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• 1 2022-05-23T17:58:54+00:00 8:30 PM to 9:00 PM 31 plain 2024-01-11T21:05:39+00:00
  
  As people in the groups around the northeast corner of 125th St and 7th Avenue began to throw rocks at the windows of the Herbert’s Blue Diamond Jewelry store, store staff rushed to remove the merchandise from the window displays. Businesses on 125th Street remained opened until late in the evening, so there were staff in all the stores whose windows were being broken. Some of those staff may also have cleared the window displays in their store; they almost certainly did what the Herbert’s jewelry staff did after emptying the windows -- gathered in the rear of the store, away from the objects coming through the windows. Outside, nearby police moved to disperse the people around the store, another clash in which twenty-eight-year-old Andrew Lyons may have been hit on the head by a police baton, an injury that would eventually be fatal. Several patrolmen armed with rifles, which identified them as crew from emergency trucks, took up positions in front of the broken windows. They remained there, guarding the store, throughout the disorder, protection that few businesses received. Newspaper photographers recorded the presence of those officers and the damage to the store’s windows. Large holes could be seen behind a patrolman in one image, and an equally large section of smashed glass in the other photographed window, indications that multiple objects had hit the store. However, only some of business’s extensive expanse of display windows suffered such damage before police intervened, and no merchandise was taken. As a result, Bernard Newman, the store manager, was one of the very few Harlem business owners “deeply impressed with the police” handling of the disorder.
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  As police moved to protect Herbert’s jewelry store, at the opposite end of the block in front of the Kress store, Patrolman Gross arrested James Smitten, a twenty-six-year-old Black man, for allegedly assaulting a twenty-four-year-old white mail clerk named William Kitlitz. There were no details of the alleged violence other than the men’s injuries, bruises on Kitlitz’s face and cuts on Smitten’s scalp — although Smitten’s injuries might have come after his arrest, at the hands of police. As one report of Kitlitz’s injury described him as “beaten on head,” Smitten may have hit him — or he may have been hit by the rocks being thrown at store windows at this time. Both men lived within a few blocks of 125th Street, Smitten on 123rd Street to the south and Kitlitz on St Nicholas Avenue to the west, close enough for them to have heard rumors about a boy being beaten or killed, or to have been shopping or going to a theater. While white men and women like Kitlitz who visited 125th Street had not been targets of the complaints of the groups gathered on the street in the preceding hours, they were implicated in the broadening anger that Louise Thompson and Carlton Moss had recently begun to hear from some of those on 7th Avenue. If Smitten did assault Kitlitz, he may have been acting on calls like the one heard by Moss, to “Run dem white folks outa Harlem." However, with no record of the outcome of his arrest, there is no basis for assessing the validity of the charges against Smitten. After Patrolman Gross arrested Smitten, he took him the short distance to the police station on West 123rd Street and called for an ambulance from Harlem Hospital, which arrived at 8:45 PM, to treat his injuries.
  
  Soon after Smitten’s arrest, Captain Conrad Rothengast joined the police in front of the Kress store. Telephoned at home by his office, he came straight to Harlem, in plainclothes not his uniform. On 125th Street he found groups of people, around 250 in total, “trying to get close to [the] Kress store.” Speaking to several women, he was told that “a young colored boy had been beaten.” Rothengast told them that “was not so,” but to his frustration they did not accept what he said. “It was impossible to reason with most of them. It was impossible to do anything with them.”
  
  Further east, at 7th Avenue, mounted police and patrolmen continued to move people away from 125th Street. Louise Thompson, part of a group in front of the branch of the Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant chain on the southwest corner, watched as police repeatedly pushed people back from the corner. However, the officers could not move them as far as the entrance to the Hotel Theresa midway down the block of 7th Avenue to the south. Like other businesses on 125th Street, the Chock Full O'Nuts remained open for business at this time – and for some time longer, as Thompson later went into the “Nut Store.” The restaurant, like its neighbors, also had windows broken sometime during the disorder, some perhaps at this time.
  
  Even as police struggled to keep groups of people off the corners of 125th Street, they did prevent any from going along the street to the Kress store. Around 8:45 PM, some groups began instead to move up 7th Avenue to the north, a decision that Thompson attributed to police not allowing them on to 125th Street. Carlton Moss decided to follow one of those groups, about twenty men, women and children, up 7th Avenue, and watched as they broke windows in stores. Unlike on 125th Street, there were Black-owned businesses on 7th Avenue. While the block between 125th and 126th Streets housed only white-owned businesses, in the next block to the north seven of the twenty stores at street level had Black owners. That proportion increased to eleven of twenty stores a block further uptown. Those businesses were not targeted by the groups of Black men and women who focused their attacks on white-owned stores – although Moss did see “some ill-directed missels [sic] crash colored owned shops.” The “resentment” felt by those breaking windows had shifted from the rumored specific incident of violence by the staff of the Kress store against a boy to the white control of Harlem’s businesses, of which the boy’s fate was just the latest consequence.
  
  Many of the stores on 7th Avenue were still open for business, like their competitors on 125th Street. As rocks broke the windows of Jack Sherloff’s small jewelry store midway between 125th and 126th Street, he jumped into the window display and began throwing merchandise back into the store. He was soon hit himself by objects thrown at the windows, or perhaps directly at him, as his clerk, John Wise, watched from inside the store. Eventually Sherloff was injured badly enough that Wise pulled him back inside. While merchandise was taken from the store, that likely did not happen until later given that only windows were being broken in nearby stores at this time. Across the street, almost opposite Sherloff’s store, tailor Max Greenwald had a similar experience, likely around the same time. When bricks starting hitting the windows of his store, he shut off the lights so he was not “such a good target,” and began moving merchandise from the window into the store. Greenwald was able to move “a lot of merchandise” before so much material was being thrown through the windows that he decided it was too dangerous to continue. He then retreated inside the store, avoiding the injuries suffered by Sherloff. A shoe store on this block several buildings closer to 125th Street than Sherloff’s store that had windows broken during the disorder was also likely attacked around this time.
  
  At the same time, windows were being broken in stores two blocks further north, between 127th and 128th Streets. On the west side of the street, where five of the seven businesses were white-owned, both J. P. Bulluroff’s grocery store on the corner of 127th Street and K. Percy’s tailor and cleaning store in the middle of the block had a window broken around 8:45 PM. A few minutes later, as Lewis Eisenberg and three of his staff finished changing the window display and began cleaning up inside his auto equipment business next to Percy’s store, they “heard a terrific crash at the front door” as a window broke and saw an “angry crowd” on the street. Unlike Sherloff and Greenwald and their neighbors on this block, Eisenberg and his staff did not try to protect merchandise or remain in the business. Instead, they left out a rear exit into the backyard. From there, the men made their way to the street and hailed a taxi to get them out of Harlem. As they drove away, Eisenberg saw one window broken in his store. Even without any apparent police presence to deter those throwing rocks at the store windows, there was not a sustained or systematic attack on the stores in this area. Nor were windows targeted repeatedly at this time. Additional windows would be broken in these stores, but not until sometime later. These attacks did not appear to be the actions of a large crowd acting together, but of small groups and individuals. Police still concentrated on 125th Street did not respond to these windows being broken.
  
  At least some Black storeowners and staff reacted differently than their white counterparts to the windows in their businesses being attacked. One of the owners or staff of the Black-owned Cozy Shoppe restaurant in the building next to Percy’ store, on the southwest corner of 128th Street, wrote “Colored Shoppe” on one of the business’s windows. None of the restaurant’s windows were broken during the disorder, even as all the white-owned businesses on that block had windows broken. Across the street, on the southeast corner of 128th Street, the owner of Black-owned Williams Drug Store or his niece, his only staff member, responded the same way, painting “Colored Store, Nix Jack” in each of the two window panes that faced 128th Street. That message likely went up after the front windows of the drug store were broken sometime during the disorder. Only recently opened, the drug store may not have been widely known to be a Black-owned business. The windows on which the sign was painted were not damaged. In Battle's Pharmacy on the northeast corner of 128th Street across 7th Avenue from the Cozy Shoppe, the staff did not follow their neighbors in putting up signs to identify it as Black-owned. It had been open for three years, but it too had windows broken.
  
  Even as some groups left 125th Street and windows were broken on 7th Avenue, individuals did get through the police perimeter to break windows on 125th Street. Around 8:50 PM, a window was broken in the Willow Cafeteria at 207 West 125th Street, at the western end of the building that occupied the northwest corner of 7th Avenue. The presence of Patrolman Eppler, a member of the crew of Emergency Truck #5 stationed in front of the cafeteria at this time, did not protect the business from damage, but he did arrest Frank Wells, a twenty-six-year-old Black man, for breaking the window. Wells lived nearby, on 123rd Street near 7th Avenue, two blocks to the south. He may have been on 125th Street as part of the protests by the Young Liberators and other Communist Party affiliated organizations, as he was later represented by an ILD lawyer. Wells may not have actually broken the cafeteria window but instead have been picked out of a group on the street by Eppler given that the offense with which he was later charged was not breaking windows.
• 1 2021-04-29T02:20:47+00:00 Jack Sherloff's jewelry store looted 22 plain 2024-01-27T16:13:19+00:00 "When the trouble started, around 8:45, Mr. [Jack] Sherloff jumped into the show window [of his jewelry store at 2112 7th Avenue] and tried to save the stock," his clerk John Wise told Edna Ferguson, a reporter from the Daily News:

  He had tossed only a few pieces back into the store when the rioters ganged him. He put up a terrific battle and got badly banged up; he's home in bed now. Somebody finally clipped him with a silver cake plate snatched from the window and I had to drag him into the store to save his life.

  An Associated Press photograph is the only other evidence related to Sherloff's store. The store number, "2112 7th Ave," is visible above the door in the version published in the Los Angeles Times (but is cropped out in versions published in other newspapers). Remnants of signs, the distinctive window display, and the caption identify it as a jewelry store. Shattered glass is scattered in front of the windows, the right pane of which seems entirely smashed and the left pane to have a large whole in its center.
  
  
  
  Sherloff does not appear in any records of those injured during the disorder. Of the four stores mentioned in Ferguson's Daily News story, only one appears in any other source (and the story included a sensational description of looting of Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store that is contradicted by all the other mentions of that store). None of the arrests for looting linked to businesses occurred during this time. While some of the other arrests for looting may have come during this time, it seems unlikely. The New York Herald Tribune claimed "the first arrest for alleged looting" during the disorder came two blocks further north, around 10:10 PM, when Officer Irwin Young arrested Leroy Gillard. Frank Wells was arrested for breaking windows around five minutes after Sherloff jumped into his store window, but around the corner on West 125th Street, where the police were concentrated at this time. It would be another hour before Leroy Brown was arrested across 7th Avenue at the southern end of the block for allegedly urging people to follow his example and break store windows. But there are several other reports of attacks on stores in the three blocks of 7th Avenue north of 125th Street, suggesting that crowds first moved there in the hour or so prior to those arrests. But few, if any, police appear to have then been on these blocks of 7th Avenue when the crowds began to attack stores; certainly not enough to both protect stores and make arrests, so no arrests were made to bring the events into the legal system.
  
  Given the time, many businesses in this area would still have been open, but the struggle between Sherloff and those attacking his store is the only reported instance of a violent clash between storeowners or staff and those attacking stores. Herman Young was struck by a brick thrown through his store window on Lenox Avenue early on March 20, but otherwise all those reported as being present took cover in the rear of their stores.
  
  While the Daily News story reported that Sherloff "suffered heavy losses" from the looting, he appeared to have been able to remain in business, perhaps thanks to insurance: the MCCH business survey found a white-owned jewelry store at the address in the second half of 1935.