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

Nelson Brock arrested

Sometime during the disorder, Officer Redmond of the 28th Precinct arrested Nelson Brock, a thirty-two-year-old Black man, likely near 1974 7th Avenue, on the southwest corner of West 119th Street. The charge Redmond made against Brock recorded in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter is burglary, together with the note "Burglarized store during riot," indicating that he had allegedly looted a business. There are no details of circumstances of the arrest in the other sources. Redmond arrested two other Black men, Reginald Mills and William Grant, in relation to the same location, also charging them with burglary, according to the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book. Brock and Mills are also identified as having been charged with inciting a riot in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide (but not the list in the New York Evening Journal). That charge requires others to have been involved in the looting, and suggests that police alleged Brock and Mills had somehow contributed to the group attacking the store. However, burglary was the only charge brought against them in the Harlem Magistrates Court.

The address recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book for James Marshall, the complainant in the prosecutions against three Black men, is likely the location of the looted store. Although that column of the docket book is headed "Residence" clerks commonly put the address related to the charge in that space rather than the home of the complainant.  A branch of the white-owned James Butler Food Market chain occupied that location between 1939 and 1941 when the Tax Department photograph was taken, and was likely there at the time of the disorder as chain stores were an established part of the neighborhood's business landscape. (That side of the street is missing from the MCCH Business Survey conducted in the second half of 1935). Brock lived at 219 West 121st Street, just west of 7th Avenue two blocks north of 1974 7th Avenue. He could have been drawn to the street by the noise and crowds on 7th Avenue after 10 PM.

Brock, Mills and Grant appeared in Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, when Magistrate Renaud remanded them in custody. When they were returned to court on March 25, Magistrate Ford discharged them so they could be rearrested as they had been indicted by the grand jury, and then held them on $1000 bail. No further records mention the outcome of those prosecutions. The 28th Precinct Police Blotter recorded only the discharge on March 25.

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