."