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1. 1 2023-07-05T20:55:35+00:00 Anonymous Investigations of the events of the disorder Anonymous 31 plain 2023-07-10T21:46:12+00:00 Anonymous

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• 1 2020-03-11T21:54:28+00:00 Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted 162 plain 2023-09-13T14:07:30+00:00 When Charles Hurley, a floorwalker, and a Kress' store detective confronted Lino Rivera, an unemployed sixteen-year-old Puerto Rican boy, about stealing a pocketknife in Kress’ store, and started pushing him out of the store, the boy bit the hands of Hurley and a white window dresser who came to their aid, Steve Urban. After initially indicating that they wanted Rivera charged with assault, the two men ultimately did not ask police to arrest him. The incident is treated here as an assault as the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York American and Daily News listed the two men among the injured.
  
  As the incident between Rivera and the store staff triggered the disorder, it was widely reported in the press and investigated by the MCCH. This analysis relies on testimony given in MCCH public hearings as that was by far the most complete and detailed evidence. Newspaper narratives varied in detail, consistently reporting only that a boy had been grabbed by store staff for taking merchandise, and later released, but omitting most other details. Several white newspapers also published separate stories based on statements made by Rivera at the West 123rd police station during the disorder or at his home the next day that included additional details of why he was in the store and his encounter with the store staff but not of subsequent events in the store.
  
  Rivera had begun the day by taking the subway to Brooklyn, in pursuit of job as an errand boy, he told reporters for the New York American and New York Herald Tribune. Finding the job already filled, he returned to Harlem. Getting off the subway at West 125th Street, Rivera decided to go to a show or movie at one of the theaters that lined the street, perhaps at the Apollo Theater opposite Kress' store, as a story in the New York Evening Journal claimed. When the show ended, Rivera went into Kress' store, a detail also reported in the New York Sun. He said he did so because he had "nothing to do," according to the New York Post, "just to look around I guess," according to the New York World-Telegram, "to walk through to 124th Street," according to the New York American, and "to take a short cut home," according to the New York Herald Tribune. 
  
  Testifying in a public hearing of the MCCH, Hurley, a twenty-eight-year-old white resident of the Bronx, said he was with the store manager Jackson Smith in an office overlooking the rear of the store when he saw Rivera take a pocketknife from a counter around 2:30 PM. Calling down to the store detective, he pointed out Rivera and then headed to the floor himself. Rivera later admitted to reporters that he did take the knife, after it "caught his eye," according to the New York Post or "attracted" him according to the New York World-Telegram and New York American, or because it "matched a fountain pen set he had," according to the New York Herald Tribune. (The New York Sun mistakenly reported that it was chocolate that Rivera had taken). When Rivera denied having the knife, Hurley took it from the boy’s pocket. Both Rivera and Hurley testified that the men started to push him out of the store. According to Hurley, near the front door Rivera became scared and started to lash out at them. Rivera reportedly told journalists from the New York World-Telegram, New York Post and New York Evening Journal that he had told the men he could walk out on his own, and tried to shake free of their hold, "really started fighting" when, as he also testified in a MCCH hearing, Hurley said, "Let's take him down the cellar and beat hell out of him.” Hurley denied making that statement; he told the MCCH hearing that he held Rivera around his shoulders while the store detective tried to calm the boy. As a struggle developed, another store employee, Steve Urban, a thirty-nine-year-old white window dresser, also grabbed hold of Rivera, according to Hurley. Once the group was through the front door and into the store's vestibule, a recessed area of the street surrounded by display windows, the store detective went to get a Crime Prevention Bureau officer. That police agency provided an alternative to having children arrested; its officers instead undertaking investigations of their conditions in order to refer them to social agencies to better prevent “juvenile delinquency.” Kress store staff turned most of the boys they caught shoplifting over to the Crime Prevention Bureau, according to Hurley, and had police arrest only one or two a week.
  
  Sometime after the store detective left, Rivera bit both Hurley and Urban on the hands and wrist while "trying to get away," he told a public hearing, reportedly explaining to journalists from the New York World-Telegram and New York Post that "I didn't want a licking." The struggle in the vestibule attracted the attention of Patrolman Donahue, who was the nearest of several police officers on West 125th Street at the time (identified in some newspapers as a traffic officer and by Rivera in a MCCH hearing as a mounted patrolman). Donahue took Rivera back into the store, to near the candy counter at the front, to get away from a curious crowd gathering on 125th Street, and sent an officer to get an ambulance to provide treatment for Hurley and Urban. (He told the MCCH hearing that the officer was his partner Keel, or another patrolman named Walton; the call log records the man's name as Miller, who was later identified by the store manager as a Black officer). The telephone call to Headquarters was logged at 2:30 PM, followed by one from Police Headquarters to Harlem Hospital at 2:35 PM, with the ambulance bringing Dr. Sayet recorded in the hospital records as having arrived at 2:40 PM. Those records provide better evidence of the timing of the incident than Donahue’s testimony that he witnessed the struggle at 2:15 PM. Soon after the ambulance arrived, the manager, Jackson Smith came to the front of the store, he testified in a public hearing, after being told a crowd had gathered by a staff member. Informed that a Crime Prevention Bureau officer had been called, Smith decided there was “nothing further for him to do,” and he returned to his office. A few minutes later Alfred Eldridge, a Black Crime Prevention Bureau officer, arrived. Usually the store staff would have turned Rivera over to Eldridge, who would have taken Rivera with him. However, on this occasion Hurley and Urban told Eldridge they wanted the boy arrested and charged with assault. Hurley told a public hearing he had gone to the rear of the store before Eldridge arrived, and did not want Rivera arrested, but the officer was clear that he spoke with both Hurley and Urban. The store manager similarly told a later public hearing that “Hurley wants to press charges for biting.” Eldridge could not take Rivera with him if he was arrested: “The job and purpose of our bureau is not to arrest a child," the told the MCCH hearing. He telephoned his superior, and told him that “the 5 & 10 wanted the boy arrested.” In response that officer told him to “let the patrolman take care of it due to the fact that he was first on case.” So after about 25 minutes at Kress, around 3:15 PM, Eldridge left the store.
  
  However, Eldridge testified he later found out that soon after he left, “the store officials changed their mind.” Donahue simplified those events in the public hearing, testifying that “The boy was not arrested, but was taken through the basement to 124th Street and sent home.” He did not mention Eldridge or who reversed the decision to arrest Rivera. Hurley’s self-interested statement that he did not want him arrested made Urban responsible. Urban himself was not among those who testified before a MCCH public hearing.  It does seem that it was Urban who Donahue said was with him when he released Rivera; the officer referred to him not by name but as “the window dresser.” They took Rivera out the rear rather than on to 125th Street as there was a crowd in front of the store and Donahue “didn’t want to start something,” he told a public hearing. He was clearly anxious enough about the situation in the store to ignore another option that Eldridge had given him, “that in the event that Kress Store did not want to press charges, that the boy could be handed over to us for supervision,” according to the Crime Prevention Bureau officer’s testimony. After releasing Rivera on to 124th Street, Donahue left the store, at around 3:30 PM. Many of the fifty or so mostly black women shopping in the store observed these events, after their attention had been attracted by the struggle between the two men and Rivera, and the appearance of an ambulance. None of these women testified in a public hearing. A Black man named L. F. Cole told a MCCH public hearing that he saw Rivera being taken to the basement by two men.  As they had not seen Rivera leave the store, groups of women concerned to find out what had become of him remained in the store until Smith closed it and police pushed them out sometime around 5:00 PM or 5:30 PM.
  
  Bites are a relatively minor injury, and the hospital record indicates that both men received treatment at the scene and were not taken to the hospital. Hurley did still have a scar when he testified at a MCCH public hearing on April 20. Hays examined it, announcing that “I should say enough [of a scar] to indicate there was a bite,” adding in response to a question from the audience that he saw four teeth marks.” Only one other individual in the disorder was described as having been bitten, Arthur Block, a Black man. He appeared among lists of the injured in only three publications, with no details provided of the circumstances in which he was assaulted.
  
  The significantly less detailed narratives of what happened between Rivera and the store staff published in newspapers largely reflected what Inspector Di Martini told a journalist working for the Afro-American and others in front of the store around 7:30 PM: "A boy stole some little article here this afternoon. The manager caught him, grabbed him by the arm, and was taking him in the back when a woman screamed. The crowd gathered. The manager did not press charges, and let the boy go home through the back.” (Di Martini’s information at that time came only from interviewing Jackson Smith and Hurley, as both Donahue and Eldridge were off duty and would not learn of the disorder until the next day). Missing from his narrative was Rivera biting the men, a detail that was also missing from stories in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York World-Telegram and New York Evening Journal, and Daily Worker. However, the assault was mentioned in the New York American, Home News, New York Sun, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, Atlanta World, New York Age, Philadelphia Tribune, Pittsburgh Courier, La Prensa and in Time magazine and the New Republic. Only the New York American, Daily News and New York Herald Tribune included language that gave a particular slant to the assault. The New York American and Daily News describing Rivera as “hysterical” in his response to being grabbed by Hurley and the store detective, while the New York Herald Tribune labelled him pugnacious. The New York Age reported that “someone” had hit Rivera, the New York Herald Tribune and Brooklyn Daily Eagle that Hurley or Urban “slapped him", or “slugged him” according to the Pittsburgh Courier, with the New York Age mistakenly reporting that he was being treated at Harlem Hospital. That story was in a special edition of the New York Age published in the midst of the confusion early in the disorder. Two stories, in the New York American and New York Sun, had Rivera leave the store rather than being released. A story in The New Republic by white journalist Hamilton Basso included dialogue, almost certainly invented, between Rivera and the two men who grabbed him and comments from a crowd around him (Basso also mixed up the sequence of events inside and outside the store after Rivera's release).
  • Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted (Part 2)
  • Lino Rivera grabbed & Charles Hurley and Steve Urban assaulted in secondary sources
• 1 2020-02-25T02:58:46+00:00 Timothy Murphy assaulted & Paul Boyett shot 60 plain 2023-09-03T04:09:59+00:00 Around 9:00 PM, as police reinforcements tried to disperse the large crowds that had gathered on 7th and 8th Avenues around 125th Street, a few blocks northwest on West 127th Street between 8th Avenue and St Nicholas Avenue, a group of around Black men allegedly attacked Timothy Murphy, a twenty-nine-year-old white rock driller on his way to his home at 44 Moylan Place. Murphy alleged that the men knocked him to the ground and then hit and kicked him. The men told him “they were beating me because I was a white man,” the Daily Mirror reported Murphy as saying. What they actually said was “You white son-of-a-bitch, take it now," according to his affidavit in the Magistrates Court. As a result of the beating Murphy suffered “lacerations, contusions [about his head, face and body], a broken nose and loss of hearing in his left ear.” Press reports simply said he received a broken nose.
  
  
  
  The men beating Murphy allegedly attracted the attention of Patrolman George Conn from the 30th Precinct, immediately west of Harlem. He may have been in a radio car on his way to 125th Street as the New York Amsterdam News reported "police drove up." His Magistrate's Court affidavit described the crowd as numbering around ten men, a number reported by the New York Herald Tribune, Home News, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Other newspapers described larger crowds, twelve men according to the Daily Mirror, twenty men according to the Associated Press, and forty to fifty men in the sensationalized narrative published in the New York Evening Journal. The New York Times and New York Sun simply reported that several men had attacked Murphy. As Conn ran toward Murphy, newspaper stories and legal records agreed that he shot Paul Boyett, a twenty-year-old Black garage worker who lived only a few buildings away, at 310 West 127th Street. The New York Sun and New York Times reported Conn's statement that he had first fired a shot in the air to disperse the crowd and then ordered Boyett to halt and shot him only when he continued running. The Daily Mirror and Home News reported those details without making clear that Conn was the source of that information. The New York Evening Journal reported Conn fired two shots, one "in the air and then a second shot which struck Boyett in the back." A brief account in the New York Herald Tribune and Associated Press simply had Conn shooting Boyett, one of the group attacking Murphy. Several other newspapers did not mention that anyone else but Boyett had allegedly been involved in attacking Murphy: the New York American had Conn shooting Boyett "when he tried to flee," the Daily News "as he was about to strike" Murphy, and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle simply reported that Conn had shot Boyett. This incident was the most widely reported assault in the disorder, both because it occurred early in the evening, and because it fitted the sensationalized narrative of racial violence which the Hearst newspapers and white tabloids employed.
  
  Boyett testified at his trial that he had been “an innocent onlooker” drawn to the “disturbance,” and “struck no one at that time,” the New York Amsterdam News reported. In the confusion as the crowd rushed to leave as police appeared, a bullet hit him. While the newspaper stories on March 20 give the impression that Conn arrested Boyett where Murphy had been assaulted, testimony at the trial revealed that Boyett continued running back to his home, apparently pursued by Conn, who arrested him in the building's hallway. A trial jury accepted Boyett's account and acquitted him of assaulting Murphy. The only source on the trial, the story in the New York Amsterdam News, did not mention what evidence was presented. One issue may have been how Conn claimed he picked Boyett out of the crowd; only Daily News explicitly mentioned that he saw Boyett beating Murphy, although the 28th Precinct Police blotter recorded the charge against him as "kicked complainant." A likely alternative scenario to that offered by Conn was that he simply fired at the crowd rather than singling out Boyett and calling on him to halt, and that his shot hit Boyett, whose injury consequently led Conn to arrest him.
  
  The New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Associated Press reported Boyett had been shot in the right shoulder, the Daily Mirror in the left shoulder, the New York American and Home News in the shoulder, and the New York Times, New York Sun and New York Evening Journal reported the wound was in his back. Hospital records indicate that a doctor from Knickerbocker Hospital treated a wound to Boyett's right shoulder before he was placed in a cell. Conn was based at the 30th Precinct; St Nicholas Avenue was the boundary between that precinct and the 28th Precinct. Rather than taking Boyett to his own precinct, Conn took him to the 28th Precinct station on West 123rd Street, as Boyett appeared in that precinct's police blotter. Both Murphy and Boyett appear in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, Daily News, and New York American. Only Murphy appears in the list of injured published in the Home News and New York Post and only Boyett, in a list of those shot, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Herald Tribune.
  
  Groups of Black men allegedly targeted at least three other white men around this time, all, unlike Murphy, in the area where crowds were clashing with police. William Kitlitz reported being attacked by James Smitten in front of Kress’ store, Maurice Spellman being assaulted at 125th St and 8th Avenue, and Morris Werner at 125th Street and 7th Avenue. All those white men lived west of Harlem, relatively close to where they were attacked, so were likely regular visitors to 125th Street, to shop, seek entertainment or access public transport, on this evening caught up in the disorder. The area around 125th St and 7th Avenue would continue to be the location of alleged assaults on white men and women for at least the next three hours, with three men and two women targeted. However, the assault on Murphy represented the western boundary of the disorder, the only event west of 8th Avenue. That section of Harlem was still an area of Black residents.
  
  Murphy was one of four white men and women allegedly rescued from assaults by the intervention of police officers (with some press reports suggesting that this happened more frequently). Only in this case did police also make an arrest. In one of those other cases, an officer also fired shots at the crowd, but in that instance no one was reported as being injured. Police did shoot and kill two Black men, Lloyd Hobbs and James Thompson, in the later case also injuring two white bystanders.
• 1 2020-10-01T19:30:34+00:00 Paul Boyett arrested 45 plain 2023-08-26T14:54:13+00:00 Around 9:00 PM, Patrolman George Conn arrested Paul Boyett, a twenty-eight-year-old Black garage worker, for assaulting Timothy Murphy, a twenty-nine-year-old white rock driller. Conn testified in the Magistrates Court that he had come upon a crowd attacking Murphy on West 127th Street between 8th Avenue and St Nicholas Avenue. He may have been in a radio car as the New York Amsterdam News reported "police drove up." After firing his pistol into the air to scatter the crowd, he then called on Boyett to halt, and when he did not, shot him. Although the bullet struck Boyett in his back or shoulder he was able to continue running toward his home, only a few buildings away at 310 West 127th Street. Conn pursued him, eventually catching him in the building hallway. Boyett denied assaulting Murphy, testifying that he had been “an innocent onlooker” drawn to the “disturbance," the New York Amsterdam News reported, and “struck no one at that time.” In the confusion as the crowd rushed to leave when police appeared, a bullet hit him.
  
  
  
  Conn was based at the 30th Precinct; St Nicholas Avenue was the boundary between that precinct and the 28th Precinct. Rather than taking Boyett to his own precinct, Conn took him to the 28th Precinct station on West 123rd Street, as Boyett appeared in that precinct's Police blotter. Hospital records indicate that a doctor from Knickerbocker Hospital treated Boyett's wound before he was placed in a cell. That hospital record and  New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Associated Press reported Boyett had been shot in the right shoulder. Several newspapers reported other locations for the injury: the Daily Mirror in the left shoulder, the New York American and Home News in the shoulder, and the New York Times, New York Sun and New York Evening Journal reported the wound was in his back.
  
  Boyett appear in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, Daily News, and New York American, and in a list of those shot in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Herald Tribune. He also appears in the lists of the arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, the Daily News, New York American, and New York Evening Journal.
  
  Boyett appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with felonious assault. The docket book indicates that he was remanded until March 22, and then again on March 25 and April 1, before Magistrate Renaud sent him to the grand jury on April 9. Unusually, Boyett did not appear in any of the newspaper stories about the legal proceedings after the disorder. On April 23, the grand jury heard the case against Boyett, according to the District Attorney's case file records; they indicted him for first degree assault. His trial in the Court of General Sessions occurred just over a month later, on May 29, where his lawyer was William T. Andrews, a prominent member of Harlem's elite elected to the New York State Assembly in 1934. Boyett testified he had been “an innocent onlooker” drawn to the “disturbance," the New York Amsterdam News reported, and “struck no one at that time.” In the confusion as the crowd rushed to leave as police appeared, a bullet hit him. There is no mention in that story of what evidence was presented at Boyett's trial. Whatever it was, the jury acquitted Boyett, an outcome that indicated they accepted his account.
  
  The 28th Precinct Police blotter recorded the outcome of that trial but the only source for details is that brief story in the New York Amsterdam News. Headlined "Wins Acquittal in Disturbance Charge," the story only summarized Boyett's testimony and included no details of the alleged assault on Murphy or Conn's account of the shooting. In that way it fitted with the approach Black newspapers took of not reporting alleged violence against whites during the disorder. The story mistakenly identified the complainant as Kennedy Murphy rather than Timothy Murphy, and mispelled Boyett's last name as Boyette.
• 1 2020-02-24T20:37:35+00:00 William Kitlitz assaulted & James Smitten injured 43 plain 2023-09-03T04:25:39+00:00 William Kitlitz, a twenty-year-old white mail clerk standing in front of Kress’ store, was allegedly attacked by a twenty-six-year-old Black man named James Smitten. Dr Russell of Harlem Hospital attended Smitten at 8.45 PM at the 28th Precinct, after his arrest, a Medical Attendance record indicated, so the alleged assault took place before that, likely around 8.30 PM. Attacks by individuals represented a very small proportion of both the assaults reported in the riot (7 of 53) and the assaults on whites (3 of 29). There are no details of the alleged violence other than the men's injuries: Kitlitz was described as "beaten on head" in a list in the New York American and having “bruises on face" in the Daily News. There is no record of an ambulance being called to attend him, so those injuries were likely minor. An ambulance was called to attend Smitten, who had "lacerations of scalp." Given that he was treated at the police station, he may have suffered those injuries at the hands of police, as had allegedly happened to Harry Gordon two hours earlier, rather than Kitlitz.
  
  
  
  Both men lived only a few blocks from the site of the assault – Smitten at 158 West 123rd Street between 7th and Lenox Avenues, southeast of Kress, and Kitlitz on St Nicholas Avenue between 125th and 124th Streets just a block west of the store. The proximity of their homes to 125th Street likely contributed to them being present early in the disorder. This was the first reported assault on a white man or woman, occurring as clashes between black crowds and white police and attacks by blacks on white-owned stores began, intertwining all those forms of racial violence. Three other white men were allegedly assaulted shortly after Kitlitz. Morris Spellman reported being attacked by group of Black men a few buildings to the west at 125th Street and 8th Avenue at 9.00 PM and Timothy Murphy a few blocks further west by a group of Black men at around the same time. Half an hour later, another group of Black men allegedly attacked Morris Werner at 125th St and 7th Avenue, the eastern end of the block on which Kress’ stood. All those white men lived west of Harlem, relatively close to where they were attacked, so were likely regular visitors to 125th Street, to shop, seek entertainment or access public transport, on this evening caught up in the disorder.
  
  With police concentrated on 125th Street, and on protecting Kress' store, at this time it is not surprising that Kitlitz’s alleged assailant was one of only thirteen men arrested for assault, with 85% (46 of 54) of reports not producing an arrest. Patrolman Gross of the 23rd Precinct made the arrest, the Medical Attendance record detailed.
  
  Only two sources directly connected Smitten and Kitlitz. The Medical Attendance record identified Smitten as having been arrested for assaulting Kitlitz. A story in New York Herald Tribune described the assault. In addition, Smitten appeared in lists of those arrested for assault in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, New York Evening Journal, and Daily News, while Kitlitz appeared in lists of the injured in the New York Evening Journal, Daily News, New York American (on March 20), and Home News.
  
  Smitten’s arrest occurred early enough on March 19 that he was arraigned that evening, in the Night Court, the New York Herald Tribune reported, one of three who appeared in that court mentioned in the story. Magistrate Capshaw remanded Smitten for investigation until Saturday, March 23, the New York Herald Tribune reported, but there is no evidence of the outcome of his legal proceedings. One of the other men the story identified as appearing in the Night Court, an eighteen-year-old white man named Leo Smith, appeared in the Magistrates Court on March 20. The other man, Claudius Jones, was convicted and sentenced by Magistrate Capshaw in the Night Court on March 19.
   
• 1 2020-02-25T17:19:47+00:00 Lyman Quarterman shot 39 plain 2023-09-03T03:01:09+00:00 At around 10.30 PM, Lyman Quarterman, a thirty-four-year-old Black man, was part of a crowd at 121st Street and 7th Avenue that police were struggling to disperse when he was shot in the abdomen. A few minutes earlier, Anthony Cados, a thirty-four-year-old white man reported being assaulted nearby by "some unknown colored person or persons." While Cados lived approximately ten blocks to the south, Quarterman lived at the other end of Black Harlem, at 306 West 146th Street.
  
  
  
  Hospital records of the ambulance called to attend Quarterman simply recorded he had a "gunshot wound of the abdomen received when shot by some unknown person at the scene of riot." The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, New York American, Brooklyn Citizen and Daily Mirror,  and the Associated Press, reported on March 20, and the Chicago Defender on March 23, that Quarterman had died, a mistake the Home News attributed to "many conflicting reports during the night," and the New York Evening Journal attributed more specifically to a "report having been sent out on the police teletype." By late on March 20 the New York Evening Journal, New York Post and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle listed Quarterman among the injured, as did the Atlanta World on March 27 and the Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide on March 30. He was one of eight men still in hospital on March 21,  the New York Herald Tribune reported, and still there as late as April 8 according to the New York Age, but there are no reports that he died.
  
  The New York Times headlined the story it published on March 20, "Police Shoot Into Rioters; Kill Negro in Harlem Mob." However, the story itself was less definitive, saying only that the "police launched an investigation to determine who fired the fatal shot." However, other white newspaper stories discounted in various ways the possibility police shot Quarterman. The New York Herald Tribune, reported that no policeman in the vicinity could remember discharging his revolver, whereas the Times Union said many had, but “only into the air to frighten the mob.” The New York Evening Journal story made an oblique reference to shots being fired into the crowd, as the culmination of a narrative justifying police actions as a response to escalating violence, in which officers from the 123rd Street station surrounded by a crowd, first drew their nightsticks “to save their own lives,” and when the crowd armed themselves with baseball bats and clubs, drew their guns and exchanged shots with the crowd. No other newspapers reproduced this narrative. The New York American simply said Quarterman had been shot by an unknown assailant, the Daily Mirror by a “stray bullet,” and the Daily News reported his assailant had escaped, stories which all implicitly assumed the police were not responsible for his death. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle explicitly expressed such an assumption in reporting Quarterman had been shot “presumably by rioters.” Only the Brooklyn Citizen stated directly that “Whether he had been shot by police or other rioters could not be determined.”
  
  Four of the six others shot and wounded during the disorder were Black men like Quarterman, one of unknown race, and one white police officer. As in his case, no one was arrested for any of those shootings (the man with who the police officer struggled, James Thompson, was shot and killed by police).
   
• 1 2020-02-25T01:54:44+00:00 Detective Henry Roge assaulted 30 plain 2022-12-17T21:20:24+00:00 Just before 10 pm police on 125th Street succeeded in dispersing the crowd in front of Kress’ store, moving them across the street and west on to 8th Avenue. Detective Henry Roge of the West 123rd St Precinct and his partner Raymond Gill were among the police standing in front of the store, watching the crowd, backlit by the lighted store. A rock thrown from the crowd then struck Roge in the head, causing deep cuts to his eye and face. Gill claimed he saw a man appear from behind the cars parked on the street, look around, and throw the rock that hit Roge. At that moment there were no other objects being thrown at stores or police, so Gill was certain that it was that rock that hit his partner, and he was able to keep his eyes on the man who threw it. After chasing him through the crowd, he trapped him among the parked cars. Gill frisked the man, twenty-four-year-old James Hughes, and found five stones in his pockets; Hughes insisted the stones were to defend himself, and he had not thrown the rock that struck Roge.
  
  As Hughes was being arrested, Roge's injuries were bleeding profusely. A call for medical assistance brought Dr Fabian of the Joint Disease Hospital to attend to the detective. New York Evening Journal photographers captured two images of a uniformed officer helping a bleeding Roge from the scene (the only images of an injured police officer published). One photograph was taken at the scene shows Roge and the officer from the side. The officer is in the foreground, supporting Roge, who is leaning forward, his left hand over his eyes and forehead. A store display window is in the background, with what appears to be broken glass in front of it.  In a photograph that may have been taken somewhere inside, Roge is in the foreground of the image, with a handkerchief covering his forehead and eyes. Next to him white uniformed patrolman has one arm behind Roge's back, guiding him, and is holding the lapel of Roge's jacket with his other hand, in which he has his baton. Over the patrolman's left shoulder is a Black man. The Daily Mirror also published an image of Roge and the uniformed officer, which may have been taken on the street, There are two Black men in the image, one behind the officer and one to right of the detective holding a handkerchief he appears to be offereing the officer. This image was not published until April 3, when the newspaper miscaptioned it as showing a white man, "One of the Casualties in the Riot. The man was struck over the eyes with a stick. The policeman holds him until an ambulance arrives. But the victim was only one of many white persons injured in the mad Harlem riot."
  
  According to the record of medical attendances, Roge remained on duty after being attended by the doctor, but other sources reported that his injury required two stitches, which involved Roge being taken to Harlem Hospital. The Probation report recorded that Roge was on sick leave for ten days after his injury, making it more likely his injury required him to leave the scene for treatment.
  
  Hughes was tried and convicted of misdemeanor assault. The prosecutor’s notes on the trial suggest that Gill’s testimony stressed that he was certain of his identification of Hughes as the man who threw the rock, against which Hughes offered his denial and a series of character witnesses. In response, the prosecutor argued that Hughes “saw plenty of trouble – went right into it.” At the sentencing hearing, the judge expressed belief that Hughes had thrown the rock at the store window, not Roge, so sentenced him to term of only three months in the workhouse.
  
  As with other assaults, the press coverage of this case was fragmented. Roge appeared on the lists of those injured published by white newspapers the New York American (on both March 20 & 21), New York Evening Journal, Home News, Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Post, and in stories in the Daily Mirror. Hughes appeared in lists of those arrested published in the Black newspapers the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the white New York Evening Journal. The two were linked in only three stories, in the New York Times, Home News and Daily Worker. Even when Hughes was tried, producing additional coverage, only two of the five stories mentioned Roge. But that legal process did generate case files in both the DA’s office and the Probation Department which provided details that are available for only a handful of the events of the disorder.
  
   
• 1 2020-09-29T20:47:10+00:00 James Smitten arrested 29 plain 2023-08-26T14:48:14+00:00 Patrolman Gross of the 23rd Precinct arrested James Smitten, a twenty-five-year-old Black man, for allegedly beating William Kitlitz, a white mail clerk, in front of Kress' store on 125th Street. Dr Russell of Harlem Hospital attended Smitten at 8:45 PM at the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street, after his arrest, a Medical Attendance record indicated, so the alleged assault took place before that, likely around 8:30 PM. Smitten’s arrest occurred early enough on March 19 that he was arraigned that evening, in the Night Court, the New York Herald Tribune reported, one of three men who appeared in that court mentioned in the story. The story did not mention when the men were arrested. There were no details of the alleged violence other than the men's injuries: Kitlitz was described as "beaten on head" in a list in the New York American and having “bruises on face" in the Daily News. There was no record of an ambulance being called to attend him so those injuries were likely minor. An ambulance was called to attend Smitten, who had "lacerations of scalp." Given that he was treated at the police station, he may have suffered those injuries at the hands of police, as had allegedly happened to Harry Gordon two hours earlier, rather than Kitlitz. The Medical Attendance record described Smitten's injuries as "lacerations of scalp which he received in some unknown manner."  Other than that record there was no other evidence of his injury; he did not appear in any newspaper's list of the injured. Smitten lived close to the location of the alleged assault, at 158 West 123rd Street, so could have heard about the events in the Kress store early in the disorder or have been on 125th Street for some other reason and been drawn into the crowds around the store.
  
  
  
  Only two sources connected Smitten and Kitlitz. The hospital record identified Smitten as having been arrested for assaulting Kitlitz. Only the story in the New York Herald Tribune described the assault. In addition, Smitten appeared in lists of those arrested for assault in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, New York Evening Journal and Daily News. His name was misspelled as Smith in the New York Herald Tribune and as Smithner in the Daily News. (Another man named James Smith was arrested during the disorder, for robbery. Smith lived at a different address than Smitten, and was younger, but was confused with Smitten and given Smitten’s address in reports in the New York American and Daily News).
  
  The New York Herald Tribune reported that at the Night Court Magistrate Capshaw remanded Smitten for investigation until Saturday, March 23. However, he was not in the Magistrates Court docket book on that day and there was no record of the outcome of his prosecution. One of the two other men mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune as arraigned with Smitten, an eighteen-year-old white man named Leo Smith, did appear in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20. Magistrate Capshaw convicted and sentenced the other man, Claudius Jones, in the Night Court on March 19.
  
   
• 1 2020-08-20T20:50:26+00:00 Clara Crowder injured 25 plain 2023-08-25T02:47:10+00:00 Around 5.00 PM, during the struggles inside Kress' store as police tried to clear out the customers who had remained after Patrolman Raymond Donahue took Lino Rivera into the basement, Clara Crowder, a twenty-year-old white woman employed as a clerk in the store fainted. According to the Medical Attendance record of the ambulance that arrived at the store at 5.05 PM, she had been aiding another store employee at the time.
  
  Jackson Smith, Kress' manager, had decided sometime after 4.30 PM that efforts to convince those in the store that Rivera had been released unharmed were failing, and had called for additional police to help him close the store. When those officers began to move customers from the rear of the store, "they began to get rough," Louise Thompson wrote in the account of what she witnessed published in New Masses. Displays of pots and pans and glasses were knocked over and women screamed. Crowder and the unnamed colleague she tried to help were likely behind counters in the store, where the sales staff worked, perhaps counters whose displays were knocked to the ground. The noise and shouting led many customers to rush to leave the store, Thompson and Jackson Smith testified in the MCCH public hearings, so could also have led Crowder to faint. Neither Smith nor Thompson mentioned Crowder when describing what they saw happen in Kress' at that time.
  
  Louise Thompson, on West 125th Street after being cleared from the store by police, did mention seeing the ambulance arrive, but testified in a public hearing of the MCCH that "we never knew whom he was going to treat." L. F. Coles, who like Thompson had been in the store, likewise told a MCCH hearing that none of those he asked knew why the ambulance was there, with a police officer telling them "it wasn't any of our business." In fact, only three narratives of the events in Kress store mention Crowder. The New York Herald Tribune had her faint as Hurley and Urban grabbed Rivera: "[Rivera] bit two Kress employees on the hand when they hauled him from the counter and this, in turn, caused a woman clerk to faint." The story returned later to Crowder, in describing customers being cleared from the story, reporting “As police beat the crowd back it was discovered that Miss Clara Browder [sic], twenty, a clerk, of 473 West 158th Street, had fainted.” The story went on to say she was attended by the ambulance attending the two store employees bitten by Rivera. Had Crowder fainted when Rivera was grabbed, she could have been attended by that ambulance, but police did not clear the store until two hours after it had returned to Harlem Hospital. The Medical Attendances records indicate it was a second ambulance, carrying a different intern physician, that attended Crowder. That timing makes the clearing of the store, not Rivera being grabbed, the context in which the woman fainted. The Daily News did report that a second ambulance came to Kress, but offered a vaguer account of the circumstances, noting only that Crowder “fainted after the boy had been released.” The Daily Mirror mentioned Crowder without making clear whether she was in the store or on the street outside, but did sensationalize the circumstances, reporting she “fainted in that crush and was trampled upon until rescued, by a football wedge of police.”
  
  While not including Crowder in their narratives, the New York American, New York Evening Journal and New York Post did list her among the injured. As in the narratives and the hospital record, her injury was recording as fainting, other than by the New York Evening Journal, which listed her as “treated for shock,” which was also her injury in the Daily News list. Crowder, one of three women among those injured (14%, 3 of 21) is the only individual reported as having fainted. After being attended by the physician, Crowder left for home, 473 West 158th Street. Beyond Harlem to the north, that address was emblematic of the distance between Kress’ largely white staff and its Black customers.
  
  
   
• 1 2020-04-09T18:15:25+00:00 Benjamin Bell shot 20 plain 2023-09-03T02:10:15+00:00 Benjamin Bell, a thirty-two-year-old man of unknown race, was shot “when fired upon by some unknown person” outside his home at 73 West 128th Street, according to hospital records. Dr Payne attended Bell at Harlem Hospital at 3:55 AM, so he was likely shot sometime around 3:30 AM. Given that he was shot in front of his home, Bell was likely a spectator rather than a participant in the disorder on Lenox Avenue. He may have been hit by a stray bullet fired by police officers shooting to disperse crowds. Police officers fired their weapons frequently in the hours after midnight. While there were no reports of violence near 128th Street at this time, three other men were injured around West 129th street just a block to the north sometime after 3:00 AM. That violence could have spread down to the area around Bell's home as police pursued people who had scattered down Lenox Avenue.
  
  
  
  None of the sources that record the assault on Bell identified his race. His address did not provide clear evidence. The block on which Bell lived included white as well as Black residents.
  
  The hospital record described Bell’s injury as a “gunshot wound in the left thigh” that was serious enough for him to be admitted to Harlem Hospital. The New York American and New York Evening Journal reported simply that he had been shot in the leg. The New York Post more dismissively listed the gunshot wound as “superficial.”
  
  No one was arrested for shooting Bell, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed).
  
   
• 1 2020-03-09T18:52:16+00:00 Anthony Cados assaulted 19 plain 2023-10-23T04:22:55+00:00
  Anthony Cados, a thirty-four-year-old white man, told Dr. Sayet of Harlem Hospital that he been "assaulted by some unknown colored person or persons." The ambulance call-out record placed the time Sayet attended at Cados at 10:00 PM, so the alleged assault likely occurred around that time, and on the street near the address to which the ambulance was summoned, 2022 7th Avenue. Around that time there had been a clash between police and a crowd at the nearby intersection of 7th Avenue and 121st Street, in the midst of which Lyman Quarterman was shot.
  
  Cados did not live at the address to which the ambulance was called, but over ten blocks to the south, at 116 West 109th Street. Sayet treated him in front of the building, suggesting Cados may not have had access to any place inside. However, Cados called for an ambulance five and a half hours later, at 3:30 AM, to the same address, for further treatment of his injury. It seems unlikely that he spent the intervening time on the street. The businesses at that address were a food market and a stationary store by the time the Tax Department photograph was taken, neither a location to spend the early hours of the morning (this section of 7th Avenue is missing from the MCCH business survey).
  
  
  
  The ambulance call-out record described Cados' injury as "laceration of scalp." Dr. Sayet was in both the ambulances that attended Cados; on neither occasion did he judge the injury to be serious enough to warrant taking him back to Harlem Hospital. Cados did not appear in any of the lists of the injured published in the press, indicating that he did not make a report to police. While the ambulance record did not include information on race, specifying that Cados' attackers were "colored" indicated that he was a white man.
• 1 2020-03-11T21:14:02+00:00 Detective Charles Foley assaulted 17 plain 2022-06-08T17:05:48+00:00 Detective Charles Foley, a thirty-two-year-old white officer from the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street, was "struck by a stone thrown by some unknown person while at scene of riot in rear of Kress’ Store" on 124th Street, according to the Medical Attendance record of the ambulance that attended him. Dr Sayet of Harlem Hospital treated Foley in front of Blumstein's department store, on 125th Street, at 7.30 PM, so the assault likely took place around 7.15 PM. Around the same time a second officer, Patrolman Michael Kelly, was hit by an object at the rear of the store, where police had followed a crowd drawn to 124th Street around 7.00 PM by the appearance of a hearse they assumed had come for the body of the boy rumored to have been killed. Foley was one of the officers listed in a story in the New York Times as injured after "a barrage of missiles fell on the ranks of the police who had caught up with the crowd" after it moved from the front of the store. The street had a narrower roadway and pavements than 125th Street, making officers easier to target with objects thrown from roofs as well as the street level.
  
  The Medical Attendance record described Foley's injury as a "possible fracture of left shoulder." Lists in the Home News, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and a story in the New York Times identified him as having a shoulder injury. Three other papers, the New York American on March 20 and 21, Daily Mirror, and New York Post, instead listed a head injury, the most common injury resulting from being hit by objects. According to the New York Times, Foley "refused medical attention." Given that an ambulance attended him that claim is likely a misstatement of the fact that he was not taken back to Harlem Hospital, as Kelly was, but treated at the scene.
  
  No one was arrested for assaulting Foley, as was the case in seven of the nine assaults on police.
  
   
• 1 2020-04-09T17:35:02+00:00 Victor Fain shot 16 plain 2023-09-02T02:49:50+00:00 Victor Fain, a nineteen-year-old Black man born in South Carolina, was shot in “some unknown manner during [the] disorder” at 128th Street and 7th Avenue, according to a hospital admission record. Dr Payne attended Mitchell at Harlem Hospital at 2:30 AM, so he was likely shot sometime after 2:00 AM. The bullet almost certainly came a police gun. The noise of police gunfire had been one of the sounds of the disorder from early on, with many of those shots fired in the air in an attempt to disperse groups who gathered on the street. Around midnight, police had begun shooting more indiscriminantly, aiming at those on the street and shooting sufficient rounds to prodice many stray shots.
  
  Fain was shot some distance from his home fifteen blocks to the south, at 315 West 113th Street, in a section on the southern margins of Harlem mostly occupied by whites and Puerto Ricans. Sometime later in 1935 he relocated to section of Black Harlem, lodging at 208 West 141st Street. Fain was still at that address when a census enumerator called on April 30, 1940.
  
  
  
  The hospital record described Fain as having been shot in the left ankle. All the newspaper lists of the injured, in the New York American, Home News, Daily News, New York Post and New York Evening Journal, and a story in the New York Times, reported the same injury. That unusual consistency might result from him being admitted to the hospital after being attended.
  
  The hospital record did not identify Fain’s race, but the newspapers did. The lists of the injured in the New York American, Home News and the story in the New York Times identified him as a Black man. The lists of injured in the Daily News, New York Post and New York Evening Journal did not. Four Black men were among the six men shot and wounded in the disorder, with one man unknown race, and one white police officer.
  
  No one was arrested for shooting Fain, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed).
  
   
• 1 2020-04-09T18:27:52+00:00 Henry Blackwell assaulted 16 plain 2023-08-31T20:02:51+00:00 Henry Blackwell, a forty-one-year-old Black man born in Tennessee, was “struck by object thrown by some unknown person” while at Lenox Avenue and 126th Street. Dr Payne attended Blackwell at Harlem Hospital at 1:30 AM, finding he suffered a lacerated scalp.  Given when he was in the hospital, the alleged assault likely took place around 1:00 AM. At that time there were assaults, injuries and attacks on stores on all the blocks of Lenox Avenue from 125th Street up to 134th Street. Bricks, rocks and bottles were thrown at stores as part of that violence so Blackwell may not have been the intended target of whatever hit him. As he lived nearby, at 126 West 126th Street, nine buildings and about one third of a block to the west of where he was injured, Blackwell may have been a spectator drawn to the avenue by the noise and crowds.
  
  
  
  The hospital record was the only evidence of the alleged assault. Blackwell did not appear in newspaper stories or lists of the assaulted or injured, so he probably did not make a report to police. He was not admitted to the hospital, but left after being treated.
  
  Henry Blackwell still lived at the same address five years later, in June 1940, when the census enumerator called, in an apartment with at least eight other lodgers. He was working as a WPA laborer for the Parks Department. His situation had been very different when recorded by an enumerator for the 1930 census. Then Blackwell had lived several blocks further north at 201 West 132nd Street, with his wife of eighteen years and a thirteen-year-old daughter. He had been employed as a driver for a family while his wife worked as a hairdresser. There was no record of what became of his family between 1930 and 1935.
• 1 2020-04-09T17:57:19+00:00 Wilmont Hendricks shot 15 plain 2023-09-01T00:40:35+00:00 Wilmont Hendricks, a twenty-five-year-old Black man, was shot on Lenox Avenue near 128th Street. Dr Payne attended Hendricks at Harlem Hospital at 1:30 AM, the hospital staff recorded, so he was likely injured sometime around 1:00 AM (not around 2:00 AM, as a New York Times story reported). No details survived of the circumstances of Hendricks’ injury: the hospital record noted that he had been shot in “in some unknown manner,” while newspapers only reported he had been shot. There was considerable violence on the blocks of Lenox Avenue north of 125th Street around this time, including other assaults and looting. Police had begun shooting more indiscriminately after midnight than earlier in the disorder, and it is likely that Hendricks was shot by police. No one was arrested for shooting Hendricks, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed).
  
  After being seen by Dr Payne, Hendricks' injury was sufficiently serious for him to be admitted to the hospital, and to still be there a day later, according to the New York Herald Tribune. While the hospital recorded his wound as being in his left shoulder, only the list of injured in the Home News echoed that report. The lists in the New York American, New York Post, Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide instead locating the gunshot in his chest, and the lists in the Daily News and New York Evening Journal, and story in the New York Times reported it was in in his back.
  
  The hospital record did not identify Hendricks' race, but the newspaper lists in the New York Post, Home News, New York American and New York Evening Journal did. Four of the six other men shot and wounded in the disorder were Black, one of unknown race, and one white police officer. When he was shot Hendricks was some distance from his home at 214 West 146th Street, which was almost twenty blocks to the north.
  
  
  
   
• 1 2020-03-11T21:46:38+00:00 Patrolman Charles Robbins assaulted 14 plain 2023-07-31T22:14:27+00:00 Patrolman Charles Robbins, a member of the 6th Emergency Squad (a riot squad), was "struck over head with an iron bar by some unknown person,” according to the record of the ambulance that attended him. Dr Russell of Harlem Hospital treated Robbins at 124th Street and 7th Avenue, at 10.15 PM, indicating that that assault took place sometime earlier, around 10.00 PM. The location of the assault was the "scene of the riot," in the Medical Attendance record, likely where Robbins was treated. By 10.00 PM time police had established a perimeter around the block of 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues on which Kress' store was located. As a result crowds trying to get to the Kress store were stuck on those corners, leading some to leave in frustration and instead go up or down 7th Avenue. Emergency trucks were part of the police perimeter. While newspaper stories differed over precisely where the vehicles were stationed, both the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune located at least one truck on 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. (The New York Times put the others on 124th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, 126th Street between Lenox and Seventh Avenues, and at 130th Street and Lenox Avenue, while the New York Herald Tribune had them at Lenox Avenue and 125th Street, and 7th Avenue and 127th Street).
  
  Robbins was included in lists of the injured published in the press. Four of those lists provided details of the circumstances in which he was injured. The Home News and the New York American on March 20 described the injury as caused by an iron bar, following the Medical Attendance record. The New York Herald Tribune and Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which listed the injured policemen separately, included the detail that Robbins had been hit by a brick. An iron bar was not a typical weapon during the disorder; bricks, however, were frequently used as weapons. The New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York American (on March 21) and Daily News all listed Robbins among the injured without details of the circumstances. His injury was listed as a “possible fractured skull,” but the Medical Attendance record described Robbins' injury as only a "laceration of scalp." Nonetheless, it noted that Robbins was "removed" to Harlem Hospital for further treatment, which may be why newspapers identified him as having suffered a more serious injury.
  
  No one was arrested for assaulting Robins, as was the case in seven of the nine alleged assaults on police.
• 1 2022-05-23T17:58:09+00:00 7:00 PM to 7:30 PM 12 plain 2023-08-25T00:42:10+00:00 Just after 7:00 PM, a woman on 8th Avenue cried out that a hearse had pulled up at the rear entrance of the Kress store on 124th Street to get the body of the dead boy. Thanks to police clearing the sidewalk in front of the store there were groups of people on 8th Avenue to hear her call. Some responded by moving to the rear of the store. They may have been joined by residents of a Salvation Army hostel for homeless men located opposite the store. Several police officers had been stationed at rear entrance earlier by Inspector Di Martini; additional officers followed the crowd from 8th Avenue. Stones were soon being thrown, smashing windows in the Kress store and hitting at least two police officers, Patrolman Michael Kelly, assigned to a radio car, and Detective Charles Foley. Whether the officers were targeted or caught between the crowd and store windows is unclear. Police did not arrest anyone for throwing the stones. Two mounted policemen were moving the crowd away from the rear of the store when Joe Taylor, the Black leader of the Young Liberators, arrived at 124th Street, on his way to 125th Street having been “put out” of the West 123rd St police station together with others seeking information.
  
  By 7:15 PM, there were no longer groups of people on 124th Street at the rear of the store; an Emergency truck that arrived at 8th Avenue and 124th Street at that time as part of the reinforcements called by Inspector Di Martini found that “everything was quiet.” An ambulance from Harlem Hospital arrived at the same time to treat Patrolman Kelly. His injury was serious enough that he was taken to the hospital for an x-ray. Joe Taylor also left 124th Street around that time, moved on by police he said were shooting their guns in the air. He had heard a rumor that the boy who had been beaten lived at 410 Manhattan Avenue, so headed south to investigate.
  
  Around the same time, 7:15 PM, Inspector Di Martini returned to 125th Street. He found that there too “everything was calm.” There were no people in front of the Kress store, small groups gathered elsewhere on the street, but no “mass demonstration.” Di Martini thought that, as “the people of this part of the city of N. Y. have been very friendly with me,” “they would take my word that no child had been injured.” However, although he “spoke to all of the groups on 125th Street until [he] was hoarse,” they were not convinced.
  
  As Di Martini was futilely speaking with groups gathered around the Kress store, Louise Thompson walked from 7th Avenue to 8th Avenue. With police not permitting people to stand in front of the Kress store, she found “numerous people who were on the corner” and spent “a length of time” talking with them. There were white men and women among the groups Thompson encountered, but “not very many.” More Black residents joined Thompson on 125th Street as rumors spread further through the neighborhood. Charles Romney, a Black West Indian activist involved in a range of political organizations, who was returning home from the YMCA on 135th Street, had noticed crowds on West 117th Street running uptown around 7:00 PM. When he asked “what it was all about,” he was told “that a boy in Kress store was murdered.” Romney followed them, “to go to 125th Street to see if I could get any information.
  
  Additional members of the Young Liberators had also arrived on 125th Street. At 7:15 PM a Black reporter for the Afro-American encountered “some white youngsters [who] were passing out handbills” at the corner of 7th Avenue, a leaflet based on the information brought to their office. The mimeographed page had handwritten text at the top that read, “Child Brutally Beaten. Woman attacked by Boss and Cops = Child near DEATH.” The remaining typewritten text read:

  ONE HOUR AGO A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD NEGRO BOY WAS BRUTALLY BEATEN BY THE MANAGEMENT OF KRESS FIVE-AND-TEN-CENT STORE.
  THE BOY IS NEAR DEATH
  HE WAS MERCILESSLY BEATEN BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT HE HAD ‘STOLEN’ A FIVE CENT KNIFE.
  A NEGRO WOMAN WHO SPRANG TO THE DEFENSE OF THE BOY HAD HER ARMS BROKEN BY THESE THUGS AND WAS THEN ARRESTED.
  WORKERS, NEGROES AND WHITE, PROTEST AGAINST THIS LYNCH ATTACK ON INNOCENT NEGRO PEOPLE. DEMAND THE RELEASE OF THE BOY AND WOMAN.
  DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE ARREST OF THE MANAGER RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS LYNCH ATTACK.
  DON'T BUY AT KRESS'S. STOP POLICE BRUTALITY IN NEGRO HARLEM.
  JOIN THE PICKET LINE

  
  While small groups of people were also gathered on the corner of 7thAvenue and 125th Street, as they were at the other end of the block, the Afro-American reporter found “all was quiet.” However, as he walked along the block toward the Kress store he found a different situation, “a large number of people between Seventh and Eighth Avenues” and Inspector Di Martini and numerous police. He joined a group asking Di Martini what had happened in the store. A boy caught shoplifting had been let go, but rumors were being spread that he had been beaten or killed, the inspector told them. He also showed them the store window that had been broken. But he would not let reporters into the store or answer their question, ”Well, where is the boy?”
  
  When Louise Thompson walked in the opposite direction to the reporter, from 8th Avenue to 7th Avenue, just before 7:30 PM, she saw windows broken in businesses on the same side of 125th Street as the Kress store. As yet that damage had not spread the length of the block. Channing Tobias, who returned to 125th Street around the time Thompson left, found no windows broken yet east of Blumstein’s store, about halfway between the Kress store and that corner. The scene had “quieted down” from the threatening crowds Tobias had encountered an hour or so earlier. Likely that lack of activity was why Thompson decided now was the time to go to her home, a ten-minute walk from 125th Street, to “tell my people what had happened.”
  
  At 7:30 PM an ambulance arrived in front of Blumstein’s department store on 125th Street, several buildings east of the Kress store. Police had called it to treat Detective Foley, who had an injured shoulder after being hit earlier by a stone thrown by someone in the crowd that attacked the rear of the Kress store. By that time at least some of the police officers who had dispersed that crowd had returned to 125th Street.
• 1 2020-08-14T19:38:37+00:00 Fred Bain injured 12 plain 2023-09-02T16:08:31+00:00 Fred Bain, a forty-four-year-old man of unknown race, suffered lacerations of his forehead likely some time after 2:30 AM. He was one of six of those reported injured with wounds to the head (30%). Bain appeared only in ambulance call-out records, which described the injury as having been received “during riot.”
  
  Dr Sayet from Harlem Hospital attended Bain at his home in 227 West 127th Street at 2:47 AM. This was an area of Black residents only two blocks north of where the disorder began and close to many outbreaks of violence. Bain remained at home after the physician attended him as his injury was evidently not serious enough for him to be taken to the hospital. His name did not appear in any of the lists of the injured published by the press. The ambulance records did not include information on a patient's race. However, Bain's address makes it very likely that he was a Black man.
  
  
• 1 2020-03-11T21:55:53+00:00 William Burkhard assaulted 11 plain 2023-08-23T20:27:15+00:00 Around 11.30 PM, William Burkhard, a forty-three-year-old white man, was “assaulted by some unknown colored persons," according to the record of ambulance attendances. An ambulance from Bellevue Hospital attended Burkhard in West 118th Street between Lenox and 7th Avenues at 11.45 PM, and Dr. Solomon proceeded to treat "contusion and laceration" of his right cheek. Burkhard then left for his home, 533 East 12th Street, at the opposite end of Manhattan.
  
  If the assault took place where the ambulance attended Burkhard, he was one of only two individuals assaulted off the avenues. However, he likely made his way to that location after being attacked on 7th Avenue. The assault on Burkhard was the part of a cluster of attacks on or near 7th Avenue in the blocks around West 116th Street beginning around 11:00 PM.
  
  Burkhard appeared in the record of hospital attendances, and in lists of the injured in four newspapers. The New York Herald Tribune unusually provided the same details as the hospital records that Burkhard had been “assaulted by some unknown colored persons.” The Daily News, New York Evening Journal and New York Post listed only his injuries to his cheek. Although the ambulance records did not include information on an individual's race, the description of his alleged attackers as "colored persons," together with his address, indicate that he was a white man.
   
• 1 2020-03-11T21:38:01+00:00 Michael Krim Shamhal assaulted 9 plain 2023-09-03T02:50:52+00:00 Michael Krim-Shamhal, a fifty-four-year-old white man, reported being assaulted as he walked west on West 122nd Street near 7th Avenue at 11:00 PM. He described his assailants as “some unknown persons.” An ambulance brought Dr. Harris from Harlem Hospital to treat the cuts on Krim-Shamhal’s forehead. When the doctor was finished, the injured man left for home. He and his wife lodged in an apartment at 140 West 119th Street, in the opposite direction to where he had been heading when assaulted.
  
  
  
  Krim-Shamhal was assaulted on the edge of a cluster of assaults and attacks on stores on 7th Avenue from 121st to 125th Streets, suggesting the presence of crowds on the street. Other white residents of the blocks south of 125th Street were among those assaulted, likely after being drawn to the streets by the disorder – where they became targets. The timing of that violence was mostly unknown, but the assaults appears to have come before much of the other violence as crowds began to spread from 125th Street.
  
  The hospital record of the ambulance call-out was the only evidence of the assault. Krim-Shamhal’s race was not made clear in that record, but he appeared in the 1930 census residing at the same address on 119th Street. Born in Russia, he had arrived in the US in 1923.