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Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935

Daniel Miller, Sam Jamison, Murray Samuels and Claudio Diabolo protest in front of Kress' store

Around 6 PM, four men arrived at the front of Kress’ store and began picketing. Newspaper reports identified them as members of the Young Liberators, an organization with ties to the Communist party with an office nearby, at 262 Lenox Ave near 126th Street. Three of the men, Daniel Miller, Sam Jamison, Murray Samuels were white and allegedly college students; Claudio Diabolo was black. They carried signs that read “Kress Brutally Beats and Seriously Injures Negro Child and Negro Women. Negro and White Don’t Buy Here” and “Kress Brutally Beats Negro Child.” At some point a fourth white man, Harry Gordon, a member of another group with ties to the Communist Party, the National Student League, arrived in front of the store.<<photographs>>.

<<What exactly did the men say to the crowd?? Young Liberators also distributed a pamphlet, but it did not appear on Harlem’s streets until several hours later, around 7.30 or 8.30 PM>> <<Photographs of pamphlet as well as signs, and of the group of men>>

At some point the men set up a stand in front of the store and began to speak to the crowd. One eyewitness reported that Diabolo, the black man spoke first, introducing a white speaker, identified in most reports as Harry Gordon, and in others as Daniel Miller. Shortly after he began to speak, someone threw a rock through the store window. Police then moved to arrest the speaker, pulling him down from the stand, as well as the other members of the group. In one account, a second member of the group climbed a lamppost to speak to the crowd after the first arrest, before himself being dragged down and placed under arrest. Police hurried the men into waiting cars and took them to the local precinct. There officers charged Daniel Miller, Sam Jamison, Murray Samuels and Claudio Diabolo with inciting a riot, and the fifth man, Harry Gordon, with assaulting one of the arresting officers, Patrolman Irwin Young.

This incident assumed outsized prominence in the reporting of the riot as Hearst newspapers and ADA Dodge alleged that Communists had instigated the riot.

 

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