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

Oscar Leacock arrested

Officer Astel of the 25th Precinct arrested Oscar Leacock, a twenty-year-old Brazilian laborer, together with John Henry, a sixteen-year-old Black student, at Lenox Avenue and 126th Street around 2:15 AM. There was no mention of what prompted Astel to stop the men. By this time the crowds that had been on the street attacking businesses or watching the disorder had thinned and more police were stationed on the corners of Lenox Avenue north of West 125th Street. Astel reported that he found that the men had "a quantity of jewelry," which when questioned they admitted taking from Benjamin Zelvin's store at 372 Lenox Avenue. The officer then had the men take him to the store three blocks to the north. They found all the windows broken. Zelvin had closed the business around 11:00 PM but remained there until police he had called to protect the store arrived at 11:30 PM. Those officers had evidently not remained at the jewelry store. Zelvin did not return from his home in Brooklyn until opening time that morning.

Leacock and Henry were two of nine men known to have been arrested away from the stores they allegedly looted, one third (9 of 27) of the arrests for which that information is known (27 of 60).

Leacock lived at 39 West 118th Street near 5th Avenue. Henry lived at the opposite end of the same street, at 313 West 118th Street, near 8th Avenue. Henry was the youngest person arrested during the disorder. There was no indication of how he and Henry came to be together on March 19. Leacock lived in an area that housed a mix of Black and Spanish-speaking residents. In the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book he was recorded as Black; in his examination in the court he gave his birthplace as Brazil, making him one of the very few among those arrested who was not identified as born in the United States or the West Indies (the transcription of the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded his birthplace as the United States, but also misspelled his name as Ossor Leasode).



Zelvin later identified the jewelry police allegedly found on the men as having come from his store. In the charge against Leacock and Henry, the value of the jewelry was initially typed as $100, but then struck out and $75 handwritten in its place. The grand jury reduced the felony burglary charge against the men to a misdemeanor. Their decision indicated the lack of evidence that the men had broken into the store that a charge of burglary required. Given that they had been arrested with merchandise in their possession, the grand jury likely instead charged them with petit larceny; a felony larceny charge was not an option as the jewelry they had allegedly taken was worth less than $100. Zelvin appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 21 to charge one additional man with burglary, a thirty-one-year-old Black man named Henry Goodwin. That charge was also reduced to petit larceny, indicating the same lack of evidence he had broken into the store and that he too had allegedly taken jewelry worth less than $100.

There were no details of Leacock's alleged offense published in the press. Leacock and Henry appeared among those charged with burglary only in the two most comprehensive lists of those arrested, published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the New York Evening Journal. The details were in the Magistrate Court affidavit contained in Leacock's district attorney's case file. Although arrested together, the men appeared in the Harlem Magistrate Court at different times. Leacock was arraigned on March 20 with most of those arrested during the disorder. Henry was not arraigned until the next day. Despite Officer Astel's report that the men had confessed at the time of their arrest, they pled not guilty in court. Leacock was one of only eighteen of those arrested in the disorder represented by a lawyer, in his case H. Hirsch of 9 Sylvan Place. No information could be found on the lawyer. Both men appeared again on March 22, when the magistrate sent them to the grand jury. It was not until April 2 that the grand jury heard their case and sent both men to the Court of Special Sessions. The 28th Precinct police blotter was the only source that recorded that the judges in that court found both men guilty, Leacock on April 18 and Henry on April 17. The judges suspended Leacock's sentence, but sent Henry to the House of Refuge, a juvenile reformatory on Randalls Island (which would close less than a month later, on May 11).

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