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

Patrolman Michael Kelly assaulted

Around 7 PM, Patrolman Michael Kelly was hit on the right leg by rock at the rear of Kress’ store on 124th Street. A thirty-year-old white officer from the West 123rd station assigned to a radio car, he was the second of six officers assaulted in efforts to control the crowds around the store at the beginning of the disorder. Although police had struggled with crowds earlier on 125th Street, where Patrolman Irwin Young was assaulted making an arrest at the very beginning of the disorder, more assaults did not come until the crowd moved to 124th Street in response to the appearance of a hearse they assumed had come for the body of the boy rumored to have been killed in the store. This street had a narrower roadway and pavements than 125th Street, making officers easier to target with objects thrown from roofs as well as the street level. At least one other officer, Detective Charles Foley, was hit by objects on 124th Street around this time, and three other officers would be assaulted in the area around 125th Street before 10.30 PM, all but one hit by objects.

According to the hospital report of the ambulance call-out, the injury to Kelly’s leg was serious enough that he was taken to Harlem Hospital for an x-ray and observation. The list of the injured in the New York American (March 20 & 21) and New York Herald Tribune, and the story in the New York Times followed that information, while the lists in the Home News and New York Evening Journal reported the injury as a sprain without noting that he was taken to the hospital. The Daily Mirror, and lists in the New York Daily News and New York Post replaced the injury to the leg with a more dramatic head injury. Only the hospital record specified the location of the assault, although stories in the New York Times and New York Age associated the assault with events at the rear of Kress’ store.

No one was arrested for assaulting Kelly, as was the case in seven of the nine assaults on police.


 

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