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• 1 2021-04-26T21:26:03+00:00 Mario Pravia's candy store looted 26 plain 2023-10-03T18:34:20+00:00 Around 11.30 PM, Mario Pravia and his wife Gertrude were in their candy store at 1953 7th Avenue when a group of around five people on the street outside began throwing stones at the store window. Crowds had started to move down 7th Avenue from 125th Street around 10.00 PM, reportedly attacking whites and stores before and and they continued to do so after the stones were thrown at the store window. Why the Pravias were in their store was not mentioned in the sources. The store was unlikely to have been open that late, but they may have remained inside after closing the store when they saw the crowds begin to gather. In 1942, when he registered for the draft, they lived nearby at 126 West 119th Street, but he no longer worked at the store.
  
  When the store window shattered, members of the crowd began to take goods from the window display. Officer Harmon of the 18th Division witnessed the attack on the store, and reported seeing Amie Taylor, a twenty-one-year-old Black butcher, throw a stone and reach into the window to take something. Taylor lived south of the store, at 1800 7th Avenue, so may not have been part of the crowd that came from 125th Street. He was the only member of the group in front of the store arrested, despite at least one other police officer being at the scene, Detective Harry Wolf of the 28th Precinct, listed as a witness on the Magistrates Court affidavit and an arresting officer with Harmon on Taylor's criminal record. The New York Evening Journal identified a different officer as making the arrest, Deputy Chief Inspector John Ryan. In a vignette within the paper’s narrative of the disorder, that senior officer observed the attack on the store while driving to 125th Street. He pulled over and attempted to round up the thieves in “a terrific battle”  from which “Ryan emerged...with Amie Taylor, 21, as his prisoner.” No other sources support that account.
  
  Harmon allegedly found eighteen packets of chewing gum, valued at 3 cents each, in Taylor’s possession. Struck out information on the Magistrates Court affidavit suggested $200 worth of merchandise was stolen from Pravia’s store. Pravia appeared to have remained in business despite those losses, perhaps because he had insurance, although that would have been unusual for such a small-scale business. The MCCH business survey identified a white-owned business operating at 1953 7th Avenue in the second half of 1935, although it was categorized as a stationary store. Pravia, born in Uruguay in 1899, had arrived in New York City from Chile in 1925, and married his German-born wife Gertrude in 1929. His naturalization petition identified him as white. While the building had Black residents, it was located just a block north of an area populated by Spanish speaking residents. A business advertising candy and other merchandise also appeared in the tax photograph of the building taken sometime between 1939 and 1941. But by 1942, whatever business was at 1953 7th Avenue, Pravia was not its owner. He was working as a butcher, according to his naturalization petition, and his draft registration records his place of employment as a hotel in East Orange, New Jersey.
  
  Taylor appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, when Magistrate Renaud remanded him until March 22. When he appeared in court again, Renaud sent him to the grand jury. They transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions. The Police Blotter recorded that the judges in that court acquitted Taylor. The sources are silent on what alternative account of events Taylor offered, but others arrested in the disorder claimed to have been bystanders mistakenly grabbed by police trying to pick offenders out of crowds.
   
• 1 2021-06-01T01:41:16+00:00 Nicholas Peet's tailor's store looted 17 plain 2023-08-19T14:41:11+00:00 Around 1:30 AM, Detective George Booker allegedly saw Horace Fowler, a thirty-two-year-old Black laborer, break the window of Nicholas Peet's tailor's shop at 2063 7th Avenue, reach inside, and take several articles of clothing. In the Magistrate's Court affidavit, Booker described Fowler breaking the window with a club. Booker told a Probation Department officer that he saw Fowler break the window "by throwing a missile through it." Fowler denied "breaking the window or knowing how it was broken," according to the Probation officer. However, Fowler did admit stealing the clothing in his possession when Booker arrested him, a man's suit and a lady's coat, valued at $8.25 in the affidavit, but at $25 by Peet in the Probation Department investigation.
  
  Peet put his total losses during the disorder at $452.25 in secondhand suits, coats and pants, and an addition $133 worth of suits, overcoats, women's coats and dresses belonging to customers, according to the Probation Department investigation. It was not clear how much of that stock was stolen before Fowler's arrest. It could not all have been in the display windows, so people must have entered the store through broken windows. Peet's store was located only two blocks south of West 125th Street so crowds would have moved there long before 1:30 AM, making it unlikely that the windows remained intact until the time of Fowler's arrest. It was more likely that windows were broken beginning around 11:00 PM and that Fowler was following in the wake of other looters.
  
  Peet was not identified as having joined other white merchants in suing the city for failing to protect his business. None of those identified came from the area in which his store was located, but around eighty of those who brought suits were not identified. Peet did have insurance for his store windows, which paid $30 for their replacement, according to the Probation Department investigation; there was no mention of other insurance. Regardless, Peet was able to remain in business. The MCCH survey found a white tailor's store at 2063 7th Avenue in the second half of 1935, and Peet identified himself as still in business at that address when he registered for the draft in 1942. Born in Cyprus, he had arrived in New York City in 1929, from England. When he started the process to become a US citizen in November 1934, he lived at 12 West 123rd Street, two blocks east of his store, with his German-born wife Martha, who he had married in 1933. By 1937, when he filed his naturalization petition, the couple had moved two blocks south, to 9 Mt Morris Park, remaining in the enclave of white residences that bordered the park. By the time of the 1940 census, Peet had moved out of Harlem, to 425 West 125th Street. He and his wife stayed on the west side when they moved again. In 1942 they lived at 435 West 123rd Street when Peet registered for the draft.
  
  Fowler appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20. Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury, which indicted him for burglary. Fowler agreed to plead guilty to Petit Larceny. He was sentenced him to three months in the workhouse.