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

Sol Weit's grocery store, 343 Lenox Avenue, and 345 Lenox Avenue, c. 1939-1941.

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Sol Weit and Isaac Popiel's grocery store looted Sol Weit closed the grocery store at 343 Lenox Avenue that he co-owned with Isaac Popiel at about 10:00 PM, according to a Probation Department investigation. About 1:30 AM, Officer George Nelson of the 15th Precinct was “on duty” nearby when he saw a group of about five people gathered around the store. Arthur Merritt, a forty-two-year-old Black painter, allegedly then broke the store window with a hammer. He and the others climbed through the windows and stole groceries — although likely not all 126 pounds of butter, ninety dozen eggs, eight cartons of cigarettes, a ham, and other food products, as well as $14 from the cash register, that the owners reported was taken. By the time Nelson got to the store, the group had run back out, according to the Magistrates Court affidavit; he told a probation officer he arrested Merritt “a short distance away.” He found two cans of beans, a can of milk, and a can of tuna in Merritt's possession, as well as a hammer. (The details of what was allegedly found on Merritt were not included in the affidavit; the probation officer included them in the report of his investigation.) Merritt denied looting the store or participating in the disorder. He was on his way home after visiting his sister, Pauline, he told a Probation officer. She lived at 108 West 130th Street; he lived at 134 West 121st Street. Both address were between 7th and Lenox Avenues, so his route home could have taken him down Lenox Avenue.

Weit and Popiel’s store was in the area of Lenox Avenue north of 125th street that saw the most extensive disorder, most of which occurred around the time the store was looted. Police were on the blocks and patrolling the streets in radio cars but struggled to protect businesses and respond to changing and moving crowds. As Merritt was the only one of the group Officer Nelson saw who was arrested, it was likely Nelson was on his own or with a single partner. Weit lived in Harlem, on 5th Avenue between 118th and 119th streets, ten blocks south and east of store, according to the Magistrate's Court affidavit, but apparently did not return to the store during the disorder.

Appearing in the Magistrates Court, Weit put the value of the stolen stock at $100. When he appeared before the grand jury three weeks later, he offered the more precise total of $126.02, according to the Probation Department investigation. Questioned by a probation officer a week or so after that testimony, he revised the total again, to $167.86. Unusually, neither the Magistrate’s Court affidavit nor the Probation Department investigation placed a value on the goods found on Merritt, but they were clearly a small fraction of that loss. Insurance paid $48.69 to replace three broken windows in the store, according to the Probation Department investigation. Weit and Popiel were not among the store owners identified as suing the city for failing to protect their business, so there was no indication if they received any award of damages.

Nonetheless, the store remained in business. The MCCH business survey found a white-owned grocery store at the address in the second half of 1935, and the store was visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941. In 1942, Isaac Popiel identified himself as the owner of the store in his draft registration. By that time he was living at 1047 Faile Street in the Bronx. Sometime soon after the disorder Weit also made the Bronx his home. A census enumerator found him at 1976 Vyse Avenue, which he said was also his address on April 1, 1935.

Arthur Merritt appeared in the Harlem Magistrate’s Court on March 20. His criminal record showed an arrest for grand larceny in 1920, which resulted in a suspended sentence, so he was held without bail. Returned to the court on March 22, he was held for the grand jury, who indicted Merritt on April 9. He later agreed to plead guilty to petit larceny, after which Judge James Garrett Wallace sentenced him to three months in the Workhouse.
1:30 AM to 2:00 AM

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.
Unknown store window broken An unknown store at 345 Lenox Avenue had its windows broken during the disorder. The bottom half of the display window to the right of the entrance was gone. That was the only section of the store visible in the Pathe newsreel from the day after the disorder, on the bottom left of footage focused on the damaged window of the Cleaners & Dyers store at 347 Lenox Avenue. No indication of the type of business is visible in the footage, and the MCCH business survey does not record a store at the address in the second half of 1935. By the time the Tax Department photograph was taken, between 1939 and 1941, the Empire Market occupied 345 Lenox Avenue, but there is no evidence that business was there in March 1935. No other sources mention the damage to the store, and no one arrested during the disorder was charged with breaking the window.

This store was located in the middle of a block of Lenox Avenue that saw multiple businesses damaged and looted, although none reported in the five buildings north of 347 Lenox Avenue other than the Cleaners & Dyers on the right hand side of this store. To the left of the store, on the other side of the entrance to upper floors, Sol Weit and Isaac Popiel's grocery store at 343 Lenox Avenue was looted. Further south, on the corner of West 127th Street, the drug store at 339 Lenox Avenue had windows broken, and flying glass injured William Brown. Just around the corner on West 127th Street, a candy store was looted. A reporter for the Afro-American who apparently walked up this side of Lenox Avenue from 125th Street to 128th Street, which included the block on which this store was located, counted twenty-two windows broken, in the approximately forty businesses on that stretch of the street.