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New York Penal Law, § 722-724: Disorderly Conduct
1 2021-09-20T01:59:45+00:00 Anonymous 1 8 plain 2022-12-07T21:19:17+00:00 Anonymous"§722. Disorderly conduct. In cities of one million inhabitants or over any person who with intent to provoke a breach of the peace, or whereby a breach of the peace may be occasioned, commits any of the following acts shall be deemed to have committed the offense of disorderly conduct:
- Uses offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior;
- Acts in such a manner as to annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others;
- Congregates with others on a public street and refuses to move on when ordered by the police;
- By his actions causes a crowd to collect, except when lawfully addressing such a crowd;
- Shouts or makes a noise either outside or inside a building during the night time to the annoyance or disturbance of any considerable number of persons;
- Interferes with any person in any place by jostling against such person or unnecessarily crowding him or by placing a hand in the proximity of such person's pocket, pocketbook or handbag;
- Stations himself on the public streets or follows pedestrians for the purpose of soliciting alms, or who solicits alms on the public streets unlawfully;
- Frequents or loiters about any public place soliciting men for the purpose of committing a crime against nature or other lewdness;
- Causes a disturbance in any street ear, railroad car, omnibus or other public conveyance, by running through it, climbing through windows or upon the seats, or otherwise annoying passengers or employees therein;
- Stands on sidewalks or street corners and makes insulting remarks to or about passing pedestrians or annoys such pedestrians.
- By imprisonment in a county jail or workhouse for a term not exceeding six months, or by a fine not exceeding fifty dollars, or by both;
- By placing on probation for a term not to exceed two years.
§ 725. Issuance of summons or warrant. Such magistrate, on oath of a credible witness that any person within his jurisdiction has committed the offense of disorderly conduct, may issue a summons or warrant for the appearance of such person before him."
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2020-02-25T19:43:29+00:00
Looting (67)
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2023-08-06T21:12:10+00:00
The disorder resulted in damage to at least 300 Harlem businesses, perhaps as many as 450, many of which also had goods stolen. Such attacks on white businesses distinguished the events in 1935 from collective racial violence earlier in the twentieth-century, although the scale was far smaller than the disorders that would follow. When racial violence broke out in Harlem in 1943, four times as many businesses were targets of violence. The press labeled the theft as looting, a term that distinguished it on the basis of the context of violence and crisis in which it took place. Such theft often involved crowds publicly stealing goods, but those circumstances were not entirely out of the ordinary. Just over one in five (15 of 67) burglaries at other times in 1935 involved smashing street-front doors and windows, to steal goods before police responded, although not crowds of participants.
Although press reports and the MCCH gave prominence to attacks on property in characterizing the disorder as “not a race riot,” they offered only general descriptions of this violence, including fewer detailed incidents than was the case with assaults and none of the quantitative information that would be collected in subsequent racial disorders. However, damaged businesses did figure prominently in press photographs, which highlighted that such damage represented a spectacle -- one which also drew crowds to Harlem the day after the disorder to view the damage for themselves. Only sixty-seven looted businesses were identified in the surviving sources, twenty-nine linked to arrests, with nine stores linked to more than one arrest. An additional seventy-two businesses were identified as having had their windows damaged, which would have exposed them to theft. There were almost certainly more looted businesses than those identified in the sources. In the cases of sixteen of those arrested for looting there was no information on their alleged targets. While some of those stores may be among those identified in other sources, given the limited number of cases where multiple arrests were made for thefts from the same store, most are likely missing from this picture of the looting. (Two looted businesses that appeared in photographs whose location could not be determined were not included in these counts).
The stores identified in the sources as having stock stolen represented a cross-section of the small businesses in Harlem focused on needs more than luxuries, and on personal items rather than larger items like furniture. Businesses providing food make up the largest group (24 of 57). Clothing was also a target (19 of 57), while the remaining businesses sold a variety of goods (14 of 57). Missing from this partial list of businesses attacked during the disorder were large stores and several enterprises prominent in the neighborhood: beauty shops, and barbers. There are sixteen individuals charged with looting unidentified businesses. Two looted businesses that appeared in photographs whose location cannot be determined are not included in these counts. At other times in 1935 the full range of stores were targets of burglaries.
However, newspaper reports and legal records indicated that in the initial hours of the disorder store windows were smashed without efforts to steal their contents. After police dispersed the crowd drawn to Kress’ store and set up a cordon on 125th Street protecting it, another clash at the rear of the store on 124th Street around 7.45PM saw windows broken. Around the same time, crowds smashed windows on 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue. Although the police present on this block lacked the numbers to protect the windows, in several cases they responded to damage by taking up positions in front of stores, which appeared to have prevented much looting. While many of the large stores were identified as having windows smashed at this time, only the New York Evening Journal reported that thefts also took place. Around 8.45 PM, when police succeeded in pushing the crowds from 125th St on to 7th and 8th Avenues, the smaller businesses on those streets became targets. Windows were broken, and isolated looting reported in the blocks of 7th Avenue immediately north of 125th Street. The New York Times and Afro-American reported goods were thrown into the street rather than taken, actions more akin to efforts to damage property, to ransack, than a turn to theft, but it was not clear how often that happened. Many of these businesses were still open and staffed, but that did little to curtail theft. In some businesses staff removed goods from windows and shelves, but most hid or fled crowds and bombardment with rocks and stones. More effective were the Black storeowners and staff who put signs in their store windows that identified the business as Black-owned. Those signs spared them from looting if not always from having windows broken. Around 10:00 PM, as crowds began to move away from the block of 125th Street containing Kress’ store, where police were concentrated, assaults and attacks on stores intensified spread through Harlem. Further isolated looting occurred on 7th Avenue north of 125th Street, and after 10.30PM, in the area of 116th Street to the south.
Around midnight, reporters from the New York Herald Tribune, Daily Mirror and Afro-American noted a change in the tenor of the disorder reflected in arrests: violence became overshadowed by looting, particularly on Lenox Avenue in the blocks north of 125th Street, lasting until around 2 AM. This more general turn to looting was helped by both earlier damage to windows that offered access to displays and store interiors and the lesser police presence in this area. By that late hour most undamaged businesses had closed. Iron gates and grills protected the doors and windows of some businesses. However, those additional obstacles did not prevent looting, an indication of growing violence and limited police presence. At least three businesses in this area were also set on fire after having been looted. Even the return of some businessowners, once they learned of the disorder, did little to prevent looting. Several owners reported futile efforts to secure police assistance which later became the basis of suits for damages they filed against the city. The progression from violence and damage to looting also featured in the later racial disorders, in Harlem and Detroit in 1943, and in Detroit in 1967. As Sydney Fine argued was the case in Detroit in 1967, that pattern locates looting as a consequence of the violence, not as the defining characteristic of the disorder, and as serving to prolong disorder. While the Hearst press and other white publications, and some establishment Black leaders, attributed the looting to "hoodlums," others pointed to the economic situation of Harlem's residents. The Communist Daily Worker offered the starkest statement of that explanation: "It was dire need that turned the window-smashing retaliation against the police and the store-keepers into a "looting" campaign." It was certainly true that the blocks to the east of Lenox Avenue, where the looting was most extensive, were home to many of Harlem's poorest residents.
The progression from damage to looting also reflected the involvement of additional groups of men who had not been prominent in the initial violence. In later racial disorders, women would be a much larger presence among those arrested for looting, and in images of theft. However, in 1935, while three women are among the sixty individuals arrested for looting, almost as many women were arrested for other offenses: two for breaking windows and another for inciting a crowd. Several newspapers reported that white men also joined the looting, but only two are identified in legal records. One of those men was arrested in circumstances that do not put him in the midst of the disorder: Jean Jacquelin, a thirty-three-year-old Canadian driver with a previous arrest for assault with a knife, arrested at 5.40AM, after the crowds had left the streets, in possession of clothing stolen from a tailor down the block from his home. Louis Tunick, the second white man arrested, is not linked to a specific business, and lived outside Harlem (one additional white man, Leo Smith, was arrested for breaking windows).
The feature of the looting that drew particular comment in the reports of newspapers and later the MCCH was the extent to which it targeted only white-owned businesses and spared Black-owned businesses. Newspaper stories and the final report of the MCCH allowed that a small number of Black-owned businesses did suffer damage, either before identifying themselves with signs, or after crowds became less discriminating. However, none of the instances of looting identified in the sources involved black businesses. At the same time, Harlem’s racial landscape was more complex than these reports recognized. Among the “white-owned” businesses targeted were a number of Puerto Rican businesses around 116th Street and Chinese laundries scattered throughout the neighborhood.
Police responded to looting with a greater degree of violence and more arrests than they did to crowds and attacks on stores. In their practices, theft justified firing at suspects, rather than in the air, as police claimed they did in confronting crowds and assaults. Police pursuing suspected looters shot and killed Lloyd Hobbs and James Thompson. Sixty of those arrested were alleged to have been looting, identified in the sources either because they were charged with burglary, an offense which involved breaking into a store and entering it to take merchandise, or by details of what police officers alleged an individual had done that fit looting but that resulted in other charges such as petit larceny or disorderly conduct. Those arrests far outnumbered those arrested for any other activity during the disorder. Officers generally claimed to have seen an individual stealing goods from a business. In their defense, at least some of those police arrested claimed to have simply been standing with crowds on the street when police approached. In one-third (9 of 27) of the cases where the circumstances are known, the arrest occurred away from the looted store when police apparently stopped and questioned individuals they encountered carrying goods.
Courts also treated charges of looting more severely than other alleged offenses in the disorder. Magistrates held over half (28 of 50) of those who appeared before them for the grand jury, compared to only one third of those charged with assault. The grand jury did redirect a significant number to the Court of Special Sessions, casting them as involving goods of too little value to warrant treatment as felonies. District attorneys followed the same pattern with those individuals as at other times in 1935, negotiating guilty pleas for lesser offenses with most, so that only two prosecutions for looting went to trial.
As these criminal prosecutions made their way through the legal system, Harlem's white business-owners turned to the civil courts seeking compensation from the city for their losses on the basis of a nineteenth-century municipal law that held a city or county liable if their property was destroyed or injured by a mob or riot. One hundred and six owners brought actions, twenty-six of who were identified in newspaper stories. The first of those suits heard in the Municipal Court was brought by William Feinstein, who owned a liquor store on Lenox Avenue. The jury awarded him damages, a verdict which two months later the judge decided to uphold. In the interim, the city also lost a second case in the Municipal Court, for damages to Anna Rosenberg's notion store, which had been set on fire, and seven actions in the Supreme Court, which heard cases for larger damages. -
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2020-02-25T17:01:43+00:00
Looting in the courts (50)
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2023-05-09T14:03:57+00:00
Police arrested sixty individuals for looting, but only fifty appeared in legal records or newspaper stories about legal proceedings. The other ten individuals appeared only in lists of those arrested for burglary published in newspapers, and in the case of six men, in the police blotter of the 32nd Precinct. As they did not appear in the Magistrate court docket books, they did not appear in court, and none of those sources mentioned what happened to those people in the legal system. There are also an additional nineteen individuals arrested for whom no details of their alleged offense survive, some of whom may have been involved in looting. Of the three Black women police arrested for looting, Elizabeth Tai and Elva Jacobs subsequently appeared in court. While press coverage of later disorders would focus attention on female looters, few publications mentioned them in 1935, noting only the presence of Black women in the crowds at the beginning of the disorder. It is not clear if the relative absence of women reflected their behavior during the disorder or the inattention of police and journalists. Both the white men arrested for looting ultimately had the charges against them dismissed. At least one, Jean Jacquelin, had been arrested in possession of clothing rather than in the act of taking those items from a store.
Prosecutors did not charge six of those individuals with the offense for which they had been arrested, but instead with disorderly conduct. An additional five men and one woman -- Joseph Payne, Raymond Taylor, Preston White, Arthur Davis, Herbert Hunter and Elizabeth Tai - had the charge against them reduced to disorderly conduct after their initial appearance in court. A smaller proportion of those arrested for looting faced that lesser charge (12 of 50, 20%) than of those arrested for breaking windows (11 of 20, 55%) and assault (8 of 13, 62%) - although given that the basis for the arrest of sixteen of those charged with disorderly conduct (32%) is unknown that pattern has to be be considered uncertain. If the change in charge indicated police lacked evidence to charge those individuals with looting, the decision to nonetheless proceed with their prosecution indicated some evidence that associated them with the disorder. The variety of acts encompassed by disorderly conduct fell between being a bystander and a participant in acts of violence and theft, including "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior," acting to "annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others," refusing "to move on when ordered by the police," and causing a crowd to collect. Possible scenarios might involve acting in a way that police interpreted as indicating an intention to participate in violence, amounting to "disorderly" conduct or behavior - most likely by being parts of crowds in the vicinity when stores were looting. Magistrates found guilty two thirds (8 of 12) of those charged with disorderly conduct after being arrested for looting (the white man released in the Magistrates court, Louis Tonick, had been charged with robbery not disorderly conduct).
The charge brought against individuals who were prosecuted for looting was burglary. A charge of burglary required breaking into a store, entering it, and taking merchandise - all the elements that made up looting. If police did not have evidence of all three elements, the charge had to be to another offense that carried lesser penalties. Seven of those arrested for looting were charged with petit larceny instead of burglary. In those cases police likely had evidence an individual had taken merchandise but not that they had broken into and entered a store to take those goods. What form of larceny that evidence supported depended upon the value of the goods allegedly stolen. A charge of Petit larceny indicated that in all seven cases the goods were worth less than $100. Another three of those arrested for looting were charged with disorderly conduct instead of burglary. That charge could indicate that police had evidence an individual broke windows but not that they took merchandise, or that they had part of a crowd near looting. Police charged the remaining two men with robbery.
After the initial arraignment, prosecutors in the Magistrates Court later changed a charge of burglary to a lesser offense in eight cases: unlawful entry for Elva Jacobs; petit larceny for Henry Goodwin; and disorderly conduct for Joseph Payne, Raymond Taylor, Preston White, Elizabeth Tai, Arthur Davis and Herbert Hunter (that change is not recorded in the docket book for Davis and Hunter, but the Magistrate convicted them, which he could only do if they were charged with disorderly conduct). The charge of unlawful entry against Jacob suggests that police presented evidence that she had entered a store or put her hand through the window but not that she had taken merchandise.
Magistrates sent just over half (28 of 50) of those arraigned for looting to the grand jury to be charged with the felony offense of burglary. In ten of those cases, the grand jury saw the alleged offense differently, and voted misdemeanor charges that sent those individuals to the Court of Special Sessions not felony charges that would have sent them to the Court of General Sessions. Magistrates sent nine others arrested for looting to the Court of Special Sessions. There the judges convicted thirteen of the seventeen tried in that court where the outcome is known, with slightly more of those charged with petit larceny (5 of 6) convicted than those charged with unlawful entry (8 of 11).
Individuals arrested for looting made up a substantial majority of those charged with felonies after the disorder. The grand jury indicted just seventeen men of who fourteen had been arrested for looting (one they dismissed and their decision about three others is unknown); three of those indictments were later dismissed by judges in the Court of General Sessions. All eleven of the other defendants agreed to plea bargains and pled guilty of misdemeanor offenses, petit larceny in seven cases, unlawful entry in three and attempted grand larceny in the case of Edward Larry, who had been charged with robbery.
Just over half of those arrested for looting received a sentence of one month or longer, a similar proportion as those arrested for breaking windows and a far greater proportion than of those arrested for riot and assault. However, almost all of those arrested for looting received terms of three months or longer (16 of 18), compared with only a third of those arrested for breaking windows (3 of 9). -
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2020-02-26T14:48:08+00:00
Charles Alston arrested
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2023-10-29T21:31:56+00:00
Near the end of the disorder, at 5:00 AM on March 20, Patrolman Jerry Brennan arrested Charles Alston, Albert Yerber, Edward Loper, and Ernest Johnson for allegedly shooting at police stationed at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No police officers were reported injured, but Alston suffered a fractured skull as the men fled police. Trying to escape by leaping from the roof of a six-story building to the adjoining building, Alston fell to a second-floor ledge. He was a twenty-one-year-old Black man, as was Loper; Johnson was twenty-two years of age, and Yerber twenty years of age. Alston lived northwest of the alleged shooting, on the edge of Harlem at 512 West 153rd Street. The other men also lived west of where they were arrested, within Harlem, Johnson at 206 West 140th Street, Loper at 298 West 138th Street, and Yerber at 106 Edgecombe Avenue. Only a small proportion of those involved in the disorder lived above 135th Street.
Newspaper stories contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language — for example, the New York World Telegram and Times Union reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” a "lone policeman." Stories in the New York World Telegram and Brooklyn Daily Eagle did offer the name of the officer allegedly targeted by Alston and his companions, Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station, and the same dramatic account that a bullet whistled past his ear as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street. Taking cover, he saw the men on the roof of the six-story building at 101 West 138th. Soon after, police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. One other story, in the Home News, identified Brennan, but cast him not as the target of the shooters but as one of the police who responded. In a radio car assigned to the area with his partner Patrolman McGrady, Brennan “heard the shots and sped to the scene. At the radio car's approach the four snipers [standing in the doorway] ran to the roof of the building.” This story provides the key detail that no guns were found on Alston and his companions.
On March 20, the other three men appeared in court charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book. The clerk annotated that charge with the word "annoy." Under that section of the statute, a person was guilty if they acted "in such a manner as to annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others." A separate clause punished disorderly or threatening conduct or behavior, so based on that annotation, the men were not charged with attacking Brennan. That charge better fit the circumstances described in the Home News. Whatever the patrolman alleged, Magistrate Ford did not find sufficient evidence of the men's guilt and acquitted the three men. Given that outcome, it is possible Brennan mistook some other noise for gunfire. Without any evidence of an assault in the sources, these events are treated here only as arrests. It was not until three weeks later that Alston appeared in court, on April 9. On that date he was discharged, an outcome recorded in the transcription of the 32nd Precinct blotter made by the MCCH's researchers. In releasing Alston without trial the Magistrate was following the decision made in the other men's acquittals.
Alston’s fall attracted more attention than the shooting. Again the Home News offers the most detail, noting that the leap that Alston had attempted was a distance of seven feet (the New York Post said six feet), and that after he landed on the ledge he managed to crawl through the window into an apartment and hide under a bed. His escape bid failed as the occupants of the apartment called police. The Home News report also made clear that Alston did not appear seriously injured at the time of his arrest. It was at the 135th Street police station that he collapsed and was found to have a fractured skull, the serious injury noted in less detailed stories and in lists of the injured. (The New York Evening Journal was the only other newspaper to report these details, although it mistakenly reported that the group arrested numbered three, not four. The New York Post did report that Alston hid under a bed.)
The Daily News published a photograph of Alston's arrest in which he is holding his head, suggesting he did appear injured at that time. The caption published with the photo drew attention to the “clubbed gun” held by the uniformed officer leading Alston to a patrol wagon (seeming to suggest that the officer had used the gun butt to hit Alston). It concludes starkly, “He’s dying.” The photo published in the Norfolk Journal and Guide and New York World-Telegram credited to the International Photo agency and likely taken with the camera visible in the foreground of the Daily News photo a few seconds earlier, also clearly shows Alston clutching his head, with marks on his trousers and jacket that may be evidence of his fall. The officer’s clubbed gun is also again visible, together with the night stick of his partner. The full photograph from which the published image is cropped, part of the Bettman Collection digitized by Getty Images, provides a clearer view of those gathered around the building.
Embed from Getty Images
Visible to the right of this group are three black men obscured in the Daily News photo, which shows only white men. Given the location of this arrest in the heart of Harlem, at 5:00 AM, the only white men likely to be present would be reporters and police detectives in plainclothes. The photographs are some of the few taken beyond the area around 125th Street. By the time of Alston’s arrest, the disorder was over, allowing white reporters to travel more freely in Harlem than they had earlier, when crowds had attacked them. The captions accompanying the published cropped versions of the photo in the Norfolk Journal and Guide and New York World Telegram misidentified Alston as a suspected looter.
The New York American, New York Evening Journal, and New York Post included Alston in their lists of the injured, as did the New York Herald Tribune on March 21, and the Black newspapers the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide several days later, all describing the nature of his injuries with no reference to the circumstances in which he suffered them. He was not listed among those arrested. A photograph published in the Daily News of four patrolmen carrying a stretcher containing an injured Black "victim of the rioting" out of the West 135th Street station may be an image of Alston being taken to the hospital. The photograph was not published until March 21, and the caption identified it as having been taken "early yesterday." As the location was the 135th Street station, the "victim" would have been injured above 130th Street, the southern boundary of that precinct. Most seriously injured individuals would have been taken directly to hospital.
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2023-04-13T18:12:04+00:00
Convicted (77)
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2023-10-30T02:15:00+00:00
Seventy-seven of 103 of those arrested, almost three out of every four, whose fate is known were found guilty in the courts (the outcomes of the prosecution of the remaining twelve is unknown). One of those individuals, Bernard Smith, was acquitted of a second charge brought against him.
Half of those convictions, the thirty-nine of the seventy-seven that came in the Magistrates courts, were not for the offense for which those individuals had been arrested. Instead, those convictions were for the offense of disorderly conduct. The variety of acts encompassed by that charge fell between being a bystander and a participant in acts of violence and theft, including "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior," acting to "annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others," refusing "to move on when ordered by the police," and causing a crowd to collect. If the change in charge indicated police lacked evidence to charge them with the offense for which they had been arrested, the decision to nonetheless proceed with their prosecution indicated some evidence that associated them with those acts. Possible scenarios might involve acting in a way that police interpreted as indicating an intention to participate in violence, amounting to "disorderly" conduct or behavior. Those arrested for breaking windows were most often instead charged with disorderly conduct and convicted — although given that the basis for the arrest of 40% of those convicted in the Magistrates courts is unknown that pattern has to be be considered uncertain. The reduced charge did not ensure conviction: magistrates released eleven who faced that charge, one in five of those prosecuted. That conviction rate (78%) was in line with the outcomes in the superior courts.
Judges in the Court of Special Sessions found guilty a similar proportion of those who appeared before them, twenty-six of thirty-two (81%), with the outcome of ten prosecutions unknown. Although those arrested for riot appeared to be convicted at a lower rate, it was Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators who were released after a politically-charged prosecution. Only those charged with looting and assault were tried in the Court of General Sessions, where a smaller proportion were convicted than in the other courts, twelve of seventeen (70%). All the convictions of those arrested for looting in this court resulted from plea bargaining, which reduced the charges to misdemeanors. The one guilty verdict delivered by a jury came in a case of assault, and was also for a misdemeanor.
The majority of those convicted of the offense for which they were arrested had allegedly been looting. The convictions came in almost equal numbers in the Court of Special Sessions and the Court of General Sessions, with all but one of those in the Court of Special Sessions for petit larceny. Looting cases were a greater proportion of those convicted than of those arrested, perhaps because the possession of merchandise provided evidence of a kind not available for charges of assault, breaking windows and inciting riot.
Judges convicted only three of the eight white men arrested in the disorder: one in the Harlem Magistrates court, Leo Smith, of disorderly conduct having been arrested for breaking windows; and two in the Court of Special Sessions, Harry Gordon, of assaulting a white police officer at the beginning of the disorder; and Jose Perez, for possession of a gun. While far lower than the overall conviction rate, those outcomes are not clear evidence of lenience towards white men as three of the five men released, Daniel Miller, Sam Jameson, and Murray Samuels, were Communists whom the district attorney went to great lengths to prosecute for inciting the riot.
Five Black women were among those convicted, with only Viola Woods released. Magistrates convicted three women of disorderly conduct, while judges in the Court of Special Sessions convicted Elva Jacobs, for breaking windows, and Rose Murrell, for looting. That conviction rate is in line with the overall pattern of outcomes, although the small numbers involved reduce the significance of the patterns. -
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2020-09-29T17:41:09+00:00
Hashi Mohammed arrested
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2023-10-30T03:03:04+00:00
Officer Brown of the 40th Precinct arrested Hashi Mohammed, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, for inciting a riot and possession of a knife. Mohammed had allegedly smashed windows "along Lenox Avenue," according to a story in the Home News, the source of details of the charges made against him. Born in Abyssinia, according to the New York American and New York Evening Journal and Washington Heights Magistrate's Court docket book, he lived at 4 West 128th Street, a block east of an area of Lenox Avenue that saw extensive disorder from late on March 19 and into the early hours of March 20, and may have been drawn to join the crowds on that street at some point. The combination of charges suggest that after Mohammed's arrest, the police officer searched him and found the knife, "a large bread knife" according to Home News. Mohammed also appeared in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and New York American as having "internal injuries." While he was listed among those "Less Seriously Injured" in the New York American and New York Evening Journal, he was also identified as in Harlem Hospital (however, he does not appear in any of the records the MCCH obtained from the hospital). It is possible that Brown or other police officers involved in his arrest may have been responsible for those injuries.
Mohammed was included in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide as charged with inciting a riot and "also charged with, violation of Sullivan law (possession of firearms)." When Mohammed appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court, he faced both charges, but the weapon he was recorded in the docket book as possessing was a knife not a gun.
Mohammed did not appear in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court until March 22, whereas most of those arrested in the disorder had been in court on March 20. That delay may have been the result of his injury. On the charge of carrying a dangerous weapon, Magistrate Ford held him on bail of $2,500 to appear in the Court of Special Sessions, significantly more than the typical bail of $500. Mohammed pled guilty, according to the docket book, but that must have been to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct, as the Magistrate could not adjudicate a charge of riot. Ford sentenced him to thirty days in the Workhouse. The only reports of Mohammed's court appearance were in the New York Times and Daily Worker, which mentioned only the sentence and misreported the charge against him as burglary, and the Home News, which reported he had been convicted, not pled guilty. (The New York Times story mentioned Mohammed in the context of hearings in the Harlem court not the Washington Heights court.) Three weeks later, on April 17, the Magistrates in the Court of Special Sessions acquitted Mohammed of possessing a weapon, an outcome that appears only in the records of the 32nd Precinct.
The sources differ in how they record Mohammed's name. In the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide he appears as Sashi Mohammed, as Hashi Mohammed in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, and New York American, as Hashi Mohamed in the Home News, and as Hashi Mohamid in the Washington Heights Magistrate's Court docket book.The records of the 32nd Precinct record his name as "Koko Mohammed."
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2021-12-20T20:08:38+00:00
Frank Wells arrested
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2023-11-02T02:56:16+00:00
Around 8:50 PM, Officer Henry Eppler of the 48th Precinct arrested Frank Wells, a twenty-six-year-old Black man, for allegedly "hurling an automobile hub through a cafeteria window on 125th Street," according to a story in the New York Herald Tribune. Eppler was stationed in front of 207 West 125th Street, he testified in a public hearing of the MCCH; that was the address of the Willow Cafeteria, which appeared in several newspaper lists of damaged businesses. Eppler had arrived on Emergency Truck #5 about 7:15 PM and initially was stationed on 124th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues, at the rear of Kress' store. By that time, the crowds that broke the store's rear windows were gone and he testified that the street was quiet, so the truck drove on to West 125th Street. At that time, police were establishing a cordon around Kress' store; around the time Eppler arrested Wells, a crowd reportedly broke through that cordon on to this block of 125th Street. Wells lived near 125th Street at 155 West 123rd Street, near the corner of 7th Avenue, so could have been drawn to the noise and crowds around Kress' store early in the disorder, when store windows on 125th Street were broken.
A New York Herald Tribune story reported Wells was "locked up at West 123rd Street station," the charge against him "to depend on value of the window." That determination was necessary as malicious mischief, the offense involving damage to property that was the charge most often made against those alleged to have broken windows, was a felony if the damage was more than $25. Only the Daily News list of those arrested reported that charge against Wells. The charge was inciting a riot in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, assault in the list published in the New York Evening Journal, and disorderly conduct in the list published in the New York American. Wells did not appear in the 28th Precinct police blotter, perhaps because of how early in the disorder he was arrested. On March 20, when Wells appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court, one of the last arraigned after being one of the first arrested, the charge recorded in the docket book was disorderly conduct. He appears to have been one of a small number of those arrested to be represented by a lawyer: "Ed Kuntz, 100 5th Ave." was the attorney recorded in the docket book. Edward Kuntz, a lawyer with the International Labor Defense, also represented Daniel Miller, Sam Jamison, Murray Samuels, and Claudio Viabolo, the men arrested for picketing in front of Kress' store immediately before the disorder began, in the Court of Special Sessions, and questioned witnesses in hearings of the MCCH commission. That representation indicated that Wells was associated with the Communist Party. So too did the involvement of another ILD lawyer, Isidore Englander, who once he heard he had been arrested, sought him out at the Magistrates court.
The ILD lawyers representing Wells alleged that he had been beaten by police during his arrest. He appeared in a list of possible witnesses that the Communist Party gave to Arthur Garfield Hays of the MCCH, with the annotation "police brutality." According to a summary in a list of "Cases of Police Brutality, Discrimination and Mistreatment of Negroes in Harlem" later supplied to the MCCH by lawyers affiliated with the Communist Party, he was "attacked by police and brutally beaten" while walking down 125th Street, again at the police station, and a third time in the police line-up on the morning of March 20. When Englander found Wells at the Harlem Magistrates Court, "his head was bandaged, his shirt was red with blood, he could not stand on his feet," he testified in a public hearing of the MCCH. At an earlier hearing, Kuntz had tried to ask Patrolman Eppler about the claim that police had beaten Wells "on the streets," but had been prevented by the district attorney's instruction that police officers testifying in the hearings could not reveal any evidence they would give in a pending case.
Investigating the case against Wells took an unusually long time. He returned to court on March 26, at which time his bail was set at $500. A note on the docket book appears to indicate that someone put up that bail, likely a Communist Party organization. Wells returned to court a further five times, according to the docket book, on April 9, 12, 17, 18, and finally on April 20, when he was convicted and sentenced to thirty days in the Workhouse. -
1
2021-09-06T19:34:04+00:00
Elizabeth Tai arrested
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2023-11-06T17:04:43+00:00
Sometime during the disorder, Detective Phillips of the 28th Precinct arrested Elizabeth Tai, a twenty-eight-year-old Black resident of 1654 3rd Avenue, for allegedly stealing groceries from a store at 340 Lenox Avenue. She may have reached into an already broken window, as a story in the Home News specified that Tai's alleged offense occurred "after the windows had been smashed." The store's address was mentioned only in that story. Both the story in the Home News and one in the Daily Worker reported that Tai had allegedly taken groceries. At the same time, Detective Phillips also arrested Arthur Davis, a thirty-six-year-old Black man, for allegedly taking groceries from the store.
Tai appeared in the list of those charged with burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list published in the New York Evening Journal. The 28th Precinct police blotter also recorded the charge against Tai as burglary, with the note "Burglarised store during riot." Her home was some way from Harlem, on the east side of Central Park between 92nd and 93rd Streets.
Tai was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 with Arthur Davis and another individual arrested by Detective Phillips, Herbert Hunter, also charged with burglary and arrested with them, according to the Home News. However, that story did not directly state that Hunter was charged with looting the same store. Magistrate Renaud remanded all three to appear again in court (he sent two others arrested by Phillips who appeared at the same time charged with malicious mischief, Charles Wright and William Norris, to the Court of Special Sessions). The docket book recorded only Phillips' name and precinct; the stories in the Home News and Daily Worker identified him as a detective.
When Tai appeared in court again, on March 22, the docket book recorded that the charge had been reduced to disorderly conduct, the original charge crossed out. The "court" reduced the charge, according to the Home News, doing the same in the cases of Davis and Hunter. Had the police presented evidence Tai had stolen merchandise, she would have been charged with either burglary or larceny; had they presented evidence that she had broken windows, the charge would have been malicious mischief. The charge of disorderly conduct suggested that she may only have been part of a crowd near the store. Magistrate Renaud found Tai guilty, an outcome reported in the stories in the Daily Worker, Daily News, and New York Evening Journal as well as the Home News. He also found Davis and Hunter guilty. Tai was one of only three women charged with looting in the disorder.
Renaud sentenced Tai to pay a fine of $25 or serve five days in the Workhouse, according to the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, as he did Davis. The magistrate gave Hunter a longer sentence of ten days without the alternative of a fine. Tai was unable to pay the fine, according to the Home News, so was sent to the Workhouse, a sentence also recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter and stories in the Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and Daily Worker.
Tai was the name recorded in the docket book, and in the lists published in Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the New York Evening Journal. It was recorded differently in other sources less reliable than the legal record: as Tae in the Home News and 28th Precinct police blotter, as Pae in the Daily News and New York Evening Journal, and as Cay in the Daily Worker. If it was recorded correctly by the court clerk, Tai was a common last name among Chinese living overseas, suggesting that Elizabeth was married to a Chinese man. Given it was an unusual last name for a resident of Harlem, the arrested woman may be the Elizabeth Tai who died in Harlem Hospital on April 20, 1945. She had been born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1905, and was a widow at the time of her death, with her husband's name transcribed as "Hawley Tai." That Elizabeth Tai had been a domestic worker, who lived at 124 West 135th Street at the time of her death. -
1
2020-02-26T15:11:31+00:00
Richard Jackson arrested
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2023-04-16T03:57:53+00:00
Officer Connelly of the 32nd Precinct arrested Richard Jackson, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man who lived at 102 West 119th Street, on March 20, perhaps for assaulting Vito Capozzio, a man of unknown race and age. Jackson appeared in the list of those arrested for assault published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, with no information on the events that led to his arrest. However, the information in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book suggests Jackson may have been involved in a fight not in the disorder. When he appeared in court on March 20 charged the charge against him was the lesser offense of disorderly conduct, not assault, and was annotated "fight." That violence cannot have resulted in significant injury if the charge was disorderly conduct: the applicable section of the statute applied only to a person who used "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior." The complainant was Vito Capozzio, whose address was recorded as "3764 Boulevard," perhaps in the Bronx. He was also the complainant against the man recorded after Jackson in the docket book, Salathel Smith, a forty-seven-year-old Black man also charged with disorderly conduct. Both Jackson and Smith were arrested by the same police officer. Given that evidence, Jackson and Smith may have got into a fight in a business which Capozzio either owned or worked in rather than assaulting him. Their appearance in the Washington Heights Court, and arrest by an officer from the 32nd Precinct, indicate that they were arrested north of 130th Street, an area that saw fewer incidents and arrests during the disorder. Jackson and Smith would not have been the only men who appeared in court that day not arrested as part of the disorder; eleven of the forty-four recorded in the docket book on March 20 faced charges unrelated to the disorder, such as offenses against the Sabbath Law.
Disorderly conduct was a charge that could be adjudicated in the Magistrates Court. Magistrate Ford convicted Jackson, and Smith. He sentenced both to just two days in the workhouse or a $5 fine; neither paid the fine, so would have served the time. The New York Age and Home News reported Jackson's conviction, while the New York Herald Tribune also reported the charge and sentence, in stories on legal proceedings related to the disorder. The New York Age also reported Smith's conviction, the only mention of his name in a newspaper story. The inconsistent appearance of Jackson in newspaper lists and reports of court proceedings likely reflects confusion of reporters about whether his arrest related to the disorder. -
1
2021-11-21T17:48:45+00:00
Windows broken without arrest (54)
29
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2022-02-18T02:04:58+00:00
No one was identified as being arrested for breaking 75% (54 of 72) of the businesses identified in the sources (as no one was arrested for the first broken window in Kress' store, the store appears among those cases in which no arrests were made even though an arrest was made for allegedly breaking a window after another attack over four hours later). There are four individuals arrested for breaking windows for who there is no information about their alleged targets; some of those three men and one woman may have been charged with breaking windows in stores for which there was no reported arrests. So could the twenty-one men charged with disorderly conduct in the Magistrates Court for which there is no information about their alleged actions, although only just over one in four of those accused of breaking windows were charged with that offense.
There are significantly more businesses with broken windows for which no one was charged than businesses that were looted, 75% (54 of 72) compared with 55% (37 of 67). Most of those stores were on and around West 125th Street, the area where the disorder began, and likely suffered damage during the time when small numbers of police struggled to control crowds that had gathered in front of Kress' store. Three arrests on West 125th Street, of Frank Wells, Claude Jones and William Ford, came after police reinforcements arrived. The reported arrests on Lenox Avenue around West 125th Street for which there is information on timing, of John Kennedy Jones, Bernard Smith, and Leon Mauraine and David Smith, came after midnight, when businesses in that area began to be looted. Another cluster of businesses with broken windows for which no one was arrested was on West 116th Street and the blocks of Lenox Avenue around it. That lack of arrests could indicate the absence of police in that area, which also was ignored in the English-language press. Those damaged businesses were only reported in La Prensa, with the arrest of Jackie Ford two days after the disorder for allegedly breaking a window in a store at 142 Lenox Avenue also mentioned in the New York Post and New York World-Telegram. Several newspapers drew the boundary of the disorder north of West 116th Street: crowds only went as far south as 120th Street according to the New York World-Telegram, New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Journal and Daily Mirror; and as far south as 118th Street according to the Home News. (The Daily News and Afro-American did report crowds as far south as 110th Street).
The low proportion of arrests supports the claim that police were unable to protect businesses made in multiple newspaper stories and by business-owners who sued the city for damages, as well as in the MCCH report. Once the crowd around Kress’ store broke into smaller groups sometime after 9.00 PM, police were unable to clear the streets or contain all those groups. When police did disperse crowds, they simply reformed, according to the New York Herald Tribune, New York World-Telegram, Norfolk Journal and Guide and the MCCH Report. An alternative account in the Daily News presented crowds not as elusive but as "too scattered" to be controlled. As a result, rather than being ineffective, police were absent from the scene of some attacks on businesses. Business-owners who sued the city for damages made that complaint. No police officers came to protect the stores of Harry Piskin, Estelle Cohen, and George Chronis despite Piskin approaching police officers on the street, and them all visiting or calling the local stationhouse.
The absence of police from some parts of Harlem resulted in part from a decision to concentrate them elsewhere. Reported police deployments focused on West 125th Street. Inspector McAuliffe used the reserves sent to Harlem after 9.00 PM to establish a perimeter around the main business blocks of the street, from 8th to Lenox Avenues, from 124th to 126th Streets, according to stories in the New York Times, Daily Mirror and Pittsburgh Courier, the only stories that described police deployments. Beyond West 125th Street, the police relied on radio cars patrolling the avenues and limited numbers of uniformed police and detectives in plainclothes moving through the streets. -
1
2021-10-30T20:28:37+00:00
Danbury Hat store windows broken and looted
28
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2022-01-27T17:54:07+00:00
Some time during the disorder, the windows of the Danbury Hat store at 2334 8th Avenue were broken, likely allegedly by David Terry, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, and, around the same time, James Hayes, a sixteen-year-old Black youth, allegedly took a baseball bat from the store window. There are no clear details of the circumstances of the damage to the store or the men's arrest. Hayes lived at 476 West 141st Street, on Black Harlem's northwest boundary, further from the location of his arrest than most of those caught in the disorder, who typically lived south of 125th Street or near Lenox Avenue south of 135th Street. Terry had "no home." Police had pushed the crowds that gathered in front of Kress' store to the intersection of 125th Street and 8th Avenue early in the disorder, and groups of people remained in the area for several hours. Nearby stores on either side of the hat store had windows broken: the branch of the Liggett's drug store chain to the south, on the northeast corner of 125th Street; and a seafood restaurant to the north at 2338 8th Avenue. Neither of those stores was among those reported looted. Other isolated reports of looting and arrests on 8th Avenue occurred further north, around 127th and 128th Streets.
The Danbury Hat store was one of the businesses with broken windows identified by the reporter for La Prensa who walked along West 116th Street, up Lenox Avenue and across West 125th Street to 8th Avenue on the day after the disorder. The business is also likely the storefront that appears in a photograph published in the Decatur Review.
Although the caption does not identify the business, hats are visible in the display window, together with the last few letters of the store name on an unbroken section of glass at the bottom of the window: "RY HAT CO.." (The only other hat store recorded as having been damaged or looted is Young's Hat store). Two white men pose in front of the damaged store; white bystanders are most likely to be found near West 125th Street, where the Danbury Hat store was located. A large basket sits inside the display window, perhaps a trash bin taken from the sidewalk. The stock just visible behind the basket suggest that the store was not looted.
Despite this damage, the Danbury Hat store was recorded as in business in the second half of 1935 in the MCCH business survey, mistakenly located at 2336 8th Avenue. The Tax Department photograph was taken from too far away to show the presence of the store when it was taken between 1939 and 1941.
Hayes taking a baseball bat from the store was reported in a story about his appearance in the Magistrates Court in the Home News, which gave only the address of the store. The name of the store is confirmed by the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, which recorded the complainant against Hughes as Wilbur Montgomery, living at 951 Woodycrest Avenue. Montgomery is identified in the 1933 City Directory as the manager of Danbury Shoes. He was also recorded as the complainant against David Terry. There are no sources with details of the circumstances of Terry's arrest, only the charges made against him.
Officer Balkin was recorded as the arresting officer of both Hayes and Terry in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, suggesting they were arrested at the same time. James Hayes appeared in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter, his name misrecorded as Hazel, as charged with burglary, with the note "Broke store window, burglarized store." In line with that entry, he was among those charged with burglary in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. However, when Hayes appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge was recorded as petit larceny not burglary. That charge did not require evidence of breaking in and entering a store as burglary did, indicating a reassessment of the information in the blotter by the time of his arraignment. Magistrate Renaud transferred Hayes to the Court of Special Sessions and held him on $500 bail.
Instead, it appears that it was Terry who was charged with breaking the store windows. In the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book the charge recorded against him when he appeared in March 20 was malicious mischief, an offense involving destruction of property used against the other individuals arrested during the disorder for allegedly breaking windows. Magistrate Renaud held Terry in custody so his case could be investigated. When he was returned to court on March 26, the charge against him was reduced to disorderly conduct, the previous charge crossed out in the docket book, "Red. to" written above it, and the new charge stamped in its place. It is that reduced charge of disorderly conduct that appeared as the charge against Terry in lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. A different charge recorded against him in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter, inciting a riot, appears to have frequently been used by police as the initial charge against those arrested during the disorder, and was often replaced by other charges in the Magistrates Court.
As disorderly conduct was a charge that Magistrates had the power to adjudicate, Terry was tried in the Harlem Magistrates Court and convicted by Magistrate Renaud, who sentenced him to pay a $500 fine or spend five days in the workhouse. Terry served the time in the workhouse, according to the 28th Precinct Police blotter. The blotter also recorded the outcome of the prosecution of Hayes, five days later, on April 1: tried in the Court of Special Sessions and convicted by the judges, who gave him a suspended sentence. -
1
2021-09-07T21:35:13+00:00
Viola Woods arrested
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2023-08-08T15:55:31+00:00
Officer St. Louis of the 28th Precinct arrested Viola Woods, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman, for allegedly smashing the window of a vacant store at 2314 8th Avenue with an umbrella sometime during the disorder. There was no information on when during the disorder the arrest took place. The most likely time would be around 10:00 PM, when the disorder intensified and many of those at the nearby intersection of 8th Avenue and 125th Street began to move up and down the avenue. Only a New York Amsterdam News story identified the store as vacant; a list in the New York American and stories in the Home News and New York Times provided only the address. The vacant store was in the block between 125th and 124th Streets, where four other stores had windows broken, including two other empty stores at 2320 8th Avenue and 2324 8th Avenue, the Arrow Sales 5 & 10c store at 2318 8th Avenue and Andy's Florist on the southeast corner of 125th Street. Those other damaged stores were all included in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa who walked west along 125th Street and and up and down 8th Avenue a block north and south of the intersection on the day after the disorder. It was possible the store whose window Woods allegedly broke was not on that list because it suffered only minor damage; the La Prensa reporter concluded their list by noting they had not included others as they had only suffered minor damage ("y otras mas que por ser los danos ocasionados relativamente pequeños no creimus de interes catalogar entre los establecimientos ya mencionados").
Woods name was misrecorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter as Viola Williams, a mistake repeated in the list of those arrested during the disorder published in in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal. The New York American misreported Woods' name as Loyola Williams. Another woman named Loyola Williams was arrested during the disorder and charged with burglary. Both women were recorded as being twenty-eight-years of age and living at 301 West 130th Street. While these overlapping details might indicate the reports refer to a single woman, both Loyola Williams and Viola Williams [Woods] appear in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal, with Viola Williams [Woods] charged with malicious mischief, an offense involving the destruction of property used in the prosecution of those alleged to have broken windows during the disorder. That is the charge recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter, with a note reading "Broke window with umbrella." However, when that woman appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court, the docket book, and stories about her two appearances in court in the New York Amsterdam News, Home News and New York Times, recorded her name as Viola Woods.
When Woods appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 the charge against her was disorderly conduct. The change from malicious mischief indicated police did not have evidence that she had broken the window, but only that she had been in the crowds in the area of the attack. Disorderly conduct was a charge that the magistrate could adjudicate, unlike misdemeanor and felony charges that required referral to other courts. Magistrate Renaud ordered Woods held on bail of $100, a court appearance reported in the Home News. Unusually, she was represented by a lawyer, future alderman Eustace Dench of 207 West 125th Street. Dench was one of several prominent members of the Harlem Lawyers Association who represented those arrested during the disorder. When Woods returned to the court on March 28, Magistrate Ford discharged her. The New York Amsterdam News reported that she "was freed for lack of evidence." The New York Times story simply reported that she had been discharged, the outcome recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter. That outcome suggests Woods was not part of a crowd that clashed with police but likely simply a bystander.
The woman arrested may be the woman named Viola Woods a census enumerator found at 123 West 133rd Street on April 16, 1940. She was the same age and had been in Harlem in 1935. Born in South Carolina, in Hilton Head she gave birth to a son, William, in 1923, and a second son, Samuel, in 1925, according to their draft registrations. At that time her last name was Bligen. She arrived in Harlem sometime between 1925 and 1930, when she was recorded in the census living at 255 West 143rd Street, with a cousin, working as a domestic servant (both her sons are recorded as living with their father, William Bligen and his wife in Hilton Head until at least 1940). In 1931, she married Chester Woods, a West Indian longshoreman. At the time of the 1940 census, they had four children, aged between ten and two years. When her sons William and Samuel registered for the draft in 1942, Viola Woods was living at 49 West 133rd Street. -
1
2020-10-01T19:25:21+00:00
Rivers Wright arrested
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2023-08-19T17:51:47+00:00
Detective Doyle of the 5th Division arrested Rivers Wright, a twenty-one-year-old Black man for allegedly being part of a group of men who attacked an unnamed white man at 125th St and Lenox Avenue at some point in the disorder. Wright lived at 2137 7th Avenue, a block west and two blocks north of the site of the alleged assault, and in the heart of the disorder. Police arrived at the intersection around 11:00 PM, so Doyle likely arrested Wright around then or later.
Only one source provided any details of the circumstances of his arrest. The Home News reported on March 21 that Wright was arrested "after he and a number of others are said to have attacked a white man at 125th St and Lenox Ave." Wright appeared in lists of those arrested during the disorder in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, the New York American, New York Evening Journal, and Daily News.
Among the first arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Wright was charged with disorderly conduct, not assault, as was the case with half of those arrested for assault. As the statute applied only to a person who used "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior," police did not appear to have evidence that Wright participated in the assault. Instead, he may have been part of a crowd nearby, caught up in police efforts to arrest those responsible for the assault. Those circumstances fitted the definition of the offense.
Disorderly conduct was an offense that was adjudicated by a magistrate rather than referred to another court as was the case with misdemeanor and felony offenses. Magistrate Renaud convicted Wright and remanded him for sentence on March 23. On that date, he sent Wright to the Workhouse for ten days. His appearance was widely reported, in stories that named him in the Daily News, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune and New York Age and stories in which he was unnamed in the New York World-Telegram, New York American, New York Post, New York Evening Journal, and Home News. None of those stories mentioned what Wright had allegedly done. Four other men convicted of disorderly conduct sentenced at the same time, after being charged with breaking windows, received terms of thirty days. The disparity in sentence offered further evidence that Wright had not actually been involved in the alleged assault. -
1
2021-09-17T00:24:45+00:00
Albert Yerber arrested
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2023-10-21T03:02:43+00:00
Near the end of the disorder, at 5:00 AM on March 20, Patrolman Jerry Brennan arrested Albert Yerber, Charles Alston, Edward Loper, and Ernest Johnson for allegedly shooting at police stationed at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No police officers were reported injured, but Alston suffered a fractured skull as the men fled police. Trying to escape by leaping from the roof of a six-story building to the adjoining building, Alston fell to a second-floor ledge. He was a twenty-one-year-old Black man, as was Loper, Yerber was twenty years of age, and Johnson was twenty-two years of age. Yerber lived on the other side of Harlem at 106 Edgecombe Ave, as did Loper, at 298 West 138th Street and, even further west, Alston at 512 West 153rd Street, while Johnson lived close to where they were arrested, at 206 West 140th Street. Only a small proportion of those involved in the disorder lived above 135th Street.
Newspaper stories contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language — for example, the New York World Telegram and Times Union reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” a "lone policeman." Stories in the New York World Telegram and Brooklyn Daily Eagle did offer the name of the officer allegedly targeted by Yerber and his companions, Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station, and the same dramatic account that a bullet whistled past his ear as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street. Taking cover, he saw the men on the roof of the six-story building at 101 West 138th Street. Soon after police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. One other story, in the Home News, identified Brennan, but cast him not as the target of the shooters but as one of the police who responded. In a radio car assigned to the area with his partner Patrolman McGrady, Brennan “heard the shots and sped to the scene. At the radio car's approach the four snipers [standing in the doorway] ran to the roof of the building.” This story provides the key detail that no guns were found on Yerber and his companions.
On March 20 Yerber, Loper, and Johnson were charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book, which identified Brennan as the arresting officer for all three men. (Alston did not appear in court, likely because of his injury). The clerk annotated that charge with the word "annoy." Under that section of the statute, a person is guilty if they act "in such a manner as to annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others." A separate clause punishes disorderly or threatening conduct or behavior, so based on that annotation, the men were not charged with attacking Brennan. That charge fits better with the circumstances described in the Home News. Whatever the patrolman alleged, Magistrate Ford did not find sufficient evidence of the men's guilt and acquitted Yerber and his two companions. Given that outcome, it is possible Brennan mistook some other noise for gunfire. Without any evidence of an assault in the sources, these events are treated here only as arrests.
Yerber, and Loper and Johnson, are among those charged with disorderly conduct in the list of the arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide. They are not mentioned in stories about the proceedings in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20 in the New York Age and New York Herald Tribune, which listed only those convicted. -
1
2022-12-03T22:24:37+00:00
Sentences in the Magistrates Court (39)
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2023-05-03T14:18:11+00:00
Just over half, thirty-nine of the seventy-seven, individuals convicted after the disorder were sentenced by Magistrates in the Harlem and Washington Heights courts. They had been convicted of disorderly conduct, which carried a maximum sentence of six months imprisonment or two years of probation. That was half the maximum sentence for a misdemeanor, so it is to be expected that those sentenced in the Magistrates Court were typically imprisoned for shorter periods that those sentenced in the Court of Special Sessions and in the Court of General Sessions, from five days to one month. However, more sentences to terms around six months were imposed in the Magistrates Courts than in the other courts: two of five months and twenty-nine days (Preston White and Joseph Payne) and two of six months (James Lloyd and James Smith). While all the men other than Lloyd had been arrested for looting, there is nothing in the sparse information on the circumstances of those cases to explain the unusually long terms. It could be that, like Edward Larry, who received the longest prison term of those convicted after the disorder, those men had extensive criminal records (that information is only available for individuals sent to the grand jury).
It is difficult to determine if the allegations police made when they arrested those convicted in the Magistrates Court had any bearing on their sentences. Whatever those initial charges, these individuals were instead prosecuted for disorderly conduct, indicating a lack of evidence to support those allegations. It could be that those arrested in crowds around an event remained associated with that particular violence even if police did not charge them as participants. However, the large proportion of individuals sentenced in the Magistrates Courts who had been arrested in unknown circumstances obscures any patterns that there might be.
The only one of the three white men convicted in the disorder whose sentence was found in the sources, Leo Smith, was among those sentenced in the Magistrates Court. The term of one month in the workhouse imposed on him was consistent with the punishments that Black men and women arrested for breaking windows received. Four others arrested in the same circumstances received the same term, while three received terms of only five days and two had their sentences suspended. Only three men arrested for breaking windows charged with malicious mischief and sent to the Court of Special Sessions received longer terms, and then only of three months.
Those sentenced in the Magistrates courts included three of the five Black women convicted. The sentences Magistrate Renaud imposed on them appear consistent with those given to Black men: Louise Brown had her sentence suspended; Margaret Mitchell was given a choice between three days in the workhouse or a fine (she paid the fine); and Elizabeth Tai was sentenced to five days in the workhouse.
Given the widely variety of activities encompassed by the Disorderly Conduct statute, it is difficult to tell if the sentences imposed by magistrates were out of the ordinary. In the week leading up to the disorder, when the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book recorded thirty-six men and women as convicted of disorderly conduct, two individuals received three-month terms and three six-month terms, including one charged with "jostling," placing the most severely punished acts in the disorder on a par with attempted pickpocketing. On the other hand, none of the remaining thirty-one sentences were for more than ten days, with fourteen for one to three days with the option to instead pay a fine and the sentences of eight suspended, making the one-month terms given to some of those arrested during the disorder a harsher punishment than was usual. -
1
2021-12-05T21:00:05+00:00
Bernard Smith arrested
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2023-10-25T01:15:08+00:00
Officer Alfred Tait of the 42nd Precinct testified in the Harlem Magistrates Court that he saw a group of about thirty people assemble in front of the Temple Grill & Restaurant at 317 Lenox Avenue. Then, about 12:15 AM, he allegedly heard Bernard Smith, a thirty-nine-year-old Black man, shout to the group, "We will get these two windows here," and saw him then throw two stones at the restaurant windows, breaking them. Smith then allegedly shouted to the others, "You fellows get the others." Tait presumably arrested Smith in front of the store, although his statement did not mention the circumstances, but according to the officer, members of the group in front of the restaurant acted on Smith's urging, as "thereafter there were several acts of force and violence committed in said vicinity to other persons and property of others." In the minutes around when Tait arrested Smith, other police officers arrested three men near West 126th Street and Lenox Avenue, Leon Mauraine and David Smith at 318 Lenox Avenue ten minutes earlier, and John Kennedy Jones at 333 Lenox Avenue fifteen minutes later. Multiple arrests by different officers indicate that a number of police were stationed at the intersection at that time. All three of the arresting officers came from precincts outside Harlem.
Bernard Smith gave his occupation as interior decorator when examined in the Harlem Magistrates Court, and his home, for the last eight years, as 116 West 126th Street. That building was close to the bar and restaurant, around the nearby southwest corner of West 126th Street and four buildings west. Smith appeared in the lists of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal as one of those charged with inciting a riot. The 28th Precinct police blotter also recorded the charge made against Smith as "Inciting riot."
The last person to appear in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Smith was charged with both malicious mischief, for allegedly breaking the window, and inciting a riot, for his alleged call for the group to break other windows. Held in custody by Magistrate Renaud, Smith returned to court on March 25, when bail was set at $500 for the first charge and $1,000 for the second, and then again on March 26, when Magistrate Ford held him for the grand jury on the charge of riot. Prosecutors reduced the charge of malicious mischief to disorderly conduct, likely indicating a lack of evidence that he had broken the window. Magistrate Ford found him guilty of that charge and sentenced him to five days in the Workhouse or a fine of $25. The docket book recorded that he paid the fine. Misleadingly, the 28th Precinct police blotter also recorded that sentence, but not either of the charges of malicious mischief and disorderly conduct, only the charge of riot.
A week later, Smith appeared before the grand jury, which dismissed the riot charge, an outcome recorded only in his District Attorney's case file. While the grand jury did not indict any of those arrested during the disorder charged with inciting a riot, it did send all the others who appeared before it to the Court of Special Sessions rather than dismissing the charges. The difference in Smith's case could be that no one else allegedly broke windows in the store that he attacked and the subsequent attacks on people and property could not be linked to him. -
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2021-09-01T12:00:29+00:00
Elva Jacobs arrested
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2023-04-17T00:11:06+00:00
Sometime in the disorder, Officer L. W. Adamie of the 46th Precinct arrested Elva Jacobs, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, and charged her with burglary for allegedly having "broken a store window at 1 W. 137th St. and taken groceries," according to a story in the Home News At a subsequent court appearance the prosecutor reduced the charge against Jacobs to unlawful entry, an offense used when there was not evidence that she had taken any merchandise. However, that charge did suggest that Jacobs had done more than break a window, as the charge in that circumstance would likely have been disorderly conduct. Most likely, Adamie had allegedly seen or found her in the grocery store. Like almost all of those arrested for looting on the eastern boundary of Harlem north of 130th Street, Jacobs lived relatively near the store. Her home was at 56 West 142nd Street, between 5th Avenue and Lenox Avenues, five blocks north of the store, which was just off 5th Avenue.
The only information on the circumstances of the arrest was the statement in the Home News, reporting Jacobs' arraignment in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20. It is possible that Adamie arrested a second person for looting the store, and that Jacobs had been part of a larger group. He was recorded in the docket book as the officer who arrested Courtney March, a thirty-nine-year-old Black man who appeared in court immediately after Jacobs, facing the same charge of burglary. Like her, he lived north of the store, but further away, at 263 West 152nd Street, Based on other cases recorded in the docket book that indicated that Marsh was also arrested for looting the grocery store, but he was not mentioned in the Home News story on the arraignments in the court, nor did he appear in the list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide in which Jacobs appeared (neither of them are in the list published in the New York Evening Journal). Given that absence, and without a complainant recorded in the docket book to confirm a link between the two, Marsh was not included among those arrested during the disorder.
Magistrate Ford remanded Jacobs in custody. When she returned to court the next day, the docket book records that Ford set her bail at $1500. Two days later, on March 23, Jacobs was back in court. This was likely when the charge against her was reduced from burglary to unlawful entry; in the docket book the original charge is crossed out and "Red. to unl. entry" written in its place, in a different handwriting than the original charge. The same handwriting records that on this date Ford sent her to the Court of Special Sessions, which adjudicated misdemeanors such as unlawful entry, reducing her bail to $50. It took a month before Jacobs was tried in the that court. On May 3, the Magistrates convicted here, suspended her sentence and put Jacobs on probation, an outcome found only in the 32nd Precinct records. (The prosecution of Marsh followed the same process until March 23, when Magistrate Ford discharged him rather than sending him for trial as he did Jacobs). -
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2021-08-31T19:14:13+00:00
Albert Bass arrested
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2023-10-10T19:08:13+00:00
Some time during the disorder, Officer Ferry of the 28th Precinct arrested Albert Bass, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man. He likely made the arrest in the vicinity of Lafayette Market at 2044 7th Avenue. Salvatore Marrone, with his address recorded as 2044 7th Avenue, was the complainant against Bass in the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book. The windows of the market were smashed during the disorder and merchandise taken. Channing Tobias, who lived in an apartment above the market, reported hearing both smashing glass and gunshots between midnight and 1:00 AM, sounds that indicated both attacks on the business and the presence of police. It was likely that Bass was arrested during that period, perhaps around 12:30 AM when Fred Campbell also saw stores being attacked and police trying to disperse crowds in this area.
Just what Bass allegedly did was uncertain. Both the list published in the New York Evening Journal and the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded the charge against him as burglary, with the blotter noting that he allegedly "In concert with others burglarized stores." However when Bass was arraigned in the Magistrate's Court he was charged with disorderly conduct. That charge suggested that police did not have evidence that he had broken windows, which would have seen him charged with malicious mischief, or that he had taken merchandise, which would have been the basis for the charge of burglary. Instead, the charge of disorderly conduct indicated that police had encountered Bass been on the street in the area of the looted store. That was not surprising as he lived only half a block west of the market, at 238 West 122nd Street. He likely had come to 7th Avenue to investigate the noise and disorder.
Magistrate Renaud held Bass in custody until March 26. When he returned, the magistrated convicted him and fined him $25 or, if he did not pay the fine, sentenced him to five days in the workhouse, according to the docket book. The docket book and the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded that he paid the fine of $25.
Bass was one of a small number of those listed as arrested in the New York Evening Journal not also present in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide. The 28th Precinct police blotter misspelled his name as Boss; both the New York Evening Journal and the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book recorded his name as Bass. -
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2022-01-07T19:57:38+00:00
John Hawkins arrested
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2022-12-18T20:21:25+00:00
Detective George Booker of the 28th Precinct arrested John Hawkins, a thirty-year-old Black man, for allegedly inciting a riot. There are no details of his alleged offenses or where or when Hawkins was arrested. Booker also arrested Horace Fowler during the disorder, for allegedly looting Nicholas Peet's tailor's shop at 2063 7th Avenue. Booker made no mention of a crowd or anyone else being involved in that alleged looting, so he likely arrested Hawkins at some other time and place. Hawkins lived at 2357 8th Avenue, between West 126th and West 127th Streets. He could have been part of the crowds around that block of 8th Avenue, where Theodore Hughes was arrested for allegedly looting the store directly opposite the building where Hawkins lived, Emmet Williams for breaking the window of that store, and Rose Murrell for breaking a window in the store at 2366 8th Avenue.
In the 28th Precinct Police blotter, the charge against Hawkins was recorded as inciting riot, which was also the charge under which he appeared in the list of those arrested during the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide. When he appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, that was also the charge recorded in the docket book. However, the charge was later crossed out and "DISORDERLY CONDUCT" stamped in its place. That change had to have been made on March 20, as Magistrate Renaud convicted him that day and held him for investigation before sentencing. The offense of disorderly conduct did not involve being part of a group of three or more, as the offense of riot did, nor inciting others to threaten to, attempt to or use violence against a person or property. Charging Hawkins with disorderly conduct thus likely indicated that police did not have evidence that he acted with or led a group of people; rather, that he had been part of a crowd on the street near attacks on property or people.
When Hawkins returned to court on March 23, Renaud sentenced him to thirty days in the Workhouse. Stories in the Daily News, New York Times, New York Age and Afro-American reported the sentencing. Three other men sentenced at the same time had been accused of breaking windows; the three newspapers other than the New York Times reported that Hawkins had also committed that offense, while that newspaper merely reported his sentence. -
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2021-04-27T19:22:05+00:00
Amie Taylor arrested
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2022-12-18T20:23:18+00:00
Officer Harmon of the 18th Division arrested Amie Taylor, a twenty-one-year-old Black butcher, near Mario Pravia's candy store at 1953 7th Avenue around 11.30 PM. Harmon and at least one other police officer, Detective Harry Wolf of the 28th Precinct, reported seeing Taylor throw a stone at the store window and take merchandise from the window display. Wolf appears as a witness on the Magistrates Court affidavit and an arresting officer with Harmon on Taylor's criminal record. Taylor was also not alone; "about 5 others" threw stones at the store and took merchandise at the same time, while Pravia and his wife watched from inside, but police managed to arrest only Taylor. Harmon allegedly found eighteen packets of chewing gum, valued at three cents each, in his possession. The Home News reported that a total of $200 of merchandise was taken from the store.
The New York Evening Journal identified a different officer as making the arrest, Deputy Chief Inspector John Ryan, in a vignette within the paper’s narrative of the disorder:
No other sources support that account. The story's framing of the incident in relation to the force used by police does direct attention to the unremarked upon means by which police made arrests. The New York Evening Journal was one of several white newspapers that claimed that police showed restraint in responding to the disorder, and did not shoot at crowds until the after midnight, when looting became widespread. If police drew their revolvers but did not fire them in this "terrific battle," they likely used the gun butts as clubs, as they are in several photographs taken during the disorder.Deputy Chief Inspector John Ryan, in charge of all Manhattan detectives, figured in another incident in which police were forced to draw their revolvers, although no shot was fired. While speeding to the trouble zone, Ryan saw a group of men looting a store at 1952 Seventh ave. The detective chief, with his chauffeur, swung into action and attempted to round up the thieves. there was a terrific battle, but Ryan emerged from it with Amie Taylor, 21, as his prisoner.
Crowds had moved down 7th Avenue from West 125th Street around 10 PM. This event was the first this far south on the avenue. Taylor may have come from the opposite direction. He lived south of the store, at 1800 7th Avenue, next to Central Park, in an area home to Black, white and Spanish speaking residents. Taylor's first name caused confusion about his identity. In the 28th Precinct Police Blotter the name is "Annie," and he is identified as female, information likely responsible for Annie also being used in the list of those arrested in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal. While the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book identifies Taylor as male, the clerk recorded the name as Annie on his examination, and on the back of the Magistrates Court affidavit, where it is struck out and Amie written underneath.
When Taylor appeared in Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with burglary, Magistrate Renaud remanded him to appear again on March 22. Reporters from the Home News, New York Daily News, New York Evening Journal and Daily Worker were in court when Taylor appeared again; the Daily Worker somehow misreported his name as Annie. Renaud sent Taylor to the grand jury, who on April 3 transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions, which as it adjudicated misdemeanors, means they must have reduced the charge from burglary to an offense such as unlawful entry, petit larceny or disorderly conduct. Two weeks later, on April 17, the judges acquitted Taylor, according to the Police Blotter. Given the low value of what Taylor allegedly stole – a total of 54c – it would not have been surprising to see him receive a minor punishment; but to acquit him the judges would have had to find fault with the evidence against him provided by Officer Harmon and Detective Wolf. The sources are silent on what alternative account of events Taylor offered, but others arrested in the disorder claimed to have been bystanders mistakenly grabbed by police trying to pick offenders out of crowds. It could also be that prosecutors could not prove that the chewing gum found on Taylor had been taken from the store; it was a common enough item, in a large but not inexplicable quantity, that he could have obtained it legitimately elsewhere. -
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2021-11-12T21:22:43+00:00
Willow Cafeteria windows broken
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2022-12-13T19:11:54+00:00
Around 8.50 PM, Officer Henry Eppler was stationed in front of the Willow Cafeteria at 207 West 125th Street, he told a public hearing of the MCCH, where he would have been part of the cordon police established around Kress' store. He allegedly saw Frank Wells, a twenty-six-year-old Black man, throw a automobile hubcap at the window and break it. Opposite the McCrory department store, the restaurant was at the western end of the building at the intersection of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue. All the businesses in the building to the east of the store had windows broken; the General Stationery & Supplies store, Savon Clothes store, Young's Hats, Minks Haberdashery, and the United Cigar store on the corner. Only Young's Hats was reported looted.
Windows were broken in large numbers of businesses on this block of West 125th Street, where police clashed with crowds gathered in front of Kress' store. Two newspapers reported very extensive damage. "Practically every store window on the block had been shattered by 10 PM, according to the Home News; that damage was both less extensive and took longer in the New York Herald Tribune story: "By midnight one or more windows had been smashed in almost every storefront" on that block between 7th and 8th Avenues (although in another mention of that damage in the story it had been done by 8 PM). The Willow Cafeteria was one of seven businesses identified as having broken windows by the New York Herald Tribune, New York American, and Daily Mirror. No reason is given in those stories for why that mix of businesses were singled out. They were not just the largest stores, although the Blumstein and McCrory's department stores were included, together with the W. T Grant 5 & 10c store in the New York American and Daily Mirror. The United Cigar store spanned several storefronts on the corner on West 125th Street and 7th Avenue, but the other stores, Scheer's clothing store Young's Hats, and the Conrad Schmidt music shop identified in the New York American and New York Herald Tribune, did not have similarly large displays. All the stores identified by these newspapers were located between Kress' store at 256 West 125th Street and 7th Avenue, so may have been the damaged stores that reporters could see. Willow Cafeteria store was also one of the nineteen businesses on this block with broken windows listed by a reporter for La Prensa who walked along West 125th Street on the day after the disorder. That list included businesses west of Kress' store.
Only the New York American provided an address for Willow Cafeteria, 207 West 125th Street. The MCCH business survey taken between June and December 1935 located the white-owned business at 209 West 125th Street. However, the Tax department photograph of that building taken between 1939 and 1941 shows that the Cafeteria was one building further east, its sign partly visible beyond the canopy over the entrance to the Harlem Opera House. The cafeteria sign is also partly visible on the left in the Tax Department photograph of 2100-2106 7th Avenue.
Eppler's testimony in the public hearing is the only evidence that specifically associates Wells with the Willow Cafeteria, which he identified by address not name. A story in the New York Herald Tribune did say Wells had been arrested for allegedly "hurling an automobile hub through a cafeteria window on 125th Street," but did not name the cafeteria. On March 20, Wells appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court, one of the last arraigned after being one of the first arrested. The docket book recorded the charge against him as disorderly conduct not malicious mischief, the offense involving damage to property that was the charge most often made against those alleged to have broken windows. That charge suggests that Wells did only limited damage to the window. He returned to court on March 26, at which time his bail was set at $500. Wells returned to court a further five times, according to the docket book, on April 9, 12, 17, 18, and finally on April 20, when he was convicted and sentenced to thirty days in the Workhouse. -
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2021-09-17T00:28:51+00:00
Ernest Johnson arrested
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2023-11-02T02:51:53+00:00
Near the end of the disorder, at 5:00 AM on March 20, Patrolman Jerry Brennan arrested Ernest Johnson, Albert Yerber, Charles Alston, and Edward Loper for allegedly shooting at police stationed at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No police officers were reported injured, but Alston suffered a fractured skull as the men fled police. Trying to escape by leaping from the roof of a six-story building to the adjoining building, Alston fell to a second-floor ledge. He was a twenty-one-year-old Black man, as was Loper, Yerber was twenty years of age, and Johnson was twenty-two years of age. Johnson lived close to where they were arrested, at 206 West 140th Street. Yerber lived on the other side of Harlem at 106 Edgecombe Ave, as did Loper, at 298 West 138th Street and, even further west, Alston at 512 West 153rd Street. Only a small proportion of those involved in the disorder lived above 135th Street.
Newspaper stories contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language — for example, the New York World Telegram and Times Union reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” a "lone policeman." Stories in the New York World Telegram and Brooklyn Daily Eagle did offer the name of the officer allegedly targeted by Johnson and his companions, Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station, and the same dramatic account that a bullet whistled past his ear as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street. Taking cover, he saw the men on the roof of the six-story building at 101 West 138th. Soon after, police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. One other story, in the Home News, identified Brennan, but cast him not as the target of the shooters but as one of the police who responded. In a radio car assigned to the area with his partner Patrolman McGrady, Brennan “heard the shots and sped to the scene. At the radio car's approach the four snipers [standing in the doorway] ran to the roof of the building.” This story provides the key detail that no guns were found on Alston and his companions.
On March 20, Johnson, Yerber, and Loper were charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book, which identified Brennan as the arresting officer for all three men. (Alston did not appear in court, likely because of his injury). The clerk annotated that charge with the word "annoy." Under that section of the statute, a person is guilty if they act "in such a manner as to annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others." A separate clause punishes disorderly or threatening conduct or behavior, so based on that annotation, the men were not charged with attacking Brennan. That charge fits better with the circumstances described in the Home News. Whatever the patrolman alleged, Magistrate Ford did not find sufficient evidence of the men's guilt and acquitted Johnson and his two companions (Alston was later discharged when he appeared in court on April 9, presumably after he recovered from his injuries.) Given that outcome, it is possible Brennan mistook some other noise for gunfire. Without any evidence of an assault in the sources, these events are treated here only as arrests.
Johnson, and Loper and Yerber, are among those charged with disorderly conduct in the list of the arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide. They are not mentioned in stories about the proceedings in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20 in the New York Age and New York Herald Tribune, which listed only those convicted. -
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2021-12-15T20:01:28+00:00
Louise Brown arrested
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2023-08-08T16:17:02+00:00
Sometime during the riot, Officer Libman of the 32nd Precinct arrested Louise Brown, a twenty-three-year-old Black woman. There was no information on Brown's alleged offense, or the time or circumstances of the arrest. The arrest likely took place around 10:30 PM or 11:00 PM, when the disorder intensified and crowds spread from 125th Street along 8th Avenue. Libman also appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court as the arresting officer of another woman, Rose Murrell, and two men, Henry Stewart and Warren Johnson, who, with Brown, had all been arrested at 8th Avenue and West 127th Street, according to a story in the Daily Mirror. Murrell and Stewart were alleged to have broken windows in two different stores, Murrell at 2366 8th Avenue and Stewart at 2422 8th Avenue. Brown and Johnson were also arrested for breaking windows, based on the charge against them, malicious mischief according to the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book. An offense involving damage to property, malicious mischief was used by prosecutors after the disorder only against individuals arrested for allegedly breaking windows. Brown has been treated as having been arrested for breaking windows on the basis of that charge even though there are no details of her alleged act.
While the story in the Daily Mirror suggested Brown and Johnson had been arrested at the intersection, so likely had allegedly broken windows nearby, the store in which Stewart allegedly broke a window was two and half blocks north of where the story reported his arrest. It was possible that the intersection was where police were stationed, so where those arrested were initially brought, rather than the site of their arrest. Brown lived at 251 West 128th Street, just east of 8th Avenue, a block north of where she was reported arrested, so may have been drawn to the noise and crowds on the avenue in the early evening of March 19. All six of the men and women arrested by police on 8th Avenue lived either west of the avenue or in the block between 8th and 7th Avenues.
Louise Brown was recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter as charged with inciting a riot. That charge was reported in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, in the New York Evening Journal and in the Daily News, as well as in the story in the Daily Mirror. Police appeared to have initially charged many of those arrested during the riot with inciting a riot, and then revised those charges to fit the specific act that an individual was alleged to have committed before their arraignment in court. Prosecutors had changed the charge against Brown to malicious mischief by the time she appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20. Magistrate Renaud held Brown in custody until March 25, on bail of $500. When she was returned to court, the charge against Brown was reduced to disorderly conduct, malicious mischief crossed out in the docket book, "Red." written above it, and "DISORDERLY CONDUCT" stamped in its place. That change, to a lesser offense that did not involve damage to property, likely indicated a lack of evidence that Brown had broken a window. Instead, she was likely part of a crowd in the vicinity of the damaged store, arrested either by mistake or to get her off the street as part of police efforts to disperse the crowd. Disorderly conduct was an offense that could be adjudicated by a magistrate, unlike malicious mischief which would have been referred to another court. Magistrate Ford convicted Brown and gave her a suspended sentence. Warren Johnson, arrested with her and prosecuted in the same way, also received a suspended sentence. -
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2021-12-02T17:25:14+00:00
James Bright arrested
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2023-08-26T19:12:24+00:00
Sometime during the disorder Detective Perretti of the 6th Division arrested James Bright, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, for allegedly breaking windows in the drug store at 339 Lenox Avenue, on the northwest corner of 127th Street. Perretti likely arrested a second man, Arthur Bennett, also a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, at the same time, also for breaking the store's windows. There was no information on the circumstances of the arrests. While other stores in the surrounding blocks of Lenox Avenue had windows broken and goods taken, police made few arrests as they lacked the numbers to control the many crowds on the streets. However, other officers made arrests for alleged looting at Frank De Thomas' candy store next to the drug store on West 127th Street and at Sol Weit and Isaac Popiel's grocery store two buildings north on Lenox Avenue, suggesting that officers were stationed near this intersection to complement those patrolling the avenue in radio cars and Emergency trucks. Bright did not live close to the store, but five blocks north, at 43 West 133rd Street. He could have made his way down Lenox Avenue as part of one of the groups moving through the area attacking businesses or as a spectator following the crowds.
A story in the Home News was the only evidence that connected Bright, and Arthur Bennett, to 339 Lenox Avenue. Bright appeared in lists of those charged with disorderly conduct published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. Inexplicably, the 28th Precinct Police blotter records "Annoyed pedestrians" as the charge against him; no one else arrested during the disorder other than Bennett was charged with that offense. Bright appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with disorderly conduct, with Detective Perretti recorded in the docket book as the arresting officer. Bright had allegedly thrown "stones through the window of the store at 339 Lenox Ave.," according to the Home News story on those proceedings. However, if police had evidence of such an attack Bright would have been charged with malicious mischief. Charging him instead with disorderly conduct generally indicated that they only had evidence that he had been in the crowd around the store when the windows were broken. The continued references to breaking windows as Bright's offense suggests that in his case he may have done insufficient damage to warrant being charged with the more serious offense. Magistrate Renaud convicted Bright of disorderly conduct. He returned to the court for sentencing on March 23, and received a term of one month in the workhouse "for breaking windows" from Magistrate Renaud in proceedings reported in the Afro-American, New York Age, Daily News, and New York Times. None of those stories gave an address for the store whose windows Bright had allegedly broken. -
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2021-12-02T17:24:56+00:00
Arthur Bennett arrested
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2023-10-24T03:15:21+00:00
Sometime during the disorder, Detective Perretti of the 6th Division arrested Arthur Bennett, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, for allegedly breaking windows in the drug store at 339 Lenox Avenue, on the northwest corner of 127th Street. Perretti likely arrested a second man, James Bright, also a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, at the same time, also for breaking the store's windows. There was no information on the circumstances of the arrests. While other stores in the surrounding blocks of Lenox Avenue had windows broken and goods taken, police made few arrests as they lacked the numbers to control the many crowds on the streets. However, other officers made arrests for alleged looting at Frank De Thomas' candy store next to the drug store on West 127th Street and at Sol Weit and Isaac Popiel's grocery store, two buildings north on Lenox Avenue, suggesting that officers were stationed at this intersection.
A story in the Home News was the only evidence that connected Bennett and James Bright to 339 Lenox Avenue. Bennett appeared in lists of those charged with disorderly conduct published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. Inexplicably, the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded "Annoyed pedestrians" as the charge against him; no one else arrested during the disorder other than Bright was charged with that offense. Bennett appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with disorderly conduct, with Detective Perretti recorded in the docket book as the arresting officer. He alleged that Bennett had thrown "stones through the window of the store at 339 Lenox Ave.," according to the Home News story on those proceedings. Bennett did not live close to the store, but eight blocks south, at 48 West 119th Street. Magistrate Renaud convicted Bennett of disorderly conduct. He returned to the court for sentencing on March 23, and received a term of one month in the workhouse "for breaking windows" from Magistrate Renaud in proceedings reported in the Afro-American, New York Age, New York Daily News, and New York Times. None of those stories gave an address for the store whose windows Bennett had allegedly broken. -
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2021-09-17T00:25:21+00:00
Edward Loper arrested
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2023-10-31T18:32:41+00:00
Near the end of the disorder, at 5:00 AM on March 20, Patrolman Jerry Brennan arrested Edward Loper, Charles Alston, Albert Yerber, and Ernest Johnson for allegedly shooting at police stationed at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. No police officers were reported injured, but Alston suffered a fractured skull as the men fled police. Trying to escape by leaping from the roof of a six-story building to the adjoining building, Alston fell to a second-floor ledge. He was a twenty-one-year-old Black man, as was Loper. Yerber was twenty years of age, and Johnson was twenty-two years of age. Loper lived on the other side of Harlem at at 298 West 138th Street, as did Yerber, at 106 Edgecombe Ave, and, even further west, Alston at 512 West 153rd Street, while Johnson lived close to where they were arrested, at 206 West 140th Street. Only a small proportion of those involved in the disorder lived above 135th Street.
Newspaper stories contained few details of the shooting, even as they employed a range of dramatic and emotive language. For example, the New York World Telegram and Times Union reported a “nest” of snipers “trying to pick off” a "lone policeman." Stories in the New York World Telegram and Brooklyn Daily Eagle did offer the name of the officer allegedly targeted by Alston and his companions, Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station, and the same dramatic account that a bullet whistled past his ear as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street. Taking cover, he saw the men on the roof of the six-story building at 101 West 138th. Soon after, police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. One other story, in the Home News, identified Brennan, but cast him not as the target of the shooters but as one of the police who responded. In a radio car assigned to the area with his partner Patrolman McGrady, Brennan “heard the shots and sped to the scene. At the radio car's approach the four snipers [standing in the doorway] ran to the roof of the building.” This story provides the key detail that no guns were found on Alston and his companions.
On March 20 Loper, Yerber, and Johnson were charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book, which identified Brennan as the arresting officer for all three men. (Alston did not appear in court, likely because of his injury.) The clerk annotated that charge with the word "annoy." Under that section of the statute, a person is guilty if they act "in such a manner as to annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others." A separate clause punishes disorderly or threatening conduct or behavior, so based on that annotation, the men were not charged with attacking Brennan. That charge fits better with the circumstances described in the Home News. Whatever the patrolman alleged, Magistrate Ford did not find sufficient evidence of the men's guilt and acquitted Loper and his two companions. Given that outcome, it is possible Brennan mistook some other noise for gunfire. Without any evidence of an assault in the sources, these events are treated here only as arrests.
Loper, and Yerber and Johnson, are among those charged with disorderly conduct in the list of the arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide.They are not mentioned in stories about the proceedings in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20 in the New York Age and New York Herald Tribune, which listed only those convicted.
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2021-12-12T03:19:41+00:00
David Terry arrested
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2023-10-26T03:04:13+00:00
Some time during the disorder, Detective Balkin of the 5th Division arrested David Terry, a twenty-four-year-old homeless Black man. Wilbur Montgomery, living at 951 Woodycrest Avenue, recorded as the complainant against Terry in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, was identified in the 1933 City Directory as the manager of Danbury Shoes, at 2334 8th Avenue. The nearby intersection of 8th Avenue and West 125th Street, only a few buildings from Kress' store, saw some of the earliest crowds and violence of the disorder, and a concentration of police, who sought to clear West 125th Street by pushing people on to the avenue. Windows were also broken in stores on either side of Danbury Shoes, the branch of the Liggett drug store chain on the corner of West 125th Street, and a seafood restaurant at 2338 8th Avenue. Montgomery was also the complainant against another man arrested by Detective Balkin, likely at the same time, James Hayes.
There were no details of the circumstances of Terry's arrest, but the charge against him in the Harlem Magistrates Court, malicious mischief, was made against those arrested in the disorder who had allegedly broken windows. Hayes had allegedly taken a baseball bat from the hat store, according to a story about his appearance in the Magistrates Court in the Home News, which gave only the address of the store. Police appeared to have initially charged Hayes with breaking a window as well as taking the bat. He appeared in the 28th Precinct police blotter, his name misrecorded as Hazel, with the note "Broke store window, burglarized store." In line with that entry, Hayes was among those charged with burglary in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. However, when Hayes appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge was recorded as petit larceny, not burglary. That charge did not require evidence of breaking in and entering a store as burglary did, indicating a reassessment of the information in the blotter by the time of his arraignment. Given that the arrests came in response to attempts to take merchandise, they likely occurred after 11:00 PM, when businesses in the area had already been damaged, when incidents of looting became more frequent
Instead, it appeared that it was Terry who police alleged had broken the hat store windows, as he was charged in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 with malicious mischief. Magistrate Renaud held Terry in custody so his case could be investigated. When he was returned to court on March 26, the charge against him was reduced to disorderly conduct, the previous charge crossed out in the docket book, "Red. to" written above it, and the new charge stamped in its place. That change likely indicates a lack of evidence that Terry had broken windows. Instead, he would have been among those on the street around the store when the window was broken. Police may have mistaken him for the person who broke the window or have arrested him to get him off the street as part of their efforts to restore order. It was that reduced charge of disorderly conduct that appeared as the charge against Terry in lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. A different charge recorded against him in the 28th Precinct police blotter, inciting a riot, appeared to have frequently been used by police as the initial charge against those arrested during the disorder, and was often replaced by other charges in the Magistrates Court. Disorderly conduct was a charge that magistrates had the power to adjudicate. Magistrate Ford convicted Terry and fined him $500 or five days in the Workhouse. Terry served the time in the Workhouse, according to the 28th Precinct police blotter.
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2021-08-31T16:32:04+00:00
Oscar Austin arrested
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2023-08-27T21:10:45+00:00
Sometime during the disorder, an officer from the 28th Precinct arrested Oscar Austin, a twenty-nine-year-old Black man (the clerk's handwriting in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book is too messy to decipher the officer's name). The arrest likely occurred near the Romanoff Drug Store at 375 Lenox Avenue, on the northwest corner of West 129th Street. J. Romanoff is recorded as the complainant when Austin is arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court.
Just what Austin allegedly did is uncertain. He appeared among those listed as being arrested for burglary, the charge used in cases of alleged looting, in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. However, the 28th Precinct Police blotter recorded the charge against him as Attempted Burglary, suggesting that he was not arrested with any merchandise in his possession. In the Magistrate's Court, Austin was charged with disorderly conduct. Such a change suggests that police did not have evidence that he had either broken windows or taken any merchandise. Instead, a charge of disorderly conduct suggested he had been in the crowds around the store when it was looted and clashed in some way with police. However, Magistrate Renaud acquitted Austin, an outcome also recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter. Renaud's verdict indicated Austin was a spectator, perhaps arrested as part of police efforts to disperse crowds on the street. The Romanoff Drug store was located in the midst of the area of Lenox Avenue that saw multiple arrests and reports of looting and violence, likely after midnight, noise and disorder that could have drawn Austin to the street. He lived relatively close to the store, at 204 West 128th Street, just west of 7th Avenue.
J. Romanoff was also the complainant in the cases of two twenty-four-year-old Black men, Jacob Bonaparte and Sam Nicholas arrested by the same police officer, according to the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book. Their prosecution followed the same pattern as that of Austin, ending in acquittal. Bonaparte lived even closer to the store than Austin, at 123 West 128th Street, midway down the block between Lenox and 7th Avenues, while Nicholas lived further away, on West 124th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. -
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2022-06-13T16:54:29+00:00
Salathel Smith arrested
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2023-04-17T01:45:59+00:00
Officer Connelly of the 32nd Precinct arrested Salathel Smith, a forty-seven-year-old Black man somewhere north of West 130th Street some time during the disorder, perhaps for assaulting Vito Capozzio, a man of unknown race and age. Smith, who lived at 246 West 121st Street, appeared in lists published in the Home News and New York Age of those arrested during the disorder who were found guilty in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court and sentenced to the Workhouse for two days on March 20. The story included no information on the events that led to his arrest. No other newspaper lists or stories mention Smith, including the other reports of those court proceedings. He did appear in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book, where the charge against him was recorded as disorderly conduct.
The other information in the docket book suggests Smith may have been involved in a fight not in the disorder. Check marks indicate that the charge, complainant and arresting officer in his case were the same as those of the man who appeared above him in the docket book, Richard Jackson, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man who lived at 102 West 119th Street. The charge was annotated "fight." Like Smith, Jackson was found guilty by the Magistrate and sentenced to only two days in the Workhouse. That violence cannot have resulted in any injury if the charge was disorderly conduct: the applicable section of the statute applied only to a person who used "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior." Vito Capozzio was the complainant, his address recorded as "3764 Boulevard," perhaps in the Bronx. Given that evidence, Smith and Jackson may have got into a fight in a business which Capozzio either owned or worked in. Their appearance in the Washington Heights Court, and arrest by an officer from the 32nd Precinct, indicate that they were arrested north of 130th Street, an area that saw fewer incidents and arrests during the disorder. While neither list in which Smith was includedSmith and Jackson would not have been the only men who appeared in court that day not arrested as part of the disorder; eleven of the forty-four recorded in the docket book on March 20 faced charges obviously unrelated to the disorder, such as offenses against the Sabbath Law.
Disorderly conduct was a charge that could be adjudicated in the Magistrates Court. Magistrate Ford convicted Smith, and Jackson. He sentenced both to just two days in the workhouse or a $5 fine; neither paid the fine. Jackson did appear in two sources that Smith did not: the list of those arrested for assault published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide; and a New York Herald Tribune story that reported the charge and sentence. However, he, like Smith, is missing from most sources that provided information on those arrested. The presence of Smith in the New York Age story likely reflects the reporter's confusion about whether his arrest related to the disorder, given that the charge against him was one made against others arrested in the disorder. -
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2021-12-13T16:22:07+00:00
Julius Hightower arrested
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2023-04-17T01:47:03+00:00
Patrolman Carter of the 32nd Precinct arrested Julius Hightower, an eighteen-year-old Black man, for allegedly throwing a brick through the window of Moskowitz's tailor shop at 2310 7th Avenue, according to a story in the New York Herald Tribune. The complainant recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book is L. Hackner, with the address 2310 7th Avenue, confirming the location of Hightower's alleged offense published in the New York Herald Tribune. The tailor shop was operated by a father and son, so Hackner was likely a manager or staff member. Located between 135th and 136th Streets, the shop was one of the northernmost businesses damaged during the disorder, in an area where most of the other businesses had Black owners.
Hightower lived at 204 West 148th Street, more than ten blocks north of the tailor store. He appeared among those charged with disorderly conduct in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. However, when Hightower appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20 the charge recorded in the docket book was malicious mischief, an offense involving the destruction of property used in cases of individuals who allegedly broke windows during the disorder. During his arraignment, that charge was reduced to disorderly conduct, an offense that a Magistrate could adjudicate. Magistrate Ford convicted Hightower, and sentenced him to five days in the workhouse or a fine of $25. He served the time. That sentence was reported in the New York Herald Tribune, and the New York Age, and without the duration in the Home News. -
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2021-12-15T20:02:06+00:00
Warren Johnson arrested
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2023-08-08T16:22:47+00:00
Sometime during the riot, Officer Libman of the 32nd Precinct arrested Warren Johnson, an eighteen-year-old Black man. There was no information on Johnson's alleged offense, or the time or circumstances of the arrest. The arrest likely took place around 10:30 PM or 11:00 PM, when the disorder intensified and crowds spread from 125th Street along 8th Avenue. Libman also appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court as the arresting officer of two women, Rose Murrell and Louise Brown, and another man, Henry Stewart, who, with Johnson, had all been arrested at 8th Avenue and West 127th Street, according to a story in the Daily Mirror. Murrell and Stewart were alleged to have broken windows in two different stores, Murrell at 2366 8th Avenue and Stewart at 2422 8th Avenue. Johnson, and Brown, likely also allegedly broke store windows, based on the charge against all four of those Libman arrested, malicious mischief according to the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book. An offense involving damage to property, malicious mischief was used by prosecutors after the disorder only against individuals arrested for allegedly breaking windows. Johnson has been treated as having been arrested for breaking windows on the basis of that charge even though there are no details of his alleged act.
While the story in the Daily Mirror suggested Johnson and Brown had been arrested at the intersection, so likely were alleged to have broken windows nearby, the store in which Henry Stewart allegedly broke a window was two and half blocks north of where the story reported his arrest. It is possible that the intersection was where police were stationed, where those arrested were initially brought, rather than the site of their arrest. Johnson lived at 206 West 121st Street, a block east of 8th Avenue and six blocks north of where he was reported arrested. All six of the men and women arrested by police on 8th Avenue lived either west of the avenue or in the block between 8th and 7th Avenues, but the others lived north of 125th Street, considerably closer than Johnson.
Warren Johnson was recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter as charged with inciting a riot. That charge was reported in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, in the New York Evening Journal and in the Daily News, as well as in the story in the Daily Mirror. Police appear to have initially charged many of those arrested during the riot with inciting a riot, and then revised those charges to fit the specific act that an individual was alleged to have committed before their arraignment in court. Prosecutors had changed the charge against Johnson to malicious mischief by the time he appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20. Magistrate Renaud held Johnson in custody until March 25, on bail of $500. When he was returned to court, the charge against Johnson was reduced to disorderly conduct, malicious mischief crossed out in the docket book, "Red." written above it, and "DISORDERLY CONDUCT" stamped in its place. That change, to a lesser offense that did not involve damage to property, likely indicated a lack of evidence that Johnson had broken a window. That change, to a lesser offense that did not involve damage to property, likely indicated a lack of evidence that Johnson had broken a window. Instead, he was likely part of a crowd in the vicinity of the damaged store, arrested either by mistake or to get him off the street as part of police efforts to disperse the crowd. Disorderly conduct was an offense that could be adjudicated by a magistrate, unlike malicious mischief which would have been referred to another court. Magistrate Ford convicted Johnson and gave him a suspended sentence. Louise Brown, arrested with him and prosecuted in the same way, also received a suspended sentence. -
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2020-10-29T15:01:55+00:00
Vito Capozzio assaulted
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2022-12-18T20:54:03+00:00
Vito Capozzio may have been assaulted somewhere north of West 130th Street during the disorder. He was recorded as the complainant in the prosecution of Richard Jackson, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man, and Salathel Smith, a forty-seven-year-old Black man, in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20. No details of the case appear in any sources, but the men's arraignment in that court indicated they had been arrested within its jurisdiction, which began above 130th Street. Jackson appeared in the list of those arrested for assault in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, which included only his name and the charge. Smith was not included in that list. However, his name was recorded directly beneath Jackson in the docket book, with check marks indicating that the complainant, charge and arresting officer were the same in both cases. Although his name suggests Capozzio was likely a white man, there is no evidence of his race. The docket book recorded his address as "3764 Boulevard," which appears to be an incomplete address, perhaps referring to Southern Boulevard in the Bronx.
Other evidence in the docket book, and Jackson and Smith's absence from most newspaper reports of those arrested during the disorder, suggest that this incident was not part of the disorder. When Jackson and Smith appeared in court on March 20 the charge against them was the lesser offense of disorderly conduct, not assault, annotated with the word "fight." The reduced charge could simply indicate that Capozzio's injuries did not warrant a charge of assault. However, this is the only instance in which the charge was annotated with "fight." Another possible interpretation is that Jackson and Smith may have got into a fight in a business which Capozzio either owned or worked in rather than assaulting him. The area north of 130th Street where the men were arrested saw fewer incidents and arrests during the disorder. Jackson and Smith would not have been the only men who appeared in the court that day not arrested as part of the disorder; eleven of the forty-four recorded in the docket book on March 20 faced charges unrelated to the disorder, such as offenses against the Sabbath Law. While stories in New York Age and New York Herald Tribune reported Jackson's appearance in court, only the New York Age also mentioned Smith, the only time he appeared in the newspapers. That inconsistency, and the absence of the men from other stories about the court proceedings, suggest at least some confusion about whether their arrests related to the disorder. Magistrate Ford did convict both Jackson and Smith, but sentenced them to just two days in the workhouse or a $5 fine.
This page references:
- 1 2021-09-20T02:03:34+00:00 Laws of the State of New York, 1923 (New York - 146th Legislature): 960-962. 3 plain 2023-11-06T17:57:11+00:00