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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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• 1 2020-04-09T19:45:50+00:00 Assaults on women (5) 47 plain 2024-03-01T17:54:06+00:00 The fifty-three alleged victims of assault included five women. Two of the women were allegedly attacked by groups, one “beaten” by an individual or group, one hit by an object, and one assaulted in unknown circumstances. Details exist of only two of those assaults. This small proportion of women does not appear to have reflected their presence in the disorder.
  
  Patricia O’Rourke was hit by glass after a bottle was thrown at the car in which she was traveling on 7th Avenue toward her home in the Bronx, leaving her with cuts to her eyes, forehead, and cheeks. Betty Willcox was also traveling on 7th Avenue, in a car that stopped at 7th Avenue and 125th Street so her companion could buy cigarettes. A crowd of Black men attacked the car as she sat in it, until a group of police appeared and drove them away. Willcox was uninjured. Alice Gordon was also allegedly assaulted by a group of Black men, also on 7th Avenue, eight blocks to the south at 117th Street, only a block south of where O’Rourke was assaulted. She was treated for lacerations to her face. The alleged assault on Emma Brockson occurred at 125th St and 7th Avenue, the same location as that described by Willcox, but there was no evidence indicating the form of the assault. She suffered an injured hand. Finally, Elizabeth Nadish was described as being “beaten,” a term that encompasses assaults by an individual and by groups while excluding being hit by objects or shot. Her injury was to her eye.
  
  
  
  Four of the women were white and one of unknown race. Two of the women were traveling through neighborhood rather than present there. However, white women could be found among the staff of businesses in Harlem and among those who patronized the theaters on 125th Street and 116th Street. That the four assaults with locations all occurred on 7th Avenue, at 125th Street or further south, means those women may have come from Harlem's businesses or entertainment venues. Nonetheless, white women did not appear in any images of the crowds in Harlem’s streets.
  
  Although no Black women were identified as victims of assault in any of the sources, they did appear in images of crowds and of the injured. One photograph printed in several newspapers showed a Black woman being helped up from the pavement, reportedly after being knocked down by “rioters.” (Several photographs, almost entirely illegible in the microfilm copies, that appeared to show an injured woman being loaded into a vehicle may have been taken subsequent to that photograph). Two men have hold of her arms, a Black man looking directly at the camera and a partly visible white police officer. Offering additional evidence of the presence of Black women on the streets, three of the four figures in the background are Black women. While the woman in that photograph did not appear to be seriously injured, a Daily News photographer took an image of a Black woman being treated in Harlem Hospital – although no Black women appeared in the list of those treated sent to the Mayor's Commission. The woman was lying on a trolley facing away form the camera, with only the back of her head visible. One of the men "treating" her was holding her head, which could indicate that was the location of her injury.
  
  There are also three photographs of women who were allegedly assaulted. O’Rourke appeared with bandage around her head as she left Harlem Hospital wearing a fur coat that attracted particular attention in the Daily News caption. (The only other bandaged individual was among those arrested being transported to court; otherwise the injured in photographs were bleeding or being treated). Only Nadish’s head with a “puffed up eye” appeared in the published photograph of her. Willcox was photographed striking a pose and smiling while seated on a desk — an image that on its own contained nothing to associate it with assault or the disorder.
  
  The reporting of assaults on women varied little from that on men. Several newspaper stories did frame women victims of assault as a sign of the indiscriminate nature of the violence of the disorder. The Daily News titled the photograph it published of a woman in Harlem Hospital “Sex was disregarded in riot” and in the body of its coverage wrote, “Men and women alike were attacked by hoodlums."