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• 1 2020-02-24T23:09:46+00:00 Assaults by groups (17) 43 plain 2024-02-25T19:42:12+00:00 During the disorder, seventeen individuals were allegedly attacked by groups of people. All those reported attacked were white, fifteen men and two women, and all the groups that allegedly attacked them were made up of Black men and women. In these attacks, rather than throwing rocks and stones from a distance, assailants came close enough to hit their targets with their fists and other weapons. That distinction was not always clear cut: in the case of the assault on James Wrigley, newspaper reports differed on whether he had been beaten or had objects thrown at him.
  
  Sources disagreed about the size of groups who committed the alleged assaults. Small groups reportedly committed five of the sixteen assaults, two groups specified as including three people, three others as made up of “several” people. Attacks by groups of this size regularly occurred in Harlem outside the disorder. Larger groups committed eight alleged assaults, two specified as made up of five or eight people and ten people, and six groups described in general terms (“group,” “number," “some,” and “Negroes”). These attacks highlight the fragmented nature of the disorder, in which groups emerged from the larger crowds on the streets. “Mobs,” and a “gang of 40 or 50,” committed the remaining four assaults, all reported only in the New York Evening Journal or New York Post, white publications which presented violence against whites in sensational terms (and did not show any concern with reporting more specific numbers).
  
  
  
  A number of the attacks by groups occurred near 125th Street, where crowds concentrated in the early hours of the disorder and other assaults and attacks on stores took place. Despite the presence of those crowds, several of the assaults involved only small groups: just three men allegedly attacked Joseph Sarnelli in his store, “several” assaulted Morris Werner, and a “number” assaulted Maurice Spellman. Likewise, the areas where groups of men allegedly attacked Michael Krim-Shamhal, William Burkhard, Alice Gordon, B.Z. Kondoul, and William Ken also saw other forms of disorder. On the other hand, the two assaults in the north of Harlem, on Max Newman and Julius Narditch, occurred in an area that saw no other reported disorder or reports of crowds on the streets. The attack on Timothy Murphy fell in between these spaces, on the fringes of the disorder.
  
  The most extensively reported attack by a group occurred early in the disorder. A group of around ten Black men attacked Timothy Murphy on West 128th Street between 8th Avenue and St. Nicholas Avenue. They beat him, knocked him down, and kicked him, until Patrolman George Conn arrived on the scene and dispersed the crowd (in the process shooting Paul Boyett, a twenty-eight-year old Black man, who was arrested for assaulting Murphy, but testified he was simply a bystander and was acquitted at trial). One other attack by a group was widely reported, in which group of four men allegedly shot at police on post at Lenox Avenue and West 138th Street. While police arrested four men, they did not find any guns on them and all the men were acquitted in the Magistrates Court, so the attack is not included in this category.
  
  Police made an arrest in just one other alleged assault by a group. After a “mob” attacked Thomas Wijstem in front of W. T. Grant’s department store on 125th Street, police arrested twenty-two-year-old Douglas Cornelius for assaulting him. The New York Herald Tribune reported Cornelius allegedly struck Wijstem with a rock; however inflicted, Wijstem’s injuries left him unconscious. That this attack occurred near the origins of the disorder, where police concentrated their forces, likely contributed to an arrest being made. But as in the case of Paul Boyett and the four men arrested on West 138th Street, it appears that police could not prove that Cornelius was actually involved in the assault. A grand jury dismissed the charges against him.
  
  Evidence exists of the details of only two other assaults, each reported in similar sensational language in only a single story in the New York Evening Journal: a “gang of 40 or 50 Negroes pursued B. Z. Kondoul up Lenox Ave; and a group surrounded Betty Willcox as she sat in a parked car at 125th St. and 7th Avenue. Both stories refer to mobs, shouting and screaming threats to kill whites. In both cases it takes police wielding clubs and shooting guns to save the white victims, an explicit justification of police violence against the crowds, notwithstanding that the stories make clear that no one in the crowds had a weapon. In neither case do police make any effort to arrest members of the mob. Betty Willcox’s first person account of being attacked is even more sensational and steeped in racist tropes than the story about Kondoul. The mob is “howling” and “roar for blood,” and all have “murderous rage” in their faces. When police drive the crowd back, they stay nearby, with an “undertone of ominous muttering and shuffling.”
  
  Two other victims were also rescued from attacks by groups. The New York Post published the only report of a “group” of men attacking Joseph Sarnelli as he closed his barber’s shop in the Hotel Theresa. Refusing to give up his razors, Sarnelli fought the men, and “was being badly pummeled” until Patrolman Thomas Jordan came to his aid. As happened when Murphy, Kondoul, and Willcox were rescued, no one was arrested, an indication of the limited control police had over the crowds. In a third case reported only in the New York Evening Journal, William Ken was rescued not by white police officers but by two of his Black coworkers. According to the story, Ken was “seized” as he entered the Blue Heaven Restaurant at 378 Lenox Ave, punched a couple of times, but then dragged to safety by two Black employees who convinced the crowd to “spare him.”
  
  The fact that these details are reported only in the New York Evening Journal and New York Post, newspapers whose coverage of the riot stands out for its emphasis on violence against whites and sensational language, raises some questions about their reliability. In other cases, the evidence is again fragmented: victims of assault appear in lists of the injured, with details of how they were injured only in one or two papers. The New York Herald Tribune and New York American reported that a group of either eight or five men attacked Max Newman, like Joseph Sarnelli, as he closed his store. Only the New York Herald Tribune explained the injuries of Julius Narditch as the result of being attacked by three men just across the street from Newman’s store.
  
  There are no details of the circumstances of the remaining attacks other than that they involved groups. Three of those attacked are described as having been stabbed, the only reports of knives being used in the disorder. All the reports of injuries to Edward Genest, a white sailor, mention him being stabbed, as does the only source mentioning Morris Werner, his hospital record. Only one of the multiple sources that mention Julius Narditch report him as being stabbed, a story in the New York American, and the police report of his case just describes him as being “jumped” and suffering head wounds and lacerations of the kind that resulted from beatings. A knife allegedly taken from one of those arrested during the disorder was also displayed in a photograph published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

  Assaults (54)

• 1 2022-11-26T20:10:24+00:00 Line-up at Police Headquarters (96) 33 plain 2024-02-15T20:51:59+00:00 On the morning of March 20, police transported most of those arrested during the disorder from Harlem’s two police stations downtown to police headquarters for a line-up prior to their arraignment in the Magistrates courts. Only four white newspapers reported details of that line-up. The New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun devoted the most space to those events; the Daily Mirror offered an overview and a brief account of an exchange between Harry Gordon, one of the white men arrested in front of the Kress store at the beginning of the disorder, and Captain Dillon, one of the officers questioning prisoners. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle included a series of snippets in a list of “Highlights on the Harlem Front.” The Daily News, Daily Mirror, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle published photographs of prisoners being taken to the line-up and waiting in police headquarters.
  
  The stories presented those arrested as a group, emphasizing the scale of the disorder, in contrast with subsequent stories about the appearance of those prisoners in court, which named multiple individuals. The focus of the stories was those charged with looting and on Harry Gordon. No mention was made of those charged with assault. The only suggestion of violence by those arrested came in a photograph published on the front page of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of prisoners after the line-up in the back of a police wagon that would take them back uptown to the Magistrates courts. One of several images of the prisoners being transported, in this photograph, as the caption described it, “in the left foreground a policeman is holding a long knife taken from one of the rioters.” There was no reference to that weapon in the newspaper’s story. However, many of those arrested were injured, described as having “battered heads and hands” in the New York Herald Tribune and “bruised and beaten and their clothing was torn” according to the New York Sun. Prisoners with those injuries appeared in images taken by press photographers as they were being transported to police headquarters. A Black man in the foreground of a Daily News image of prisoners being led into the back of a police wagon in front of the 28th Precinct had a large bandage around his head. The caption to that image was the only one to draw attention to the injuries of those arrested in the disorder, noting "First man in line was badly banged up." The same man also appeared in a second Daily News photograph exiting a wagon at the Harlem court. Two other men with bandages around their heads appeared among a half dozen prisoners photographed sitting in the rear of a wagon, in an Acme agency photograph that has been insightfully analyzed by Sara Blair. The newspaper stories offered no comment on those injuries, which almost certainly indicated that the men had been subject to violence by police.
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  Photographs of those being transported to and from police headquarters likewise offered images of groups of prisoners, albeit of only part of the large group referenced in the stories. The Daily News published multiple photographs of prisoners being transported to police headquarters: two views of a group being loaded into police wagons in front of the 28th Precinct, one from across the street showing the crowd of press around the entrance and a newsreel crew filming from the top of a van and another from next to the wagon (discussed above). Both showed approximately half a dozen men. The Daily Mirror also published a similar close-up photograph of men being loaded into a police wagon, likely taken at the same time and place, although the details are difficult to make out in the microfilm copy. Two photographs of men in the back of police wagons, one published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the other an Acme agency photograph, showed eight to ten men.
  
  The New York Herald Tribune reported ninety-six prisoners were involved in the line-up, while the New York Sun and Daily Mirror reported only eighty-nine. As the New York Herald Tribune used its number in a headline, it is treated as the more reliable. All three stories agreed that there were six white men and four black women in the group; the remainder were Black men. They also agreed that twenty-one of those questioned by police were on relief, three had been until recently, and one was a CWA worker. That information was likely obtained for the benefit of “a representative of the Department of Public Welfare and a representative of the Aldermanic Welfare Committee,” who attended the line-up according to the New York Herald Tribune. “Both took notes, presumably in checking the number of prisoners on the home relief rolls.” However many prisoners were brought to police headquarters, the number was more than the building’s cells could accommodate, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Post. The former reported, “There weren't enough cells to go around for the Harlem visitors at headquarters and many were herded in the photographic gallery,” with the later specifying that "All prisoners were placed together in the photograph gallery as the cell block at Headquarters only has capacity for thirty." A photograph published in the Daily Mirror seemed to confirm the overcrowding, showing prisoners packed together behind bars. Not all of those arrested during the disorder were in the line-up. One hundred and six people would appear in court on March 20. None of the stories mentioned that some of those arrested were missing. A passing mention in the New York Post provided a possible explanation, noting that during the disorder "prisoners were herded in police stations when they did not require hospital treatment, and were sent to Headquarters this morning." Some of those arrested could still have been in the hospital at the time of the line-up or at least had not been transported back to a police station.
  
  Police led groups of three to five men and women on to a narrow, flood-lit stand to be questioned by detectives, according to both the New York Herald Tribune and Daily Mirror. A transcript of the exchange between a police officer and Isaac Daniels in the line-up contained in his district attorney's case file indicated the questions asked of those in the line-up: about an individual’s alleged offense, which elicited explanations; about details of that explanation; and about their identity in terms of time in New York City, marital status, and birthplace. Unfortunately, there are no records of the questioning of others police arrested during the disorder
  
  Other than the injuries suffered by many prisoners, the other detail that attracted the attention of the reporters was the goods that many of those in the line-up carried with them. The New York Herald Tribune simply reported that “Many admitted they had stolen articles such as clothing, groceries and toothbrushes in their possession when apprehended.” While the New York Herald Tribune simply presented those individuals as guilty of looting, the New York Sun added a sense of the answers they gave that complicated that picture: “Many admitted thefts from the stores damaged during the riot, stealing everything from toothbrushes to shirts and groceries, but all denied breaking the store windows, insisting that they had picked the articles up from the street after others had thrown them out of the stores.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle also reported such responses only to make fun of them: “Many in the lineup still carried things they admitted picking up in the street but denied reaching into broken shop windows to secure. Cigarettes were the favorite item 'found.' One Negro woman still had in her possession five milk bottles. Police were doubtful that she drank as much milk as all that.”
  
  The Brooklyn Daily Eagle also made fun of some of the answers offered by Aubrey Patterson, a twenty-one-year-old Black man, statements also reported in the New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun. "'I don't want to extricate myself from any guilt,' said Aubert Patterson, colored, of 83 E. 113th St. Manhattan,” according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, “in explaining (amid laughter) why he didn't want to discuss the charge of burglary against him." The New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun by contrast, quoted Patterson answering questions, although only the New York Sun reported the questions: "'Are you a citizen?' Capt. Dillon asked this prisoner, who had identified himself as Aubrey Patterson, of 83 East 113th Street. 'I am a citizen of this great metropolis,' replied Patterson. 'I was born in this metropolis on 132d Street.' 'What do you do for a living?' 'I do laboring in the daytime and I go to school at nighttime.'" The story framed that exchange by denigrating Patterson as having "assumed a pompous air when questioned by Acting Capt. Dillon and gave off oratory to reply to most of the questions." The New York Herald Tribune did not offer any similar judgement but did add that Patterson was "a light-skinned Negro"
  
  The other prisoner that reporters selected for attention was Harry Gordon, whom the New York Herald Tribune reported was grouped with Daniel Miller and the three Young Liberators in the line-up. Gordon’s response to being questioned was reported by the New York Herald Tribune, New York Sun, and Daily Mirror. The briefest mention appeared in the Daily Mirror, which reported only that "under the grilling conducted by Acting Capt. Edward Dillon" he declared "I am a student at City College of New York" and "refused to answer further questions." The reporter described Gordon's manner as "defiant." The other stories conveyed a similar judgment in their portrayals of Gordon. The New York Herald Tribune described him as "a tall, lanky youth [who] thrust one hand in his pocket and struck an orator's attitude" during the questioning; the New York Sun described his pose as "Napoleonic." Neither of those stories mentioned Gordon identifying himself as a student; they instead quoted him as refusing to answer questions until he saw a lawyer. The New York Sun quoted the exchange at the greatest length: 

  "I have no comment to make until I see my lawyer. I understand that anything I might say would be used against me."
  
  "If you are not guilty why do you want to see a lawyer?" he was asked.
  
  "I know all that," he replied with a wave of his hand "But I won't talk until I see my lawyer."

  The Daily Mirror concluded that Gordon, in responding as he did, "had practically declared himself the inciter of the night's rioting" and the leader of the four others arrested at the beginning of the disorder.
  
  The New York Sun alone included the response of Claudio Viabolo, who was in the same group as Gordon. The story did not name him, instead identifying him as “Another Negro, giving his version of the start of the trouble:”

  "We were picketing in front of the store. I heard that a child had been killed inside. I thought it ought to be called to the attention of the public, about the child being killed."
  
  Whereupon this Negro and his companions took turns on a soap box "informing the public," Capt. Dillon was told.”

  The inclusion of Viabolo’s answers was an unusual departure from reporting across the range of newspapers that consistently portrayed the Communists involved in the early part of the disorder as white. A striking example of that focus are the later photographs of this group taken in the 28th Precinct station house as they were being transported to the Harlem courthouse. Although Viabolo was visible in images published in the Daily News, New York American and New York Evening Journal, he was not identified as part of the group in the captions, and was cropped out of versions of the photograph published by several regional newspapers.

  Events