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

On the streets

Viewed at the granular level, the disorder on the streets of Harlem that began not long after 6:00 PM in the frustrated crowds on 125th Street in front of the Kress store trying to find out what had happened there earlier in the afternoon spread and changed in character over a period of sixteen hours. Rather than a large crowd or even several crowds, moving through the neighborhood, the disorder involved many smaller groups who appeared and dispersed, joining spectators drawn to the streets by the noise of breaking glass, sirens from radio cars, ambulances and fire trucks, gunshots, and shouting. Early in the disorder, the targets of those groups were the windows of white-owned businesses. As police slowly established a cordon around the block of 125th Street containing the Kress store, using batons and mounted police to clear the sidewalks and corners, people began to move up and down 8th Avenue and 7th Avenue. More windows were broken on those streets, and then further east on 125th Street and on Lenox Avenue, with objects also thrown at white men and women in those businesses and on the blocks around 125th Street, and others beaten by groups of men.

Even as reinforcements led police to expand their presence beyond 125th Street, they still lacked the numbers to guard the damaged stores as they had earlier on the block of 125th Street around the Kress store or to move crowds off the streets. Individuals began to enter stores through the broken windows to take merchandise, often breaking more windows and doing further damage in the process. Police responded to the increased looting by more often firing their weapons than earlier in the disorder, often into crowds as they ran from nearby corners or patrolling radio cars and riot trucks, even as the large numbers of bystanders and passersby made it difficult to identify those responsible for thefts and violence. Attacks on white men and women continued alongside the intensifying attacks on property, with incidents of violence reaching as far south as 116th Street, where Puerto Rican-owned businesses were the targets, and north of 135th Street, where more of the businesses were Black-owned. After midnight, Lenox Avenue saw the greatest concentration of violence and looting. The crowds on the street began to disperse after 2:30 AM, athough isolated outbreaks of looting and violence continued for another three hours.

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