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

New York Penal Law, § 1433: Malicious Mischief

Consolidated Laws of the State of New York, 1909, ch. 88

"§ 1433 Injury to property, how punished. A person who unlawfully and wilfully destroys or injures any real or personal property of another, or who without authority or permission from a person who has the right to give such authority or permission, loosens any brake or blocking of any car standing on any railroad track in this state, or without like authority or permission, puts upon or runs any hand car, or other car, on any railroad track in this state, or without like authority or permission, interferes or meddles with any brake or coupling of any car while standing or moving on any railroad track in this state, or takes any part therein, in a case where the punishment is not specially prescribed by statute, is punishable as follows:

If the value of the property destroyed, or the diminution in the value of the property by the injury is more than two hundred and fifty dollars, by imprisonment for not more than four years. [Amended 1915]
In any other case, by imprisonment for not more than six months, or by a fine of not more than two hundred and fifty dollars, or by both such fine and imprisonment.
And in addition to the punishment prescribed therefor, he is liable in treble damages for the injury done, to be recovered in a civil action by the owner of such property, or the public officer having charge thereof."

New York Penal Law

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Windows broken (72) A window in the S. H. Kress 5 & 10c store being hit by an object and breaking began the disorder. Objects thrown at the windows of stores, mostly those with white owners, was the most prevalent event in the following hours, with at least 300 businesses damaged. Such attacks were unfamiliar from the racial disorder of previous decades. Business and residential property had been the targets of violence, but that property had been Black-owned and damaged or destroyed by white crowds. However, white businesses in Harlem had been the focus of protests against their failure to hire Black workers in the years immediately prior to the disorder, culminating in a campaign by a coalition of Black organizations in 1934. Those efforts involved boycotts and pickets, not breaking store windows. A competing campaign by the Communist Party did extend to smashing windows in the Empire Cafeteria. The potential for picketing to lead to violence, and specifically to a “race riot” was one of the justifications given by the judge in the New York State Supreme Court who outlawed the tactic in 1934, effectively ending the boycott campaign for the hiring of Black workers. That sentiment was echoed after the disorder by Black columnist Theophilus Lewis in the New York Amsterdam News, a critic of the boycott movement: "There was a time, during the peak of the boycott movement, when a slight indiscretion by a policeman, a white salesgirl or a colored shopper who defied the boycott would have started an outburst quite as serious as the recent disorder. The feeling of race antipathy, perhaps not intended by the leaders of the boycott, has remained pent up in the community waiting for a spark to set it off." The turn to breaking windows as a final resort was captured by Gill Horton, a Black former cabaret owner quoted by Joseph Mitchell in the New York World-Telegram after the disorder. "I didn’t throw no rocks," he reportedly said. "I broke my last window when I was going on 10. Of course, if I was pushed a little I might let loose a few bottles and brickbats, but nobody pushed me yet.” Many others in Harlem clearly had been pushed. When James Hughes, a twenty-four-year-old Black shoe repairer returning home found himself in a crowd at 8th Avenue and West 125th Street, he heard people saying, "Let's break windows," he later testified in court.

Historians Cheryl Greenberg and Larry Greene have argued that decision had the opposite effect to what the judge intended, shutting off an outlet for discontent and protest, and leaving Harlem’s residents with fewer alternatives to violence. The events in front of Kress’ store before someone threw the object that broke one of its windows replicated/recapitulated those tensions. Three men had been protesting the store employees’ treatment of Lino Rivera by walking in front of the store with banners – picketing. Police officers arrested the group, shutting down those means of protest. On this occasion, unlike earlier protests, members of the crowd attacked the store.

The objects thrown at store windows were most often described as rocks or stones, and less often as bricks – the objects recovered from the windows of Herbert’s Blue Diamond jewelry store displayed by a clerk for a Daily News photographer the day after the disorder. All those objects could be found around Harlem. An employee of the Blackbird Inn told a reporter for the New York Post that much of that material came from the island that ran down the middle of 7th Avenue, where stones and debris left after the paving of the street had been dumped. Other larger objects found on the street were sometimes used: ashcans and trashcans. (The tailor’s dummy allegedly thrown through Sam Lefkowitz's store window likely came from another damaged store). In a handful of cases, the missiles were objects more likely brought from home -- bottles clubs, and hammers -- or items individuals happened to have with them, such as umbrellas (there was rain on the night of the disorder). At least two windows in looted stores were allegedly kicked in.

While newspaper reports routinely described store windows as “smashed,” the extent of the damage they suffered varied. A single object generally broke and created a hole in a window rather than shattering it entirely, as is evident in a photograph published in the Daily News that shows a white police officer and a white store manager speaking through a hole in an unidentified shoe store. To remove most or all of the glass from a display window took more than one object, which usually meant more than one person, depending obviously on the size of the window. Stores on West 125th Street, particularly the department stores and those that wrapped around the corners of the intersections with 8th, 7th and Lenox Avenues had far larger windows than the smaller businesses on the avenues themselves. More extensive damage to windows appears to have been associated with looting, and may have occurred when groups or individuals returned to stores with broken windows to take merchandise. A section of Lenox Avenue in a photograph published by the Daily News shows that variety of damage: closest to the camera is a rental agency with a hole in its window, which still contained the ashcan that created it, that does not appear to be looted; to its left are two grocery stores and a cigar store whose windows are almost entirely gone, and whose contents have been taken The sources do not offer a clear picture of the extent of the damage to the stores identified as having broken windows but not as looted: the reporter for La Prensa who listed thirty-five businesses with broken windows on Lenox Avenue, West 125th Street and 8th Avenue, ended their list by alluding to an unspecified number of other stores not on the list that suffered relatively little damage compared with those listed. There are no details for just under half of those identified (33 of 69) in the sources; of the remainder, fragmentary information suggests fourteen businesses could have been suffered limited damage.

Efforts to damage stores may also have extended to destroying merchandise by throwing it into the street, on a night when it rained. The Afro-American most directly reported that practice, in which “the goods was dragged in the wet sidewalk and destroyed.” The New York Times and Atlanta World reported goods taken out of windows and “strewn” and “scattered” on the sidewalk without mention of the intention. So too did Betty Willcox, who told a New York Evening Journal that on West 125th Street, "I saw that the windows of all the stores around there had been shattered and the goods thrown all over the place." Merchandise on the street, however, could also have been a byproduct of looting rather than attacks on businesses, thrown or carried out of stores so they could be taken - as seemed to be the case in a photograph of a damaged grocery store published in the New York Evening Journal. Some of those arrested during the disorder denied "breaking the store windows" and instead insisted "that they had picked the articles up from the street after others had thrown them out of the stores," according to a story in the New York Sun (which dismissed those claims as an effort to avoid responsibility).

When objects broke windows, glass went flying, hitting individuals on at least five occasions. All those reported injuries came after 1:00 AM, so during the period when most of the reported looting took place, and in the areas where that looting was concentrated, on Lenox Avenue from 127th Street to 130th Street and on 7th Avenue and 116th Street. Evidence about the circumstances of those injuries is fragmentary, brief details in lists and hospital records rather than discussions in stories. One record explicitly linked the injuries to windows being broken in stores. In the 32nd Police Precinct book of aided cases Herbert Holderman was listed as “cut by flying glass when some unknown persons broke windows of stores.” "Flying glass” and “falling glass” were the reported causes of the four other injuries. That glass could have come from smashed windows in cars and buses driving on Harlem's streets, which also had objects thrown at them, although such attacks were reported only on 7th Avenue. Those injuries could also have been the result of throwing objects at windows or climbing or reaching into broken windows to take merchandise. However, crowds of bystanders were on Harlem's streets throughout the disorder, on sidewalks close enough to stores to be hit by glass when someone broke store windows. One storeowner, Herman Young, was also injured by glass from a window broken by a stone.

The seventy-two businesses identified in the sources as having broken windows, and the additional sixty stores looted as well as damaged, amount to around 30% of the total number estimated to have had windows broken. Newspaper stories offered a range of initial assessments of the damage. By noon on March 20 the New York Plate Glass Service Bureau, “whose member companies do 98 per cent of the glass insurance business in the city,” told a reporter for the New York Post that 110 clients had reported broken glass, a fraction of the expected total damage. Other newspapers published totals for the number of windows broken, not stores effected: “at least 130 costly plate gas windows,” according to the New York American; 200 plate-glass store windows according to the New York Times, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Chicago Defender and Norfolk Journal and Guide; and “more than 250 windows” according to the New York Herald Tribune, 300 windows in the Afro-American, and “more than 1,000 panes of glass” in the New York Post. Inspector Di Martino offered an "approximate number of windows broken" that totaled 624 in his "Report on Disorder" to the Police Commissioner on March 20, with the disclaimer that the "extent of property damage cannot be estimated at this time." A later survey of forty-seven insurance companies by the National Bureau of Casualty and Surety Underwriters, reported by the New York Times and Pittsburgh Courier, combined the two counts, reporting claims for 697 plate glass windows in 300 businesses, amounting to two-thirds of the broken windows. With the uninsured glass included, the total damage would have been just over 1000 windows in around 450 businesses.

“Breakages were most numerous on 125th street, near Seventh avenue,” according to that survey, but also occurred in an area that extended “from 114th to 143rd streets, between Fifth and Eighth Avenues. Several thousand businesses were located in that area, the MCCH business survey found, so attacks away from 125th Street were clearly less extensive. The "approximate number of windows broken" Inspector Di Martino reported to the Police Commissioner on March 20 was broken down by precincts, with almost all (86%, 538 of 624) located in the 28th Precinct, south of 130th Street. Newspapers stories consistently identified West 125th Street as the most damaged area, with New York Age specifying the two blocks from 8th to Lenox Avenues, and the New York Herald Tribune identifying the block between 8th and 7th Avenues, on which Kress’ store was located. Those general descriptions are in line with the events which are reported in the sources, which are concentrated on that block, with fewer on the block between 7th and Lenox Avenues. Those blocks were where the disorder originated, and the largest crowds gathered; where Harlem’s largest stores were located; and where all the businesses were white-owned. Beyond 125th Street, newspaper stories presented different pictures of the extent of the area in which windows were broken. As neither the Police Department nor the MCCH appear to have collected details of the damage, as would happen after the racial disorder in Harlem in 1943, that variation might reflect the limits of what individual reporters investigated or, in the case of very wide areas, a lack of investigation. Only the Daily News identified an area as extensive as the insurance survey, from 110th to 145th Streets. The New York Evening Journal and New York Herald Tribune only encompassed as far south as 120th Street, and as far north as 138th Street. Two newspapers focused only on 7th Avenue, the Pittsburgh Courier reporting smashed windows from 116th to 140th Streets, and the Daily Mirror only from 120th to 125th Streets. The Black newspaper’s area fits the reported events, and suggests an investigation throughout Harlem; the white newspaper included only a portion of that area, the blocks closest to 125th Street. Eighth Avenue attracted special attention in the New York Herald Tribune, which reported “windows broken in virtually every other store and glass covering the sidewalk” from 124th Street to 130th Street, and less damage in the blocks further north. Lenox Avenue, where the reported events are concentrated, drew particular attention only from the Afro-American, which offered the only specific count, that “In the three blocks from 125th to 128th Street, west side Lenox Avenue, there were twenty-two windows broken.” The Times Union offered the vaguest area, "for blocks around the five and ten cent store two-thirds of shop windows had been smashed." The tendency to draw the boundaries at 120th Street, together with inattention to West 116th Street by both the Black and white press, effectively left Spanish-speaking areas of Harlem out of discussions of the disorder.

The businesses reported with windows broken differed from those reported as targets of looting. (Of the seventy-two stores with broken windows, three are unknown, three were vacant, and five were later looted, leaving sixty-one that are identified). Clothing stores of various types and businesses and businesses involving miscellaneous goods (which included department stores, which sold a variety of goods, including clothing but generally not food) were the largest groups; the food stores that made up the largest group of those looted were the smallest portion of those with broken windows. Those different patterns suggest that those who returned to damaged stores to take merchandise, or turned to looting, focused on what they needed, not on the wider range of stores that had been targets earlier in the disorder.

When objects were thrown at windows beyond Kress' store, their targets were initially other businesses on West 125th Street, where all the stores had white owners. As groups moved away from 125th Street, they continued to focus their attacks on white-owned businesses. Five Black-owned businesses were among those identified as having windows broken, a number far below their presence in the neighborhood. Posting signs that identified a business as Black-owned appears to have stopped attacks and prevented windows from being broken. No Black-owned businesses are among those later looted. In addition to Black businesses, there were two white-owned businesses specifically identified as not being damaged in the disorder. Koch's department store, was well-known for having hired Black staff. A group of Black boys reportedly protected the other store.

Arrests for allegedly breaking windows were reported for only 24% (17 of 72) of the businesses that suffered damage, a smaller proportion than for looted stores (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). The twenty-six individuals arrested for breaking windows were identified either because they were charged with malicious mischief, an offense involving damage to property, or by details of what police alleged they had done recorded in legal records or reported in the press. For five individuals arrested for breaking windows there is no information about their alleged targets; some of those four men and one woman may have been charged with breaking windows in stores for which there was no reported arrests. Three of those arrested were women, and one a white man, similar numbers as among those arrested for looting, but twice the proportion of those arrested. Police do not appear to have made arrests during the first hours of the disorder, when windows were broken on West 125th Street as they struggled to keep crowds from Kress' store and off the streets. The arrests that were made in that area came around 10:30 PM. Leroy Brown's arrest on 8th Avenue at 9.45 PM was during that early phase of violence. The handful of other arrests where the time is known occurred on 7th Avenue and Lenox Avenue when reported looting intensified, thirty minutes either side of midnight.

Courts treated breaking windows less severely than other activities during the disorder, in large part because the value of damaged windows was only sufficient to make a charge of malicious mischief a misdemeanor. Most store windows cost less than $100 to repair, well below the $250 required for the crime to be a felony. Only the five men also charged with inciting others to violence were sent to the grand jury, just over a third of the proportion of those arrested for looting, and the grand jury sent all those men to the Court of Special Sessions to be prosecuted for misdemeanors. Similarly, Magistrates transferred nine men and one woman directly to the Court of Special Sessions and adjudicated eleven cases, discharging Viola Woods, and convicting nine men and one woman of disorderly conduct.
Leroy Brown arrested Around 9.45 PM, Officer Edward Doran watched a group assemble in front of Sam Lefkowitz's store at 2147 7th Avenue. In in his affidavit in the Harlem Magistrates Court, Doran alleged Leroy Brown threw a tailor's dummy through the window of the store, after which Doran heard him say to the rest of the group, "Go right along and get the other windows." As Doran arrested Brown, he saw the group continue north up 7th Avenue, and "heard the crash of glass and later observed other windows broken." The unclaimed laundry store at 2145 7th Avenue, on the south side of the Lefkowitz's store, also had its window broken.

Leroy Brown was a twenty-two-year-old Black man who identified himself as a bootblack in his examination in the Harlem Magistrates Court. He lived at 2493 8th Avenue, near West 133rd Street, some distance northwest of Lefkowitz's store, which was just north of West 127th Street. That address had been his home since 1932, he told the clerk in the Harlem Magistrates Court. Brown had been in the Magistrates Court once before 1935, charged with disorderly conduct in September 1934, and discharged by a Magistrate, according to his criminal record. When Brown appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, he 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. He appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, as one of those charged with inciting a riot. That was the most serious of the charges Brown faced in the Magistrates Court, so likely the one that would have been emphasized in a list of those arrested. The charge against Brown in a list published in the New York Daily News was malicious mischief (like four other men in this list he was misidentified as white). In lists published in the New York Evening Journal and the New York American the charge against Brown was disorderly conduct (and his first name mistakenly recorded as Eli). That information was almost certainly a mistake, as it was a less serious offense than either of those charged in the Magistrates Court and would only make sense if there was no evidence of him either breaking a window or inciting others. The two charges against Brown are reported in the Home News story about his appearance in the Magistrates Court.

Brown was held in custody by Magistrate Renaud on March 20, and then returned to the court on March 25, March 27, and again on April 1, appearances recorded only in the docket book. There is no information on why prosecutors needed this much time to investigate the case. On the last occasion, Magistrate Stern held Brown for the grand jury on the riot charge, and sent him to the Court of Special Sessions to be tried on the charge of malicious mischief (indicating that the value of the damage to the building was not more than $250, the level required for the charge to be a felony). Two weeks later, on April 15, Brown's case was presented to the grand jury, who sent him to the Court of Special Sessions to be tried for the lesser, misdemeanor form of the offense of riot. The outcome of Brown's two trials in the Court of Special Sessions are unknown. As he was charged in the Harlem Magistrates Court, he should have been in the 28th Precinct Police blotter, but he does not appear in the transcript in the MCCH records. Bernard Smith was also charged with both riot and malicious mischief, alleged, like Brown to have both broken a store window and urged others to do the same. In Smith's case, the grand jury dismissed the riot charge, and the malicious mischief charge was reduced to one of disorderly conduct, of which the Magistrate found him guilty and sentenced him to five days in the Workhouse.
Frank Wells arrested 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.
Elizabeth Tai arrested 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.
Breaking windows in the courts (20) Seventeen men and three women who were arrested for breaking windows appeared in court. Prosecutors did not charge seven of those individuals with the offense for which they had been arrested, but instead with disorderly conduct. An additional three men and one woman — David Terry, Julius Hightower, Warren Johnson, and Louise Brown — had the charge against them reduced to disorderly conduct after their initial appearance in court. The proportion of those arrested for breaking windows who faced that lesser charge (11 of 20, 55%) fell between that of those arrested for assault (8 of 13, 62%) and than of those arrested for looting (12 of 50, 20%) — 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 breaking windows, 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 store windows were broken. Magistrates found guilty all but one of those charged with disorderly conduct after being arrested for breaking windows. Viola Woods, one of the few defendants represented by a lawyer, "was freed for lack of evidence" according to a story in the New York Amsterdam News. Among those convicted was another Black woman, Louise Brown, and the one white man arrested for breaking windows, Leo Smith.

The charge brought against individuals who were prosecuted for breaking windows was malicious mischief. That offense punished unlawful and wilful destruction or injury to property. It was a felony if the damage amounted to more than $250. Magistrates transferred eight men and one woman who faced that charge to the Court of Special Sessions for trial; they sent no one charged with malicious mischief to the grand jury. Those outcomes reflected that the value of windows, particularly those of the scale found in the small businesses on Harlem's avenues, was far less than $250. In the case of William Jones, prosecutors had originally charged him with a felony, which was reduced to a misdemeanor after investigation.

Judges in the Court of Special Session convicted five of those charged with malicious mischief while acquitting only one, Henry Stewart (the outcome of the other three trials is unknown). While William Jones had his sentence suspended, the other three Black men, Charles Wright, William Norris, and David Bragg, received sentences of three months in the workhouse, among the longer sentences imposed on those arrested during the disorder. Rose Murrell received a shorter term of only one month in the workhouse. While her gender was the most obvious explanation for that difference, it may be that Murrell caused less damage than the men. No details of the cost of replacing the windows are provided in any of these cases.

In any case, Murrell was the only one of the three Black women arrested for breaking windows convicted of that offense. That Louise Brown was found guilty of disorderly conduct indicated only that the magistrate was convinced that she had been part of a crowd around an attack on a store, whereas the acquittal of Viola Woods removed her further from the violence, casting her as a bystander.

Similarly, the conviction of Leo Smith, the white man arrested for breaking windows, for disorderly conduct placed him at a distance from damage to a store, without explaining his presence in the crowds on the street.
Arthur Davis arrested Sometime during the disorder, Detective Phillips of the 28th Precinct arrested Arthur Davis, a thirty-six-year-old Black resident of 42 West 126th Street, for allegedly stealing groceries from a grocery store at 340 Lenox Avenue. Davis may not have broken the store windows, as a story in the Home News specified that Davis' alleged offense occurred "after the windows had been smashed." The store's address was mentioned only in that story. Both the Home News and the Daily Worker reported the Davis had allegedly taken groceries. At the same time, Detective Phillips also arrested Elizabeth Tai, a twenty-eight-year-old Black women, for allegedly taking groceries from the store.

Davis 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 Davis as burglary, with the note "Burglarised store during riot."

Davis was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 with Tai 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. Both the docket book and 28th Precinct police blotter gave Davis' age as thirty-six years; both lists and all the newspaper stories gave his age as thirty-two-years.

When Davis appeared in court again, on March 22, the docket book recorded no change in the charge against him, but a story in the Home News reported that "the Court" had reduced the charge from burglary to disorderly conduct, as it had for both Tai and Hunter. In Tai's case, the docket book did record that the charge had been reduced to disorderly conduct. Had the police presented evidence Davis had stolen merchandise, he would have been charged with either burglary or larceny; had they presented evidence that he had broken windows, the charge would have been malicious mischief. The charge of disorderly conduct suggested he may only have been part of a crowd near the store. Magistrate Renaud found Davis guilty, an outcome reported in the stories in the Daily News and New York Evening Journal as well as the Home News. He also found Tai and Hunter guilty.

Renaud sentenced Davis to pay a fine of $25 or serve five days in the Workhouse, according to the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, the same sentence he gave Tai. He gave Hunter a longer sentence of ten days without the alternative of a fine. Davis was unable to pay the fine, according to the Home News, so was sent to the Workhouse. The sentence also recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter and stories in the Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and Daily Worker.
Viola Woods arrested 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.
John Kennedy Jones arrested Around 12.30 AM, Patrolman James Lamattina of the 66th Division allegedly saw "large number" of people gather in front of William's Shoe Store at 333 Lenox Avenue. Then John Kennedy Jones "motioning with his hand, said to the others "come on," and threw a rock that "broke the plate glass window" of the store. Other people in the crowd also threw "stones and sticks" at the window, Lamattina alleged in his Magistrates Court affidavit. At some point Lamattina arrested Jones, a twenty-four-year-old Black laborer; the affidavit made no mention of the circumstances of the arrest. No other members of the crowd were arrested. The shoe store had been attacked at least twice earlier in the disorder. A display window had been smashed and merchandise stolen sometime between 9.45 PM and 11.20 PM, and another window allegedly kicked in and three shoes taken at 11.20 PM, when a patrolman arrested Julian Rogers. In the half hour before Lamattina arrested Jones, other police officers arrested three men for breaking windows near West 126th Street and Lenox Avenue, Leon Mauraine and David Smith at 318 Lenox Avenue and Bernard Smith at 317 Lenox Avenue. Multiple arrests by different officers indicated that a number of police were stationed at the intersection at that time. All three of the arresting officers came from precincts outside Harlem.

Jones lived at 135 West 119th Street according to the information he gave in his examination in the Harlem Magistrates Court. Some distance from the shoe store, this block between Lenox and 7th Avenue was in an area south of 125th Street with a mix of Black and white residents.

Jones appeared in the lists of those arrested and charged with "inciting to riot" published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. Similarly, the 28th Precinct Police Blotter recorded the charge against him as "inciting to riot. When Jones was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, the docket book recorded the charge against him as riot for leading others in the crowd to attack the store. Crossed out was an additional charge of malicious mischief for damage to the store window. That charge did appear on the Magistrate Court affidavit in a handwritten note that also listed the forms of riot being charged. Reporting the proceeding in the Magistrates Court, a story in the Home News mixed the two charges together to describe Jones as having "urged the crowd to smash windows," but being held for the Grand Jury "on a charge of malicious mischief" for which urging a crowd was not relevant. That garbled account likely indicated that Jones faced both charges, as did the six other men who allegedly both urged crowds to break windows and broke windows themselves. Only two of those men, Leroy Brown and Bernard Smith, had both charges recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book.

On March 20, Magistrate Renaud held Jones for the grand jury and set bail at $1000. A week later, when Jones appeared before the grand jury, they decided to transfer him to the Court of Special Sessions for trial on misdemeanor forms of the charges (as the malicious mischief charge was not recorded in the docket book Jones was not categorized as being charged with that offense). The judges convicted Jones and on April 1 gave him a suspended sentence, recorded in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter.
James Pringle arrested Around 11.15 PM, Detective Peter Naton of the 28th Precinct was watching a crowd of twenty-five to thirty people at West 123rd Street and 7th Avenue when that he allegedly heard James Pringle, a twenty-eight-year-old Black laborer, shout to the group, “Let's go cross the way and scale rocks at the cops, they are coming down our side of the street.” Naton's affidavit in the Harlem Magistrates Court then records that the detective arrested Pringle, a twenty-eight-year-old Black laborer, and found a rock in his right hip pocket. His statement held Pringle responsible for what the other members of the crowd did after his arrest, "acts of force and violence committed to several persons and the property of others, in said vicinity." A handwritten note below the typewritten charge presents a different narrative, in which "Deft led others who smashed windows." The windows of the grocery store on the northwest corner of West 123rd Street and 7th Avenue were broken sometime during the disorder. A patrolman from the 28th Precinct arrested David Bragg for breaking that window; he may have been part of the crowd on the corner around 11.15 PM. The shoe repair store directly across 7th Avenue from the grocery store was also looted sometime during the disorder. But that looting likely came an hour or more after Naton arrested Pringle, the time when two other looted stores near the intersection were looted, Sarah Refkin's delicatessen at 2067 7th Avenue at 12:30 AM, and then Nicholas Peet's tailors store at 2063 7th Avenue at 1:30 AM. (Naton made two other arrests around this time, of John Vivien fifteen minutes earlier, and John King, forty-five minutes earlier, at 10.30 PM, both at the intersection of 7th Avenue and West 125th Street). Pringle's address was recorded in his examination in the Harlem Magistrates Court as 101 West 115th Street, southeast of where Naton arrested him, in an area with a mix of Hispanic and Black residents.

The 28th Precinct Police blotter recorded the charge against Pringle as burglary, with the note "Burglarized store during riot." He appeared only in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, among those charged with riot. That was the charge recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book when Pringle appeared in court on March 20. Magistrate Renaud held him until March 27. When he returned to court, Magistrate Ford sent Pringle to the grand jury. His court appearance was mentioned in stories in the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune, with the later newspaper reporting the charge against Pringle as malicious mischief. Although not recorded in the docket book, the handwritten note on the affidavit listed that charge, as well as riot. Almost two weeks later, on April 8, Pringle appeared before the grand jury, which transferred his case to the Court of Special Sessions, reducing the charges against him from felonies to misdemeanors. A week later the judges in that court convicted Pringle and suspended his sentence, according to the 28th Precinct Police blotter.
Claude Jones arrested At about 10:30 PM, Patrolman Walter MacKenzie told the Harlem Magistrates Court, he saw Claude Jones, a twenty-four-year-old Black musician, throw a brick that broke a window in Blumstein's department store at 230 West 125th Street. Then Jones allegedly shouted "in a loud voice 'Kill the cops, the dirty mother-fucking sons of bitches,' causing a large crowd to gather." By that time the large crowds that had been focused on 125th Street had broken into smaller groups, many of which scattered north and south up the avenues, but some groups remained. Ten minutes after windows were broken in Blumstein's store, William Ford allegedly threw a rock that broke a window at Kress' store several buildings to to the west, and then called on the people on the street to attack police, drawing a large crowd. Around the same time, a white man named Thomas Wijstem was hit by a rock in front of the W. T. Grant store immediately east of Blumstein's store, allegedly while being attacked by a group of Black men. Police arrested one man, Douglas Cornelius.

Patrolman MacKenzie appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court as the arresting officer of not just Jones but also the two other men arrested nearby around the same time, William Ford and Douglas Cornelius. It is not clear he actually made the arrests. In court MacKenzie stated that he had witnessed Ford and Jones breaking windows and inciting the crowd, but made no mention of arresting them (there are no details of the circumstances of the arrest of Cornelius). Police had established a headquarters in front of Kress' store, and officers from throughout the city had begun arriving there before 10:30 PM, so there were likely other officers in the area who could have made the arrests.

The address Jones gave when examined in the Harlem Magistrates Court, 170 West 121st Street, his home for only about two weeks, was four blocks south of Blumstein's store, at close enough to where the disorder began for him to have been among those drawn to 125th Street by the noise, crowds, or rumors. After reporting that police had identified Jones as "an ace trombonist in Fletcher Henderson's orchestra," the New York Amsterdam News published a story on April 6 in which the trombonist denied he was man arrested. The trombonist, now "connected with Cab Calloway's Band," had been out of the city on tour at the time of the disorder.

Jones appeared among those charged with inciting a riot in the list of those arrested during the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the list published in the New York Evening Journal. The same charge is recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter and the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, a consistency unusual for the men reported as both breaking windows and inciting crowds. When Jones appeared in court on March 20, Magistrate Renaud remanded him in custody. He was one of only eighteen of those arrested in the disorder to have a lawyer representing him listed in the court docket book. Only the lawyer's first name and initial, James W., are legible, together with his address, 200 West 135th Street, an office building in the heart of Harlem that housed the offices of many Black lawyers (both the other men arrested at same time, William Ford and Douglas Cornelius, had prominent Black lawyers recorded as representing them).

Returned to court a week later, Jones was held for the grand jury on bail of $1000 by Magistrate Ford, an appearance reported in the New York Herald Tribune and New York Times. Jones was to have appeared before the grand jury on April 8, the same day as William Ford, but Patrolman MacKenzie was not present. It was not until April 12 that the grand jury heard the case against Jones, deciding then to transfer him to the Court of Special Sessions, likely to be tried for the offenses written in a note on the Magistrates Court affidavit, both the misdemeanor forms of inciting a riot, and malicious mischief, an offense involving damage to property used in the prosecution of those who allegedly broke windows during the disorder (as the malicious mischief charge was not recorded in the docket book Jones is not categorized as being charged with that offense). Convicted, Jones received a suspended sentence on April 16, according to the 28th Precinct Police blotter.

Three days after his release, on April 19, Jones obtained a license to marry twenty-one-year-old Erma (or Emma) Harris, a marriage reported in the New York Age on May 4, 1935.
Elva Jacobs arrested 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 not fit with the allegation that Jacobs had broken a window, as the charge in that circumstance would have been malicious mischief. 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. Adamie was recorded in the docket book as the officer who arrested Courtney Marsh, 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, the charge of burglary 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, Ford set her bail at $1,500 according to the docket book. 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 her, suspended her sentence, and put her 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.)
Leon Mauraine arrested At 12:05 A.M., Officer Anthony Barbaro of the 25th Precinct arrested Leon Mauraine, a twenty-two-year-old Black window washer, and David Smith, a twenty-two-year-old Black clerk, in front of 322 Lenox Avenue. Barbaro had been standing on the corner of Lenox Avenue and 126th Street when he saw a group of people gather in front of the Rex Drug store at 318 Lenox Avenue, according to the statement he gave in the Harlem Magistrates Court. He then allegedly heard two of the men, Mauraine and Smith, say, "Com[e] on gang, here's two more windows, let's break them." Those men then threw stones at the store windows, breaking them, after which they ran north on Lenox Avenue. Barbaro chased them, catching and arresting both men two buildings north of the drug store. As the drug store was on the northeast corner of Lenox Avenue and West 126th Street, Barbaro must have been standing across 126th Street, on the southeast corner, as he would not have been able to hear the men or catch them so quickly from across the much wider Lenox Avenue. In the half hour after Barbaro arrested Mauraine and Smith, other police officers arrested two men for breaking windows near West 126th Street and Lenox Avenue, John Kennedy Jones at 333 Lenox Avenue and Bernard Smith at 317 Lenox Avenue. Multiple arrests by different officers indicates that a number of police were stationed at the intersection at that time. All three of the arresting officers came from precincts outside Harlem.

Mauraine had lived for the last nine months at 52 West 128th Street, two blocks north and a block east of the store, according to his examination in the Magistrates Court. He may have been drawn to Lenox Avenue by the noise of windows being broken earlier in the disorder. While both he and Smith could have thrown stone at the windows, as Barbaro stated, it is unlikely they said exactly the same words. It may be that only one of the them urged on the group, or that they expressed similar sentiments that the officer chose to report in the same words (The Home News story about the proceedings in the Harlem Magistrates Court reported they had said "Come on. Let's bust some more windows," a difference in wording from the affidavit likely produced by a reporter's difficulty hearing what was said in the courtroom). The list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal, did distinguish the men in a way Barbaro's affidavit did not. Mauraine was listed among those charged with inciting a riot and Smith among those charged with malicious mischief, an offense which involved damaging property used in other cases involving broken windows. However, that distinction is not replicated in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter or in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, which recorded both men as charged with inciting a riot. So too did the story in the Home News about the proceedings in the court, which did not mention that Mauraine or Smith had broken the store windows, only what they had been "overheard saying to companions." A note on the Magistrates Court affidavit did, however, include malicious mischief alongside three sections of the riot law, indicating that both men faced both charges at some point in their prosecution.

When Mauraine, and Smith, appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Magistrate Renaud held them for the grand jury, on bail of $1000. A week later both men appeared before the grand jury, which transferred them to the Court of Special Sessions for trial. It is likely that the note on the Magistrates Court affidavit was the charges they faced in that court, malicious mischief (as the malicious mischief charge is not recorded in the docket book Mauraine is not categorized as being charged with that offense) and the three misdemeanor forms of inciting a riot. Convicted in that court, on April 2, Mauraine, and Smith, received suspended sentences, according to the 28th Precinct Police Blotter.
Bernard Smith arrested 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.
Arthur Killen arrested Officer Platt of the 40th Precinct arrested Arthur Killen, a forty-three-year-old Black man, allegedly "after he threw a stone through the window" of the Truss Shop at 2136 7th Avenue, according to a Home News story. After the arrest, that story went on, police found an "open knife" in his possession. The newspaper story did not mention when Platt arrested Killen. Groups from 125th Street had begun to move north on 7th Avenue around 8:30 PM, and some broke store windows as they went. However, police were not deployed on these blocks of 7th Avenue until around 9:30 PM. Patrolman Edward Doran arrested Leroy Brown for breaking windows a block further north on the other side of 7th Avenue at 9:45 PM. Killen was likely arrested around that time. An arrest later, at 10:10 PM, a block north on the same side of 7th Avenue as Killen's arrest, was of an alleged looter. The shift from breaking windows to taking goods generally came sometime after store windows had been broken, so that arrest suggested that the behavior of the crowd had changed — or at least who police sought to arrest had changed. Certainly, there was no evidence of arrests for breaking windows in this area after 10:00 PM, making it unlikely Killen was arrested later in the disorder.

Killen lived at 277 West 127th Street, at the western end of the block that intersected with 7th Avenue near the Truss Shop. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, charged with both malicious mischief and possession of a knife. Magistrate Renaud transferred Killen to the Court of Special Sessions, and held him on bail of $500 for each charge. Renaud's decision indicated that the value of the damage to the window was not more than $250, the level required for the charge of malicious mischief to be a felony, and that Killen did not have a previous conviction, which would have made possession of the knife a felony. The outcome of his prosecutions are unknown.

A story in the Home News about Killen's appearance in the Magistrates Court was the only evidence that connected him to 2136 7th Avenue. Killen appeared in lists of those arrested during the disorder, with the charges against him variously recorded as inciting a riot in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, disorderly conduct in the New York American, "concealed weapons" in the Daily News, and disorderly conduct and possession of a weapon in the list in the New York Evening Journal. Those inconsistencies likely resulted from Killen being charged with more than one offense, which was unusual for those arrested during the disorder. Given that he appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court, Killen should have been in the 28th Precinct Police blotter, which would have included information on the outcome of his prosecution. However, Killen was missing from that record.

The Daily News identified Killen as a white man, but the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book recorded him as a Black man. The Daily News misidentified several of those arrested as white.
Henry Stewart arrested Sometime during the disorder, Officer Libman of the 32nd Precinct arrested Henry Stewart, a thirty-three-year-old Black man, for allegedly having thrown a bottle through a window in the meat market at 2422 8th Avenue, a story in the Home News reported. There was no information on the time or circumstances of the arrest. The arrest may have taken place around 10:30 PM, when the disorder intensified and crowds spread from 125th Street along 8th Avenue, but more likely occurred later, around 11:00 PM, given how far north the store was located. Libman also appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court as the arresting officer of another man, Warren Johnson, and two women, Louise Brown and Rose Murrell, who, with Stewart, had all been arrested at 8th Avenue and West 127th Street, according to a story in the Daily Mirror. The broken window in 2422 8th Avenue was the northern-most report of disorder on 8th Avenue, on the block between 130th and 131st Streets, two and half blocks north of where the story reported Stewart's arrest. While the grocery store whose window Murell allegedly broke was located at that intersection, on the southeast corner of 127th Street, the location of Brown and Johnson's alleged offenses are not mentioned in any sources. The intersection may have been where police were stationed and where those arrested were initially brought, rather than the site of their arrest. The other reported broken windows and looting on 8th Avenue were south of 128th Street. Stewart lived at 268 West 132nd Street, east of 8th Avenue a block and a half north of the meat market, 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.

Henry Stewart 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 the Daily News, and in a story in the Daily Mirror. However, malicious mischief was the charge recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book on March 20, when Stewart appeared in court, and reported in the Home News story about those proceedings. 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. The others arrested by Libman were all charged with malicious mischief, although Brown and Johnson later had that charge reduced to disorderly conduct, indicating a lack of evidence they had broken windows. Magistrate Renaud transferred Stewart to the Court of Special Sessions and set bail at $500. That decision meant that the value of the damage to the building was not more than $250, the level required for the charge to be a felony. On March 25, the judges in that court discharged Stewart, according to the 28th Precinct police blotter. He was the only one of the six individuals tried for malicious mischief known to have been released (the outcome of three trials is unknown). Evidently police could not prove that Stewart had been a participant in the disorder rather than a spectator.
Truss shop windows broken Windows were broken in Fred Noble's Truss Shop at 2136 7th Avenue sometime during the disorder. Just south of the intersection with West 127th Street, the store was in the midst of the three-block section of 7th Avenue north of West 125th Street that saw multiple reported broken windows and looting, and three assaults on whites, including both James Wrigley and a Fifth Avenue Coach Company bus being hit by objects. Officer Platt's arrest of Arthur Killen for allegedly breaking windows in the Truss Shop was the only arrest that can be identified as having occurred in this area during the disorder. When police searched Killen they found an "open knife" in his possession, according to a Home News story.

A forty-three-year-old Black man, Killen lived at 277 West 127th Street, at the western end of the block that intersected with 7th Avenue near the Truss Shop. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, charged with both malicious mischief and possession of a knife. Magistrate Renaud transferred Killen to the Court of Special Sessions, and held him on bail of $500. The outcome of his prosecution is unknown.

A story in the Home News about his appearance in the Magistrates Court, for allegedly throwing a stone through a window, is the only evidence connecting Killen to 2136 7th Avenue, which it identified as a "surgical instrument store." The MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935 identified the business as a "Truss Shop;" a truss is a surgical appliance, typically used by hernia patients.

A white-owned "Truss Shop" is recorded at 2136 7th Avenue, with the owner identified as Noble, in the MCCH business survey. In the Tax Department photograph from sometime between 1939 and 1941, the name of the business at that address is not visible.
Temple Grill & Restaurant windows broken Just after midnight, windows in the Temple Grill & Restaurant at 317 Lenox Avenue were broken. 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 business. Then, about 12:15 AM, he allegedly heard Bernard Smith, a thirty-nine-year-old Black man shout to the group, "We will get this 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."

Located in the block between 125th and 126th Streets, the restaurant was in an area where multiple stores were reported as looted or damaged, with particularly extensive damage to both George Chronis' restaurant a building further north on the southwest corner of West 126th Street and Harry Piskin's laundry next to it on West 126th Street. Across the street, ten minutes before Tait observed the attack on the restaurant, another officer had arrested two other men who, like Smith, had allegedly urged another group to attack a drug store. By the time Chronis arrived at his restaurant at 1 AM it had been "completely demolished," according to a story in the New York World-Telegram.

Bernard Smith was the last person to appear in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, where he 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 $1000 for the second, and then again on March 26, when Magistrate Ford sent him to grand jury on the charge of riot. Prosecutors reduced the charge of malicious mischief to disorderly conduct, of which Magistrate Ford found him guilty and sentenced him to five days in the Workhouse. A week later Smith appeared before the grand jury, which dismissed the riot charge.

Although the business Smith allegedly attacked is not named in the Magistrates Court affidavit or the Home News story on Smith's first appearance in the Harlem Magistrates Court, an advertisement for the "Temple Grill Bar and Restaurant" at 317 Lenox Avenue appeared in the New York Age on March 9, 1935, just ten days before the disorder. It was still in business when the MCCH business survey was taken in the second half of 1935, identified as a white-owned business (the advertisement in 1935 identified Phillip Portoghese as the proprietor). A storefront of the kind that would fit a bar and restaurant is visible in the Tax Department photograph but the signage is not legible, so whether the business survived until 1939-1941 is unknown.
Charles Wright arrested Officer Phillips of the 28th Squad arrested Charles Wright, together with William Norris, for allegedly having "thrown an ashcan through the window" of the Lokos Clothes store at 2275 8th Avenue, according to a story in the Home News. There were no details of the time or circumstances of the arrests. The store was located just north of West 122nd Street, on the west side of 8th Avenue. Across the street, at 2275 8th Avenue, Max Newman was assaulted as he closed his grocery store at 10:30 PM. The men's arrest likely happened around the same time. Violence had begun intensifying away from 125th Street around half an hour earlier as more people left 125th Street. Sufficient police had arrived at 125th Street for some to be deployed on the avenues in response to that change. Phillips was likely among the first officers to arrive this far south on 8th Avenue. The only other reported incident around this intersection was not until after midnight, when someone on the street threw a rock that hit Patrolman Harry Whittington as he traveled on an emergency truck. That was too late for groups to be focused on breaking windows.

Wright, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, was recorded as having "no home" in the 28th Precinct police blotter and the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, but with an address in Philadelphia in the Home News. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with malicious mischief. Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions for trial, and held him on bail of $500 (indicating that the value of the damage to the building was not more than $250, the level required for the charge to be a felony). The judges convicted him and on April 1st sentenced him to three months in the Workhouse. The prosecution of Norris followed the same process, with the same result. Phillips also arrested Arthur Davis, Herbert Hunter, and Elizabeth Tai.

Pauline Lokos of 2275 8th Avenue was identified n the Home News as the owner of the store whose windows Wright allegedly broke. He was also recorded as the complainant in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book when he appeared in court on March 20. Wright appeared in the lists of those arrested during the disorder published in Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal, but the two lists differed in the charge made against him. The Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide included him among those charged with burglary, while the New York Evening Journal listed the charge against Wright as inciting a riot. The charge recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter was inciting a riot. In the Magistrates Court, the charge made was malicious mischief, recorded in the docket book and reported in the Home News. That change reflected a general practice of replacing the initial charge of riot made at the time of an arrest with a more specific charge that fit what police officers alleged an individual had done.
Rose Murrell arrested Sometime during the disorder, Officer Libman of the 32nd Precinct arrested Rose Murrell, a nineteen-year-old Black woman, for allegedly having "stoned a store window," in the grocery store at 2366 8th Avenue, a story in the Home News reported. There is no information on the time or circumstances of the arrest. Libman also appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court as the arresting officer of another woman, Louise Brown and two men, Henry Stewart and Warren Johnson, who, with Murrell, had all been arrested at 8th Avenue and West 127th Street, according to a story in the Daily Mirror. While the grocery store was located at this intersection, on the southeast corner of 127th Street, the location of Brown and Johnson's alleged offenses are not mentioned in any sources, and the store in which 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.

The grocery store at 2336 8th Avenue was in the midst of the blocks of 8th Avenue on which there are reports of violence and police making arrests during the disorder: the arrest of James Hayes for allegedly looting the Danbury Hat store at 2334 8th Avenue near 125th Street; the arrest of Emmett Williams and Theodore Hughes for allegedly breaking windows and looting Frendel's meat market three buildings south at 2360 8th Avenue; the arrest of Thomas Babbitt for allegedly taking soap from Thomas Drug store at 2374 8th Avenue, across 127th Street; and at the very end of the disorder, the arrest of Jean Jacquelin at 128th Street for allegedly looting and police shooting and killing James Thompson across 8th Avenue from the store. Murrell lived at 260 West 126th Street, just east of 8th Avenue a block south of the grocery store, 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.

Rose Murrell is recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter as charged with inciting a riot. That charge is reported in a list in the Daily News and a story in the Daily Mirror. However, the list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the list published in the New York Evening Journal, include her among those charged with malicious mischief, an offense involving damage to property used in the prosecution of individuals arrested for allegedly breaking windows during the disorder. That was the charge recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book on March 20, when Murrell appeared in court, and reported in the Home News story about those proceedings. 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. Magistrate Renaud transferred Murrell to the Court of Special Sessions, and set bail at $500, indicating that the value of the damage to the building was not more than $250, the level required for the charge to be a felony. Almost two weeks later, on April 1st, the judges in that court convicted Murrell, and sentenced her to one month in the Workhouse, according to the 28th Precinct Police blotter.

Murell's name is spelled in different ways in the sources: as Murrell in the 28th Precinct Police blotter and Harlem Magistrates Court docket, book, and the Daily News, New York Evening Journal; as Murelle in the Daily Mirror; as Murell in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide; and as Morrell in the Home News.
William Norris arrested Officer Phillips of the 28th Squad arrested William Norris, together with Charles Wright, for allegedly having "thrown an ashcan through the window" of the Lokos Clothes store at 2275 8th Avenue, according to a story in the Home News. There are no details of the time or circumstances of the arrests. The store was located just north of West 122nd Street, on the west side of 8th Avenue. Across the street, at 2275 8th Avenue, Max Newman was assaulted as he closed his grocery store at 10:30 PM. The men's arrest likely happened around the same time. Violence had begun intensifying away from 125th Street around half an hour earlier the store as more people left 125th Street. Sufficient police had arrived at the Kress store for some to be deployed on the avenues in response to that change. Phillips was likely among the first officers to arrive this far south on 8th Avenue. The only other reported incident around this intersection was not until after midnight, when someone on the street threw a rock that hit Patrolman Harry Whittington as he traveled on an Emergency truck. That was too late for groups to be focused on breaking windows.

Norris, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, was recorded as residing at 201 West 122nd Street in all the records of his arrest, only a block east of the clothing store. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with malicious mischief. Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions for trial, and held him on bail of $500. His decision indicated that the value of the damage to the building was less than the $250 required for the charge to be a felony. The judges in the Court of Special Sessions convicted him, and on April 1st sentenced him to three months in the Workhouse. The prosecution of Wright followed the same process and brought the same result. Phillips was also the arresting officer of three other individuals, Arthur Davis, Herbert Hunter and Elizabeth Tai.

Pauline Lokos of 2275 8th Avenue was identified as the owner of the store whose windows Norris allegedly broke in the Home News and recorded as the complainant in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book when he appeared in court on March 20. Norris appeared in the lists of those arrested during the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide and in the New York Evening Journal, but the two lists differed in the charge made against him. The Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide included him among those charged with burglary, while the New York Evening Journal and the 28th Precinct Police blotter recorded the charge as inciting a riot. That offense appeared to be the charge initially made against many of those arrested during the disorder. The charge malicious mischief made in the Magistrates Court was recorded in the docket book and reported in the Home News. That change reflected a general practice of replacing the initial charge of riot made at the time of an arrest with a more specific charge that fitted what police officers alleged an individual had done.
Emmet Williams arrested Sometime during the disorder, Officer Carrington of the 32nd Precinct arrested Emmet Williams, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, for allegedly breaking a window in Frendel's meat market at 2360 8th Avenue. There are no sources that clearly describe what Williams allegedly did. He is identified as "breaking window" in a list in the New York American, which fits the charge made against him in the Harlem Magistrates Court, malicious mischief. That offense involved damage to property, and all those arrested during the disorder who faced that charge had allegedly broken windows. Leo Halberg, a butcher employed in the meat market is recorded as the complainant against Williams in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, by "marks that refer to his details in the row above, the record of the appearance of Theodore Hughes." The clerk used the same marks to identify Carrington as the arresting officer. He arrested Hughes, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, for allegedly taking two pieces of salt pork from the broken window of the meat market, according to a story in the New York Herald Tribune and a list in the New York American. The latter source specified that Hughes had taken the pork from an already broken window; Williams likely allegedly broke the window.

The home address recorded for Williams in the docket book, 242 West 127th Street, was only half a block west of 8th Avenue. The meat market was midway between 127th and 126th Streets, on the east side of 8th Avenue. He was likely drawn to the area by the multiple incidents of attacks on windows, looting, and violence reported there during the disorder: the arrest of James Hayes for allegedly looting the Danbury Hat store at 2334 8th Avenue near 125th Street; the arrest of Rose Murrell for breaking windows in a grocery store three buildings to the north, on the corner of 127th Street; the arrest of Thomas Babbitt for taking soap from Thomas Drug store a block north; and at the very end of the disorder, the arrest of Jean Jacquelin at 128th Street for looting and police shooting and killing James Thompson across the street from the store.

Williams appears in the list of those charged with inciting a riot published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide. A list published in the Daily News, which misreported his name as "Emmet Hughes" and his race as white, listed the charge against him as disorderly conduct. In the court docket book, Williams was recorded as Black. Arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, directly after Hughes, the charge against Williams was malicious mischief. Several of the other people arrested during the disorder charged with breaking windows likewise were reported as charged with inciting a riot or disorderly conduct, but were then charged with malicious mischief in court. Like Theodore Hughes, Magistrate Renaud sent him to the Court of Special Sessions and held him on bail of $500 (indicating that the value of the damage to the building was not more than $250, the level required for the charge to be a felony). There is also no evidence of the outcome of his trial. Williams and Hughes are two of the few of those who appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court not mentioned in the Home News story on March 21 that provides brief details of the charges against those arrested in the disorder. Given the location of the market, Williams and Hughes should have been taken to the 28th Precinct and appear in their blotter, but they do not. Carrington may have instead taken them to his own precinct, the 32nd, on West 135th Street.
Grocery store window broken Sometime during the disorder, the windows of the grocery store at 2366 8th Avenue, on the southeast corner of 127th Street, were broken. Officer Libman of the 32nd Precinct arrested Rose Murrell, a nineteen-year-old Black woman, for allegedly having "stoned a store window," a story in the Home News reported. There is no information on the time or circumstances of the arrest. Libman also appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court as the arresting officer of another woman, Louise Brown, and two men, Henry Stewart and Warren Johnson, who, with Murrell, had all been arrested at 8th Avenue and West 127th Street, according to a story in the Daily Mirror. The store was in the midst of the blocks of 8th Avenue on which there are reports of violence and police making arrests during the disorder: the arrest of James Hayes for allegedly looting the Danbury Hat store at 2334 8th Avenue near 125th Street; the arrest of Emmett Williams and Theodore Hughes for allegedly breaking windows and looting Frendel's meat market three buildings south at 2360 8th Avenue; the arrest of Thomas Babbitt for allegedly taking soap from Thomas Drug store at 2374 8th Avenue, just across 127th Street; and at the very end of the disorder, the arrest of Jean Jacquelin at 128th Street for allegedly looting and police shooting and killing James Thompson across 8th Avenue from the store.

Rose Murrell appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with malicious mischief, an offense involving damage to property used in the prosecution of individuals arrested for allegedly breaking windows during the disorder. Magistrate Renaud transferred her to the Court of Special Sessions, and set bail at $500. Almost two weeks later, on April 1st, the judges in that court convicted Murrell, and sentenced her to one month in the Workhouse, according to the 28th Precinct police blotter.

A white-owned grocery store was recorded at 2366 8th Avenue in the MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935. The Tax Department photograph from 1939–1941 shows a grocery store at that address.
Willow Cafeteria windows broken 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.
Louise Brown arrested 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.
David Smith arrested At 12:05 A.M., Officer Anthony Barbaro of the 25th Precinct arrested David Smith, a twenty-two-year-old Black clerk, and Leon Mauraine, a twenty-two-year-old Black window washer, in front of 322 Lenox Avenue. Barbaro had been standing on the corner of Lenox Avenue and 126th Street when he saw a group of people gather in front of the Rex Drug store at 318 Lenox Avenue, according to the statement he gave in the Harlem Magistrates Court. He then allegedly heard two of the men, Smith and Mauraine, say, "Com[e] on gang, here's two more windows, let's break them." Those men then threw stones at the store windows, breaking them, after which they ran north on Lenox Avenue. Barbaro chased them, catching and arresting both men two buildings north of the drug store. As the drug store was on the northeast corner of Lenox Avenue and West 126th Street, Barbaro must have been standing across 126th Street, on the southeast corner, as he would not have been able to hear the men or catch them so quickly from across the much wider Lenox Avenue. In the half hour after Barbaro arrested Smith and Mauraine, other police officers arrested two men for breaking windows near West 126th Street and Lenox Avenue, John Kennedy Jones at 333 Lenox Avenue and Bernard Smith at 317 Lenox Avenue. Multiple arrests by different officers indicates that a number of police were stationed at the intersection at that time. All three of the arresting officers came from precincts outside Harlem.

Smith had lived for the last fourteen months at 2094 5th Avenue, three blocks north and a block east of the store, according to his examination in the Magistrates Court. He may have been drawn to Lenox Avenue by the noise of windows being broken earlier in the disorder. While both he and Mauraine could have thrown stones at the windows, as Barbaro stated, it is unlikely they said exactly the same words. It may be that only one of the them urged on the group, or that they expressed similar sentiments that the officer chose to report in the same words. (The Home News story about the proceedings in the Harlem Magistrates Court reported they had said "Come on. Let's bust some more windows," a difference in wording from the affidavit likely produced by a reporter's difficulty hearing what was said in the courtroom.) The list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal, did distinguish the men in a way Barbaro's affidavit did not. Smith was listed among those charged with malicious mischief, an offense that involved damaging property used in other cases involving broken windows, and Mauraine among those charged with inciting a riot. However, that distinction is not replicated in the 28th Precinct police blotter or in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, which recorded both men as charged with inciting a riot. So too did the story in the Home News about the proceedings in the court, which did not mention that Smith or Mauraine had broken the store windows, only what they had been "overheard saying to companions." A note on the Magistrates Court affidavit did, however, include malicious mischief alongside three sections of the riot law, indicating that both men faced both charges at some point in their prosecution.

When Smith and Mauraine appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Magistrate Renaud held them for the grand jury, on bail of $1,000. A week later both men appeared before the grand jury, which transferred them to the Court of Special Sessions for trial. It is likely that the note on the Magistrates Court affidavit was the charges they faced in that court, malicious mischief (as the malicious mischief charge is not recorded in the docket book Smith was not categorized as being charged with that offense) and the three misdemeanor forms of inciting a riot. Convicted in that court, on April 2, Smith, and Mauraine, received suspended sentences, according to the 28th Precinct police blotter.
William Jones arrested Sometime during the disorder, Patrolman Murphy of the 28th Precinct arrested William Jones, a twenty-five-year-old Black man. There is no information on Jones' alleged offense, or the time or circumstances of the arrest. He was charged with 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, so Jones has been treated as having been arrested on that charge, even though there are no details of his alleged act.

William Jones is recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter as charged with inciting a riot. That charge is reported in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide. 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 Jones to malicious mischief by the time he appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20. Magistrate Renaud held Brown in custody until March 22, on bail of $1000. When he was returned to court, the charge against Jones was reduced to a misdemeanor, "Red. to Misd." written above the original charge in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book. That change would have reflected information on the value of the window that Jones allegedly broke: it had to be more than $250 for Jones to be charged with felony malicious mischief. Magistrate Ford then transferred Jones to the Court of Special Sessions for trial. On March 28 the three judges of that court convicted Jones, and gave him a suspended sentence, according to the 28th Precinct Police blotter. The others convicted of malicious mischief, three men and one woman, received terms of one month or three months in the workhouse.
David Terry arrested 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.
Jackie Ford arrested Early on March 22, Officer Mckenna of the 28th Precinct arrested Jackie Ford, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, for allegedly being one of a group who broke windows in Julia Cureti's restaurant at 142 Lenox Avenue. Where that arrest took place is unknown. While police made other arrests after the disorder at the homes of those they arrested, Ford was recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book as having "no home." Stories about Ford's appearance in court that same day in the New York Post, New York World-Telegram and La Prensa mention only that Cureti had identified Ford as one of those she saw break windows. There was no information on how she came to identify Ford.

As Ford was arrested two days after the disorder, he did not appear in the transcript of the 28th Precinct Police blotter or lists of those arrested published on March 20. In the Harlem Magistrates Court, Ford was charged with malicious mischief, the offense used in cases in which windows were broken. Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions and held him on bail of $500, indicating that the value of the damage to the building was not more than $250, the level required for the charge to be a felony. There was no information found on the outcome of the prosecution.
Julius Hightower arrested 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.
Warren Johnson arrested 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.
Meat market window broken Sometime during the disorder, a store window in the meat market at 2422 8th Avenue was broken. Officer Libman of the 32nd Precinct arrested Henry Stewart, a thirty-three-year-old Black man, for allegedly having thrown a bottle through the window, a story in the Home News reported. There is no information on the time or circumstances of the arrest. Libman also appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court as the arresting officer of another man, Warren Johnson, and two women, Louise Brown and Rose Murrell , who, with Stewart, had all been arrested at 8th Avenue and West 127th Street, according to a story in the Daily Mirror. The broken window was the northern-most report of disorder on 8th Avenue, on the block between 130th and 131st Streets. The other reported broken windows and looting were south of 128th Street.

Henry Stewart appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with malicious mischief, an offense involving damage to property used in the prosecution of individuals arrested for allegedly breaking windows during the disorder. Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions, and set bail at $500. On March 25, the judges in that court discharged Stewart, according to the 28th Precinct Police blotter.

A white-owned meat market is recorded at 2422 8th Avenue in the MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935. The nature of the business is not visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941.

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