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

"Police Guard Against New Uprising as Mayor Acts to Probe Race Riot," Home News, March 21, 1935, 1.

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Morris Towbin's haberdashery store looted Around 10.30 PM, a group of eight men entered Morris Towbin's haberdashery store on the corner of West 125th Street and Lenox Avenue. Towbin and a clerk named Cy Bear were in the store, apparently still open for business despite the crowds around Kress' store and breaking windows in other stores one block away on West 125th Street. In his affidavit in the Magistrates Court Towbin described the men using “force and fear and…threatening to kill” to steal goods from the store with a value of $5000, breaking windows and store fixtures in the process. A Probation Department investigation by G. H. Royal used more sensational language to also describe a robbery, in which “the defendant and a group of hoodlums…brandished knives with which they threatened [Towbin] and his clerk, demolished fixtures and perpetrated other acts of vandalism,” after which they forced the men into the basement of the store. However, the Police Blotter and newspaper reports of the arrest of a man who allegedly took part labeled the event as looting, without mention of threats of violence. The Home News report of the Magistrates Court hearing included no mention of the force in the affidavit, describing Towbin’s store as looted, the goods carried out, and the windows smashed, and not noting that the charge brought was robbery not burglary. Reporting of Towbin’s statements as president of Harlem Merchants Association after the disorder likewise referred to a looting, with the Daily News identifying his store as one “into which hoodlums broke and stole several thousand dollars worth of merchandise,” and the Home News as “one of those wrecked during the disorder.” Moreover, the arrest of the man charged occurred away from the store, and was based on the goods he had in his possession, as in the other arrests for looting away from the scene of the crime. He was not charged with possession of a knife, so did not have the weapon Towbin alleged had been used and provided the legal basis for charging robbery not burglary. Given this evidence, the thefts from the haberdashery store have been categorized as looting, not robbery.

Towbin initially reported losses of $5000, but, after taking an inventory, told the Probation Department officer that only $2000 of goods had been stolen. His insurance paid $1000 for the goods taken from inside the store; the policy did not cover the goods taken from the store window. Another insurance company replaced the smashed plate glass windows, at a cost of $226.89, but the damaged fixtures, Towbin estimated, would cost an additional $1000 to replace. That he was well-insured suggested that Towbin’s business was more established than many of those on Harlem’s avenues. It certainly occupied a prime location, next to an entrance to the 125th Street subway station, through which crowds entered and exited the neighborhood. Towbin’s leadership of the Harlem Merchants Association, an all-white organization established during the picketing of white business on West 125th Street in 1934, also suggests his standing in the white business community. It is not surprising, then, that he remained in business in the years immediately after the disorder.

At 1.00 AM Patrolman William Clements observed Edward Larry, a twenty-six-year-old Black laborer traveling in a taxi at West 123rd Street and 7th Avenue. He stopped the taxi, and found that Larry had a box containing eight shirts, with a value of $12. Not satisfied with Larry’s explanation that he had found the shirts on the street at West 129th Street and Lenox Avenue, Clements took him to the 28th Precinct for further questioning. He was one of nine men arrested away from the store they had allegedly looted, a group making up one third (9/27) of the arrests for which that information is known (27/60).

Towbin was at the police station, where he had gone to report the theft from his store once the group of men fled. It is not clear how he had spent the two and a half hours since the men entered his store; it would have taken some time for a group of men, even if joined by others, to remove $2000 of goods, so he may have been in the basement for much of that time, and given the growing scale of the disorder, he also may have had to wait some time at the 28th Precinct station to report the theft. Regardless, he saw Larry there, and identified him as one of the men who had threatened him, and the shirts in Larry's possession as from his store. That encounter is described only in the more detailed account included in the Probation Department investigation, not the Magistrates Court affidavit. Had Towbin only identified the property Larry would have been charged with burglary; the allegation of force changed the charge to robbery. That the the charge against Larry is recorded in the police blotter as burglary suggests that Towbin's identification came after Larry's initial booking, as police charged others arrested away from looted stores in possession of goods suspected of being stolen with burglary.

Arraigned in Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 and held without bail, Larry was indicted for robbery by the grand jury. Rather than go to trial, he agreed to plead guilty to Attempted Grand Larceny in the second degree. The judge sentenced Larry to a term of between fifteen months and thirty months in the State Prison. That was the longest sentence given to anyone arrested in the disorder, a reflection of the charge, and of Larry’s criminal record, which included three convictions for pickpocketing in the three years before the disorder, and most significantly, a conviction for grand larceny in West Virginia in 1928.
Danbury Hat store windows broken and looted Some time during the disorder, the windows of the Danbury Hat store at 2334 8th Avenue were broken, likely allegedly by David Terry, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, and, around the same time, James Hayes, a sixteen-year-old Black youth, allegedly took a baseball bat from the store window. There are no clear details of the circumstances of the damage to the store or the men's arrest. Hayes lived at 476 West 141st Street, on Black Harlem's northwest boundary, further from the location of his arrest than most of those caught in the disorder, who typically lived south of 125th Street or near Lenox Avenue south of 135th Street. Terry had "no home." Police had pushed the crowds that gathered in front of Kress' store to the intersection of 125th Street and 8th Avenue early in the disorder, and groups of people remained in the area for several hours. Nearby stores on either side of the hat store had windows broken: the branch of the Liggett's drug store chain to the south, on the northeast corner of 125th Street; and a seafood restaurant to the north at 2338 8th Avenue. Neither of those stores was among those reported looted. Other isolated reports of looting and arrests on 8th Avenue occurred further north, around 127th and 128th Streets.

The Danbury Hat store was one of the businesses with broken windows identified by the reporter for La Prensa who walked along West 116th Street, up Lenox Avenue and across West 125th Street to 8th Avenue on the day after the disorder. The business is also likely the storefront that appears in a photograph published in the Decatur Review. Although the caption to that image did not identify the business, hats are visible in the display window, together with the last few letters of the store name on an unbroken section of glass at the bottom of the window: "RY HAT CO.." (The only other hat store recorded as having been damaged or looted was Young's Hat store). Two white men pose in front of the damaged store; white bystanders are most likely to be found near West 125th Street, where the Danbury Hat store was located. A large basket sits inside the display window, perhaps a trash bin taken from the sidewalk. The stock just visible behind the basket suggest that the store was not looted.

Despite this damage, the Danbury Hat store was recorded as in business in the second half of 1935 in the MCCH business survey, mistakenly located at 2336 8th Avenue. The Tax Department photograph was taken from too far away to show the presence of the store when it was taken between 1939 and 1941.

Hayes taking a baseball bat from the store was reported in a story about his appearance in the Magistrates Court in the Home News, which gave only the address of the store. The name of the store was confirmed by the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, which recorded the complainant against Hughes as Wilbur Montgomery, living at 951 Woodycrest Avenue. Montgomery was identified in the 1933 City Directory as the manager of Danbury Shoes. He was also recorded as the complainant against David Terry. There are no sources with details of the circumstances of Terry's arrest, only the charges made against him.

Officer Balkin was recorded as the arresting officer of both Hayes and Terry in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, suggesting they were arrested at the same time. When James Hayes appeared he was charged with petit larceny not burglary. That charge did not involve breaking in and entering a store as burglary, only taking merchandise. Magistrate Renaud transferred Hayes to the Court of Special Sessions, where he was convicted and given a suspended sentence. It was Terry who was charged with breaking the store windows. Tried in the Harlem Magistrates Court he was convicted by Magistrate Renaud, who sentenced him to pay a $500 fine or spend five days in the workhouse. Terry served the time in the workhouse, according to the 28th Precinct Police blotter.
Thomas Cut Rate Drug store looted Some time during the disorder, Thomas Babbitt, a forty-two-year-old Black man, allegedly took two cases of soap from the window of the Thomas Cut Rate Drug store at 2374 8th Avenue, on the northeast corner of West 127th Street. He did not smash the window. A Home News story described Babbitt as having "stolen two cases of soap from a drug store window;" the 28th Precinct Police Blotter included a less ambiguous description, that he "Put hand though Window. Stole merchandise." Detective Balkin of the 5th Division arrested Babbitt, according to the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book; at some time in the disorder he also arrested James Hayes for allegedly looting the Danbury Hat store two blocks to the south, near 125th Street. The attack on the Thomas drug store was one of the northern-most reports of disorder on 8th Avenue; further uptown were the arrests of Jean Jacquelin at 128th Street, in possession of goods he allegedly took from a store on 7th Avenue, and Henry Stewart for allegedly breaking a window in a meat market at 2422 8th Avenue, between 130th and 131st Streets. Police shot and killed James Thompson on corner diagonally opposite the drug store at the end of the disorder. Police made three other arrests in the block south of the drug store, of Emmet Williams and Theodore Hughes for allegedly breaking windows and looting a meat market and Rose Murrell for breaking windows. There is no evidence of when any of those events occurred. The businesses on the blocks of 8th Avenue north of 125th Street were almost entirely white-owned when the MCCH business survey was taken in the second half of 1935.

Babbitt appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with petit larceny not burglary. That change was likely made because of a lack of evidence that he had broken the store window and entered the store to steal merchandise. Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions, where the judges convicted Babbitt and sent him to the Workhouse for ten days.

Abraham Thomas, living at 1262 43rd Street in Brooklyn, is the complainant recorded in the docket book. Notwithstanding his last name, the forty-five-year-old white man appears to have been a staff member rather than owner of the store. In both the 1930 and 1940 census Thomas gave his occupation as "drug clerk," and his employer as Thomas Pharmacy in his draft registration in 1942 (business owners recorded themselves as self employed). Further evidence that the store remained in business after the disorder comes from the MCCH Business survey, which recorded a white-owned drug store, "Cut Rate Drug Store," at 2374 8th Avenue, and the Tax Department photograph, in which the store is visible.
Robert Tanner arrested Around 3 AM, Officer Charles Necas of the 28th Precinct reported seeing Robert Tanner, a seventeen-year-old Black student, put his hand in the broken window of Jack Garmise's cigar shop at 1916 7th Avenue and take a pipe, according to the Magistrates Court affidavit. Necas then arrested Tanner. The store window had been broken a little over an hour earlier, when two police officers allegedly saw someone in a crowd throw a milk can. At that time officers arrested two men, Thomas Jackson and Raymond Easley. That Tanner allegedly took a single pipe suggests that there was little merchandise in the window by that time, that most of the $100 of pipes, clocks, watches, razors and other goods that Garmise reported stolen had been taken earlier. While it does not appear that police officers guarded the damaged store, as they did on West 125th Street, it was in a likely location for police to be stationed: on the corner of West 116th Street, the business district south of West 125th Street, and Harlem's busiest avenue. Tanner lived on West 116th Street only three buildings west of 7th Avenue, at 218 West 116th Street. He was likely one of the many Harlem residents drawn to the streets by the disorder. There is no mention of others in the area at the time, but there are a scattering of reported events nearby around this time.

Tanner was one of only two of those arrested identified as a student, along with John Henry, and one of only four under eighteen years of age. His name is in the lists of those arrested for burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the New York Evening Journal. When he was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrate Court on March 20, Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury on $1000 bail, according to the Magistrates Court docket book. The Home News published the only report of that appearance, which grouped Tanner with Thomas Jackson, one of the men arrested for the earlier attack on Garmise's shop who the docket book indicates had been arraigned shortly before Tanner. The story mistakenly reversed the timing of the men's alleged crimes described in the legal records, reporting that Tanner smashed a side window an hour before Jackson broke the front window. A grand jury indicted him on a charge of burglary on March 22nd. Three days later the New York Sun reported that Tanner appeared in the Court of General Sessions, at which time he did not offer a plea, unlike the other men who appeared with him, and the judge continued his bail. When he appeared again in the court, he pled not guilty. By April 4, he had agreed to plead guilty to petit larceny, an outcome which went unreported in the press but was noted in the District Attorney's case file and the 28th Precinct Police Blotter. The district attorney offered that plea bargain to most of those indicted for burglary. The blotter provided the only evidence of his sentence, to the New York City Reformatory, as a result of being a youthful first offender.
Raymond Easley arrested Around 1.45 AM, Patrolmen Kalsky and Holland of the 28th Precinct allegedly saw a group of people around the cigar store at 1916 7th Avenue, and then a milk can thrown through the plate glass windows. The officers got to the store in time for Kalsky to arrest Thomas Jackson, a thirty-four-year-old Black driver who he charged had thrown the milk can, and Holland to arrest Raymond Easley, a twenty-one-year-old Black man, he charged had taken cigars from the store window, according to a story in the Home News. Holland also found that Easley was carrying a razor. Two arrests at the same incident of alleged looting was unusual during the disorder, suggesting that the officers were closer to the store than in other instances, perhaps only having to cross West 116th Street rather than 7th Avenue.

Easley is not mentioned in the affidavit in the District Attorney’s case file in which he and Jackson are co-defendants, nor does the file contain an examination of him. The only document in the case file referring to Easley is a criminal record; he had no previous prosecutions. Other than the story about his arraignment in the Magistrates Court in the Home News, Easley only appears in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list published in the New York Evening Journal, and a report on his return to the Magistrates Court in the New York Herald Tribune.

Easley and Jackson (whose real name was Thomas Dean) both appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, but took different paths through the legal system. Magistrate Renaud held Jackson for the grand jury on charges of burglary; he remanded Easley on the same charge and also sent him to the Court of Special Sessions on the charge of carrying a dangerous weapon, a misdemeanor offense, for having the razor in his possession. Both appeared in court again on March 27, but while Jackson, indicted on March 22, pled guilty to unlawful entry in the Court of General Sessions, Easley was back in the Magistrate's Court, having the burglary charges against him dismissed as he had already been indicted by the grand jury as a result of evidence presented in District Attorney Dodge's investigation. The New York Herald Tribune, the only newspaper to report on those proceedings, noted that Easley was rearrested. The 28th Precinct Police Blotter and the District Attorney’s case file are the only sources that recorded that the indictment was dismissed on April 12.
Herman Young assaulted Around 1.00AM, Herman Young, a fifty-three-year-old Austrian-born white man who had lived in Harlem for twenty years was cut on the head by flying glass after a stone was thrown through the glass door of his Lenox Avenue hardware store. Young and his wife Rose had come from their apartment above the store after hearing smashing glass. Rose went to the store first, turning on the lights in the store and front windows. On the stoop, she encountered a man, who called her names and punched her on the shoulder. He then tried to push past her into the store, but encountered her husband on the other side of the door. According to Young, the man cursed at him - "You Goddam Jew I am going to kill you if you don’t get out of here” -- and then smashed the glass in the door. Rose testified that the man used a piece of pipe; Herman said he used "some instrument." Police later reported a stone had been thrown through the door. Rose said she saw glass hit Herman; the stone may also have hit him.

Young appears in lists of the injured published by the New York Post (mistakenly identified as a Patrolman) and the Home News, and among those recorded as attended by physicians from Harlem Hospital, likely in the emergency room. All three sources describe the injury as a laceration of the scalp, with the hospital record adding the detail that it resulted from being hit with a stone, and the report of the arrest adding that Young had been cut by flying glass. The other details appear in the District Attorney's case file, which includes notes on statements by Herman and Rose Young, an arresting officer, and the man arrested for the assault and his wife. (Another man, James Williams, was later arrested for looting the store; the affidavit in his case makes no mention of Young being assaulted by a man, instead recording that he had come downstairs to find four men in the store stealing merchandise).

Isaac Daniels, a twenty-nine-year-old black man was arrested and charged with throwing the rock. According to notes in the District Attorney's case file, when Young was having his wound stitched at Harlem Hospital around 1:30AM, Daniels came in for treatment. Young identified him as the man who assaulted him, and an officer at the hospital arrested him. Young said he could identify Daniels as he had stared at him through the glass in the store door for several minutes.

Questioned in a lineup at the Manhattan Police HQ, Daniels denied throwing the stone at Young, and said he had been in the area because he was coming home. Daniels, a native of Georgia who had come to New York City in 1928, lived with his wife only a few blocks from Young's store, at 73 W. 130th St. Later, at his trial, he added the detail that he had gone out to buy cigarettes. His wife said that he had gone to the movies, and was listening to the radio at home at 1 AM, when Young was attacked; notes in the District Attorneys case file say that neither statement was true without indicating the basis for that claim.

Daniels was one of the first of those arrested to appear in the Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with felonious assault. The Home News reported he was back in the court two days later, one of three men returned to have their original charges dismissed so they could be rearrested and new charges brought (which is likely why Daniels appears in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter as having been discharged). The indictment in the District Attorney's case file has a charge of first degree assault, with intent to kill, struck out, leaving a charge of second degree assault, with intent to cause bodily harm, suggesting that prosecutors reduced the charge after obtaining details of what happened. Indicted for assault, Daniels was one of the handful of individuals tried for alleged offenses during the disorder. On April 9, the District Attorney's case file recorded that a jury acquitted him of the charge of assault, likely because of questions over Young's identification of him.
John Vivien arrested Around 11 PM, Officer Peter Naton of the 28th Precinct claimed he saw John Vivien, a twenty-seven-year-old Black laborer, reach through the smashed window of Regal Shoes and take a pair of shoes from the display. Edward Wittleder, the assistant manager, had closed the store, on the corner of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue, at 10 PM, before it was damaged, according to his Magistrate's Court affidavit. However, he would have known that it was likely to be attacked. By that time store windows had been smashed the length of the block of 125th Street to the west, between 7th and 8th Avenues. Police trying to clear people from the street had pushed them toward the intersection on which Regal Shoes sat, creating large crowds, as well as concentrating officers and riot control trucks there. After 10 PM, small groups had begun to attack businesses north and south of the intersection on 7th Avenue and further east on 125th Street. When Naton (and Officer Redmond, according to the Criminal Record) arrested Vivien, he claimed he found shoes which Wittleder identified as coming from the store in Vivien's possession. They had a value of $5.50, according to the affidavit. (Naton made two other arrests around this time, of John King, thirty minutes earlier, at the intersection of 7th Avenue and West 125th Street, and of James Pringle fifteen minutes later, two blocks south on 7th Avenue at West 123rd Street).

Vivien lived at 483 Manhattan Avenue, two blocks west of Regal Shoes, near the corner of West 120th Street, on margins of the Black neighborhood. He is listed among those arrested and charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and New York Evening Journal, his name, misspelled Vivian. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, where Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury on bail of $1000. It was not Vivien's first time in court; he had been arrested for robbery in 1929, a charge dismissed by a Magistrate according to his Criminal Record. The Home News reported those proceedings, also misspelling his name Vivian; the remainder of his prosecution is recorded only in legal records and police records. Vivien appeared before the grand jury on April 4, according to his District Attorney's case file; they sent him to the Court of Special Sessions rather than indicting him. That outcome indicates a lack of evidence that he had broken into the store, a requirement for a charge of burglary; the charge Vivien instead faced was likely petit larceny, a misdemeanor, as the value of the items he had taken were well below the $100 required for a charge of felony theft. The judges in that court convicted him on April 10 and suspended his sentence, an outcome recorded in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter.
Grocery store on West 137th Street looted Sometime during the disorder the grocery store at 1 West 137th Street, close to the northwest corner of 5th Avenue, was looted. That store is visible in the Tax Department photograph of 3 West 137th Street taken between 1939 and 1941. The two stores in the foreground are part of a different building which fronts 5th Avenue, and includes the lunch bar partly visible on the right, and would have had the address 1 West 137th Street, one of which has a sign identifying it as a grocery store. The MCCH Business survey in the second half of 1935 includes only one store at 1 West 137th Street, a black-owned stationary store that is likely the storefront to the left of the grocery store in the Tax Department photograph. The survey identifies the store at 3 West 137th Street, immediately to the left of the triangle on the sign in the Tax Department photograph, as a black-owned grocery store that the investigator described as a "Fairly well supplied store. Has been here 8 years." That is not the grocery store reportedly looted.

When Elva Jacobs, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with burglary, the Home News added the details that she had "broken a store window at 1 W. 137th St. and taken groceries." No complainant was recorded in the docket book, nor is the name of the store-owner recorded after the disorder by the MCCH investigator. Officer L. W. Adamie of the 46th Precinct arrested Jacobs. He also arrested Courtney March, a thirty-nine-year-old Black man who appeared in court immediately after Jacobs, facing the same charge of burglary. Based on other cases recorded in the docket book that indicates that Marsh was also arrested for looting the grocery store, but he is not mentioned in the Home News story on the arraignments in the court, nor does he appear in the list of those arrested in the disorder in which Jacobs appeared. Given that absence, and without a complainant recorded in the docket book to confirm a link between the two, Marsh was not included among those arrested during the disorder. Magistrate Ford sent Jacobs to the Court of Special Sessions, there is no evidence of the outcome of her trial.

No details survive of the scale of damage done to the grocery store. While it is not in the MCCH Business survey, there is a grocery store visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941, suggesting the store may have continued to operate after the disorder.
Lokos Clothes shop windows broken Windows in the Lokos Clothes store at 2275 8th Avenue were broken sometime during the disorder. Located just north of West 122nd Street, on the west side of 8th Avenue, the store was in an area with no other reported activity during the disorder other than rocks hitting Patrolman Harry Whittington as he traveled on an Emergency truck. Officer Phillips of the 28th Squad arrested two men for allegedly having "thrown an ashcan through the window" of the store, according to a story in the Home News. One of those arrested, William Norris, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, gave his address as 201 West 122nd Street, only a block east of the clothing store. The other individual arrested, Charles Wright, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, is recorded as having "no home" in the 28th Precinct Police blotter and the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, but with an address in Philadelphia in the Home News. There are no details of the time or circumstances of the arrests.

Pauline Lokos, a thirty-nine-year-old white woman, was identified as the storeowner in the Home News and recorded as the complainant in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book when Norris and Wright appeared in court on March 20. She and her husband Henry are listed in the 1933 City Directory as the owners of the men's clothing store at 2275 8th Avenue, which the Home News story misidentified as a delicatessen. An advertisement in 1954 said the business had opened in 1914. In 1933 the Lokos family lived at 312 West 122nd Street, just a block west of the store, on the corner of Manhattan Avenue, a section of Harlem where the residents were white in the early 1930s.

When Norris and Wright appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court both men were charged with malicious mischief. Magistrate Renaud transferred them to the Court of Special Sessions for trial, where the judges convicted them. On April 1st, the judges sentenced them each to three months in the workhouse, according to the 28th Precinct Police blotter.

The clothing store was recorded as a white-owned business in the second half of 1935 in the MCCH business survey, which mistakenly located the business at 2273 8th Avenue. By 1937, Lokos Clothes had relocated to 2285 8th Avenue, in the three-story building north of their location in 1935 (where the New York Amsterdam News reported a police officer had shot and killed Allen Bruce after allegedly seeing the twenty-five-year-old Black laborer smash the display window and take a coat). A "Henry Lokos Clothes" store sign is visible in a Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941, overhanging the street north of the one-story building in which it was located in 1935. The Lokos' two sons also gave 2285 8th Avenue as their place of employment when they registered for the draft in 1942. By April 6, 1940, when a census enumerator called, the family had moved to 285 St. Nicholas Avenue, between West 124th and West 125th Streets, still close to the store and in a section of Harlem west of 8th Avenue where white residents remained the majority.
John Kennedy Jones arrested Around 12.30 AM, Patrolman James Lamattina of the 66th Division allegedly saw "large number" of people gather in front of William's Shoe Store at 333 Lenox Avenue. Then John Kennedy Jones "motioning with his hand, said to the others "come on," and threw a rock that "broke the plate glass window" of the store. Other people in the crowd also threw "stones and sticks" at the window, Lamattina alleged in his Magistrates Court affidavit. At some point Lamattina arrested Jones, a twenty-four-year-old Black laborer; the affidavit made no mention of the circumstances of the arrest. No other members of the crowd were arrested. The shoe store had been attacked at least twice earlier in the disorder. A display window had been smashed and merchandise stolen sometime between 9.45 PM and 11.20 PM, and another window allegedly kicked in and three shoes taken at 11.20 PM, when a patrolman arrested Julian Rogers. In the half hour before Lamattina arrested Jones, other police officers arrested three men for breaking windows near West 126th Street and Lenox Avenue, Leon Mauraine and David Smith at 318 Lenox Avenue and Bernard Smith at 317 Lenox Avenue. Multiple arrests by different officers indicates that a number of police were stationed at the intersection at that time. All three of the arresting officers came from precincts outside Harlem.

Jones lived at 135 West 119th Street according to the information he gave in his examination in the Harlem Magistrates Court. Some distance from the shoe store, this block between Lenox and 7th Avenue was in an area south of 125th Street with a mix of Black and white residents.

Jones appears in the lists of those arrested and charged with "inciting to riot" published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. Similarly, the 28th Precinct Police Blotter recorded the charge against him as "inciting to riot. When Jones was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, the docket book recorded the charge against him as riot, for leading others in the crowd to attack the store. Crossed out is an additional charge of malicious mischief, for damage to the store window. That charge does appear on the Magistrate Court affidavit, in a handwritten note that also listed the forms of riot being charged. Reporting the proceeding in the Magistrates Court, a story in the Home News mixed the two charges together, describing Jones as having "urged the crowd to smash windows," but being held for the Grand Jury "on a charge of malicious mischief," an offense for which urging a crowd was not relevant. That garbled account likely indicates that Jones faced both charges, as did the six other men who allegedly both urged crowds to break windows and broke windows themselves, although only two of those men, Leroy Brown and Bernard Smith, had both charges recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book.

On March 20, Magistrate Renaud held Jones for the grand jury and set bail at $1000. A week later, Jones appeared before the grand jury, which transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions for trial on misdemeanor forms of the charges (as the malicious mischief charge is not recorded in the docket book Jones is not categorized as being charged with that offense). The judges convicted Jones and on April 1 gave him a suspended sentence, recorded in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter.
Viola Woods arrested Officer St. Louis of the 28th Precinct arrested Viola Woods, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman, for allegedly smashing the window of a vacant store at 2314 8th Avenue with an umbrella sometime during the disorder. There is no information on when during the disorder the arrest took place. Only a New York Amsterdam News story identified the store as vacant; a list in the New York American and stories in the Home News and New York Times provided only the address. The vacant store was in the block between 125th and 124th Streets, where four other stores had windows broken, including two other empty stores at 2320 8th Avenue and 2324 8th Avenue, the Arrow Sales 5 & 10c store at 2318 8th Avenue and Andy's Florist on the southeast corner of 125th Street. Those other damaged stores were all included in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa who walked west along 125th Street and and up and down 8th Avenue a block north and south of the intersection on the day after the disorder. It is possible the store whose window Woods allegedly broke was not on that list because it suffered only minor damage; the La Prensa reporter concluded their list by noting they had not included others as they had only suffered minor damage ("y otras mas que por ser los danos ocasionados relativamente pequeños no creimus de interes catalogar entre los establecimientos ya mencionados").

Woods name is misrecorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter as Viola Williams, a mistake repeated in the list of those arrested during the disorder published in in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal. The New York American misreported Woods' name as Loyola Williams. Another woman named Loyola Williams was arrested during the disorder and charged with burglary. Both women were recorded as being twenty-eight-years of age and living at 301 West 130th Street. While these overlapping details might indicate the reports refer to a single woman, both Loyola Williams and Viola Williams [Woods] appear in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal, with Viola Williams [Woods] charged with malicious mischief, an offense involving the destruction of property used in the prosecution of those alleged to have broken windows during the disorder. That is the charge recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter, with a note reading "Broke window with umbrella." However, when that woman appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court, the docket book, and stories about her two appearances in court in the New York Amsterdam News, Home News and New York Times, recorded her name as Viola Woods.

When Woods appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 the charge against her was disorderly conduct, a lesser offense than malicious mischief, and one that could be adjudicated in the Magistrates Court. Woods was ordered held on bail of $100 by Magistrate Renaud, an appearance reported in the Home News. Unusually, she was represented by a lawyer, future alderman Eustace Dench of 207 West 125th Street. Dench was one of several prominent members of the Harlem Lawyers Association who represented those arrested during the disorder. When Woods was returned to the court on March 28, Magistrate Ford discharged her, the New York Amsterdam News reporting that she "was freed for lack of evidence." The New York Times story simply reported that she had been discharged, the outcome recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter.

The woman arrested may be the Viola Woods a census enumerator found at 123 West 133rd Street on April 16, 1940. She was the same age and had been in Harlem in 1935. Born in South Carolina, in Hilton Head she gave birth to a son, William, in 1923, and a second son, Samuel, in 1925, according to their draft registrations. At that time her last name was Bligen. She arrived in Harlem sometime between 1925 and 1930, when she was recorded in the census living at 255 West 143rd Street, with a cousin, working as a domestic servant (both her sons are recorded as living with their father, William Bligen and his wife in Hilton Head until at least 1940). In 1931, she married Chester Woods, a West Indian longshoreman. At the time of the 1940 census, they had four children, aged between ten and two years. When her sons William and Samuel registered for the draft in 1942, Viola Woods was living at 49 West 133rd Street.
Horace Fowler arrested Around 1:30 AM, Detective George Booker arrested Horace Fowler, a thirty-two-year-old Black laborer who lived at 362 Lenox Avenue, after he allegedly saw Fowler break the window of Nicholas Peet's tailor's shop at 2063 7th Avenue, reach inside, and take several articles of clothing. Fowler did admit stealing the clothing in his possession when Booker arrested him, a man's suit and a lady's coat, according to the Probation Department investigation, but denied "breaking the window or knowing how it was broken." In the Magistrate's Court affidavit, Booker describes Fowler breaking the window with a club. The Probation Department investigation reports Booker as saying that he saw Fowler break the window "by throwing a missile through it." If Fowler smashed the window to gain entry, he had committed burglary; if he did not, he had only committed theft.

Fowler told the Probation Department officer that "he mingled with the crowds on the streets of Harlem following the disturbances and that when he observed the looting taking place, he stole the articles indiscriminately." The Probation Officer's notes suggest the theft was not entirely at random: "fell in with mob - needed a suit." As Detective Booker would have been in plainclothes, Fowler may have been unaware that there were police in the vicinity of the store. Fowler was certainly not the only person to steal goods from the store, and unlikely one of the first. Peet put his total losses during the disorder at $452.25 of secondhand suits, coats and pants, and an addition $133 of suits, overcoats, women's coats and dresses belonging to customers, according to the Probation Department investigation. The items found in Fowler's possession had a value of only $25. It is not clear how much of the other clothing was stolen before Fowler's arrest. It could not all have been in the display windows, so people must have entered the store, which required that the windows be broken. If Fowler had to break a window, that looting was unlikely to have happened before his arrest. However, Peet's store was located only two blocks south of West 125th Street, so crowds would have been on this section of 7th Avenue for several hours by 1:30 AM, making it unlikely that the windows remained intact that long. It is more likely that Peet did not have to break the window, and was following in the wake of other looters.

Fowler appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, charged with burglary. He appears in the list of those charged with burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, a list published in the New York Evening Journal, and a story in the Home News that included brief summaries of the charges made in the Magistrates Court. Magistrate Renaud held him for the grand jury on $1000 bail. The criminal record provided by the Police Department in the District Attorney’s case file showed no arrests, but the Probation Department found a conviction for disorderly conduct, for loitering in the subway, for which Fowler served five days in the workhouse in 1930. Indicted on April 5, Fowler agreed to plead guilty to petit larceny on April 8. After being investigated by the Probation Department, he returned to the Court of General Sessions on April 22, where Judge Wallace sentenced him to three months in the workhouse, according to both the 28th Precinct Police Blotter and the Probation Department case file.

Born in Cooleemee, North Carolina, Fowler had lived in New York City since around 1930. At the time of the 1920 census he was still living with his mother, stepfather and their seven children in Jerusalem, North Carolina, working as a card hand in a cotton mill (his name misrecorded as Horris). Fowler appears to have left home soon after, working around North Carolina before relocating to Philadelphia around 1924. He told a Probation officer he worked as a porter in two different bakeries and the Baltimore and Ohio station restaurant, details that could not be confirmed in the time available for the investigation.

When Fowler arrived in New York City sometime in 1930, he found work as an assistant janitor in a series of apartment buildings – but likely not immediately. His arrest for loitering in the subway was in February 1930; he also mentioned an unconfirmed arrest for vagrancy in Baltimore a month earlier, when he had traveled from Philadelphia looking for work. In both cases he appears to have been seeking shelter. Work as a janitor came with onsite accommodation, first at 1955 Grand Concourse in the Bronx, then 144 West 144th Street in Harlem, and finally, from October 1931 to January 1933, back in the Bronx at 1756 Taylor Avenue, according to the information he gave the Probation officer. Sometime in 1932, Fowler also began working part-time as a porter at a drug store at 1758 East Tremont Avenue, close to the apartment building where he worked. In January 1933 he suffered a hernia which prevented him from working as a janitor. He subsequently rented a room in the apartment of Walter Stevenson and his family at 362 Lenox Avenue, while continuing to work at the drug store almost seven miles away. The owner told the Probation officer he would be glad to give Fowler on his release, as he considered him “a reliable, industrious and honest person.” His industry extended to his leisure time, much of which he spent attending adult education classes at P.S. 89.

At some point after his release in 1935, Fowler left New York City and returned to Philadelphia. In 1940, a census enumerator found him living in a Salvation Army Men’s Hostel. He had been unemployed for over two months, and reported only four weeks of work in 1939. When Fowler registered for the draft two years later, in 1942, he was still living in Philadelphia, and without a job.
Rivers Wright arrested Detective Doyle of the 5th Division arrested Rivers Wright, a twenty-one-year-old Black man for allegedly being part of a group of men who attacked an unnamed white man at 125th St and Lenox Avenue at some point in the disorder. Wright lived at 2137 7th Avenue, a block west and two blocks north of the site of the alleged assault, and in the heart of the disorder.

Only one source provided any details of the circumstances of his arrest. The Home News reported on March 21 that Wright was arrested "after he and a number of others are said to have attacked a white man at 125th St and Lenox Ave." Wright appeared in lists of those arrested during the disorder in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, the New York American, New York Evening Journal, and Daily News.

Among the first arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Wright was charged with disorderly conduct, not assault, as was the case with half of those arrested for assault. The attack cannot have resulted in significant injury if the charge was disorderly conduct: the applicable section of the statute applied only to a person who used "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior." It could also have been the case that police did not have evidence that Wright participated in the assault; he may have been part of a crowd nearby, caught up in police efforts to arrest those responsible for the assault. Those circumstances fitted the definition of the offense. Disorderly conduct was also an offense that could be adjudicated in the Magistrates Court.

Magistrate Renaud convicted Wright and remanded him for sentence on March 23. On that date, he sent Wright to the Workhouse for ten days. His appearance was widely reported, in stories that named him in the Daily News, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune and New York Age and stories that did not in the New York World-Telegram, New York American, New York Post, New York Evening Journal, and Home News. None of those stories mentioned what Wright had allegedly done. Four other men convicted of disorderly conduct sentenced at the same time, after being charged with breaking windows, received terms of thirty days. The disparity in sentence offers further evidence that Wright had not actually committed an assault.
Joseph Wade arrested
At about 2.45 AM, Officer William Leahy of the 28th Precinct allegedly saw Joseph Wade, a twenty-four-year-old Black "candy boy" coming out of Frank De Thomas' candy store at 101 West 127th Street. Leahy noted that store's windows were broken, but not that he had seen Wade break them. When Leahy arrested Wade, he found several toy pistols worth sixty cents in Wade's possession, according to the Magistrate's Court affidavit, or $70 of goods, according to later reports of Wade's sentencing in the New York Age and New York Times. For the last month, Wade had lived near the other end of the same block of West 127th Street as the store was located, at 148 West 127th Street.

Wade was clearly not the only person to have looted the store, as DeThomas claimed $745.25 in losses. He was among the twenty white store-owners to bring the first suits against the city for failing to protect their businesses identified in the New York Sun.

Wade appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, when Magistrate Renaud ordered him held for the grand jury without bail. While only ? of those charged after the disorder were denied bail, Wade's criminal record featured three convictions since 1926, including one for unlawful entry resulting from a charge of burglary. That conviction in December 1926 was followed by a second arrest for burglary in April 1931 for which Wade was discharged. Two months later he was convicted of gun possession. Finally, in October 1933, Wade pled guilty to attempted second degree assault, having been charged with rape. As a result, he spent around two years in prison in the nine years before the disorder: two indeterminate terms for the first two convictions, and a year in Sing Sing Prison for the final conviction. The New York Age reported Wade had been paroled in December 1934, only three months before the disorder (a detail not mentioned by any other newspaper).

The grand jury indicted Wade for burglary on March 22, and five days later he appeared in the Court of General Sessions having agreed to plead guilty to the lesser offense of petit larceny. The Probation Department would have conducted an investigation before Wade's sentencing, but as he had been convicted previously in the Court of General Sessions, that report would have been put in the file created then, likely in 1926. On April 8, Judge Donnellan sentenced him to six months in the workhouse, a decision reported in the press as well as recorded in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter.

There are more reports of the progress of Wade’s prosecution than most looting cases. He appears not only in the lists of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal, and the Home News story on proceedings in the Harlem Magistrates Court. The New York Sun also reported his return to the Magistrates Court on March 25 to have his bail decision continued. At least five papers - New York Amsterdam News, New York Herald Tribune, New York Daily News, New York Post, New York Times - reported Wade’s appearance in the Court of General Sessions to plead guilty. The New York Times , New York Evening News, Daily News and Times Union, and three Black newspapers, the Afro-American, New York Amsterdam News and New York Age, also reported his sentencing eleven days later.

Wade had lived in New York City since at least 1920, when he and his mother Marie appear in the federal census, living with his father's brother at 262 West 124th Street. According to the census, he was born in New York City, but the Sing Sing Prison Inmate Admission Register recorded Charleston, South Carolina as his birthplace, and that of both his parents. Exactly when the family moved to New York City is uncertain; the register entry recorded Wade as having lived there for eleven years, so since around 1922, but the census indicates he had been in the city at least two years earlier. The Admission Register contains other fragmentary details of Wade’s life before the disorder. His father apparently died around 1923, when Wade was thirteen years old. He remained in school until he was sixteen years old; his first arrest and conviction must have occurred around the time he left school. He was born in according to the register, and he gave his age as twenty-four years in the Magistrate’s Court, but the census schedule records his age as ten years in 1920, putting his birthday in 1910. He must have given that earlier date when arrested in 1926, as he was not prosecuted in the juvenile court as he would have been if under sixteen years of age. As a youthful first offender, he was sent to the New York City Reformatory in January 1927. Released later that year, he began working as a porter at the Alhambra Theater. It appears that Wade’s arrest and conviction for gun possession in June 1931 cost him that job. Now aged around twenty-one-years old, he was sentenced to another indeterminate sentence, this time in the Penitentiary.

Wade served no more than eighteen months, as he started work as a porter for Sam Rosen of 216 West 125th Street around January 1933, according to the Sing Sing Prison Inmate Admission Register. By October, 1933, he lived at 109 West 129th Street; his mother Marie lived at 226 West 124th Street. That month Wade was charged with rape. The Admissions Register includes a section to record “Criminal Acts attributed to;” Wade’s entry is “Lived with girl,” suggesting that the charge may have been statutory rape, for sexual acts with a girl under eighteen years of age, the age of consent in New York in 1933. (Both the plea bargain and the sentence are in line with how courts handled such cases). Although sentenced to a minimum term of fifteen months, the Admissions Register recorded that he was eligible for parole after one year, on December 28, 1934. The report of his sentencing in the New York Age indicated he was released at the time.
Leon Mauraine arrested At 12:05 A.M., Officer Anthony Barbaro of the 25th Precinct arrested Leon Mauraine, a twenty-two-year-old Black window washer, and David Smith, a twenty-two-year-old Black clerk, in front of 322 Lenox Avenue. Barbaro had been standing on the corner of Lenox Avenue and 126th Street when he saw a group of people gather in front of the Rex Drug store at 318 Lenox Avenue, according to the statement he gave in the Harlem Magistrates Court. He then allegedly heard two of the men, Mauraine and Smith, say, "Com[e] on gang, here's two more windows, let's break them." Those men then threw stones at the store windows, breaking them, after which they ran north on Lenox Avenue. Barbaro chased them, catching and arresting both men two buildings north of the drug store. As the drug store was on the northeast corner of Lenox Avenue and West 126th Street, Barbaro must have been standing across 126th Street, on the southeast corner, as he would not have been able to hear the men or catch them so quickly from across the much wider Lenox Avenue. In the half hour after Barbaro arrested Mauraine and Smith, other police officers arrested two men for breaking windows near West 126th Street and Lenox Avenue, John Kennedy Jones at 333 Lenox Avenue and Bernard Smith at 317 Lenox Avenue. Multiple arrests by different officers indicates that a number of police were stationed at the intersection at that time. All three of the arresting officers came from precincts outside Harlem.

Mauraine had lived for the last nine months at 52 West 128th Street, two blocks north and a block east of the store, according to his examination in the Magistrates Court. He may have been drawn to Lenox Avenue by the noise of windows being broken earlier in the disorder. While both he and Smith could have thrown stone at the windows, as Barbaro stated, it is unlikely they said exactly the same words. It may be that only one of the them urged on the group, or that they expressed similar sentiments that the officer chose to report in the same words (The Home News story about the proceedings in the Harlem Magistrates Court reported they had said "Come on. Let's bust some more windows," a difference in wording from the affidavit likely produced by a reporter's difficulty hearing what was said in the courtroom). The list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal, did distinguish the men in a way Barbaro's affidavit did not. Mauraine was listed among those charged with inciting a riot and Smith among those charged with malicious mischief, an offense which involved damaging property used in other cases involving broken windows. However, that distinction is not replicated in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter or in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, which recorded both men as charged with inciting a riot. So too did the story in the Home News about the proceedings in the court, which did not mention that Mauraine or Smith had broken the store windows, only what they had been "overheard saying to companions." A note on the Magistrates Court affidavit did, however, include malicious mischief alongside three sections of the riot law, indicating that both men faced both charges at some point in their prosecution.

When Mauraine, and Smith, appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Magistrate Renaud held them for the grand jury, on bail of $1000. A week later both men appeared before the grand jury, which transferred them to the Court of Special Sessions for trial. It is likely that the note on the Magistrates Court affidavit was the charges they faced in that court, malicious mischief (as the malicious mischief charge is not recorded in the docket book Mauraine is not categorized as being charged with that offense) and the three misdemeanor forms of inciting a riot. Convicted in that court, on April 2, Mauraine, and Smith, received suspended sentences, according to the 28th Precinct Police Blotter.
La Guardia's statement "To the People of Harlem" On March 20, Mayor La Guardia circulated a statement about the disorder to “To the People of New York City.” The document was released to the press, and printed “in bold type on placards 20 by 24 inches in size,” the New York Herald Tribune reported. “Bundles of [the placards] were delivered to the West 123d Street station,” that story continued; the New York Times described the delivery as “two patrol wagons of circulars,” which it reported were “two foot by two and a half foot” in size. Patrolmen distributed the placards to Harlem’s stores, which displayed them in their windows, as was shown in a photograph published by the New York Evening Journal and reported by the New York Times, Home News, New York Herald Tribune and New York World-Telegram. The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Home News, New York World-Telegram, New York American and Daily Worker published the full statement. Among the Black newspapers, the Norfolk Journal and Guide provided a brief summary rather than the full text. The statement was not mentioned in the New York Amsterdam News, New York Age or Afro-American or in the Daily News, New York Sun or Daily Mirror (and reported only with the photograph in the New York Evening Journal).

The statement read
To the People of New York City: The people of New York City must know that the overwhelming majority of the Negro population of West Harlem are splendid, decent, law-abiding American citizens.

The unfortunate occurrence of last night and early morning was instigated and artificially stimulated by a few irresponsible individuals. A very small fraction of 1 per cent of the population took part in the demonstration and violence. Small groups of vicious individuals marauded throughout the section, from time to time; committing acts of violence, at-tacking individuals in cowardly fashion and breaking plate glass of stores unoccupied during the night.

Malice and viciousness of the Instigators are betrayed by the false statements contained in mimeographed handbills and placards.

Attempts may be made to repeat the spreading of false gossip, of misinformation and distributing misrepresentation in handbills or other printed matter.

I appeal to the law-abiding element of Harlem to carefully scrutinize any charge, rumor or gossip or racial discrimination being made at this time.

Every agency of the city Is available to assist in investigating all such charges. I expect a complete report from several sources giving me details of everything that occurred. As soon as I receive these reports they will be made public.

I am appointing a committee of representative citizens to check all official reports and to make a thorough investigation of the causes of the disorder and a study of necessary plans to prevent a repetition of the spreading of malicious rumors, racial animosities and the inciting of disorder.

F. H. LA GUARDIA.
Mayor.

Three versions of the statement are in the MCCH files. In a draft version the sentence announcing the committee read, “…and a study of necessary DEFENSIVE plans to prevent a repetition of the spreading of malicious rumors and the instigation of RACIAL disorder,” with the word “racial” crossed out in pencil. In a second draft, “defensive” is crossed out, “racial animosities” inserted, and “instigation of racial disorder” changed to “inciting of disorder” to produce the final text. That those edits were intended to avoid casting the events of March 19 as a “race riot” was made clear when a reporter from the New York Herald Tribune questioned La Guardia about the choice of the phrase “unfortunate occurrence” to describe the disorder. He asked, "You do not regard the trouble up there as a race riot?" "No," he replied, "you see, we have to be careful. We don't know yet what was the underlying cause of the trouble. We can't say on the basis of what we know that it was fundamentally racial. Certainly an outburst like that which happened Wednesday night doesn't go off unless there was smouldering some underlying feeling. What the causes of that were are what I want the fact-finding committee to find out. It may go back 100 years."

Notably, La Guardia’s statement did not follow police and District Attorney Dodge in holding Communists responsible for starting the disorder – although the New York Evening Journal misleadingly described La Guardia’s statement as doing just that, as having “flatly charge[d] radicals with the responsibility for much of Harlem’s riots.” Instead, as both the New York World-Telegram and New York Herald Tribune noted, it did not mention the Young Liberators or Communists by name. A journalist evidently asked La Guardia about that omission, as the New York Herald Tribune reported, “He would not say whether he agreed with the police that the instigators were Communists.” The Daily Worker, nonetheless, chose to ignore that reticence and characterized the statement as “cue from the red-baiting Hearst press” and “Attacking the Young Liberators, without mentioning them by name.”

The NAACP press release on March 22 that claimed credit for La Guardia’s decision to appoint a committee and the telegram the organization sent him that formed the basis of that claim (and a press release about the telegram) are in the NAACP files.

Only historian Lindsey Lupo has discussed La Guardia's statement, in a chapter on the MCCH in a broader study of riot commissions. Her study is the most detailed account of the MCCH. She highlighted the revisions to the statement as evidence that the mayor was "hesitant to deem the violence as "racial," which she interprets as at odds with the bi-racial committee he would appoint. That interpretation did not acknowledge that La Guardia's position was shared by Harlem's Black leadership.
Jean Jacquelin arrested At 5.40 AM, in one of the final events of the disorder, Officer Di Maio arrested a twenty-eight-year-old white chauffeur named Jean Jacquelin at the corner of West 128th Street and 8th Avenue. Jacquelin allegedly was carrying two ladies coats, values at $20 each, and two pairs of trousers, valued at $5 each. There is no mention of what caused Dimao to arrest him, but the clothing was likely bulky enough that it attracted the officer's attention; Morris Sankin later identified it as coming from his tailor's store at 200 West 128th Street, the opposite end of the block from where Dimao arrested Jacquelin.

Jacquelin was one of nine men known to have been arrested away from the stores they allegedly looted, one third (9/27) of the arrests for which that information is known (27/60).

Jacquelin would not have had to travel far to Sankin's store. He lived at 222 West 128th Street, a four story apartment building ten buildings west of the store. He had only lived there for a month. That block was home to Black residents, making it an unusual address for Jacquelin, one of only ten white men arrested in the disorder. There were areas occupied by white residents nearby, on West 126th Street and several blocks south of West 125th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues.

The evidence that Jacquelin was white comes from the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book. It is the only legal record that collected information on an individual's race. The Magistrate's Court examination recorded only birthplace. So too did the Police Blotter. Jacquelin may have been Canadian. His birthplace is recorded as Nova Scotia in the Magistrate's Court examination, but as the United States in both the docket book and the 28th Precinct Police Blotter (although the blotter also mistakenly identifies Jacquelin as a woman). He had been in New York City since at least 1932, when his criminal record shows he was arrested for assault with a knife, an incident that does not seem to have involved significant violence as the charge was reduced to disorderly conduct, for which the Magistrate convicted him but gave him a suspended sentence. No newspapers reported Jacquelin's race. He appears in the list of those arrested published by the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list published by the New York Evening Journal (both of which misspelled his first name as Kean). He also appears in the Home News story on hearings in the Magistrate Court, his first name reported as Gene, with Leroy Gillard, a forty-six-year old Black man also charged with burglary of Sankin's store, but arrested earlier, at 10.10PM, at the store. The story reported that they stole all $800 of clothes taken from Sankin's store, rather than the clothing allegedly found on them.

Jacquelin appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, immediately after Gillard. The Magistrate sent Jacquelin to the grand jury, along with Gillard. On April 5, the grand jury determined that both men should only be charged with a misdemeanor not felony burglary, likely petit larceny in Jacquelin's case as the clothing he had allegedly taken had a value of less than $100, so too little for a charge of grand larceny. Sent to the Court of Special Sessions, he appeared before the judges on April 11, according to the 28th Precinct Police Blotter, when they dismissed the charges against him.
Leroy Gillard arrested Patrolman Irwin Young alleged that around 10.10 PM, he "saw the window of the [Morris Sankin's tailor's] store being broken" and then saw a forty-six-year-old unemployed Black man named Leroy Gillard go into the store through the broken window and emerge with two suits of clothing, each valued at $25. The phrasing of the affidavit implies that Gillard did not break the window, suggesting there may have been others there at the time who escaped arrest. Certainly more clothing was stolen, to the value of $800, than Gillard allegedly had in his possession. The affidavit left those possibilities open by including the stock phrasing that Gillard's alleged crime was committed "while acting in concert with a number of others not yet arrested."

Sankin's store was set back from 7th Avenue and the crowds that moved up it around 9 PM, in a single story structure located between the rear of the five story building on the corner of West 128th Street and 7th Avenue and the first of a block of eight three story brownstone apartment buildings that stretched for roughly a quarter of the block. Gillard may not have come to the store from 7th Avenue as he lived at 208 West 128th Street, just four buildings west of the store. It is likely Officer Young was on the corner of 7th Avenue and West 128th Street, as police tended to take up positions on intersections. Young had been one of the officers in front of Kress' store four hours earlier, during which he was allegedly assaulted by Harry Gordon as he arrested him for trying to speak to the crowd.

Leroy Gillard appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, immediately before Jean Jacquelin, a twenty-eight-year-old white chauffeur arrested near the end of the disorder, at 5.40 AM, allegedly in possession of two ladies coats, values at $20 each, and two pairs of trousers, valued at $5 each, identified by Morris Sankin as also coming from his store. As Sankin had not returned to his store until 8.00 AM that morning, its contents would have been accessible through the broken window throughout the disorder. Jacquelin had been arrested away from the store, at the 8th Avenue end of West 128th Street, and like Gillard, lived on the same block as the store. A story in the Home News reported that the two men stole all $800 of clothing taken from Sankin's store, rather than the items worth $100 allegedly found on them.

Gillard appears in more newspapers than most of those arrested for looting. That is likely because police arrested him early in the disorder, so would have been able to provide his name to reporters for several hours. The New York Herald Tribune singled out Gillard as "the first arrest for alleged looting" during the disorder, describing the arrest as taking place inside the store (misspelling his last name as Gilliard as all the newspapers but the Home News did). As well as appearing in the Home News story, the list of those arrested and charged with burglary published by the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide and the list published by the New York Evening Journal he was included in a list in an earlier edition of the New York Evening Journal (which mistakenly listed the charge against him as disorderly conduct), a list in the New York American, and a list in the Daily News (which mistakenly identified him as a white man in one edition).

The Magistrate sent both Gillard and Jacquelin to the grand jury. On April 5, the grand jury determined that Gillard should only be charged with a misdemeanor not felony burglary, sending him to the Court of Special Sessions. The grand jury disposed of Jacquelin's case in the same way. Those decisions indicate a lack of evidence that the men had broken into the store, a requirement for a charge of burglary. That likely left a charge of larceny for taking the clothing; as those items were valued at less than $100, the men could only be charged with petit larceny. According to the 28th Precinct Police Blotter, on April 11, the judges dismissed the charges against Jacquelin. It took almost two more weeks before Gillard was tried, on April 23, when the judges convicted him and sentenced him to the workhouse for three months.
James Smith arrested Sometime during the disorder, Officer C. G. Weiler of the 32nd Precinct arrested James Smith, a seventeen-year-old Black man. Smith appeared in the lists of those arrested in the disorder charged with burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, in the New York Evening Journal and in the Daily News. By the time that Smith appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge against him had been reduced to disorderly conduct, a charge recorded in the docket book and reported in New York American. That change suggests that police did not have any evidence that Smith had taken any merchandise, or had been trying to take merchandise, the acts that constituted the offenses of burglary and larceny. He may have been accused of breaking store windows; a third of those police alleged broke windows faced a charge of disorderly conduct. But the definition of the offense did not actually encompass property damage, only various forms of breach of the peace. If the prosecutor was employing the charge in line with that definition, it was likely Smith had been part of a crowd near a looted store, but police could not establish that he attacked or took items from the store.

Magistrate Ford convicted Smith and sentenced him to six months in the Workhouse, an outcome recorded in the docket book and reported in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News and later in the New York Age. That was the maximum prison term the Magistrate could impose for disorderly conduct, and one of the heaviest punishments given to those arrested during the disorder. Notwithstanding the decision to charge him with disorderly conduct, that outcome suggests that police did allege that Smith had been involved in looting.

There is considerable variation in Smith's age and home address in as reported in the press. The docket book recorded him as seventeen years of age and living at 125 West 123rd Street, near the heart of the disorder. The New York Evening Journal and Daily News reported that home address, but Smith as eighteen years of age. The New York Herald Tribune, Home News and New York Age reported Smith was forty-eight years of age, living at 112 West 136th Street, while the New York American reported his age as twenty-six years and his home as 158 West 123rd Street. Based on the docket book, the stories could not refer to anyone else who appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20 other than James Smith.
John King arrested Around 10:30 PM, Detective Peter Naton of the 28th Precinct allegedly saw a crowd of twenty-five to thirty people gathered at the 7th Avenue and West 125th Street, he stated in an affidavit in the Harlem Magistrates Court. Crowds had been gathering at the intersection for several hours, with police stationed there to control and disperse them since around 9 PM as part of the perimeter around the block of 125th Street from 7th to 8th Avenues on which Kress's store. In response to this group, Naton "announced himself as a police officer," necessary as he would have been in plainclothes not in uniform, and told the group to "move on." John King, a twenty-eight-year-old Black fish and ice dealer, allegedly responded by yelling "I won't move for you this is my Harlem, and we will put that Kress store out of business and punish that man that injured the child." He then allegedly grabbed hold of the billy club in Naton's hand and broke its strap. As well as arresting King, Naton made two other arrests around this time, of John Vivien thirty minutes later at the same intersection, and James Pringle another fifteen minutes later, two blocks south at West 123rd Street and 7th Avenue.

The affidavit is the only source that includes details of King's arrest. The 28th Precinct Police blotter recorded the charge against King as inciting riot. He appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, among those charged with riot, and in a story in the Home News that only mentioned the charge against him. Riot was the charge recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book when King appeared in court on March 20. Magistrate Renaud sent him to the grand jury, on bail of $1000. A handwritten note on the affidavit listed an additional charge not recorded in the docket book, "simple assault," likely in response to Detective Naton's allegation that King had grabbed his billy club. That charge may have been added by the grand jury after they heard the evidence against King on March 27, when they transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions, reducing the riot charge against him from a felony to a misdemeanor. King did not appear before the judges in that court for almost two months; there is no information on the reason for that delay. The judges convicted King and suspended his sentence, according to the 28th Precinct Police blotter.

King's address was recorded in his examination in the Harlem Magistrates Court as 2905 8th Avenue, on the northern boundary of Harlem just south of West 154th Street. Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, he had lived at that address for five years, likely since he arrived in New York City sometime after April in 1930. At the time of the 1930 Census, King lived in Philadelphia, where he worked as a porter for a theater company, and lived with his wife Inez and their four-month-old son. He was still at the same address, 2905 8th Avenue, when the census enumerator called on April 2, 1940, by then working as the superintendent of the building, while Inez owned a candy store. The couple had two more children by that date, an eight-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son. King listed the same address and occupation when he registered for the draft two years later.
Elva Jacobs arrested Sometime in the disorder, Officer L. W. Adamie of the 46th Precinct arrested Elva Jacobs, an eighteen-year-old Black woman, and charged her with burglary for allegedly having "broken a store window at 1 W. 137th St. and taken groceries," according to a story in the Home News. At a subsequent court appearance the prosecutor reduced the charge against Jacobs to unlawful entry, an offense used when there was not evidence that she had taken any merchandise. However, that charge did suggest that Jacobs had done more than break a window, as the charge in that circumstance would likely have been disorderly conduct. Most likely, Adamie had allegedly seen or found her in the grocery store. Like almost all of those arrested for looting on the eastern boundary of Harlem north of 130th Street, Jacobs lived relatively near the store. Her home was at 56 West 142nd Street, between 5th Avenue and Lenox Avenues, five blocks north of the store, which was just off 5th Avenue.

The only information on the circumstances of the arrest was the statement in the Home News, reporting Jacobs' arraignment in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20. It is possible that Adamie arrested a second person for looting the store, and that Jacobs had been part of a larger group. He was recorded in the docket book as the officer who arrested Courtney March, a thirty-nine-year-old Black man who appeared in court immediately after Jacobs, facing the same charge of burglary. Like her, he lived north of the store, but further away, at 263 West 152nd Street, Based on other cases recorded in the docket book that indicated that Marsh was also arrested for looting the grocery store, but he was not mentioned in the Home News story on the arraignments in the court, nor did he appear in the list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide in which Jacobs appeared (neither of them are in the list published in the New York Evening Journal). Given that absence, and without a complainant recorded in the docket book to confirm a link between the two, Marsh was not included among those arrested during the disorder.

Magistrate Ford remanded Jacobs in custody. When she returned to court the next day, the docket book records that Ford set her bail at $1500. Two days later, on March 23, Jacobs was back in court. This was likely when the charge against her was reduced from burglary to unlawful entry; in the docket book the original charge is crossed out and "Red. to unl. entry" written in its place, in a different handwriting than the original charge. The same handwriting records that on this date Ford sent her to the Court of Special Sessions, which adjudicated misdemeanors such as unlawful entry, reducing her bail to $50. It took a month before Jacobs was tried in the that court. On May 3, the Magistrates convicted here, suspended her sentence and put Jacobs on probation, an outcome found only in the 32nd Precinct records. (The prosecution of Marsh followed the same process until March 23, when Magistrate Ford discharged him rather than sending him for trial as he did Jacobs).
Temple Grill & Restaurant windows broken Just after midnight, windows in the Temple Grill & Restaurant at 317 Lenox Avenue were broken. Officer Alfred Tait of the 42nd Precinct testified in the Harlem Magistrates Court that he saw a group of about thirty people assemble in front of the business. Then, about 12:15 AM, he allegedly heard Bernard Smith, a thirty-nine-year-old Black man shout to the group, "We will get this two windows here," and saw him then throw two stones at the restaurant windows, breaking them. Smith then allegedly shouted to the others, "You fellows get the others." Tait presumably arrested Smith in front of the store, although his statement did not mention the circumstances, but according to the officer, members of the group in front of the restaurant acted on Smith's urging, as "thereafter there were several acts of force and violence committed in said vicinity to other persons and property of others."

Located in the block between 125th and 126th Streets, the restaurant was in an area where multiple stores were reported as looted or damaged, with particularly extensive damage to both George Chronis' restaurant a building further north on the southwest corner of West 126th Street and Harry Piskin's laundry next to it on West 126th Street. Across the street, ten minutes before Tait observed the attack on the restaurant, another officer had arrested two other men who, like Smith, had allegedly urged another group to attack a drug store. By the time Chronis arrived at his restaurant at 1 AM it had been "completely demolished," according to a story in the New York World-Telegram.

Bernard Smith was the last person to appear in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, where he was charged with both malicious mischief, for allegedly breaking the window, and inciting a riot, for his alleged call for the group to break other windows. Held in custody by Magistrate Renaud, Smith returned to court on March 25, when bail was set at $500 for the first charge and $1000 for the second, and then again on March 26, when Magistrate Ford sent him to grand jury on the charge of riot. Prosecutors reduced the charge of malicious mischief to disorderly conduct, of which Magistrate Ford found him guilty and sentenced him to five days in the Workhouse. A week later Smith appeared before the grand jury, which dismissed the riot charge.

Although the business Smith allegedly attacked is not named in the Magistrates Court affidavit or the Home News story on Smith's first appearance in the Harlem Magistrates Court, an advertisement for the "Temple Grill Bar and Restaurant" at 317 Lenox Avenue appeared in the New York Age on March 9, 1935, just ten days before the disorder. It was still in business when the MCCH business survey was taken in the second half of 1935, identified as a white-owned business (the advertisement in 1935 identified Phillip Portoghese as the proprietor). A storefront of the kind that would fit a bar and restaurant is visible in the Tax Department photograph but the signage is not legible, so whether the business survived until 1939-1941 is unknown.
Truss shop windows broken Windows were broken in Fred Noble's Truss Shop at 2136 7th Avenue sometime during the disorder. Just south of the intersection with West 127th Street, the store was in the midst of the three-block section of 7th Avenue north of West 125th Street that saw multiple reported broken windows and looting, and three assaults on whites, including both James Wrigley and a Fifth Avenue Coach Company bus being hit by objects. Officer Platt's arrest of Arthur Killen for allegedly breaking windows in the Truss Shop was the only arrest that can be identified as having occurred in this area during the disorder. When police searched Killen they found an "open knife" in his possession, according to a Home News story.

A forty-three-year-old Black man, Killen lived at 277 West 127th Street, at the western end of the block that intersected with 7th Avenue near the Truss Shop. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, charged with both malicious mischief and possession of a knife. Magistrate Renaud transferred Killen to the Court of Special Sessions, and held him on bail of $500. The outcome of his prosecution is unknown.

A story in the Home News about his appearance in the Magistrates Court, for allegedly throwing a stone through a window, is the only evidence connecting Killen to 2136 7th Avenue, which it identified as a "surgical instrument store." The MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935 identified the business as a "Truss Shop;" a truss is a surgical appliance, typically used by hernia patients.

A white-owned "Truss Shop" is recorded at 2136 7th Avenue, with the owner identified as Noble, in the MCCH business survey. In the Tax Department photograph from sometime between 1939 and 1941 the name of the business at that address is not visible.
Lawrence Humphrey arrested Around 12.40 AM, Officer Rock of the 28th Precinct arrested Lawrence Humphrey, a thirty-five-year-old Black laborer, near Jacob Solomon's grocery store at 2100 5th Avenue, on the corner of West 129th Street. He claimed to have seen six men run out of the store, which had been closed since 9 PM. Humphrey was the only one of those men Rock arrested; he allegedly had a 50 pound bag of rice worth $2.50 in his possession, according to a note written on the Magistrate's Court affidavit. When Solomon returned to his store around 7 AM he found the door and windows broken and approximately $100 of groceries missing.

Lawrence Humphrey (misspelled Humphries) is listed among those arrested and charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, a proceeding reported only in the Home News, together with its outcome. It was not Humphrey's first appearance in the court. He had been arrested and charged with robbery in 1927; a grand jury dismissed the case, according to his Criminal Record. Magistrate Renaud held Humphrey for a grand jury on bail of $1000. There are no newspaper reports on the subsequent steps in his prosecution. His District Attorney's case file records that on April 11 the grand jury sent him to the Court of Special Sessions rather than indicting him and sending him to the Court of General Sessions. Their decision to charge him with a misdemeanor rather than a felony likely reflected the low value of the goods allegedly found in his possession. According to the 28th Precinct Police Blotter (which also misspelled his name Humphries) the judges found Humphrey guilty and on April 17 sentenced him to thirty days in the Workhouse.
Loyola Williams arrested Sometime during the disorder, Loyola Williams, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman who lived at 301 West 130th Street was arrested and charged with burglary. Williams' name appears among those charged with burglary in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide and the list in the New York Evening Journal, which also included her age, race and address. However, Williams does not appear in 28th Precinct Police Blotter, the 32nd Precinct Police Reports, the docket book of either Magistrates Court or any newspaper stories, and there is no evidence of the location of the business that she allegedly looted. That is also the case with nine men who appear only in the list published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide. That they did not appear in court could mean that police released them after questioning them the next day.

In the case of Loyola Williams, it is also possible that whoever compiled the list had confused her with another Black woman arrested during the disorder, Viola Woods, who was identified as Viola Williams in several sources. Both women were recorded as being twenty-eight-years of age and living at 301 West 130th Street. However, both Loyola Williams and Viola Williams appear in the list published in Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal, with Viola Williams charged with malicious mischief. Viola Williams also appears in the 28th Precinct Police blotter with the same age and address, where a note records her alleged offense as using her umbrella to break a store window. However, when that woman appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court, the docket book, and stories about her two appearances in court in the New York Amsterdam News, Home News and New York Times, recorded her name as Viola Woods.
Jacob Solomon's grocery store looted Around 12.40 AM, Officer Rock of the 28th Precinct saw six men run out of Jacob Solomon's grocery store at 2100 5th Avenue, on the corner of West 129th Street, which had been closed since 9 PM. He evidently gave chase and claimed he was able to arrest one of those men, a thirty-five-year-old Black laborer named Lawrence Humphrey. When arrested Humphrey allegedly had a 50 pound bag of rice worth $2.50 in his possession, according to a note written on the Magistrate's Court affidavit. When Solomon returned to his store around 7 AM he found the door and windows broken and approximately $100 of groceries missing. He told a passing New York World-Telegram reporter, who heard the sound of "cracking glass" and saw him "sweeping the walk in front of his little shop" the morning after the disorder that "my windows were smashed early this morning and the mob stole $150 worth of food."

The attack on Solomon's store is one of only two incidents reported on 5th Avenue; the other, an attack on a liquor store on West 116th Street over ten blocks to the south came almost two hours later. In part that absence reflected a lack of targets. The blocks around the grocery store contained very few businesses; only the block north of 125th Street, and the blocks from 131st Street to 138th Street were lined with stores. The men who attacked the store may have come from Lenox Avenue, a block to the west, where multiple attacks on businesses were reported around this time. Humphrey lived at 55 West 132nd Street, in the middle of the block between 5th Avenue and Lenox Avenue three blocks north of Solomon's store, closer to the crowds and violence on Lenox Avenue than the apparently relatively incident-free 5th Avenue.

Humphrey appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, a proceeding reported only in the Home News, together with its outcome. Magistrate Renaud held Humphrey for a grand jury on bail of $1000. There are no newspaper reports on the subsequent steps in his prosecution. His District Attorney's case file records that the grand jury sent him to the Court of Special Sessions rather than indicting him and sending him to the Court of General Sessions. Their decision to charge him with a misdemeanor rather than a felony likely reflected the low value of the goods - $2.50 - allegedly found in his possession. According to the 28th Precinct Police Blotter, the judges found Humphrey guilty and on April 17 sentenced him to thirty days in the Workhouse.

It is not clear if Solomon remained in business after the attack on his store. The store does not appear in the MCCH Business survey, which included no businesses at 2100 5th Avenue. However, the Tax Department photograph taken a few years later does show a store with the window signs characteristic of grocery stores, and a truck parked outside filled with boxes and milk containers that could be stock for the store.
Rose Murrell arrested Sometime during the disorder, Officer Libman of the 32nd Precinct arrested Rose Murrell, a nineteen-year-old Black woman, for allegedly having "stoned a store window," in the grocery store at 2366 8th Avenue, a story in the Home News reported. There is no information on the time or circumstances of the arrest. Libman also appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court as the arresting officer of another woman, Louise Brown and two men, Henry Stewart and Warren Johnson, who, with Murrell, had all been arrested at 8th Avenue and West 127th Street, according to a story in the Daily Mirror. While the grocery store was located at this intersection, on the southeast corner of 127th Street, the location of Brown and Johnson's alleged offenses are not mentioned in any sources, and the store in which Stewart allegedly broke a window was two and half blocks north of where the story reported his arrest. It is possible that the intersection was where police were stationed, where those arrested were initially brought, rather than the site of their arrest.

The grocery store at 2336 8th Avenue was in the midst of the blocks of 8th Avenue on which there are reports of violence and police making arrests during the disorder: the arrest of James Hayes for allegedly looting the Danbury Hat store at 2334 8th Avenue near 125th Street; the arrest of Emmett Williams and Theodore Hughes for allegedly breaking windows and looting Frendel's meat market three buildings south at 2360 8th Avenue; the arrest of Thomas Babbitt for allegedly taking soap from Thomas Drug store at 2374 8th Avenue, across 127th Street; and at the very end of the disorder, the arrest of Jean Jacquelin at 128th Street for allegedly looting and police shooting and killing James Thompson across 8th Avenue from the store. Murrell lived at 260 West 126th Street, just east of 8th Avenue a block south of the grocery store, so may have been drawn to the noise and crowds on the avenue in the early evening of March 19. All six of the men and women arrested by police on 8th Avenue lived either west of the avenue or in the block between 8th and 7th Avenues.

Rose Murrell is recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter as charged with inciting a riot. That charge is reported in a list in the Daily News and a story in the Daily Mirror. However, the list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the list published in the New York Evening Journal, include her among those charged with malicious mischief, an offense involving damage to property used in the prosecution of individuals arrested for allegedly breaking windows during the disorder. That was the charge recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book on March 20, when Murrell appeared in court, and reported in the Home News story about those proceedings. Police appear to have initially charged many of those arrested during the riot with inciting a riot, and then revised those charges to fit the specific act that an individual was alleged to have committed before their arraignment in court. Magistrate Renaud transferred Murrell to the Court of Special Sessions, and set bail at $500, indicating that the value of the damage to the building was not more than $250, the level required for the charge to be a felony. Almost two weeks later, on April 1st, the judges in that court convicted Murrell, and sentenced her to one month in the Workhouse, according to the 28th Precinct Police blotter.

Murell's name is spelled in different ways in the sources: as Murrell in the 28th Precinct Police blotter and Harlem Magistrates Court docket, book, and the Daily News, New York Evening Journal; as Murelle in the Daily Mirror; as Murell in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide; and as Morrell in the Home News.
James Hayes arrested Some time during the disorder, Detective Balkin of the 5th Division arrested James Hayes, a sixteen-year-old Black youth, for allegedly taking a baseball bat from the window of a store at 2334 8th Avenue, according to a report of his appearance in the Magistrates Court in the Home News. The name of the store is provided by the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, which recorded the complainant against Hayes as Wilbur Montgomery, living at 951 Woodycrest Avenue. Montgomery is identified in the 1933 City Directory as the manager of Danbury Shoes. He is also the complainant against another man arrested by Detective Balkin, likely at the same time, David Terry. There are no details of the circumstances of Terry's arrest, but the charge against him in the Harlem Magistrates Court, malicious mischief, was made against those arrested in the disorder who had allegedly broken windows. The nearby intersection of 8th Avenue and West 125th Street, only a few buildings from Kress' store, saw some of the earliest crowds and violence of the disorder, and a concentration of police, who sought to clear West 125th Street by pushing people on to the avenue. Windows were also broken in stores either side of Danbury shoes, the branch of the Liggett drug store chain on the corner of West 125th Street and a seafood restaurant at 2338 8th Avenue.

James Hayes is named among those charged with burglary in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, where the charge was recorded as petit larceny not burglary. That charge did not require evidence that Hayes had entered the store to take the bat, as a charge of burglary did. While the 28th Precinct Police Blotter, which misspelled his name as Hazel, included a note that he "Broke store window," the different charge in court indicates that that information had been reassessed by the time of his arraignment. The Home News story reporting the court proceeding mentioned only that "he is said to have stolen a baseball bat from a store window." Magistrate Renaud transferred Hayes to the Court of Special Sessions and held him on $500 bail. The 28th Precinct Police Blotter is the only source for the outcome of that proceeding: a conviction and suspended sentence on April 1.

The Home News story gave Hayes' age as seventeen years, while the blotter and the list in the New York Evening Journal gave his age as sixteen years (the list published in the Black newspapers did not include age or home address). The age in the Magistrates Court docket book is difficult to decipher, appearing to be "10," but is likely a hastily written "16." Hayes was one of the youngest arrested during the disorder, together with John Henry, also aged sixteen years. Hayes lived at 476 West 141st Street, on Black Harlem's northwest boundary, further from the location of his arrest than most of those caught in the disorder, most of whom lived south of 125th Street or near Lenox Avenue south of 135th Street.
Arthur Killen arrested Officer Platt of the 40th Precinct arrested Arthur Killen, a forty-three-year-old Black man, allegedly "after he threw a stone through the window" of the Truss Shop at 2136 7th Avenue, according to a Home News story. After the arrest, that story went on, police found an "open knife" in his possession. Just south of the intersection with West 127th Street, the store was in the midst of the three-block section of 7th Avenue north of West 125th Street that saw multiple reported broken windows and looting, and three assaults on whites, including both James Wrigley and a Fifth Avenue Coach Company bus being hit by objects, but no other arrests.

Killen lived at 277 West 127th Street, at the western end of the block that intersected with 7th Avenue near the Truss Shop. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, charged with both malicious mischief and possession of a knife. Magistrate Renaud transferred Killen to the Court of Special Sessions, and held him on bail of $500, for each charge. Renaud's decision indicated that the value of the damage to the window was not more than $250, the level required for the charge of malicious mischief to be a felony, and that Killen did not have a previous conviction, which would have made possession of the knife a felony. The outcome of his prosecutions are unknown.

A story in the Home News about Killen's appearance in the Magistrates Court is the only evidence connecting him to 2136 7th Avenue. Killen appeared in lists of those arrested during the disorder, with the charges against him variously recorded as inciting a riot in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, disorderly conduct in the New York American, "concealed weapons" in the Daily News, and disorderly conduct and possession of a weapon in the list in the New York Evening Journal. That Killen was one of a small number of those arrested charged with more than one offense likely produced that inconsistent reporting. Given that he appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court, Killen should have been in the 28th Precinct Police blotter, which would have included information on the outcome of his prosecution. However, Killen was missing from that record.

The Daily News identified Killen as a white man, but the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book recorded him as a Black man. The Daily News misidentified several of those arrested as white.
Thomas Babbitt arrested Some time during the disorder, Detective Balkin of the 5th Division arrested Thomas Babbitt, a forty-two-year-old Black man, for allegedly taking two cases of soap from the window of the Thomas Cut Rate Drug store at 2374 8th Avenue, on the northeast corner of West 127th Street. Babbitt is not alleged to have smashed the window. A Home News report of his appearance in the Magistrates Court described Babbitt as having "stolen two cases of soap from a drug store window;" the 28th Precinct Police Blotter focused on the means he allegedly used, that he "Put hand though Window. Stole merchandise." Balkin also appears in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book as the officer who arrested James Hayes for allegedly looting the Danbury Hat store two blocks to the south, near 125th Street, some time during the disorder. Babbitt lived at 321 West 136th Street, a block west of 8th Avenue, so may have been drawn to the noise and crowds on the avenue in the early evening of March 19. All six of the men and women arrested by police on 8th Avenue lived either west of the avenue or in the block between 8th and 7th Avenues.

Babbitt is among those listed as being charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with petit larceny not burglary. That change was likely made because of a lack of evidence he had broken into the store and entered it to steal merchandise, and because the allegedly stolen merchandise had a value of less than $100, the requirement for a felony grand larceny charge. Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions holding him on bail of $500. His trial and conviction occurred sooner than was the case with most of those arrested in the disorder sent to that court. On March 22 Babbitt was sentenced to ten days in the Workhouse, an outcome recorded in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter.

The man arrested during the disorder may be the Thomas Babbitt who a census enumerator found at 108 West 133rd Street on April 8, 1940. That man was the same age, and had been in Harlem in 1935. Born in Massachusetts, he was working on a farm in Williamsburg, South Carolina in 1917 when he registered for the draft. After serving in France in World War One, he was transported back to Hoboken, New Jersey in 1919, after which he appears to have made his home in New York City. In 1940 he listed his occupation as junk dealer.
Henry Stewart arrested Sometime during the disorder, Officer Libman of the 32nd Precinct arrested Henry Stewart, a thirty-three-year-old Black man, for allegedly having thrown a bottle through a window in the meat market at 2422 8th Avenue, a story in the Home News reported. There is no information on the time or circumstances of the arrest. Libman also appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court as the arresting officer of another man, Warren Johnson, and two women, Louise Brown and Rose Murrell, who, with Stewart, had all been arrested at 8th Avenue and West 127th Street, according to a story in the Daily Mirror. The broken window in 2422 8th Avenue was the northern-most report of disorder on 8th Avenue, on the block between 130th and 131st Streets, two and half blocks north of where the story reported Stewart's arrest. While the grocery store whose window Murell allegedly broke was located at that intersection, on the southeast corner of 127th Street, the location of Brown and Johnson's alleged offenses are not mentioned in any sources. It is possible that the intersection was where police were stationed, where those arrested were initially brought, rather than the site of their arrest. The other reported broken windows and looting on 8th Avenue were south of 128th Street. Stewart lived at 268 West 132nd Street, east of 8th Avenue a block and a half north of the meat market, so may have been drawn to the noise and crowds on the avenue in the early evening of March 19. All six of the men and women arrested by police on 8th Avenue lived either west of the avenue or in the block between 8th and 7th Avenues.

Henry Stewart is recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter as charged with inciting a riot. That charge is reported in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, in the New York Evening Journal, and the Daily News and a story in the Daily Mirror. However, malicious mischief was the charge recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book on March 20, when Stewart appeared in court, and reported in the Home News story about those proceedings. Police appear to have initially charged many of those arrested during the riot with inciting a riot, and then revised those charges to fit the specific act that an individual was alleged to have committed before their arraignment in court. The others arrested by Libman were all charged with malicious mischief, although Brown and Johnson later had that charge reduced to disorderly conduct. Magistrate Renaud transferred Stewart to the Court of Special Sessions, and set bail at $500, indicating that the value of the damage to the building was not more than $250, the level required for the charge to be a felony. On March 25, the judges in that court discharged Stewart, according to the 28th Precinct Police blotter.
Isreal Riehl's Unclaimed Laundry store looted Sometime during the disorder, Lamter Jackson, a twenty-four-year-old Black man, allegedly threw a rock that shattered the window of a store selling unclaimed laundry at 1 West 131st Street, and then took a bag of laundry from the store, according to the report of his appearance in the Magistrates' Court published by the Home News. Patrolman C. Jackson of the 32nd Precinct was recorded as having arrested Jackson in the Magistrates Court docket book. There are no other details of those events in the sources. There was only one other looting in this area, two blocks south on 5th Avenue, and a fire reportedly set on the roof of the building next door, 5 West 131st Street. A block west, Lenox Avenue saw multiple stores looted, assaults, and three fires, but there were far more business on that street than on this area of 5th Avenue.

Although the store was identified as at 1 West 131st Street, the business was likely the white-owned unclaimed laundry store the MCCH Business survey identified at 3 West 131st Street (the survey includes no businesses at 1 West 131st Street). The building was on the northwest corner of 131st Street and 5th Avenue, photographed as 2140 5th Avenue by the Tax Department. On West 131st Street the next building is number 5, so 3 West 131st Street would be in that building. The awnings visible in the Tax Department photograph on the left side of the building would be over the store.

Jackson appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with petit larceny. That charge suggests a lack of evidence he had broken in and entered a store to take merchandise. Isreal Riehl was listed as the complainant, so was likely the owner of the store. Magistrate Ford sent him to the Court of Special Sessions. There are no surviving police or legal records of the outcome of his prosecution.

The business seems likely to have survived the disorder, but there is no evidence that definitively links the store visited by investigators compiling the MCCH Business survey to that looted during the disorder.
Billiard parlor windows broken The billiard parlor at 151 Lenox Avenue, between West 117th Street and West 118th Street, is one of the businesses in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa after he walked along West 116th Street, Lenox Avenue and West 125th Street on the day after the disorder. The billiard parlor was one of at least six Black-owned businesses that responded to that damage by displaying signs identifying it as a "colored" business, according to another story published in La Prensa. (The MCCH business survey undertaken after the disorder also recorded the billiard parlor as having Black owners). Such signs were not an effort to establish a racial divide in the neighborhood, to segregate Black and white residents, as the author of that story claimed, but an attempt to protect stores from being the target of violence, according to stories in the Home News, New York Evening Journal, New York Times, New York Post, New York World-Telegram and Afro-American. Those in the crowds on Harlem's streets appear to have largely avoided attacks on Black-owned businesses: only five appear in the sources as having windows broken. In the case of the billiard parlor, as happened with the Williams drug store, the signs may have stopped further damage and prevented looting. There were no Black-owned businesses among those identified as having been looted.

Two other business just north of the billiard parlor appear in the La Prensa reporter's list of those that had broken windows, a branch of the Wohlmuth Tailors chain at 157 Lenox Avenue and the Castle Inn at 161 Lenox Avenue. Additional businesses in the area also likely had broken windows as the La Prensa reporter concluded the list by noting that it did not include those that had only suffered minor damage ("y otras mas que por ser los danos ocasionados relativamente pequeños no creimus de interes catalogar entre los establecimientos ya mencionados").

No one arrested during the disorder was identified as breaking the store's windows.
Ben Salcfas' grocery store windows broken Sometime during the disorder windows were broken in Ben Salcfas' grocery store at 2061 7th Avenue, on the northeast corner of West 123rd Street and 7th Avenue. Patrolman Leahy of the 28th Precinct arrested David Bragg, a thirty-three-year-old Black man, for allegedly throwing a rock through the window, according to a story in the Home News. The window could have been broken around 11.15 PM, when a group of twenty-five to thirty people gathered at the intersection. Another officer from the 28th Precinct, Patrolman Peter Naton, arrested one member of that group, James Pringle, for allegedly urging the others to cross the street so they could throw rocks at police. The group continued on despite the arrest, smashing store windows, according to Naton. Bragg may have been part of that group. Later, two stores close to the grocery store were looted. First, Sarah Refkin's delicatessen at 2067 7th Avenue at 12:30 AM, and then Nicholas Peet's tailors store at 2063 7th Avenue at 1:30 AM. The shoe repair store directly across 7th Avenue from the grocery store was also looted sometime during the disorder.

"Ben Salcfas" of 2061 7th Avenue is recorded as the complainant against David Bragg in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book. A story in the Home News is the only other source that links Bragg to 2061 7th Avenue. Benjamin Salcfas, a fifty-four-year-old white polish immigrant, had owned the grocery store since at least 1933, when he appears in the City Directory. The store was still in business in the second half of 1935, appearing in the MCCH Business survey (which misidentified the address as 2063 7th Avenue). "Corner store - well supplied," the MCCH investigator noted, also writing that at that time Salcfas employed "1 Negro clerk or assistant." It was unusual for small family-run businesses such as the grocery store to employ Black staff. The store visible on the corner in the Tax Department photograph, taken between 1939 and 1941, is the grocery store. When Salcfas registered for the draft in April 1942 he identified himself as the owner of his own grocery business at 2061 7th Avenue. At that time he and his family lived at 270 St Nicholas Avenue, only a block west of the store, in an area where most residents were white.

The information that Bragg through a rock at the store window was only found in a story in the Home News, a report of his appearance in the Harlem Magistrates Court. When Bragg appeared in court on March 20 Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions. Convicted by the judges of that court, he was sentenced to three months in the workhouse.
Grocery store window broken Sometime during the disorder the windows of the grocery store at 2366 8th Avenue, on the southeast corner of 127th Street, were broken. Officer Libman of the 32nd Precinct arrested Rose Murrell, a nineteen-year-old Black woman, for allegedly having "stoned a store window," a story in the Home News reported. There is no information on the time or circumstances of the arrest. Libman also appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court as the arresting officer of another woman, Louise Brown and two men, Henry Stewart and Warren Johnson, who, with Murrell, had all been arrested at 8th Avenue and West 127th Street, according to a story in the Daily Mirror. The store was in the midst of the blocks of 8th Avenue on which there are reports of violence and police making arrests during the disorder: the arrest of James Hayes for allegedly looting the Danbury Hat store at 2334 8th Avenue near 125th Street; the arrest of Emmett Williams and Theodore Hughes for allegedly breaking windows and looting Frendel's meat market three buildings south at 2360 8th Avenue; the arrest of Thomas Babbitt for allegedly taking soap from Thomas Drug store at 2374 8th Avenue, just across 127th Street; and at the very end of the disorder, the arrest of Jean Jacquelin at 128th Street for allegedly looting and police shooting and killing James Thompson across 8th Avenue from the store.

Rose Murrell appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with malicious mischief, an offense involving damage to property used in the prosecution of individuals arrested for allegedly breaking windows during the disorder. Magistrate Renaud transferred her to the Court of Special Sessions, and set bail at $500. Almost two weeks later, on April 1st, the judges in that court convicted Murrell, and sentenced her to one month in the Workhouse, according to the 28th Precinct Police blotter.

A white-owned grocery store was recorded at 2366 8th Avenue in the MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935. The Tax Department photograph from 1939-1941 shows a grocery store at that address.
Joseph Moore arrested Around 1.50 AM, Patrolman Louis Frikser arrested Joseph Moore, a forty-six-year-old West Indian carpenter, on the Third Avenue Bridge, which connected the eastern end of West 130th Street in Harlem with the Bronx. Frikser charged that Moore had been part of a group of men who had entered Harry Lash's 5 & 10c store at 400 Lenox Avenue, five blocks west of the bridge on the corner of West 130th Street, and stolen goods. None of the reports of this case detail what caused Frikser to stop Moore or what he found in his possession. Moore was likely returning home; he lived just three blocks beyond the bridge, at 248 East 136th Street in the Bronx.

"A few minutes" earlier Frikser had observed Arnold Ford, a nineteen-year-old Black man "walking across the bridge with a package," according to the details provided in the Probation Department investigation of Ford. Ford was also likely going home; he lived in a building next to Moore's residence, at 246 East 136th Street in the Bronx. The package he carried cannot have been large; it contained "soap, garters, thread and notions" with a value of $1.15. According to Frikser, Ford admitted he had stolen goods from Harry Lash's 5 & 10c store, joining others entering the store and "helping himself to some merchandise," but denying breaking the store windows. But Ford did not know Moore, according to a note in the Preliminary Investigation in his Probation Department file.

Only seven other men are identified in the sources as having been arrested away from the stores they allegedly looted, a group making up one third (9/27) of the arrests for which that information is known (27/60).

While the 28th Precinct Police Blotter recorded the charge against Moore as "Acc'd stolen goods during the riot" not "Burglarized store during riot" as in Ford's case, police charged both Moore and Ford with burglary in the Harlem Magistrate Court. The first charge suggested Moore had not obtained whatever goods he had allegedly stolen directly from the store, a version of events not mentioned anywhere else. Subsequently they were indicted by the grand jury and tried together in the Court of General Sessions. During the trial on April 1, Moore was acquitted at the direction of the judge, an outcome for which the Daily Worker gave credit to the International Labor Defense lawyers who appeared for him (that story made no mention of Ford, who pled guilty to petit larceny). The story gave no indication of the basis of the successful defense, noting only that the attorneys "had riddled the framed-up case against the worker." The involvement of the ILD suggests Moore may have had ties to the Communist party; the only others arrested during the disorder they represented were the men who picketed Kress' store.

Moore (and Ford) appear in newspaper reports only in the list of those charged with burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, a list published in the New York Evening Journal, and stories in the Home News and New York Sun. The Home News story included brief summaries of the charges made in the Magistrates Court; in this case, it grouped Moore and Ford together, arrested at the same time for looting the same store, but confused the $1000 of goods stolen reported by Lash in his affidavit before the Magistrates Court for what the men were found carrying, also mistakenly identifying it as clothing. The New York Sun likewise mistakenly alleged the men had stolen $1000 of property, but did correctly identify those goods as "general merchandise," in reporting the men's pleas in the Court of General Sessions, and those of four others charged with third degree burglary, on March 25, after their indictment by the grand jury on March 22.

Moore had arrived in the United States from Barbados in 1917, perhaps initially living in Pennsylvania, as the 1930 Census reported his eldest daughter had been born there around 1920. By around 1926, he and his family were in New York City as another daughter is listed as having been born there. In 1930 the census enumerator recorded Moore living in an apartment at 213 West 142nd Street with his wife Olive, three daughters and a son, working as a carpenter for building contractors, but unemployed at that time, April 3. At some point between 1930 and his arrest in 1935 the family relocated to the Bronx, and were still at the same address when a census enumerator called on April 2, 1940. Moore's eldest daughter, twenty years old by this time, is not part of the household, but Moore and his wife had two more children, both boys. Still working as a carpenter, Moore was now employed by the Parks Department.
Vacant store windows broken (2314 8th Avenue) The windows of a vacant store at 2314 8th Avenue were broken sometime during the disorder, perhaps in the first hours of the disorder, when crowds around Kress' store on West 125th Street moved down 8th Avenue to 124th Street, to the rear of the store. The vacant store was in the block between 125th and 124th Streets, where four other stores had windows broken, including two other empty stores at 2320 8th Avenue and 2324 8th Avenue, the Arrow Sales 5 & 10c store at 2318 8th Avenue and Andy's Florist on the southeast corner of 125th Street. Those other damaged stores were all included in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa who walked west along 125th Street and and up and down 8th Avenue a block north and south of the intersection on the day after the disorder. It is possible this store was not on that list because it suffered only minor damage; the La Prensa reporter concluded their list by noting they had not included others as they had only suffered minor damage ("y otras mas que por ser los danos ocasionados relativamente pequeños no creimus de interes catalogar entre los establecimientos ya mencionados").

Officer St. Louis of the 28th Precinct arrested Viola Woods, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman, for allegedly smashing the store window with an umbrella. There is no information on when during the disorder the arrest took place. Only a New York Amsterdam News story identified the store as vacant; a list in the New York American and stories in the Home News and New York Times provided only the address. After being charged with disorderly conduct in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Woods was ordered held on bail of $100 by Magistrate Renaud. When she was returned to the court on March 28, Magistrate Ford discharged her, the New York Amsterdam News reporting that she "was freed for lack of evidence."

By the second half of 1935, when the MCCH business survey was conducted, a white-owned restaurant was located at 2314 8th Avenue. The Tax Department photograph shows a one-story building constructed after 1935.
Unnamed white man assaulted A group of men allegedly attacked an unnamed white man at 125th St and Lenox Avenue at some point in the disorder. Only the Home News provided any details of the circumstances, reporting on March 21 that Rivers Wright, a twenty-one-year-old Black man was arrested "after he and a number of others are said to have attacked a white man at 125th St and Lenox Ave." Wright lived at 2137 7th Avenue, a block west and two blocks north of the site of the alleged assault, and in the heart of the disorder.

Wright, who appeared in several newspaper lists of those arrested during the disorder was among the first arraigned in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20. The charge was disorderly conduct, not assault, as was the case with half of those arrested for assault, suggesting that the unnamed victim suffered only minor injuries. Magistrate Renaud found Wright guilty and on March 23 sentenced him to ten days in the Workhouse.
Raymond Taylor arrested Officer D. Conn of the 24th Precinct arrested twenty-eight-year-old Raymond Taylor some time during the disorder for "stealing a quantity of groceries from a chain store at 135th St. and Lenox Ave," according to a story in the Home News. The store was likely the A & P grocery store at 510 Lenox Avenue, the only chain grocery store near that intersection in the MCCH Business survey. The only reference to the looting is a Home News report of the appearance in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court of Taylor and two other Black men three Black men, forty-two-year-old Preston White and fifty-year-old Joseph Payne. White and Payne allegedly smashed the store window and took food. All three men were arrested "in the store." Officer Archbold of the 30th Precinct, not Officer Conn, is recorded as having arrested White and Payne in the Magistrates Court docket book. There is no mention of the value of the merchandise the men allegedly stole. Only one other reported event occurred on Lenox Avenue north of West 135th Street, the arrests of Charles Alston, Edward Loper, Albert Yergen and Ernest Johnston for allegedly shooting at police at 138th Street at the very end of the disorder. Taylor lived at 2228 5th Avenue, a block east of the grocery store.

Taylor, White and Payne appeared in the lists of those charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. When they appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge against them was originally recorded as burglary, with Payne and White denied bail, and Taylor held on bail of $1000. The Home News mistakenly reported different bail decisions for Taylor and Payne: $500 for Taylor and $1500 for Payne. No complainant was listed in the docket book.

The three men returned to the Magistrates Court on March 26, at which point all had the charge against them reduced from burglary to disorderly conduct. That change is recorded in the docket book in the same handwriting as the outcome of the case, a quite different hand than the original entry. Magistrate Ford convicted all three men, and suspended Taylor's sentence while sending White and Payne each to the Workhouse for five months and twenty-nine days. There is no information on why Taylor received a different sentence.
David Smith arrested At 12:05 A.M., Officer Anthony Barbaro of the 25th Precinct arrested David Smith, a twenty-two-year-old Black clerk, and Leon Mauraine, a twenty-two-year-old Black window washer in front of 322 Lenox Avenue. Barbaro had been standing on the corner of Lenox Avenue and 126th Street when he saw a group of people gather in front of the Rex Drug store at 318 Lenox Avenue, according to the statement he gave in the Harlem Magistrates Court. He then allegedly heard two of the men, Smith and Mauraine, say, "Com[e] on gang, here's two more windows, let's break them." Those men then threw stones at the store windows, breaking them, after which they ran north on Lenox Avenue. Barbaro chased them, catching and arresting both men two buildings north of the drug store. As the drug store was on the northeast corner of Lenox Avenue and West 126th Street, Barbaro must have been standing across 126th Street, on the southeast corner, as he would not have been able to hear the men or catch them so quickly from across the much wider Lenox Avenue. In the half hour after Barbaro arrested Smith and Mauraine, other police officers arrested two men for breaking windows near West 126th Street and Lenox Avenue, John Kennedy Jones at 333 Lenox Avenue and Bernard Smith at 317 Lenox Avenue. Multiple arrests by different officers indicates that a number of police were stationed at the intersection at that time. All three of the arresting officers came from precincts outside Harlem.

Smith had lived for the last fourteen months at 2094 5th Avenue, three blocks north and a block east of the store, according to his examination in the Magistrates Court. He may have been drawn to Lenox Avenue by the noise of windows being broken earlier in the disorder. While both he and Mauraine could have thrown stone at the windows, as Barbaro stated, it is unlikely they said exactly the same words. It may be that only one of the them urged on the group, or that they expressed similar sentiments that the officer chose to report in the same words (The Home News story about the proceedings in the Harlem Magistrates Court reported they had said "Come on. Let's bust some more windows," a difference in wording from the affidavit likely produced by a reporter's difficulty hearing what was said in the courtroom). The list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list in the New York Evening Journal, did distinguish the men in a way Barbaro's affidavit did not. Smith was listed among those charged with malicious mischief, an offense which involved damaging property used in other cases involving broken windows, and Mauraine among those charged with inciting a riot. However, that distinction is not replicated in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter or in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, which recorded both men as charged with inciting a riot. So too did the story in the Home News about the proceedings in the court, which did not mention that Smith or Mauraine had broken the store windows, only what they had been "overheard saying to companions." A note on the Magistrates Court affidavit did, however, include malicious mischief alongside three sections of the riot law, indicating that both men faced both charges at some point in their prosecution.

When Smith, and Mauraine, appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, Magistrate Renaud held them for the grand jury, on bail of $1000. A week later both men appeared before the grand jury, which transferred them to the Court of Special Sessions for trial. It is likely that the note on the Magistrates Court affidavit was the charges they faced in that court, malicious mischief (as the malicious mischief charge is not recorded in the docket book Smith was not categorized as being charged with that offense) and the three misdemeanor forms of inciting a riot. Convicted in that court, on April 2, Smith, and Mauraine, received suspended sentences, according to the 28th Precinct Police Blotter.
James Bright arrested Sometime during the disorder Detective Perretti of the 6th Division arrested James Bright, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, for allegedly breaking windows in the drug store at 339 Lenox Avenue, on the northwest corner of 127th Street. Perretti likely arrested a second man, Arthur Bennett, also a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, at the same time, also for breaking the store's windows. There was no information on the circumstances of the arrests. While other stores in the surrounding blocks of Lenox Avenue had windows broken and goods taken, police made few arrests as they lacked the numbers to control the many crowds on the streets. However, other officers made arrests for alleged looting at Frank De Thomas' candy store next to the drug store on West 127th Street and at Sol Weit and Isaac Popiel's grocery store two buildings north on Lenox Avenue, suggesting that officers were stationed at this intersection.

A story in the Home News was the only evidence that connected Bright, and Arthur Bennett, to 339 Lenox Avenue. Bright appeared in lists of those charged with disorderly conduct published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. Inexplicably, the 28th Precinct Police blotter records "Annoyed pedestrians" as the charge against him; no one else arrested during the disorder other than Bennett was charged with that offense. Bright appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with disorderly conduct, with Detective Perretti recorded in the docket book as the arresting officer. Bright had allegedly thrown "stones through the window of the store at 339 Lenox Ave.," according to the Home News story on those proceedings. He did not live close to the store, but five blocks north, at 43 West 133rd Street. Magistrate Renaud convicted Bright of disorderly conduct. He returned to the court for sentencing on March 23, and received a term of one month in the workhouse "for breaking windows" from Magistrate Renaud in proceedings reported in the Afro-American, New York Age, Daily News, and New York Times. None of those stories gave an address for the store whose windows Bright had allegedly broken.
Lamter Jackson arrested Sometime during the disorder, Officer Jackson of the 32nd Precinct arrested Lamter Jackson, a twenty-four-year-old Black man, for allegedly throwing a rock that shattered the window of a store selling unclaimed laundry at 1 West 131st Street, and then taking a bag of laundry from the store. The only source of details of the event was the report of Jackson's appearance in the Magistrates' Court published by the Home News. Officer Jackson is identified as the arresting officer in Magistrates Court docket book. Lamter Jackson lived at 78 West 135th Street. There are multiple lootings and assaults on the stretch of Lenox Avenue between his home and the laundry store, noise and crowds which could have brought Jackson on to the streets. Several other men arrested in this area - Lawrence Humphrey, Carl Jones, Raymond Taylor, and Preston White, likewise lived in the blocks of 135th-132nd Streets between Lenox and 5th Avenues.

Jackson is listed among those charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the New York Evening Journal. Both those lists flip his name, identifying him as Jackson Lamter; the Home News and the docket book record him as Lamter Jackson. He appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with petit larceny not burglary. That charge did not require the evidence of breaking in and entering a store to take merchandise that burglary did. Magistrate Ford sent him to the Court of Special Sessions and held him on $100 Bail. For some reason just over two months passed before Jackson's trial took place. On May 27, the Magistrates convicted him and sent him to the Workhouse for thirty days, an outcome found only in the 32nd Precinct records.
Charles Wright arrested Officer Phillips of the 28th Squad arrested Charles Wright, together with William Norris, for allegedly having "thrown an ashcan through the window" of the Lokos Clothes store at 2275 8th Avenue, according to a story in the Home News. Located just north of West 122nd Street, on the west side of 8th Avenue, the store was in an area with no other reported activity during the disorder other than rocks hitting Patrolman Harry Whittington as he traveled on an Emergency truck, and no other arrests. There are no details of the time or circumstances of the arrests.

Wright, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, is recorded as having "no home" in the 28th Precinct Police blotter and the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, but with an address in Philadelphia in the Home News. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with malicious mischief. Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions for trial, and held him on bail of $500 (indicating that the value of the damage to the building was not more than $250, the level required for the charge to be a felony). The judges convicted him, and on April 1st sentenced him to three months in the Workhouse. The prosecution of Norris followed the same process, with the same result. Phillips was also the arresting officer of three other individuals, Arthur Davis, Herbert Hunter and Elizabeth Tai.

Pauline Lokos of 2275 8th Avenue was identified as the owner of the store whose windows Wright allegedly broke in the Home News and recorded as the complainant in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book when he appeared in court on March 20. Wright appeared in the lists of those arrested during the disorder published in Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal, but the two lists differed in the charge made against him. The Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide included him among those charged with burglary, while the New York Evening Journal listed the charge against Wright as inciting a riot. The charge recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter was inciting a riot. In the Magistrates Court the charge made was malicious mischief, recorded in the docket book and reported in the Home News. That charge involved damage to property not required for the charge of riot, so the change in charge in effect shifted from treating the men as part of a crowd to as having attacked the store. There is no information on why that change was made.
Dodge announces grand jury hearings, March 20 District Attorney William Dodge’s statement that he was having the grand jury investigate the disorder was reported widely:
The Mayor communicated with me last night and at his request I will immediately present to the Grand Jury the evidence I have procured in connection with the riot. My purpose in presenting the matter at once is to let the Communists know that they cannot come into this country and upset our laws. From my information, Communists distributed literature and took an active part in the rioting.

The three-sentence statement was quoted in full by the Home News and New York Herald Tribune. Three other papers, the New York American, New York Post, and New York Times paraphrased the mention of the mayor’s request and quoted the two sentences blaming Communists for the disorder. The New York Sun, Daily Mirror, New York Evening Journal and New York World-Telegram, as well as the Daily Worker, quoted only the second sentence, Dodge’s statement about his purpose in starting the investigation was to send a message to Communists. The Times Union reported Dodge had begun an investigation without mention of his statement.

Only a small proportion of those publications reported any details of the proposed investigation. The New York Post and Times Union mentioned the number of subpoenaed witnesses. The Times Union explained the delayed start as the result of “the great number of suspects being questioned by police, wide-spread complaints and the mass of information confronting officials.” Another explanation was offered in the New York Post: “the detail involved was so great that the evidence could not be presented to the Grand Jury today.” The New York Sun reported that “the policemen and citizens needed as witnesses were unable to appear, being busy in other courts as the prisoners arrested during the riot were being arraigned.”
David Terry arrested Some time during the disorder, Detective Balkin of the 5th Division arrested David Terry, a twenty-four-year-old homeless Black man. Wilbur Montgomery, living at 951 Woodycrest Avenue, recorded as the complainant against Terry in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book, was identified in the 1933 City Directory as the manager of Danbury Shoes, at 2334 8th Avenue. The nearby intersection of 8th Avenue and West 125th Street, only a few buildings from Kress' store, saw some of the earliest crowds and violence of the disorder, and a concentration of police, who sought to clear West 125th Street by pushing people on to the avenue. Windows were also broken in stores either side of Danbury shoes, the branch of the Liggett drug store chain on the corner of West 125th Street and a seafood restaurant at 2338 8th Avenue. Montgomery was also the complainant against another man arrested by Detective Balkin, likely at the same time, James Hayes. There are no details of the circumstances of Terry's arrest, but the charge against him in the Harlem Magistrates Court, malicious mischief, was made against those arrested in the disorder who had allegedly broken windows. Hayes had allegedly taken a baseball bat from the hat store, according to a story about his appearance in the Magistrates Court in the Home News, which gave only the address of the store. Police appear to have initially charged Hayes with breaking a window as well as taking the bat. He appeared in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter, his name misrecorded as Hazel, with the note "Broke store window, burglarized store." In line with that entry, Hayes was among those charged with burglary in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. However, when Hayes appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge was recorded as petit larceny not burglary. That charge did not require evidence of breaking in and entering a store as burglary did, indicating a reassessment of the information in the blotter by the time of his arraignment.

Instead, it appears that it was Terry who police alleged had broken the hat store windows, as he was charged in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 with malicious mischief. Magistrate Renaud held Terry in custody so his case could be investigated. When he was returned to court on March 26, the charge against him was reduced to disorderly conduct, the previous charge crossed out in the docket book, "Red. to" written above it, and the new charge stamped in its place. That change likely indicates a lack of evidence that Terry had broken windows. It is that reduced charge of disorderly conduct that appeared as the charge against Terry in lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. A different charge recorded against him in the 28th Precinct Police Blotter, inciting a riot, appears to have frequently been used by police as the initial charge against those arrested during the disorder, and was often replaced by other charges in the Magistrates Court. As disorderly conduct was a charge that Magistrates had the power to adjudicate, Magistrate Ford tried and convicted Terry and fined him $500 or five days in the workhouse. Terry served the time in the workhouse, according to the 28th Precinct Police blotter.
William Norris arrested Officer Phillips of the 28th Squad arrested William Norris, together with Charles Wright, for allegedly having "thrown an ashcan through the window" of the Lokos Clothes store at 2275 8th Avenue, according to a story in the Home News. Located just north of West 122nd Street, on the west side of 8th Avenue, the store was in an area with no other reported activity during the disorder other than rocks hitting Patrolman Harry Whittington as he traveled on an Emergency truck, and no other arrests. There are no details of the time or circumstances of the arrests.

Norris, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, is recorded as residing at 201 West 122nd Street in all the records of his arrest, only a block east of the clothing store. He appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with malicious mischief. Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions for trial, and held him on bail of $500, indicating that the value of the damage to the building was not more than $250, the level required for the charge to be a felony. The judges convicted him, and on April 1st sentenced him to three months in the Workhouse. The prosecution of Wright followed the same process, with the same result. Phillips was also the arresting officer of three other individuals, Arthur Davis, Herbert Hunter and Elizabeth Tai.

Pauline Lokos of 2275 8th Avenue was identified as the owner of the store whose windows Norris allegedly broke in the Home News and recorded as the complainant in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book when he appeared in court on March 20. Norris appeared in the lists of those arrested during the disorder published in Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal, but the two lists differed in the charge made against him. The Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide included him among those charged with burglary, while the New York Evening Journal listed the charge against Norris as inciting a riot. The charge recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter was inciting a riot. In the Magistrates Court the charge made was malicious mischief, recorded in the docket book and reported in the Home News. That charge involved damage to property not required for the charge of riot, so the change in charge in effect shifted from treating the men as part of a crowd to as having attacked the store. There is no information on why that change was made.
David Bragg arrested Sometime during the disorder, Patrolman Leahy of the 28th Precinct arrested David Bragg, a thirty-three-year-old Black man, for allegedly throwing a rock through the window of Ben Salcfas' grocery store at 2061 7th Avenue, according to a story in the Home News. The window could have been broken around 11.15 PM, when a group of twenty-five to thirty people gathered at the intersection. Another officer from the 28th Precinct, Patrolman Peter Naton, arrested one member of that group, James Pringle, for allegedly urging the others to cross the street so they could throw rocks at police. The group continued on despite the arrest, smashing store windows, according to Naton. Bragg may have been part of that group. Later, two stores close to the grocery store were looted. First, Sarah Refkin's delicatessen at 2067 7th Avenue at 12:30 AM, and then Nicholas Peet's tailors store at 2063 7th Avenue at 1:30 AM. The shoe repair store directly across 7th Avenue from the grocery store was also looted sometime during the disorder. Bragg lived at 235 West 135th Street, over ten blocks north of the store, between 7th and 8th Avenues.

"Ben Salcfas" of 2061 7th Avenue is recorded as the complainant against David Bragg in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book. A story in the Home News is the only other source that links Bragg to 2061 7th Avenue. The information that Bragg through a rock at the store window is also only found in that story, a report of his appearance in the Harlem Magistrates Court. The charge made against Bragg when he was arraigned, malicious mischief, involves the destruction of property, and was used in other prosecutions involving broken windows. However, police initially charged him with inciting a riot, which is the charge recorded in the 28th Precinct Police blotter, and in the list of those arrested during the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list published in the New York Evening Journal. When Bragg appeared in court on March 20, Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions and held him on bail of $1000. Convicted by the judges of that court, he was sentenced on April 1 to three months in the workhouse, according to the 28th Precinct Police blotter.
Arthur Bennett arrested Sometime during the disorder Detective Perretti of the 6th Division arrested Arthur Bennett, a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, for allegedly breaking windows in the drug store at 339 Lenox Avenue, on the northwest corner of 127th Street. Perretti likely arrested a second man, James Bright, also a twenty-eight-year-old Black man, at the same time, also for breaking the store's windows. There is no information on the circumstances of the arrests. While other stores in the surrounding blocks of Lenox Avenue had windows broken and goods taken, police made few arrests as they lacked the numbers to control the many crowds on the streets. However, other officers made arrests for alleged looting at Frank De Thomas' candy store next to the drug store on West 127th Street and at Sol Weit and Isaac Popiel's grocery store two buildings north on Lenox Avenue, suggesting that officers were stationed at this intersection.

A story in the Home News is the only evidence that connects Bennett, and James Bright, to 339 Lenox Avenue. Bennett appeared in lists of those charged with disorderly conduct published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. Inexplicably, the 28th Precinct Police blotter records "Annoyed pedestrians" as the charge against him; no one else arrested during the disorder other than Bright was charged with that offense. Bennett appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20 charged with disorderly conduct, with Detective Perretti recorded in the docket book as the arresting officer. He had allegedly thrown "stores through the window of the store at 339 Lenox Ave.," according to the Home News story on those proceedings. He did not live close to the store, but eight blocks south, at 48 West 119th Street. Magistrate Renaud convicted Bennett of disorderly conduct. He returned to the court for sentencing on March 23, and received a term of one month in the workhouse "for breaking windows" from Magistrate Renaud in proceedings reported in the Afro-American, New York Age, New York Daily News, and New York Times. None of those stories gave an address for the store whose windows Bennett had allegedly broken.
Meat market window broken Sometime during the disorder, a store window in the meat market at 2422 8th Avenue was broken. Officer Libman of the 32nd Precinct arrested Henry Stewart, a thirty-three-year-old Black man, for allegedly having thrown a bottle through the window, a story in the Home News reported. There is no information on the time or circumstances of the arrest. Libman also appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court as the arresting officer of another man, Warren Johnson, and two women, Louise Brown and Rose Murrell , who, with Stewart, had all been arrested at 8th Avenue and West 127th Street, according to a story in the Daily Mirror. The broken window was the northern-most report of disorder on 8th Avenue, on the block between 130th and 131st Streets. The other reported broken windows and looting were south of 128th Street.

Henry Stewart appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with malicious mischief, an offense involving damage to property. Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions, and set bail at $500. On March 25, the judges in that court discharged Stewart, according to the 28th Precinct Police blotter. That outcome indicated that whatever evidence police had presented to the Magistrate did not indicate to those judges that Stewart was responsible for the broken window.

A white-owned meat market is recorded at 2422 8th Avenue in the MCCH business survey taken in the second half of 1935. The nature of the business is not visible in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941.
In Washington Heights court on March 20 (30) Thirty of those arrested during the disorder appeared in the Washington Heights court on March 20. Magistrate Ford adjudicated over 80% of those prosecutions, twenty-five of the thirty. He rendered verdicts in most cases, convicting nineteen men and discharging four others. That was far more cases than Magistrate Renaud decided in the Harlem Court that day in large part because those arraigned in the Washington Heights Court faced less serious charges. That difference was also apparent in the small number of people Ford sent for trial on misdemeanor charges in the Court of Special Sessions, just two men, and the lack of anyone charged with a felony referred to the grand jury. The remaining four men and one woman he remanded in custody on bail. Those hearings were reported in all Harlem’s white newspapers, but not in Black newspapers, which did not report the disorder until March 30, when they reported later court appearances. The newspaper stories varied in detail, with most only offering general accounts in less detail than they reported the hearings in the Harlem court.

Only the New York Sun and New York Post provided specific descriptions of the scene at the court. Both noted the building was “heavily” guarded by police, with the New York Sun adding the details that “Policemen were stationed at all corners surrounding the building, in the corridors of the building and in the court. Forty were on duty.” The Home News, Daily News, New York Times, New York Post and New York American offered generalizations about the scene at both the Washington Heights and Harlem Courts which described the presence of police keeping crowds away from the building. Given that the stories in which those descriptions appeared focused on events at the Harlem court, they are entirely reliable as evidence of the scene at the Washington Heights court.

No newspaper stories gave details about the crowd size. The only mention of the crowd’s behavior was the general statement in the New York Times – “There was considerable grumbling, some shouting of threats, but no violence” – that fitted other evidence of the crowd at the Harlem court. There were also no photographs published of prisoners arriving at the court, as there were of those scenes at the Harlem court.

Only the Home News and New York Herald Tribune published lists of those being arraigned, neither of which was complete (the list of those arraigned published in the New York Evening Journal included appeared to include only those who appeared in the Harlem court, although the copy of this story examined for this study was incomplete). The list in the Home News was more complete than its list of those arraigned in the Harlem court, including twenty-five of those who appeared, omitting only one man remanded on bail and, as had the Harlem list, those the magistrate discharged. However, the list included details of alleged offenses for only five men and one woman, all those either remanded on bail or sent to the Court of Special Sessions included in the list. Only the name, age and address of the nineteen men convicted was provided. The list in the New York Herald Tribune likewise provided only those details, for fifteen of the nineteen convicted, adding the length of their sentences. That story provided details of the alleged offenses of two additional men convicted by Magistrate Ford, the first two men who appeared in court. It omitted two of those convicted (Salathel Smith and Walter Jones) made no mention of the cases on which the Home News focused attention, the men and women remanded or sent for trial, while following that publication in not mentioning the four men the magistrate discharged.

There were no cases in the Washington Heights court that attracted reporters as the arraignment of the five alleged Communists in the Harlem court did. The New York Post mentioned the details of one case in its summary account, a man “held in $1,000 bail for stealing a can of coffee from a windowless grocery store.” That man was likely Raymond Taylor, the only one of the three men who allegedly took goods from a grocery store arraigned in the court for who Magistrate Ford set bail at $1000 (although none of the other sources that mention Taylor specify that he took coffee). It is not clear why the reporter singled him out for mention.

The other detail that the New York Post reported was that “Up to noon, only four of the persons arraigned in both courts had been discharged. All four of these cases were at Washington Heights.” Those four men were the only prisoners Magistrate Ford discharged. That he discharged prisoners was also mentioned in the New York Sun. That story noted that “Of the first nine arraigned at this court, all charged with disorderly conduct, three were discharged; the others were found guilty and given the alternative of paying a fine of $25 or serving five days in jail.” The Washington Heights court docket book recorded the outcome of those prosecutions slightly differently: Ford discharged three men among the first nine arraigned, but convicted only five of the others. He sent the other man, Lamter Jackson, the eighth arraigned, for trial in the Court of Special Sessions These were the only stories to mention that any of those arraigned had been discharged.

Those stories gave a misleading picture of the hearings as a whole. The focus on the number of men discharged, and on the first men arraigned, in those stories suggests that the reporters left the court before all those arrested in the disorder had been arraigned. The Daily News reporter likely remained longer as the newspaper’s story identified that what distinguished the hearings in the Washington Heights court overall was that “Magistrate Michael A. Ford meted out punishment in a majority of cases brought before him.” Where Renaud convicted only 8% of those who appeared before him, Ford convicted almost two thirds, 63%. That difference was the result of those arraigned in the Washington Heights court facing less serious charges. However, as those convictions were reported without details, just what those convicted had allegedly done is unknown. (Although the statement that “In most instances, the cases were set over for further hearings” in the New York American came directly after a reference to the Washington Heights court being heavily guarded, it likely referred to outcomes in the Harlem court). The only other reference to arraignments in the Washington Heights court was in the Daily Mirror, which noted that “40 of the 89 arrested during the night were dealt with later in the day,” and “16 pleaded guilty of sabotage charges and received sentences of varying degrees.” None of those details align with the legal records: only thirty of those arrested appeared in the court; one hundred and six of those arrested appeared in court on March 20; no one pled guilty.
Julius Hightower arrested Patrolman Carter of the 32nd Precinct arrested Julius Hightower, an eighteen-year-old Black man, for allegedly throwing a brick through the window of Moskowitz's tailor shop at 2310 7th Avenue, according to a story in the New York Herald Tribune. The complainant recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book is L. Hackner, with the address 2310 7th Avenue, confirming the location of Hightower's alleged offense published in the New York Herald Tribune. The tailor shop was operated by a father and son, so Hackner was likely a manager or staff member. Located between 135th and 136th Streets, the shop was one of the northernmost businesses damaged during the disorder, in an area where most of the other businesses had Black owners.

Hightower lived at 204 West 148th Street, more than ten blocks north of the tailor store. He appeared among those charged with disorderly conduct in the lists published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. However, when Hightower appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20 the charge recorded in the docket book was malicious mischief, an offense involving the destruction of property used in cases of individuals who allegedly broke windows during the disorder. During his arraignment, that charge was reduced to disorderly conduct, an offense that a Magistrate could adjudicate. Magistrate Ford convicted Hightower, and sentenced him to five days in the workhouse or a fine of $25. He served the time. That sentence was reported in the New York Herald Tribune, and the New York Age, and without the duration in the Home News.
Salathel Smith arrested Officer Connelly of the 32nd Precinct arrested Salathel Smith, a forty-seven-year-old Black man somewhere north of West 130th Street some time during the disorder, perhaps for assaulting Vito Capozzio, a man of unknown race and age. Smith, who lived at 246 West 121st Street, appeared in lists published in the Home News and New York Age of those arrested during the disorder who were found guilty in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court and sentenced to the Workhouse for two days on March 20. The story included no information on the events that led to his arrest. No other newspaper lists or stories mention Smith, including the other reports of those court proceedings. He did appear in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book, where the charge against him was recorded as disorderly conduct.

The other information in the docket book suggests Smith may have been involved in a fight not in the disorder. Check marks indicate that the charge, complainant and arresting officer in his case were the same as those of the man who appeared above him in the docket book, Richard Jackson, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man who lived at 102 West 119th Street. The charge was annotated "fight." Like Smith, Jackson was found guilty by the Magistrate and sentenced to only two days in the Workhouse. That violence cannot have resulted in any injury if the charge was disorderly conduct: the applicable section of the statute applied only to a person who used "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior." Vito Capozzio was the complainant, his address recorded as "3764 Boulevard," perhaps in the Bronx. Given that evidence, Smith and Jackson may have got into a fight in a business which Capozzio either owned or worked in. Their appearance in the Washington Heights Court, and arrest by an officer from the 32nd Precinct, indicate that they were arrested north of 130th Street, an area that saw fewer incidents and arrests during the disorder. While neither list in which Smith was includedSmith and Jackson would not have been the only men who appeared in court that day not arrested as part of the disorder; eleven of the forty-four recorded in the docket book on March 20 faced charges obviously unrelated to the disorder, such as offenses against the Sabbath Law.

Disorderly conduct was a charge that could be adjudicated in the Magistrates Court. Magistrate Ford convicted Smith, and Jackson. He sentenced both to just two days in the workhouse or a $5 fine; neither paid the fine. Jackson did appear in two sources that Smith did not: the list of those arrested for assault published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide; and a New York Herald Tribune story that reported the charge and sentence. However, he, like Smith, is missing from most sources that provided information on those arrested. The presence of Smith in the New York Age story likely reflects the reporter's confusion about whether his arrest related to the disorder, given that the charge against him was one made against others arrested in the disorder.
Joseph Payne arrested Officer Archbold of the 30th Precinct arrested fifty-year-old Joseph Payne some time during the disorder for smashing the store window and taking food from "a chain store at 135th St. and Lenox Ave," according to a story in the Home News. The store was likely the A & P grocery store at 510 Lenox Avenue, the only chain grocery store near that intersection in the MCCH Business survey. The only reference to the looting is a Home News report of the appearance in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court of Payne and two other Black men, twenty-eight-year-old Raymond Taylor and forty-two-year-old Preston White. Like Payne, White allegedly smashed the store window and took food, whereas Taylor was arrested for "stealing a quantity of groceries." All three men were arrested "in the store." While Officer Archbold also arrested White, Officer D. Conn of the 24th Precinct is recorded as having arrested Taylor in the Magistrates Court docket book. There is no mention of the value of the merchandise the men allegedly stole. Only one other reported event occurred on Lenox Avenue north of West 135th Street, the arrests of Charles Alston, Edward Loper, Albert Yergen and Ernest Johnston for allegedly shooting at police at 138th Street at the very end of the disorder. Payne lived at 28 East 128th Street, on Harlem's eastern boundary and far further from the grocery store than Taylor or White.

Payne, White and Taylor appeared in the lists of those charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. When they appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge against them was originally recorded as burglary, with Payne and White denied bail, and Taylor held on bail of $1000. The Home News mistakenly reported Payne as younger, twenty-three years-of-age, and different bail decisions for Payne and Taylor: $1500 for Payne and $500 for Taylor.

The three men returned to the Magistrates Court on March 26, at which point all had the charge against them reduced from burglary to disorderly conduct. That change is recorded in the docket book in the same handwriting as the outcome of the case, a quite different hand than the original entry. One explanation for the reduced charge is that, although arrested in the store, there was no evidence that the men had broken windows to gain entry or taken any merchandise. Magistrate Ford convicted all three men, sending Payne and White to the Workhouse for five months and twenty-nine days, and suspending Taylor's sentence. There is no information on why Taylor received a different sentence.
Preston White arrested Officer Archbold of the 30th Precinct arrested forty-two-year-old Preston White some time during the disorder for smashing the store window and taking food from "a chain store at 135th St. and Lenox Ave," according to a story in the Home News. The store was likely the A & P grocery store at 510 Lenox Avenue, the only chain grocery store near that intersection in the MCCH Business survey. The only reference to the looting is a Home News report of the appearance in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court of White and two other Black men, twenty-eight-year-old Raymond Taylor and fifty-year-old Joseph Payne. Like White, Payne allegedly smashed the store window and took food, whereas Taylor was arrested for "stealing a quantity of groceries." All three men were arrested "in the store." While Officer Archbold also arrested Payne, Officer D. Conn of the 24th Precinct is recorded as having arrested Taylor in the Magistrates Court docket book. There is no mention of the value of the merchandise the men allegedly stole. Only one other reported event occurred on Lenox Avenue north of West 135th Street, the arrests of Charles Alston, Edward Loper, Albert Yergen and Ernest Johnston for allegedly shooting at police at 138th Street at the very end of the disorder. White lived at 26 West 134th Street, a block south and east of the grocery store.

White, Payne and Taylor appeared in the lists of those charged with burglary in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and in the New York Evening Journal. When they appeared in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court on March 20, the charge against them was originally recorded as burglary, with White and Payne denied bail, and Taylor held on bail of $1000. The Home News mistakenly reported different bail decisions for Taylor and Payne: $500 for Taylor and $1500 for Payne. No complainant is listed in the docket book.

The three men returned to the Magistrates Court on March 26, at which point all had the charge against them reduced from burglary to disorderly conduct. That change is recorded in the docket book in the same handwriting as the outcome of the case, a quite different hand than the original entry. Magistrate Ford convicted all three men, sending White and Payne to the Workhouse for five months and twenty-nine days, and suspending Taylor's sentence. There is no information on why Taylor received a different sentence.
Castle Inn saloon windows broken The Castle Inn saloon at 161 Lenox Avenue, between West 117th Street and West 118th Street, is one of the businesses in a list of those with broken windows made by a reporter for La Prensa after he walked along West 116th Street, Lenox Avenue and West 125th Street on the day after the disorder. The saloon was one of at least six businesses that responded to that damage by displaying signs identifying it as a "colored" business, according to another story published in La Prensa. Such signs were not an effort to establish a racial divide in the neighborhood, to segregate Black and white residents, as the author of that story claimed, but an attempt to protect stores from being the target of violence, according to stories in the Home News, New York Evening Journal, New York Times, New York Post, New York World-Telegram and Afro-American. Those in the crowds on Harlem's streets appear to have largely avoided attacks on Black-owned businesses: only five appear in the sources as having windows broken. In the case of the saloon, as happened with the Williams drug store, the signs may have limited the damage and prevented looting. There are no Black-owned businesses among those identified as having been looted. However, it is possible that the Castle Inn was not a Black-owned business. The MCCH business survey undertaken after the disorder recorded the saloon as having white owners. A notice of a liquor license published in the New York Age in November 1934 identified the owner as John Diodato.

Two other business just near the saloon appear in the La Prensa reporter's list of those that had broken windows, a branch of the Wohlmuth Tailors chain at 157 Lenox Avenue and a billiard parlor at 151 Lenox Avenue. Additional businesses in the area also likely had broken windows as the La Prensa reporter concluded the list by noting that it did not include those that had only suffered minor damage ("y otras mas que por ser los danos ocasionados relativamente pequeños no creimus de interes catalogar entre los establecimientos ya mencionados").

No one arrested during the disorder is identified as breaking the store's windows.