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

Claims for damages examined by the Comptroller, July 23 (8)

At the end of July, the Daily News, New York Post, New York World-Telegram, New York Sun, New York Evening Journal, and the Black newspapers the New York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, and Pittsburgh Courier published stories about claims for damages filed after the disorder. Barney Rosenstein, the white attorney representing about half of the business owners who filed claims, prompted those stories by releasing the testimony that at least seven of his clients gave when they were examined by the comptroller, the first step in the legal process, according to the New York Post. The New York Evening Journal reported simply that the testimony was "made public," and did not mention Rosenstein. (The lawyer represented unions and later worked for the legal arm of the Communist Party, the International Labor Defense, frequent targets of the Hearst press, which may have led the newspaper's editors to omit him. The Daily News and Pittsburgh Courier stories were the only other accounts that omitted mention of Rosenstein.) The other stories did not identify the source of their information.

All the stories reported that 106 claims had been filed for damages totaling $116,000. The Daily News, New York World-Telegram, and the New York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, and Pittsburgh Courier added the detail that the sums claimed ranged from $2.65 to $14,000. An additional sixty-five claims had been rejected as they had been filed more than the thirty days after the disorder, the period allowed in section 71 of the General Municipal Law, according to the New York World-Telegram and the New York Amsterdam News. Only the Daily News, New York World-Telegram, Chicago Defender, and Pittsburgh Courier identified six insurance companies as among the plaintiffs, seeking to recover what they had paid to the business owners with policies covering their broken windows — reported earlier as $147,315. The New York World-Telegram, New York Sun, and New York Amsterdam News stories described the city's response, filing a "general denial" of all the claims that meant they would be resolved in court. The claim published in the New York World-Telegram that the full calendar of the court would delay trials until the next year proved accurate only for the Supreme Court: two cases were tried in the Municipal Court, in September and November.

The claims filed by Rosenstein asserted that the police department provided "insufficient protection" to the stores and that the police on the scene were "inefficient in handling the mob," phrases quoted in both the New York Sun and the New York World-Telegram, and paraphrased in the New York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, and Pittsburgh Courier. Rather than quoting from the claims, the New York Post story described them as charging "police laxity" and used them as the basis for taunting the city's police: "Where were those tough, hard-boiled cops when a riot broke out in Harlem, March 19? Why did they forget then that swaggering aggressiveness which pickets and soapboxers know so well?" By contrast, taking the other side in the ongoing tension between Mayor La Guardia and the police department, the New York Sun blamed the Mayor's "kid-glove methods" for the failed police response: "While scenes of terror rocked the Negro section during most of the late afternoon and night, Mayor La Guardia persisted in his attitude that things would come out alright, that the police had the situation in hand. His attitude, it was apparent, was responsible for the comparative gentleness with which the situation was handled by the cops." (The Daily News made no mention of the charges against the police, reporting only that the suits "claimed redress as taxpayers from the municipal corporations.")

With the exception of the Daily News, Chicago Defender, and Pittsburgh Courier, the stories quoted testimony from seven business owners. Only Harry Piskin was mentioned in all those stories, in part because he claimed the largest sum for damages, but also because he recounted being refused help by police on three occasions. George Chronis, Manny Zipp, Anthony Avitable, and Irving Stetkin each featured in three stories, Benjamin Zelvin in two stories, and Harry Levinson in only one story. The New York World-Telegram provided the most testimony, from six business owners (Avitable, Piskin, Chronis, Zipp, Zelvin, Stetkin), with five quoted in the New York Sun (Piskin, Levinson, Stetkin, Avitable, Zipp) and New York Post (Chronis, Stekin, Zipp, Avitable, Piskin), and two in the New York Amsterdam News (Piskin and Chronis) and New York Evening Journal (Piskin and Zelvin).

Piskin, Avitable, and Levinson had appeared on the list of twenty filing claims released in April, indicating that group was likely represented by Rosenstein. Chronis, Zipp, Stetkin, and Zelvin were among those for whom Rosenstein later filed claims. In all, he represented "more than half" the 106 plaintiffs, according to the New York World-Telegram and Chicago Defender or "about half" according to the New York Post and New York Sun or "many plaintiffs" according to the New York Amsterdam News. A similar pattern of a single law firm filing multiple claims was apparent after the 1919 Chicago riot.

The claims for damages created records of events in the disorder missing from newspaper stories and police and criminal court records. Police made arrests only for looting of Benjamin Zelvin's jewelry store; none of the other looted businesses identified in the press at this time appeared in any other sources.
 

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