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[Photograph] "Grim Work!" New York Daily News, March 20, 1935
1 2021-12-30T18:56:40+00:00 Anonymous 1 1 Original caption: “Grim work! Policeman at left draws his revolver as the rioters grow increasingly ugly. His comrade is dragging a recalcitrant rioter off the prison. On the dress store window are signs proclaiming it to be a ‘colored shop,’ to protect it from the raiding marauders.” plain 2021-12-30T18:56:40+00:00 AnonymousThis page has tags:
- 1 2020-09-24T17:03:34+00:00 Anonymous In the Daily News Anonymous 2 plain 2022-01-12T18:06:44+00:00 Anonymous
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2020-12-03T17:22:02+00:00
Looting of Black-owned businesses (?)
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2022-01-20T21:20:13+00:00
Black-owned businesses were not attacked to the same extent as white-owned businesses during the disorder, according to stories in a variety of newspapers and the MCCH report. At least five black-owned businesses did have their windows broken, but there are no reports of any having merchandise taken. Most reported looting occurred some time after attacks on store windows. In the interim, in response to windows being broken, staff and storeowners put up signs in their windows identifying their business as “Colored,” “Black,” and “This Store Owned by Colored,” according to the Afro-American. Seven signs identifying a store named “Winnette’s Dresses” as a “Colored Store” are visible in both a photograph of an arrest taken during the disorder published in the Daily News, and a photograph taken the morning after the disorder published in the Afro-American (the name can be seen in the uncropped version available in Getty Images; the store was at 340 Lenox Avenue, according to a column published in the New York Age in 1934). Embed from Getty Images
Also reported as having similar signs in their windows were Williams's drug store, the Monterey Luncheonette, the Cozy Tea Shoppe, the Castle Inn, and a billiard hall on Lenox Avenue. Such signs appear to have stopped attacks on stores and prevented looting. The extent to which that strategy spared business from damage tends to confirms claims made after the disorder that most of those on the street specifically white-owned businesses, at least when they were aware of the ownership.
Mentions of Black-owned businesses being spared from attack in the Home News, New York Post, and Afro-American focused on windows being broken, and did not mention looting. A story in the Atlanta World did specify that it was "stores belonging to white merchants" that were looted. Roi Ottley, in his column in the New York Amsterdam News also specified that it was looting that Black-owned businesses avoided: “The marauders, although without leadership, followed a studied program of exclusively looting white businesses.” He expressed the same assessment in more direct terms a week later: "The amazing discrimination manifested in deliberately choosing only stores owned by white people to loot...certainly indicated the direction the protest took...Years of pent-up emotion and resentment flashed their fangs in bitter opposition to the economic inequality imposed on a normally peaceful people." Only one newspaper explicitly contradicted that claim, the Norfolk Journal and Guide, which reported that "Some Negro establishments were among the 200 which lost their plate-glass windows and had the window contents looted." The New York Evening Journal also reported that "All the stores were raided and their fixtures smashed,” but once Black-owned businesses identified themselves with signs, "Those owned by Negroes, in most cases, were not broken into. The rioters concentrated on others." The MCCH Report was alone in positing the reverse chronology of when Black-owned business were targeted: "While, of course, many motives were responsible for the actions of these crowds, it seems that as they grew more numerous and more active, the personality or racial Identity of the owners of the stores faded out and the property itself became the object of their fury. Stores owned by Negroes were not always spared if they happened to be in the path of those roving crowds, bent upon the destruction and the confiscation of property." The MCCH "Subcommittee which Investigated the Disturbances of March 19th" had been more definitive in its initial report on May 29, 1935, writing "Nor is it true that stores owned by Negroes were spared. There is no evidence of any program or leadership of the rioters." While the final version of the Report seems to recognize the evidence of Black-owned stores being spared from attack reported in the press, the fading of that distinction over time is not supported by the lack of reported looting.
The number, nature and location of those enterprises Black-owned businesses also contributed to them not being looted. The MCCH business survey identified 5971 businesses in the blocks of Black Harlem (110th Street to 155th Street, from east of Amsterdam Avenue to west of Madison Avenue); black-owned business constituted only 1690 (28%) of that total. (The survey was undertaken after the disorder, between June and December 1935, by which time there likely had been some changes in Harlem’s business landscape, but few businesses appear to have been forced to close as a result of the disorder). In categorizing business owners, the MCCH survey used "Spanish" (largely Puerto Rican) and Chinese as well as white and "colored" (and on occasion "Jewish" and "Italian"); as sources on looting emphasized that "Spanish" and Chinese businesses were not spared from attack, they are grouped with white-owned businesses in this analysis.
At least one-third of Black-owned businesses did not offer the food, drink or clothing that appear to have been the primary targets of looting. Beauty parlors and barbers were the most common Black-owned businesses; the 230 beauty parlors and 143 barbers made up more than one in every five (22%) of those businesses. The offices of physicians, dentists and lawyers represented another 10% (177 of 1690) of Black-owned businesses, including ninety-eight doctor's offices, fifty-eight dentist's offices, and twenty-one lawyer's offices. Beauty parlors were an overwhelmingly Black-owned enterprise (89.15%, 230 of 258); in the other groups, Black practitioners represented slightly more than half of the total -- 56.3% (143 of 254) of barbers, 55.06% (98 of 178) of physicians, 54.21% (58 of 107) of dentists and 53.86% (21 of 39) of lawyers -- and well above the overall Black-owned share of Harlem's businesses (28%, 1690 of 5971). By contrast, the types of businesses most often looted less often had Black owners than that overall distribution of ownership, with one exception, tailors: Black owners operated 13.96% of grocery stores (67 of 480); 27.75% of restaurants (101 of 364); 5.88% of liquor stores (2 of 34); 9.94% of clothing stores (17 of 171);14.63% of hat stores (6 of 41); 24.55% of shoe repair stores (41 of 167); 1.39% of shoe stores (1 of 72); 19.53% of laundries and cleaners (91 of 466); and 35.79% of tailors (107 of 299).
In addition to not containing the items looted during the disorder, many of those Black professional offices were located above street level, removed from the disorder. Similarly, a proportion of the beauty parlors operated in apartments, also located above street level. In all, between 125th and 135th streets, on 7th Avenue, fourteen of the one hundred Black-owned business (compared to 6 of 181 other businesses), and on Lenox Avenue, eleven of fifty-five Black-owned businesses (compared to 3 of 112 other businesses) were off the street and away from the disorder.
Moreover, a portion of those businesses were located on cross-streets rather than the avenues which ran north-south through Harlem on which attacks on stores and looting took place. Excluding West 116th, 125th, 135th and 145th Streets (which as both transport arteries and sites for businesses were akin to avenues), 767 of 1920 side street businesses were Black-owned (40%, compared to 28% of the total businesses). They made up 45% of all Black-owned businesses (767 of 1690), compared to 27% of businesses owned by other racial groups (1153 of 4281).
The blocks of the avenues on which looting was reported in particular had few Black-owned businesses. Most looting occurred on Lenox Avenue between 125th and 135th Streets, blocks which had fewer Black-owned businesses – 23% (55 of 236) - than those blocks on 7th Avenue to the west – 47% (100 of 212). (Those numbers somewhat exaggerate the possible targets of looting as almost one third of those businesses on 7th Avenue (32 of 100) and 27% (15 of 55) of those on Lenox Avenue were beauty shops or barbers). While a very high proportion of the businesses on 8th and 5th Avenues were also white-owned, there were far fewer businesses on those avenues between 125th and 135th Streets than on 7th and Lenox Avenues: only an average of 13.8 each block on 8th Avenue and 10.375 on each block of 5th Avenue (which had several blocks without any businesses); compared to 20.2 on each block on 7th Avenue and 22.7 on each block on Lenox Avenue. White residents predominatied west of 8th Avenue and east of 5th Avenue, particularly south of 125th Street, while 7th and Lenox Avenues were in the midst of the Black population.
Less looting was reported south of West 125th Street down to West 115th Street, where it was concentrated on 7th Avenue rather than Lenox Avenue. On both avenues there was a smaller proportion of Black-owned businesses than between West 125th and West 135th Streets -- 12.4%, 18 of 145 on Lenox Avenue and approximately 34%, 48 of 141, on 7th Avenue (one side of the street is missing from the survey for several blocks). What focused attention on 7th Avenue in these blocks was its greater number of businesses, on all the blocks down to West 115th Street, whereas Lenox Avenue had few businesses between 123rd and 120th Streets. Reported lootings on Lenox Avenue clustered in blocks which had the highest proportion of white businesses, those closest to the retail centers of 125th Street and 116th Street. South of 125th Street, 5th Avenue was interrupted by Mount Morris Park from 124th to 120th Streets, resulting in a similarly small number of businesses as north of 125th Street. 8th Avenue south of 125th Street was lined with businesses to the same extent as 7th Avenue, none of which were Black-owned (0 of 184), but around those blocks there were diminishing numbers of Black residents.
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2021-10-14T12:37:57+00:00
Winnette’s Dresses windows not broken
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2021-12-30T18:59:27+00:00
Winnette's Dresses at 340 Lenox Avenue, on the southeast corner of West 127th Street, did not suffer damage during the disorder, likely because of the signs in the store windows identifying the business as a "Colored Store." The store is not mentioned in any newspaper reporting on the disorder but does appear in two photographs, one taken during the night of the disorder published in the Daily News, and one taken the next morning published in the Afro-American. The store's address is not visible in either image nor mentioned in their captions. However, Vere E. Johns discusses the store in the New York Age in June 1934, in a column written at the beginning of the boycott campaign targeting Blumstein's department store for failing to hire Black staff.
20 Mar 1935, Wed Daily News (New York, New York) Newspapers.com
In the photograph from the night of the disorder, Winnette's Dresses appears in the background, behind two white police officers. One officer is dragging a Black man sitting on the ground, who the caption identifies as having been arrested. Four signs attached to the store windows are visible, all reading "COLORED STORE." Those windows are not damaged. The caption asserts the signs are to "protect [the store] from raiding marauders." That reference comes at the end of the caption, which focuses attention on the police, and the gun just visible in the right hand of the patrolman in the foreground: "Grim Work! Policeman at left draws his revolver as the rioters grow increasingly ugly. His comrade is dragging a recalcitrant rioter off to prison."
Embed from Getty Images
Three additional signs are visible in the image taken the morning after the disorder published in the Afro-American, also reading "COLORED STORE." Those signs are the focus of that photograph, not a background, framed by passersby likely asked to pose. Four Black boys face the camera on one side of the window, and a Black man looks at the window, with his back to the camera, on the other side. In the context of the damages stores around it on Lenox Avenue, where reported broken windows and looting was concentrated, it is the intact windows of Winnette's dress shop that make it worthy of being photographed. "The store was not touched," the Afro-American captioned the photograph. The Associated Press explicitly connected the window signs and the state of the windows with a caption that asserted that the signs "saved this shop from destruction."
The full name of the store is visible in the uncropped version of the photograph published in the Afro-American. Almost a year earlier, Johns had used Winnette's Dresses as an example of a Black-owned business that Harlem's Black residents should be patronizing instead of going to the white-owned Blumstein's department store:
By April 1940, when the census was taken, Leo and Winifred Richards lived at 1 West 126th Street; if that was also their home in 1935, it was only a block east of Winnette's Dresses. Whether they were in the store or at home when the disorder began, they would have been well-placed to put signs on the windows. Both were born in the West Indies around 1901. They may not have been formally married in 1940, as the census enumerator recorded Winifred as a lodger, and her last name as Coward, while also recording both she and Leo as married. Winifred is identified as the source of that information. Leo's occupation is recorded as dress shop manager, Winifred's as a dress maker employed in a dress factory, indicating that the store was not bringing in sufficient income to support them both, as had been the case in 1934.At 340 Lenox Avenue (southeast corner of 127th Street) is a neat little ladies dress shop. In it you will find Leo and Winifred Richards, a cultured, educated young couple who offer to their race a fine assortment of dresses, hats, hosiery and gloves. The[y] call it “Winnette’s-Exclusive but not Expensive.” Their tale, my friends is a sad one. For two years they have managed to keep their doors open at an awful sacrifice of health and energy. One or the other has always been forced to work as a menial downtown so as to help balance the books. The goods they sell as in every way as good as Blumstein’s and the prices just as cheap, and yet in that two years thousands of Negroes have passed by their door and walked to 125th street to spend thousands of dollars at Blumstein’s. Mrs Richards told me she tried to have at least one colored girl but her small sales couldn’t stand it.
Winnette's Dresses is at 340 Lenox Avenue in the MCCH business survey from the second half of 1935, although identified as a Black-owned "Hoisery shop" not by name. It is still at that location when it was photographed by the Tax Department between 1939 and 1941. -
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2021-11-01T19:47:39+00:00
Black-owned business signs (6)
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2022-01-22T22:23:24+00:00
Six businesses were identified as having signs in their windows identifying them as Black owned. Stories in both white and Black newspapers presented such signs as a more widespread part of the disorder and as a key reason why Black-owned businesses were generally spared from damage and not looted. On placards and directly on windows with whitewash or soap were written “Colored,” "Black" and “This Store Owned by Colored,” the Afro-American reported. Three of the identified businesses fitted those generalizations, with a reporter for La Prensa describing signs that read "Colored" on a billiard hall and the Castle Inn on Lenox Avenue, and a sign reading "This is a Store Owned By Colored" in the Monterey Luncheonette reported by the Afro-American. Three other stores reportedly used a variation on those signs. Seven signs identifying a store named “Winnette’s Dresses” as a “Colored Store” are visible in both a photograph of an arrest taken during the disorder published in the Daily News, and a photograph taken the morning after the disorder published in the Afro-American. Embed from Getty Images
The sign on the Williams's drug store used the same phrase, "Colored Store" with the additional phrase "Nix Jack," repeating the combination twice on its side windows. The Cozy Shoppe customized the phrase to fit its name, rendering it as "Colored Shoppe."
Signs provided material evidence that attacks on businesses during the disorder were targeted at white-owned businesses rather than being indiscriminate. [described, photographed and filmed for newsreels - NB who does not mention signs - some Black newspapers as well as white]. Some stories cast Black-owned stores being spared damage as relying on signs - others as being helped by signs. NB significance of additional signs going up the morning after, as became aware of details of disorder?