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

Morris Sankin's tailor's store looted

Around 9:00 PM, Morris Sankin closed his tailor's store at 200 West 128th Street, presumably returning to his home at 1770 Walton Avenue in the Bronx, shortly before the crowds gathered around West 125th Street and 7th Avenue began moving north. When he returned at 8:00 AM the next morning, he found a window broken and around $800 of clothing missing, the property of the store's customers.

Going to the police, he would have found out that around 10:10 PM, Patrolman Irwin Young reported he "saw the window of the [Sankin's] store being broken" and then a forty-six-year-old unemployed Black man named Leroy Gillard go into the store through the window and emerge with two suits of clothing, each valued at $25. The phrasing of Young's statement implied that Gillard did not break the window, suggesting there may have been others there at the time who escaped arrest. Certainly more clothing was stolen than Gillard allegedly had in his possession. The affidavit left those possibilities open by including the stock phrasing that Gillard's alleged crime was committed "while acting in concert with a number of others not yet arrested."

Sankin's store was set back from 7th Avenue in a single story structure located between the rear of the five story building on the corner of West 128th Street and 7th Avenue and the first of a block of eight three story brownstone apartment buildings that stretched for roughly a quarter of the block. Gillard may not have come to the store from 7th Avenue as he lived at 208 West 128th Street, just four buildings west of the store. It is likely Officer Young was on the corner of 7th Avenue and West 128th Street, as police tended to take up positions on intersections.

As Sankin did not return to his store until 8:00 AM, the window remained broken and the clothing inside accessible throughout the disorder. At 5:40 AM, in one of the final events of the disorder, Officer Dimao arrested a twenty-eight-year-old white chauffeur named Jean Jacquelin at the corner of West 128th Street and 8th Avenue, the opposite end of the block from Sankin's store. Jacquelin allegedly was carrying two ladies' coats, valued at $20 each, and two pairs of trousers, valued at $5 each. That clothing was likely bulky enough that it attracted the officer's attention; Sankin later identified it as coming from his store.

Jacquelin was one of nine men known to have been arrested away from the stores they allegedly looted, one-third (9 of 27) of the arrests for which that information is known (27 of 60).

One of only ten white men arrested in the disorder, Jacquelin, like Gillard, would not have had to travel far to Sankin's store. He lived at 222 West 128th Street, a four story apartment building seven buildings west of Gillard. He had only lived there for a month, an unusual address for a white man by 1935. Whites resided nearby, on West 126th Street and on several blocks south of West 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues, but this block was home to Black residents.



Gillard and Jacquelin appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court one after the other on March 20, with both sent to the grand jury. On April 5, the grand jury determined that both men should only be charged with a misdemeanor not felony burglary, sending them to the Court of Special Sessions. (As both men had been charged with taking property worth more than $25, so could have been charged with grand larceny, a felony, if not burglary.) According to the 28th Precinct police blotter, on April 11, the judges dismissed the charges against Jacquelin. It took almost two more weeks before Gillard was tried, on April 23, when the judges convicted him and sentenced him to the workhouse for three months.

Sankin may not have continued in business after the disorder. A tailor's store at his address did appear in the MCCH bBusiness survey, French Dry Cleaners and Tailor, but was recorded as a Black-owned business. The Tax Department photographs taken between 1939 and 1941 did not provide a clear view of the business.

 

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