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• 1 2020-02-24T21:19:53+00:00 Injured (74) 79 plain 2024-03-01T17:58:37+00:00 At least seventy-four people suffered injuries from assaults, flying debris, and unknown circumstances during the disorder. Some newspapers reported higher numbers of injuries, which is likely the case given inconsistencies in the records. The Mayor’s Commission gathered two sets of hospital records, one which lists individuals attended at locations in Harlem, presumably by ambulances, and a second list of individuals attended by physicians with no information on where the treatment took place, which may be emergency room attendances. In addition to the thirty-nine injured individuals identified in those records, another thirty-three are listed as injured in newspaper reports, some recorded as being taken to Harlem Hospital (that number does not include individuals mentioned as involved in violence in newspaper stories who do not appear in lists of the injured). A United Press International (UPI) story reported that “Many of the injured were treated by ambulance surgeons, thus making an exact check on their number impossible,” implying that those numbers did not even capture everyone who received medical treatment, let alone all those who suffered injuries. Although the story claimed that fewer than fifty people required hospital treatment, the reporter estimated that up to 100 had been injured — and several of the publications that ran the UPI story used that figure as a headline. The Associated Press reported Harlem Hospital officials “estimated they alone treated about 70 victims,” but the hospital records and newspaper reports identify only forty-seven people attended by physicians from that hospital.
  
  The injured include forty-nine victims of assault; four other assaults involved attacks on individuals in vehicles that damaged cars and smashed windows, but did not result in reported injuries, and Thomas Wijstem died three months after the attack on him led to a prosecution for assault. Four of the men charged with assault are also recorded as being injured: Paul Boyett shot by a policeman who alleged he was part of a group assaulting Timothy Murphy; Charles Alston, who fell from a building roof to a ledge several floors below while trying to escape police; Isaac Daniels, arrested for assaulting Herman Young; and James Smitten, arrested for assaulting William Kitlitz. An additional man arrested in the disorder for inciting a riot, Hashi Mohammed, also appears in lists of the injured. Another five individuals are identified as injured by flying glass, and Stanley Dondoro was accidentally shot by police pursuing James Thompson. The remaining fourteen are listed as injured with no information on the circumstances that produced their injuries.
  
  
  Few of the injured suffered wounds severe enough to require being admitted to the hospital. Information is available for forty-three of the seventy-two injured individuals: physicians sent only twelve (28%) to the hospital. Six of those were shot and wounded (two other shooting victims were not admitted to the hospital, while the three men shot and killed were admitted, although one does not appear in hospital records). The other six individuals injured severely enough to be sent to the hospital received their wounds in a variety of circumstances: head wounds when assaulted by a group, by an individual and in unknown circumstances; and injuries to the leg and nose. The highest proportion came in assaults on individuals, but the numbers are very small (1/4, with no information in three cases). In terms of injury, the highest proportion sent to hospital were of those with leg injuries (2/5). By the day after the riot, March 21, only eight men remained in the hospital, according to the New York Herald Tribune.
  
  That combination of a high proportion requiring treatment and a small number admitted is at odds with accounts that emphasize shooting during the disorder, particularly on March 20. The New York Evening Journal's picture of the extent of injuries resulting from the violence seems particularly sensationalized and exaggerated:

  Ambulances raced through the streets to care for the wounded as the casualty list grew until it resembled some wartime engagement. The accident wards of Harlem, Sydenham, Knickerbocker and Jewish Memorial hospitals were jammed with victims of the mob's wrath. At first the victims were those injured by rocks or clubs. But as the night wore on and the looting and violence increased to a point never before reached in New York City, the police were forced to use their guns - were forced to use them to protect helpless whites from being beaten and kicked and stamped to death under the feet of the stampeding blacks. And then the reports carried the words: "Gunshot wounds."

  
  Not even estimates reported in other newspapers suggest injuries on the level of “some wartime engagement,” let alone as many as would result from violence “at a point never before seen in New York City.” Nor do the handful of gunshot victims support claims of widespread gunshot wounds.
  
  The injured attracted the attention of photographers from the Daily News, New York Evening Journal, and Daily Mirror, and appear in almost a quarter of the published images of the disorder. Those images span the experience of injury from wound to treatment to recuperation, and feature men and women, Blacks and whites, and police and medical staff: an unidentified white man knocked to the ground; an injured white police detective, Henry Roge, being helped by another officer (on the street in the New York Evening Journal and Daily Mirror and inside in a second photograph in the New York Evening Journal); an unidentified man waiting for an ambulance (likely in a police precinct); Dr. Sayet of Harlem Hospital treating an unidentified Black man in a police precinct; police officers carrying an unidentified Black individual on stretcher (likely Charles Alston); police officers picking up an unidentified injured man outside Harlem Hospital; doctors treating an unidentified Black man and an unidentified Black woman in Harlem Hospital; a room of people recuperating in hospital beds; a bandaged white woman, Patricia O'Rourke, leaving Harlem Hospital (on the front page of the Daily News); and an injured white woman, Elizabeth Nadish, at home. The presence of three Black individuals in these images is out of proportion with the number of Black men and women identified as injured in the sources, suggesting that those lists did not include all those injured during the disorder. Black men with bandaged heads also appeared among the men arrested during the disorder photographed being transported to court the next day, in photographs published in the Daily News, one on the front page, and in the Acme Photo Agency image below.
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  Events

• 1 2020-02-24T22:40:34+00:00 Assaults on police (9) 72 plain 2024-02-25T19:55:10+00:00 Nine police officers were among those reported as injured, six hit by objects thrown at them. One was attacked by an individual likely from the same crowds that threw objects at police. Two officers were injured making arrests, one hit by a shot from his own gun while attempting to apprehend a suspected looter, the other allegedly hit by a man who grabbed his baton. Assaults of police making arrests also occurred at other times in 1935; police being hit by objects did not. Six of the assaults occurred early in the disorder, two in front of Kress' store, two at the store's rear entrance, and two when police tried to establish a perimeter around Kress’ store. Only two assaults occurred after 10:00 PM, when the crowd broke up and smaller groups spread north and south on Harlem’s avenues, suggesting that the later disorder did not involve the same violence directed at police. There is no evidence of when the other assault, rocks thrown at a detective's car as he drove along 8th Avenue, took place. (This total excludes an incident in which newspapers reported four men allegedly shot at an unidentified police officer on Lenox Avenue and 138th Street as the men were charged merely with "annoying," not any form of violence, and acquitted of even that charge.)
  
  Most of the assaults on police occurred when the disorder was focused on Kress’ store and 125th Street, where large crowds gathered and police struggled to disperse them. Although police several times succeeded in moving crowds away from Kress’ and off the roadway of 125th Street, there were too few officers to hold and control the crowds until after 10:00 PM. As 125th Street and 7th and 8th Avenues were major thoroughfares accommodating buses and streetcars, they had wide roadways, with two lanes of traffic traveling in each direction, as well as wide pavements. That created significant distances between police and crowds when officers set up cordons in front of Kress’ store and at the intersections of 125th Street and the avenues. As a result, much of the violence directed against police came in the form of objects thrown at them. Patrolman Michael Kelly was hit on the right leg by a stone around 7:00 PM behind Kress’ store, where police had followed a crowd drawn there by the appearance of a hearse. Kelly's injury was serious enough that he was taken to Harlem Hospital for an x-ray and observation. Detective Charles Foley was hit on the left shoulder, possibly suffering a fracture, a few minutes after the assault on Kelly, also at the rear of Kress’ store on 124th Street. This incident was the only time police and crowds clashed away from a major thoroughfare, on a narrower cross street that exposed officers to objects thrown from roofs as well as from the street level. Two hours later, around 9:00 PM, Detective William Boyle was treated on 125th Street for injuries “received while attempting to rescue an unknown white man being assaulted at scene of riot.” None of these officers suffered the head injuries that predominated among the civilians who sought medical treatment during the disorder.
  
  Two other officers were assaulted several hours later, around 10:00 PM, after additional reinforcements arrived and police tried to establish a cordon and disperse crowds on 7th Avenue and 8th Avenue. Detective Henry Roge was hit by a rock allegedly thrown by James Hughes as he stood in front of Kress' store just after police had cleared 125th Street. Unusually, Roge’s partner claimed that as there were no other objects being thrown at the time, he was able to see who threw the rock and apprehend the man, James Hughes. Roge himself had been hit in the head and was bleeding profusely. The New York Evening Journal published two different photographs of a bleeding Roge being helped by a uniformed officer, one on the scene at 125th Street and the other somewhere inside, the only images of injured police published. While Hughes later pled guilty to misdemeanor assault, the presiding judge believed his target had been the store windows, not the police officer, and sentenced him to only three months in the Workhouse.
  
  Around the same time, someone hit Patrolman Charles Robbins over the head with an iron bar, or a brick in some accounts. Being hit by a weapon, not a thrown object, involved an assailant in close proximity. Treated at 124th Street and 7th Avenue, Robbins had likely been involved in efforts to keep crowds from 125th Street. Images of police trying to hold back crowds show officers moving into the midst of groups of people, potentially exposing themselves to attacks such as Robbins suffered — and allowing their assailants to disappear into the crowd before they could be apprehended. However, it should be noted that in both the images, it is police officers who are wielding weapons or moving against the crowd, not the other way around. The caption to one photo also indicates that objects were thrown from the crowd at such moments: a Daily News photographer was hit on the head soon after taking the photo.
  
  One of the two arrests in which a police officer was allegedly assaulted came at the very beginning of the disorder. When Patrolman Irwin Young and several other officers arrested Harry Gordon, a twenty-year-old white man, after he tried to speak to the crowds in front of Kress' store, Young alleged Gordon grabbed his nightstick and hit him with it. Gordon denied he assaulted Young, claiming instead that Young beat him; Louise Thompson also told a hearing of the MCCH she saw Young beat Gordon. Gordon also told the MCCH that Young beat him on the journey to the station and again later while he was in custody. Violence during arrests was nothing out of the ordinary in 1935. The outcome of Gordon's prosecution is unknown. The second officer allegedly assaulted during an arrest was also injured with his own weapon, in that case a revolver, at the very end of the disorder. According to the arrest report and police blotter, as James Thompson fled a grocery store where he had allegedly been discovered looting, he knocked into Detective Nicholas Campo, causing the officer's revolver to go off and a bullet to hit him in the hand.
  
  Once the crowds broke up and spread, the police response changed and officers do not appear to have been targets of violence to the extent they had been. While police maintained a cordon around 125th Street and guarded some stores their presence in other parts of the neighborhood took the form of mobile patrols in radio cars or emergency trucks. On one occasion, a police vehicle was targeted in the same way that other vehicles driven by whites were, with the Daily Mirror reporting “Harry Whittington, an emergency policeman, was 'sniped' off of the emergency truck he was riding at 8th Ave. and 123rd St. by a rock that felled him unconscious.” Cars driven by whites were frequent targets of rocks and stones. The attack on Detective Lt. Frank Lenahan as he drove his car along 8th Avenue may also have occurred away from 125th Street; there is no evidence of its timing. According to the New York Herald Tribune, which provided the only description of the incident, Lenahan’s car “was badly battered by rocks and most of its glass shattered.” Apparently the officer himself was unscathed, as he does not appear in lists of the injured.
  
  A widely reported incident of alleged “sniping” at police at the very end of the disorder was not included in the count of assaults on police as there is little evidence that police were actually targets of a shooting. Stories in the New York World Telegram and Brooklyn Daily Eagle did report that a bullet whistled past the air of Patrolman Jerry Brennan of the Morrisiana station as he stood on post at Lenox Ave and 138th Street, after which he saw four men on the roof of the six-story building at 101 West 138th. Soon after police reinforcements arrived and rushed to the roof to arrest the men. But in the Home News story, Brennan is not the target of the shooters but one of the police who responded after hearing shots. He appeared as the arresting officer in the Magistrates Court. This story provided the key detail that no guns were found on the men arrested, explaining both why police charged them with the lesser charge of disorderly conduct (annotated in the docket book as "annoy") and their acquittal, giving the story more credibility than other accounts.
  
  More officers may have been assaulted during the disorder. The New York Evening Journal reported bandaged officers as well as prisoners in court the next day. However, while news photographs confirm the presence of bandaged prisoners, no injured officers appear in those images.
• 1 2020-02-25T01:54:44+00:00 Detective Henry Roge assaulted 36 plain 2024-01-22T21:23:25+00:00 Just before 10 PM, police on 125th Street succeeded in dispersing the crowd in front of Kress’ store, moving them across the street and west on to 8th Avenue. Detective Henry Roge of the West 123rd Street Precinct and his partner, Raymond Gill, were among the police standing in front of the store, watching the crowd, backlit by the lighted store. A rock thrown from the crowd then struck Roge in the head, causing deep cuts to his eye and face. Gill claimed he saw a man appear from behind the cars parked on the street, look around, and throw the rock that hit Roge. At that moment there were no other objects being thrown at stores or police, so Gill was certain that it was that rock that hit his partner, and he was able to keep his eyes on the man who threw it. After chasing him through the crowd, he trapped him among the parked cars. Gill frisked the man, twenty-four-year-old James Hughes, and found five stones in his pockets; Hughes insisted the stones were to defend himself, and he had not thrown the rock that struck Roge.
  
  
  
  As Hughes was being arrested, Roge's injuries were bleeding profusely. A call for medical assistance brought Dr. Fabian of the Joint Disease Hospital to attend to the detective. New York Evening Journal photographers captured two images of a uniformed officer helping a bleeding Roge from the scene (the only images of an injured police officer published). One photograph taken at the scene shows Roge and the officer from the side. The officer is in the foreground, supporting Roge, who is leaning forward, his left hand over his eyes and forehead. A store display window is in the background, with what appears to be broken glass in front of it. In a photograph that may have been taken somewhere inside, Roge is in the foreground of the image, with a handkerchief covering his forehead and eyes. Next to him, a white uniformed patrolman has one arm behind Roge's back, guiding him, and is holding the lapel of Roge's jacket with his other hand, in which he has his baton. Over the patrolman's left shoulder is a Black man. The Daily Mirror also published an image of Roge and the uniformed officer, which may have been taken on the street, There are two Black men in the image, one behind the officer and one to right of the detective holding a handkerchief he appears to be offering the officer. This image was not published until April 3, when the newspaper miscaptioned it as showing a white man rather than a police officer, "One of the casualties in the Riot. The man was struck over the eyes with a stick. The policeman holds him until an ambulance arrives. But the victim was only one of many white persons injured in the mad Harlem riot."
  
  According to the record of medical attendances, Roge remained on duty after being attended by the doctor, but other sources reported that his injury required two stitches, which involved Roge being taken to Harlem Hospital. The Probation Department report recorded that Roge was on sick leave for ten days after his injury, making it more likely his injury required him to leave the scene for treatment.
  
  Hughes was tried and convicted of misdemeanor assault. The prosecutor’s notes on the trial suggest that Gill’s testimony stressed that he was certain of his identification of Hughes as the man who threw the rock, against which Hughes offered his denial and a series of character witnesses. In response, the prosecutor argued that Hughes “saw plenty of trouble – went right into it.” At the sentencing hearing, the judge expressed belief that Hughes had thrown the rock at the store window, not Roge, so sentenced him to a term of only three months in the Workhouse.
  
  As with other assaults, the press coverage of this case was fragmented. Roge appeared on the lists of those injured published by white newspapers the New York American (on both March 20 & 21), New York Evening Journal, Home News, Daily News, New York Herald Tribune, and New York Post, and in stories in the Daily Mirror. Hughes appeared in lists of those arrested published in the Black newspapers the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the white New York Evening Journal. The two were linked in only three stories, in the New York Times, Home News, and Daily Worker. Even when Hughes was tried, producing additional coverage, only two of the five stories mentioned Roge. But that legal process did generate case files in both the DA’s office and the Probation Department, which provided details that are available for only a handful of the events of the disorder.