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

Porter O'Neill arrested

Porter O'Neill, a twenty-four-year-old Black man was recorded in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book as charged with disorderly conduct on March 20. That appearance was mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune and Home News on March 21 and the New York Age on March 30. He also appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, but not in any of the lists published in white newspapers. O'Neill was listed among those charged with riot, the initial charge recorded for many of those arrested during the disorder. Several of the others listed as facing that charge were identified as also charged with burglary; that O'Neill was not suggests he had not been arrested for alleged looting. The change in charge to disorderly conduct cast him not as a participant in inciting others, breaking windows, looting or assault, but as a member of the crowds police encountered on the street, perhaps near outbreaks of violence, and arrested either mistaking them for participants or to get them off the streets. There is no information on when or where police arrested O'Neill.

The docket book recorded T. M. McCabe of the 32nd Precinct as the police officer who arrested O'Neill. Three other Black men arrested by McCabe appeared in the court at the same time also charged with disorderly conduct: James Simon, Albert Brown and Roosevelt Draiton. They too appeared alongside O'Neill in the press as arrested for riot. Police likely arrested the men together.

Magistrate Ford convicted O'Neill and sentenced him to five days in the workhouse. He also convicted the other three men, but imposed a longer sentence on them of one month in the workhouse.

O'Neill's address was recorded as 34 West 135th Street.

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