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

Patrolman Harry Whittington assaulted

Just after midnight, Patrolman Harry Whittington, a thirty-five-year-old white member of Emergency Squad 9 (a riot squad) was hit by a rock on 8th Avenue. The Daily Mirror provided the most details of the assault, reporting that the attack came as he rode on an emergency truck at 123rd Street. Only Whittington and one other officer are reported as being assaulted after crowds moved away from 125th Street around 10PM; the other seven assaults in the initial disorder around Kress’ store.  

After 10 PM, when the crowd moved away from 125th Street, police used radio cars and emergency trucks to respond to violence and to try to control crowds. Cars and buses driven by whites were also targets of rocks thrown by black crowds throughout the disorder, but those attacks took place on 7th Avenue, the major route to the Bronx and northern neighborhoods, not the less travelled 8th Avenue. The one other police vehicle reported as being hit by rocks, a car driven by Detective Frank Lenahan, was also attacked on “a riotous section of Eighth Avenue,” at an unspecified time. The windows of the car were smashed but Lenahan was not injured. Whittington did not have windows to shield him from missiles. Most of the members of an emergency squad traveled on the outside of the vehicle.

As well as the detail that Whittington was assaulted while riding on an emergency truck, the Daily Mirror described the attack as a “sniping.”

Whittington appeared in lists of the injured published by the New York American (March 20 & 21), Home News, New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, New York Evening Journal and New York Post, as well as the story published in the Daily Mirror. Although the New York American and the New York Herald Tribune reported he was treated at Harlem Hospital, he does not appear in either the list of admissions or ambulance call-outs.  The Home News and New York Evening Journal described his injuries simply as lacerations; the other lists specified a head injury.

 

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