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[Photograph] "One Killed and Many Injured in Harlem Riots," Burlington Free Press, March 22, 1935, 16.
1 2022-04-10T20:59:40+00:00 Anonymous 1 2 plain 2022-04-10T21:00:27+00:00 AnonymousOriginal caption: "One Killed and Many Injured in Harlem Riots: Policeman armed with a riot gun guards a store in the Negro district of New York after the riots which broke out when a false report circulated that a Negro boy had been lynched in a chain store, was circulated through the neighborhood."
Also published in the Brooklyn Citizen, March 21, 1935, 13; Charleston Daily Mail, March 22, 1935, 12; Central New Jersey Home News, March 21, 1935, 16; Nashville Banner, March 22, 1935, 8; Ithaca Journal, March 22, 1935, 14 (Newspapers.com).
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2022-06-16T19:24:46+00:00
Police establish perimeter around Kress' store
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2022-12-13T18:26:03+00:00
After Inspector Di Martini returned to 125th Street around 7:00 PM, he called for police reinforcements. A New York Evening Journal story celebrated the response as “the most remarkable “military” feat in the history of the department.” That portrayal was certainly how the police department would have sought to present the deployment. However, the arrival of additional officers appears to have taken longer than the story allowed, and to have been focused on establishing a perimeter around Kress’ store. The piecemeal arrival of reinforcements made that a protracted process. As police struggled to keep crowds away from Kress' store, those clashes served to disperse crowds along the avenues rather than stopping the violence. Unable to prevent windows being broken in businesses on 125th Street, police had to guard damaged stores, limiting the officers who could be deployed on the avenues. Guards appear to have prevented looting; they did not stop additional windows being broken. After crowds broke through on to 125th Street around 10:30 PM, there are only two further incidents in that area during the remaining disorder, an alleged assault on a woman and a shooting, both at the intersection of 125th Street and 7th Avenue. Although other incidents whose timing is unknown may have occurred during that time, the evidence suggests that police perimeter held through that period.
The New York Evening Journal story lauding the police response reported “a small army of 700 police was beating back the rioters” on 125th Street between 8th and 7th Avenues. That number likely reflected the total deployment rather than the force that set up the perimeter around Kress’ store. It was in line with the number Di Martini reported to the Police Commissioner were in Harlem after midnight and fell between the totals reported by newspapers, with the 1000 officers mentioned by the Daily Mirror at one extreme, and the 500 officers reported by the Home News and New York Herald Tribune representing the other end of the range. While the officers coming from beyond the local precincts went initially to 125th Street, Lt. Battle later told Langston Hughes that the reserve officers from Harlem's precincts went to their stations, on West 123rd Street and West 135th Street. Some of those officers may have been sent directly to other areas of Harlem, particularly those who arrived later in the evening.
The perimeter established by police extended from 8th to Lenox Avenues, and from 124th to 126th Streets, according to stories in the New York Times, Daily Mirror and Pittsburgh Courier, the only sources that described police deployments. While Inspector Di Martini had summoned the reinforcements, the newspapers credited that deployment to Deputy Chief Inspector McAuliffe, who commanded uniformed police in the borough of Manhattan, and would have taken over from Di Martini when he arrived around 9:00 PM. The department’s Emergency trucks attracted the most attention in newspaper stories, presented as the anchors of the police cordon. Six emergency trucks were stationed at the intersection of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue in the strategy reported by the New York Times, Daily Mirror and Pittsburgh Courier. Emergency trucks were more dispersed according to the New York Herald Tribune; two at West 125th and 7th Avenue, one at West 125th and Lenox Avenue, and one at West 127th and 7th Avenue.
The Emergency Services Division had succeeded the Police department’s Riot Battalion in 1925. Each truck had a crew of eight officers and, in addition to rescue equipment, carried a Thompson machine gun, three Winchester rifles and a Remington shotgun, as well as a tear gas gun, for use against "disorderly crowds." The twenty-two trucks in the department in 1935 were dispersed throughout the city. While the two located closest to 125th Street arrived relatively quickly, additional trucks would have taken significantly longer. Squad #6 was based on East 122nd Street, and had been involved in clearing shoppers from Kress’ store earlier. Squad #5, based on Amsterdam Avenue, arrived around 7:15 PM, according to Patrolman Eppler. The New York Evening Journal identified trucks as coming from Kingsbridge in the Bronx and from Coney Island at the southern end of Brooklyn, the later apparently arriving later: “It slithered perilously over wet streets but arrived in time for its crew to get into action.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle identified another squad from Brooklyn, Squad #16 from Herbert Street, as having crashed returning from Harlem, at 1:00 AM (a time when there was still significant disorder). Thompson did not mention the trucks. Neither did trucks appear in any of the published photographs of the disorder. Some of their crew did, identifiable because the rifles they carried - described as “riot guns” in newspapers stories and photograph captions - caused them to stand out from other police. They did not, however, have a machine gun that needed to be “set up,” as the Afro-American reported: each truck instead carried a single hand held ‘Tommy gun.’ Nor were the trucks equipped with enough of those weapons for all the crew to have one. And there are no reports that they used tear gas. Those weapons prompted several newspapers to use martial language in stories about the squads’ activities. The New York Evening Journal story on the police reinforcements described Harlem as a “seething battleground,” and the police as “beating back the rioters in a savage and organized attack.” An Emergency truck from the Bronx “leaped off the machine and tore into a crowd of window smashers” (perhaps at Herbert’s jewelry store at 125th Street and 7th Avenue, where another New York Evening Journal story described a similar scene). The Daily Mirror described Emergency trucks as "being sent to the battle zone."
The other evidence of the presence of Emergency trucks placed them in less warlike roles. Newspaper photographs show their crew among the officers who guarded damaged stores. A patrolman with a riot gun stands in front of Herbert’s jewelry store on northeast corner of 125th and 7th Avenue in a photograph published in the Burlington Free Press. Stories in the New York Evening Journal and New York Herald Tribune described police with riot guns guarding the store (the Daily News, New York American and Home News described the officers simply as patrolmen). Another patrolman with a riot gun was photographed on the corner across 7th Avenue from the jewelry store. The image published in the New York Evening Journal is narrowly focused on the officer, whereas another version of that image published in the Daily Mirror shows a Black man walking past him, and the image published in the Daily News shows several Black men and women walking by on the sidewalk, evidence of the continued presence of people around 125th Street. Two additional patrolmen, one visibly carrying a rifle, stand in front of Sherloff’s jewelry store, just a few buildings north of the intersection, in an AP photograph published in the Los Angeles Times. Taken together, the images suggest that the crew of at least one Emergency Truck guarded stores at the intersection. Captain Rothengast, Patrolman Moran and Patrolman Eppler told the MCCH that they also guarded other stores on 125th Street, including Kress’ store. A photograph published in the Daily News shows a patrolman talking through a broken window with a man inside a store on 125th Street. Again, Black men and women are visible in the background on the sidewalk in the background, their presence indicating that police had not closed the streets.
The police perimeter appears to have focused on keeping crowds off 125th Street, not individuals and small groups. In addition to those visible in photographs, Captain Rothengast described seeing "groups of people in 125th Street – no more than 250" when he arrived at Kress’ store around 8:30 PM. A story in the Home News also reported that “In an effort to keep traffic moving, police permitted pedestrians to walk through 125th St. The sidewalks on both sides of the street were crowded.” Patrolmen Moran and Eppler testified that at least some of those people approached police guarding Kress' store asking about the boy beaten in the store, encounters also described by a reporter for the Afro-American. Allowing individuals to walk along 125th Street was not incident-free: around 8:30 PM, a white man was allegedly beaten in front of Kress’ store, with police arresting James Smitten for committing the assault. About twenty minutes later, police arrested Frank Wells for breaking a window in the Willow Cafeteria. Just before 10:00 PM, Detective Roge was hit by a rock in front of Kress’ store and another patrolman injured at 124th Street and 7th Avenue. At the same time, Louise Thompson described larger groups being pushed back by police. She told a MCCH hearing she saw "one policeman throw his billy into the crowds while the mounted police were riding them down” at the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue between 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM, a scene similar to that captured by a photograph published in the Daily News. There is no evidence of where that photograph was taken, but a second photograph of police dispersing a group of Black men and women, the most widely reproduced photograph of the disorder, was taken at 125th Street and 7th Avenue according to the caption. It shows the island that that divided the north and south lanes on the roadway, which contained trees and were surrounded by the barriers like those visible in the photograph. A group of men and women are scattering in response to a uniformed patrolman moving toward them. One man is bent over; the caption describes him as falling down. He may also have been pushed down or hit by the patrolman; another man obstructs the view of what has happened between the two men. (One version of the caption claimed that the photographer was hit by a rock soon after taking the image, which might explain why the patrolman was trying to move the crowd).
One of the Black men killed during the disorder, Andrew Lyons, sustained a fractured skull "during the thick of a melee at 125th street and Seventh avenue," according to the New York Amsterdam News, or a block further west at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue according to the Times Union. Police clubs may have been responsible for those injuries, but the doctors who treated Lyons recorded that had been too groggy to tell his roommate or anyone else how he had been injured. No sources mentioned police firing revolvers or rifles to try to disperse the crowds.
On at least two occasions large crowds appear to have broken through the police perimeter. Louise Thompson told a MCCH hearing that around 9:00 PM a crowd broke through on to 125th Street. The Home News also reported that incident. Store windows were broken, Young's hat store looted, and two white men and a white police detective allegedly assaulted around that time. A second crowd broke through around 10:30 PM, resulting in more windows being broken and a white man allegedly being assaulted, and police arresting four Black men.
Most of the incidents on 125th Street before 10:30 PM did not result in arrests, likely because police were heavily outnumbered by crowds and constrained by the responsibility of guarding stores. Only at Kress’ store it seems were enough officers stationed to make arrests: there arrests were made not just around 10:30 PM but also just before 10:00 PM and at 8:30 PM. There are no arrests among those with known times in the period between the arrest of the picketers in front of Kress’ store at 6.45 PM and arrests on 125th Street between 8:30 PM and 9:00 PM. There are approximately a dozen arrests made at unknown times and places that might have occurred during this time, but it is more likely that police were too outnumbered to make arrests, as Lt. Battle later told Langston Hughes. While an arrest for breaking windows was made just before 9:00 PM, police made no arrests for the assaults and broken windows reported when a crowd broke through soon after.
The police perimeter appears to have held after 10:30 PM. Sometime before then, no later than 10:00 PM, and likely as early as between 8:30 PM and 9:00 PM, groups had moved on from 125th Street to attack businesses on 8th Avenue and 7th Avenue, and later, Lenox Avenue. In response, police began to disperse across Harlem, driving along those streets in radio cars and taking up positions on street corners and guarding damaged stores. Exactly when the first police were sent beyond 125th Street is not clear. The first arrest made away from 125th Street, on West 127th Street between St Nicholas and 8th Avenues around 9:00 PM, appears to have been made by a patrolman on his way to 125th Street rather than being deployed elsewhere in Harlem. The arrest of Leroy Brown around 9:45 PM on 7th Avenue between 127th and 128th Streets is clearer evidence of a spreading police presence.
With the MCCH giving limited attention to this period of the disorder, witnesses who testified at their hearings did not provide the details they do of the earlier police response. Newspaper reporters and photographers were on 125th Street during this time, so would have seen some of these events and been able to obtain information from police. Inspector Di Martini spoke with a group of reporters including one from the Afro-American during this time. At the same time, those reporters would have had a limited view. The block was too long for those at one intersection to see the details of what was happening at the other intersection, or even for those at Kress' store to clearly see the nearby intersection with 8th Avenue. At the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue the Afro-American's reporter saw only "little knots of people on the corner;" "once he walked on, however, he found high police officials and the first detail of 500 extra policemen rushed to the area" and "a large number of people between Seventh and Eighth Avenues." It is unsurprising then that newspaper stories offer only general and fragmented accounts of this period of the disorder. Information on specific events comes from legal records, which are limited largely to the period around 10:00 PM when police made arrests, and narrowly focused on the actions of a single arresting officer.
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2021-04-29T19:25:04+00:00
Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store windows broken
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2022-08-18T21:10:57+00:00
Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store on the northeast corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue had windows broken in the early hours of the disorder, beginning after police drove crowds on 125th Street toward 7th Avenue after 8.00 PM. Just how much damage the store suffered the store suffered is uncertain. "One brick was thrown through the window," the New York American reported, while the New York Post and New York Evening Journal reported windows on just one side of the store had been smashed, and the New York Herald Tribune that two windows were broken. The most damage was reported in an interview with Bernard Newman, the store manager, published in the Daily News. He claimed that fourteen "big show case windows" were broken. However, despite being attributed to the manager, the accuracy of that claim is questionable as the story also reported Newman as saying that "the mob jumped in the windows and scrambled for the jewelry," taking at least "Several thousand dollars worth" of merchandise. No other newspaper reported such looting; they all reported to the contrary that the store was not looted. "No attempt was made to loot the windows," according to the New York Herald Tribune, a statement echoed by the Home News. There was nothing to loot, in the New York American's story, as clerks had removed the display from the window. It was police arriving that prevented looting, according to the New York Evening Journal, describing the scene in typically sensational terms, "The emergency squad police swept into the mob with riot guns, drove the yelling, threatening men and women from their loot, and then guarded the store until armored trucks could remove the valuables." Newman was "deeply impressed with the police by the way they handled the situation in the vicinity of the store on the night of the riot," he told a MCCH investigator two months after the disorder, adding weight to the evidence that they did protect the store from being looted.
Two newspaper photographs show a smashed window and empty display that is likely a section of the windows of Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store. It was identified as a jewelry store by the captions to both photographs, and several bracelets and a pearl necklace can be seen on the back row of the display in the image that includes a white man looking into the window (no example of that image being published has been found; it is part of the Bettman collection).
Embed from Getty Images
Only the caption of the photograph in the Afro-American gave a location for the store, on Lenox Avenue, so not at the address of Herbert's store. However, compelling details in the photograph point to Herbert's, namely the distinctive panels beneath the windows, which are visible in the Tax Department photographs of the store, most clearly in the section visible in the photograph of the building to the store's north on 7th Avenue. Mistakenly locating the store on Lenox Avenue, as the caption appears to have done, also occurred a story in the New York Evening Journal, quoting the manager! The Afro-American photo caption also reported that items had been taken from the store window, but did not use the term looting, instead describing merchandise "scattered in all directions" rather than taken. The image itself could equally well fit with the displays having been emptied by clerks, as several other newspapers reported, as with having been looted.
Whenever they arrived, police "were stationed in front of the store for the night," as the Home News put it, one of the few stores identified as receiving such protection. One patrolman standing in front of the store appears in a image taken by a photographer for World Wide Photos, published in the Burlington Free Press and several other newspapers.
While the caption did not identify the store, the distinctive panels that decorated the exterior below the windows are visible behind the officer. He was armed with a "riot gun," a rifle rather than pistols regularly carried by police. Additional officers may have guarded other sections of the storefront. Four patrolmen with riot guns guarded the store in a New York Evening Journal story, three patrolmen in the Daily News, while the New York American and Home News reported two policemen guarded the store, and the New York Herald Tribune did not specify how many "police with riot guns." (Only the Afro-American mentioned police setting up "machine guns to prepare for pitched battle," weapons that were not part of police equipment). Clashes between those policemen and crowds are mentioned only by Bernard Newman, interviewed in the Daily News:
In other reports, the police presence less dramatically deterred crowds from approaching the store windows. Police "patrolled in front of the building," in the New York Herald Tribune's account, "Their armament effectively preventing attack by looters," according to the New York American. A second patrolman with a riot gun was photographed guarding another store at the intersection of 7th Avenue and West 125th Street, likely the United Cigar Store across 7th Avenue from Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry on the northwest corner of 125th Street. Notwithstanding the police guards, no one arrested for breaking windows, or looting, was charged with targeting the jewelry store.It looked for a while, according to Newman, as though the mob would crash the doors and pillage the store, despite three policemen with drawn guns who guarded the entrance. "We waited near the rear, ready to barricade ourselves in the cellar," Newman continued breathlessly, "but by some miracle the doors held."
However many windows were broken, multiple rocks were apparently thrown at the store, as Newman displayed a collection of rocks to reporters from the New York Evening Journal, New York Post and Daily News, the later publishing a photograph of them. The United Cigar Store and the businesses on the other corners were also targeted during the disorder; Regal Shoes on the southeast corner was also reported looted, while the United Cigar Store on the northwest corner and the branch of the Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant chain on the southwest corner only had windows broken. Only three stores with broken windows are reported on West 125th Street east of 7th Avenue, suggesting that most of the crowd instead went north and south on the avenue, where there were multiple reports of looting and assaults, including the looting of another jewelry store, owned by Jack Sherloff, opposite Herbert's store by the Alhambra Theatre.
The broken windows in Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store were more widely and extensively reported by the white press than any other damaged business. The prominent location of the business likely contributed to that coverage, as did the apparent willingness of the store manager, Bernard Newman, to speak with reporters.
The jewelry store is recorded at the address in the MCCH business survey in the second half of 1935 and is visible in the Tax Department photograph from sometime between 1939 and 1941.