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• 1 2021-11-01T19:47:39+00:00 Black-owned business signs (6) 93 plain 2024-06-15T18:59:21+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 showing a group of Black boys in front of the store published in the Afro-American.
  
  
  
  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. There is no information on the meaning of the phrase "Nix Jack." Roi Ottley, writing in his column in the New York Amsterdam News about the looting during the disorder as targeted at white-owned businesses, ended with an echo of that phrase: "THIS IS A COLORED COLUMN, NIX JACK!" The Cozy Shoppe customized its sign to fit its name, rendering it as "Colored Shoppe." The Home News reporter departed from those descriptions, apparently confusing the nature of the signs displayed. Explaining how it was that "Most of the damage was done to shops which were known to be operated by white persons," the reporter claimed, "The colored persons who owned stores protected their shops against vandalism by picketing their establishments. They carried signs stating that the store was operated by colored people." No other sources mention pickets in front of Black-owned stores. There was no mention of signs being displayed in store windows in the Daily Mirror, New York American, New York Sun, or in Harlem's Black newspapers, the New York Age and New York Amsterdam News, or in the Mayor's Commission (MCCH) Report.
  
  Signs appeared in Black-owned businesses as a response to windows being broken in nearby stores, providing material evidence that those throwing objects at windows chose their targets rather than being an irrational "mob." In some stories, those attacks were indiscriminate until signs appeared; other stories leave open the possibility that the signs reflected store owners' sense of the targets of those throwing objects at windows. "The mob made no choice, at first, of victims," in the most elaborate story, in the New York Evening Journal. "And then one colored man who owned a small restaurant pasted a sign in the window. It bore one word: 'Colored.' The mob passed him by and when others saw how the 'miracle' was worked, signs flashed up in store windows throughout West Harlem. Those owned by Negroes, in most cases, were not broken into." The dismissive tone of the story was typical of that newspaper's treatment of Black subjects; attributing the posting of signs to an individual and the protection from damage that resulted to a "miracle" diminished the decisions those on the streets made about what stores to target that Black store-owners recognized. By contrast, the Black reporter for the Afro-American, emphasized “Stores owned by colored persons in the rioting area had to rush improvised signs reading ‘Colored, “Black,” “This Store Owned by Colored," but cast the signs as based on an understanding of the intentions of those attacking stores, created "in order to be spared in the rain of bricks, whiskey bottles, and other missiles."
  
  Briefer mentions in other newspaper stories generally echoed that framing. Among Black newspapers, the Norfolk Journal and Guide went furthest in emphasizing that Black-owned businesses initially were damaged: "Some Negro establishments were among the 200 which lost their plate-glass windows and had the window contents looted. Finally, some Negro stores in the affected area...had to resort to self preserving signs such as 'Colored' 'Owned by Colored' and 'Black.'" The Philadelphia Tribune ambiguously alluded to earlier attacks, while also erroneously expanding the violence to homes, reporting "Risks to live became so grave Tuesday night that Negroes put up signs on their stores and homes to indicate 'colored' lived there." Signs are simply presented as a response in the Indianapolis Recorder, "As the swarms of rioters swooped down upon the business district breaking store windows and stealing merchandise signs saying 'Colored Store' went up." Among white newspapers, those brief mentions emphasized the lack of damage to businesses that put up signs, without reference to what had happened earlier. Two such mentions came in additional stories in the New York Evening Journal. "The mob wrath in most instances touched no windows whose proprietors had had opportunity to scribble 'colored' in white chalk on the glass," wrote Joseph Mickler. Robert D. Levit similarly noted, "They carefully left unmolested those store which displayed hastily constructed signs with the word 'Colored.'" The story in the New York Post included a similar description, that "Many Negro storekeepers scrawled on their windows, with soap, the word 'colored' and the heat of the mob was never sufficient to cause the Negroes to attack their own." While stories in the Daily News did not mention signs, they appeared in the background of a photograph of two police officers making an arrest, drawing a mention in the caption: "On the dress store window are signs proclaiming it to be a 'colored shop,' to protect it from the raiding marauders."
  
  Two more stories, in the New York Times and New York World-Telegram, described signs in windows the next day rather than during the disorder. Those signs may have gone up after the disorder, as storeowners became aware of details of the previous night's violence, or the white reporters may not have seen those signs during the disorder. The latter seems more likely. The signs in Winnette’s Dresses photographed after the disorder had also been present and photographed during the disorder. Likewise, the sign on the Cozy Shoppe window filmed after the disorder was also reported during the disorder. In both the New York Times and New York World-Telegram stories, Black owners weren't the only ones to put up signs. "Negro proprietors had large white-washed signs on their windows announcing that 'This shop is run by COLORED people,'" the New York Times reported, adding, "Several white store owners took the cue and covered their windows with signs announcing that 'This store employs Negro workers.'" The previous year, the boycott campaign had tried to expand the number of stores with Black staff. Newspaper stories offered contradictory claims about whether such businesses were attacked during the disorder: the New York Post and Pittsburgh Courier reported they were spared, while the Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide reported they were among those damaged.
  
  A further set of store owners' responses were included in the New York World-Telegram: "On every Negro store in Harlem today there were signs bearing this legend, 'Colored Store.' One said:-'Do not break this window. This is colored.'" Also, "There are many Chinese restaurants in Harlem, and they have placed similar signs on their windows. Chain stores have filled their windows with empty pasteboard boxes. Others have nailed boards across their windows." The only other mentions of Chinese-owned businesses as targets of attacks were of a single Chinese laundry posting a sign reading "Me Colored Too," reported by the Associated Press, in the New York Herald Tribune and Daily News (two newspapers that otherwise did not mention signs in their stories on the disorder), and in Time Magazine. That sign captured the issue raised by attention to those businesses: how did those attacking white-owned businesses regard those from other ethnic groups? The New York World-Telegram story implied that Chinese-owned businesses, of which there were 209 (3.5%, 209 of 5791) dispersed throughout Black Harlem, were not attacked because those on the streets during the disorder agreed their owners were "colored too." Newspaper stories in the New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, and New York World-Telegram about the laundry contradicted that view, reporting that the businesss' windows were broken after the sign was displayed. However, there are no other reports of damaged or looted Chinese-owned stores. By contrast, La Prensa reported several Hispanic-owned businesses suffered damage and looting, but made no mention that such stores sought to identify themselves as a "colored store." The author of that story, however, did not appear to understand the intent of the signs, seeing them as an effort to establish a racial divide in the neighborhood, to segregate Black and white residents. The final response described by New York World-Telegram offered further recognition among storeowners of who the violence targeted. Rather than signs identifying why they should be spared from attack, white-owned stores barricaded their windows, seeking to prevent damage from objects that would be thrown at them.
• 1 2020-12-03T17:22:02+00:00 Looting of Black-owned businesses (?) 91 plain 2024-01-28T05:01:09+00:00 While five Black-owned businesses are reported to have had their windows broken, there are no reports of any merchandise being taken from Black-owned businesses. Roi Ottley, in his column in the New York Amsterdam News, specified that it was looting, not damage 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." A story in the Atlanta World also specified that it was "stores belonging to white merchants" that were looted. The Communist Daily Worker persistently claimed that crowds "did not attack shops owned by Negroes, or shops on which the owners had put up the signed [sic], 'Colored Work Here.'" While that claim suited the Communist focus on the solidarity of Black and white workers, only one newspaper explicitly contradicted it. The Norfolk Journal and Guide 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, "[t]hose owned by Negroes, in most cases, were not broken into. The rioters concentrated on others." 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” were 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. Most reported looting occurred some time after attacks on store windows, so signs displayed in response to windows being broken would likely have helped to prevent stores from being looted as well as having their windows broken.
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  The MCCH report was alone in presenting 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: "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 seemed to recognize the evidence of Black-owned stores being spared from attack reported in the press, the fading of that distinction over time was not supported by the lack of reported looting of those businesses. 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.
  
  The number, nature, and location of those 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 1,690 (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 evidence of 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. (Lieutenant Samuel Battle did insist in his testimony to a public hearing of the MCCH that beauty parlors had been subject to attack, but there was no evidence to support that claim.) The offices of physicians, dentists, and lawyers represented another 10% (177 of 1,690) 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 were less likely to have 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, so 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 1,920 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 1,690), compared to 27% of businesses owned by other racial groups (1,153 of 4,281).
  
  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 as far as 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 looting on Lenox Avenue clustered in blocks that 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.
   
• 1 2021-10-14T12:37:57+00:00 Winnette’s Dresses windows not broken 55 plain 2024-05-29T17:48:06+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." Leo and Winifred Richards, who owned the business, likely put up the signs around 11:00 PM, when crowds arrived on Lenox Avenue and began to smash windows. The store was not mentioned in any newspaper reporting on the disorder but did 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 was not visible in either image nor mentioned in their captions. However, Vere E. Johns gave the location of the store, the southeast corner of West 127th Street, and the address on Lenox Avenue, in his column in the New York Age in June 1934 (for some reason the building on the northeast corner also has the address 340 Lenox Avenue or 340A Lenox Avenue).
  
  
  
  In the Daily News photograph from the night of the disorder, Winnette's Dresses appeared in the background behind two white police officers. One officer was dragging a Black man sitting on the ground who the caption identifies as having been arrested. Four signs attached to the store windows were visible, all reading "COLORED STORE." Those windows were not damaged. The caption asserted that the signs were to "protect [the store] from raiding marauders." That reference came at the end of the caption, which focused 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."
  
  Three additional signs were visible in the image taken the morning after the disorder published in the Afro-American, also reading "COLORED STORE." Those signs were the focus of that photograph, not a background, framed by passersby likely asked to pose. Four Black boys faced the camera on one side of the window, and a Black man with his back to the camera looked at the window 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 was 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 undamaged windows in a caption that asserted that the signs "saved this shop from destruction."
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  The full name of the store was visible in the uncropped version of the photograph published in the Afro-American. Almost a year earlier, New York Age columnist Vere 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:

  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.

  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 was identified as the source of that information. Leo's occupation was recorded as dress shop manager, Winifred's as a dress maker employed in a dress factory. Her job suggested that the store was not bringing in sufficient income to support them both, as had been the case in 1934.
  
  Winnette's Dresses was 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 was still at that location when the building was photographed by the Tax Department sometime between 1939 and 1941.