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Probation Department Case File, 26458 (1935) (New York City Municipal Archives)
1 2021-08-12T20:12:35+00:00 Anonymous 1 7 plain 2021-08-13T23:07:11+00:00 AnonymousThe files of individuals that judges decided to place on probation also included the records of their supervision by officers of the Probation Department. Those records began with an Order of Probation, and then a summary of the individual's weekly reports to their Probation officer, focused on their employment, residence, and other activities. As Saunders reported by mail, the file also contains the forms he sent on which those summaries are based. In addition, the file includes the department's correspondence with the Savannah Family Welfare Society, to which they arranged to have Saunders report in person, letters to Saunders when he failed to mail reports or otherwise did not follow the conditions of his probation, a letter to his brother at the time of his discharge from probation, and a response to a query about him from the Emergency Relief Bureau. The final document in the file is a Discharge from Probation that summarized the individuals supervision.
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2021-08-07T18:20:54+00:00
Charles Saunders arrested
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2022-08-16T21:00:48+00:00
Around 2 AM, as Detective Jeremiah Duross of the 6th Division drove a police car on 7th Avenue, the sound of breaking glass drew his attention to a group of people in front of Ralph Sirico's shoe repair store at 1985 7th Avenue, according to a Probation Department investigation report. The store windows had been damaged earlier, between 11.30 PM and midnight, the superintendent of the apartments above 1985 7th Avenue, Mr C. T. Berkeley, reported. As the detective pulled his car up next to the store, the crowd in front of it scattered. He leapt out of the car and claimed he saw Charles Saunders, a twenty-four-year-old Black unemployed elevator operator jump out of the store window and run down the street. Duross gave chase and arrested Saunders, who he claimed had been drinking and had a fresh cut on his hand, which he implied had resulted from breaking glass in the window.
Saunders offered a different account than Duross, according to the Probation Department investigation report. He lived nearby, in a furnished room at 1967 7th Avenue a block south of the store, with his wife Anna Gregory. Around midnight, Saunders left home to buy cigarettes. Walking toward a crowd in front of Sirico's store, he saw shoes and hats being thrown through the broken window on to the street, where people in the crowd were picking them up. Saunders claimed he followed the lead of those around him, and picked up a pair of shoes, cutting his hand on glass on the street in the process, and headed home. At that point Duross arrested him. Saunders denied having been drinking; the detective said Saunders did not have a pair of shoes in his hands when arrested.
In fact, it seems that Duross did not find anything from the store in Saunders' possession, as none of stolen goods were recovered, according to the Probation Department investigation report. Nonetheless, Saunders appears to have been charged with taking all the goods that the report recorded Sirico said had been stolen: "18 or 20 hats which had been cleaned and blocked by him; about 25 pair of shoes which he had repaired; 5 or 6 pairs of unfinished shoes; one dozen leather soles; two and a half dozen rubber heels and a quantity of polish and shoe laces," with a total value he estimated as $66.75. While the District Attorney's case file is missing, the Probation Department investigation report summarizes the indictment against Saunders as accusing him of taking merchandise worth $66.95. The two newspaper reports of the case are less specific, with both the Home News and Daily Worker reporting the charge as stealing "several pairs of shoes."
Saunders is included in the lists of those charged with burglary published 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, at which time Magistrate Renaud held him on $1000 bail to reappear, an outcome recorded in the docket book and reported only in the Home News. When Saunders was brought back to the court on March 22, detectives presented bench warrants indicating that the District Attorney had already filed an indictment against him. Magistrate Renaud consequently dismissed the charges against Saunders so the detectives could rearrest him, as happened with two other men, James Hughes and Isaac Daniels, an appearance reported in the Home News and New York Post. With the District Attorney's file missing, the date the grand jury indicted Saunders is unknown; it would have been several days prior to April 1, when Saunders appeared in the Court of General Sessions to plead guilty to petit larceny. That plea bargain is at odds with the statement in the report that none of the stolen property had been recovered. A district attorney generally offered it to those indicted for burglary after the disorder found with stolen goods in their possession; those found with nothing in their possession, as the Probation Department investigation report implied Saunders was, generally pled guilty to unlawful entry.
Immediately prior to Saunders appearing for sentencing in the Court of General Sessions on April 12, the Probation Department notified the judge of a letter from the Savannah Juvenile Court stating that Saunders' older sister Vable Greatt had offered to provide a home for him in Savannah, Georgia, and the Juvenile Court Probation Department would assist in his supervision, should the judge place him on probation. After a delay, presumably to confirm those arrangements, Judge Nott gave Saunders a suspended sentence and placed him on "indefinite" probation on the condition he go to Savannah (the 28th Precinct Police Blotter recorded only the suspended sentence, not the probation). Of the nine other men sentenced in the Court of General Sessions, only Arnold Ford was also placed on probation. Both men remained under supervision for the maximum period of three years, until 1938.
Saunders told a Probation officer that he had been born in Dublin, Georgia, the youngest of six children. His mother died when he was five years of age, and around that time he and his family moved to Savannah. After leaving school at age thirteen, Saunders did odd jobs and worked with his father, a carpenter. In 1929, his father remarried, and Saunders decided to go to New York City, where his brother Albert and sister Lola lived. After eighteen months living with Albert at 215 Edgecombe Avenue and working as a porter in a barber's shop at West 135th Street and 7th Avenue, ill-health forced him to return to live with his sister in Savannah for six months. Returning to New York City in 1931, Saunders lived with an aunt at 162 West 143rd Street until May 1933, when he met and then moved in with Anna Gregory. The Probation Department investigation report described her as "separated from her husband"; a letter in the file from the Brooklyn Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, to who the Family Court had referred Gregory in 1922, said her husband had abandoned her, leaving the state with funds provided by his mother. Saunders and Gregory were "known as man and wife," the Probation officer reported. In the fluid marriage patterns still practiced in working-class communities such informal relationships were not uncommon but the Probation Department did not recognize them, instead describing Gregory as Saunders' "mistress" and "sweetheart." Dr Charles Thompson of the Court's Psychiatric Clinic also saw a problem in Gregory being ten years older that Saunders, labeling him as immature for looking to her "for direction." In response to questions by a Probation officer, Gregory described Saunders as a good provider and their life as "harmonious."
Gregory worked as a laundress, Saunders in a barber's shop at 142nd Street and 7th Avenue, then part-time for a moving company based at 143rd Street and 7th Avenue, and beginning in September 1934 as an elevator operator at 385 Edgecombe Ave. After living for two years at 268 West 146th Street, the couple moved to 1967 7th Avenue in December 1934. Two months later Saunders lost his job after a dispute with the new building superintendent; the management company fired the superintendent soon after, and told a Probation officer that they saw him not Saunders as at fault. That fitted with the opinions of Saunders' employers and co-workers, which the Probation officer summarized as considering him honest, industrious and dependable; he and Gregory were similarly "well regarded" by their neighbors. The Probation Department investigation report followed Dr Thompson's examination report in attributing his alleged looting to "mob spirit." Thompson explained that concept as being "in company with several others under the influence of prejudice and aggressiveness," in the case of events in Harlem against "a background of racial antagonism, occasioned largely by the present lack of employment." Saunders' sister Vable Greatt explained his alleged looting, according to a letter from the Savannah Juvenile Court, as probably a result of him becoming "pretty well discouraged in his search for work," a "spiritual condition [that] caused him to fall to the temptation to steal."
While a good reputation and steady employment would have helped make Saunders a candidate for probation, Judge Nott's decision appears to have been largely a response to an offer from his sister and Savannah Juvenile Court Probation Department to supervise him. His sister Vable followed through on that offer, sending funds for Saunders' railway fare to Savannah; the Juvenile Court Probation Department did not do their part. Saunders' Probation officer's letters to his Georgia colleagues went unanswered for six months. During this time his only news of Saunders were reports he mailed weekly, using a form and stamps sent to him by the department. Soon after Saunders arrived in Savannah his sister became very sick, causing him to move in with his brother. In perfunctory answers to the questions on the form, he reported being unemployed, and involved in no education or social activities other than attending weekly services at a Protestant church.
As an alternative to the Juvenile Court, the Probation Department secured the help of the Savannah Family Welfare Society. Their worker's investigation in February 1936 solicited a very different picture of Saunders' life in Savannah from his sister and sister-in-law than he provided in his reports. Both complained he "never stayed home at night," was "drunk most of the time" and had become "lazy and shiftless," not willing to "keep a job when given one." The caseworker did not interview Saunders himself. The Probation Department responded by writing directly to Saunders, warning that his behavior was in violation of the terms of his probation, and the judge could take "disciplinary action" against him unless he improved his conduct and made "diligent efforts to obtain employment." They also requested the Savannah Family Welfare Society let Saunders report to them in person. In August 1936, Mrs Mamie Belcher, a caseworker, began countersigning Saunders' reports. The Society reported "no further complaints" about his behavior, which the Probation Department took to unambiguously mean Saunders had changed his behavior. In June 1936, Saunders relocated to live again with his sister Vable. It took six more months before he found work, at a box manufacturing company. Nothing else changed in his answers on the report form until after a lapse in reporting in May 1937, when he wrote that he had moved to live with his sister Lois, who had returned from New York City. Only in Saunders' Discharge from Probation did the Probation officer mention that this change in circumstances came after his sister Vable was killed in a car accident. By the end of 1937 Saunders had moved back in with his brother and begun working irregularly as a stevedore.
Throughout his time in Savannah Saunders appears to have remained in contact with Anna Gregory. She came to the Probation Department at the end of 1935 concerned that he had been warned that his sentence could be reviewed if he failed to report regularly and seeking to have him return to the city. When Gregory applied for Home Relief, she described Saunders as her husband, prompting the Emergency Relief Bureau to contact the Probation Department in May 1937, who in turn sought information from Saunders about whether the couple had formally married. In the Discharge from Probation, the Probation officer described Saunders as "discontented as he missed New York, and Mrs Gregory, his mistress," information apparently passed on by the Savannah Welfare Society. Their caseworker also reported in January 1938 that Saunders' sister Lois "was anxious to have Charles return with her to New York." The Probation Department wrote to the Society, to Saunders and to his brother immediately before the end of his probation in April 1938 urging that "his best interests will be served" by remaining in Savannah. They also asked Saunders to advise the department of his plans. He did not reply. There is no evidence of what Saunders chose to do. -
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Looting of clothing (18)
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2021-12-12T20:10:02+00:00
Businesses stocking clothing made up one third of those that can be identified as having goods stolen during the disorder (18 of 54). The items in these businesses did not all belong to their owners. Tailors, shoe repair stores, cleaners and laundries also housed items being repaired belonging to customers, producing losses for Black residents as well as white business-owners. The number of these types of business looted reflected in part that they comprised a large proportion of the stores in Black Harlem, with tailors the second most frequently found business after grocery stores, and laundries nearly as numerous. Clothing being taken also fitted the portrayal of the disorder as motivated by economic grievances.
Newspaper accounts of the merchandise taken from businesses featured clothing alongside food and drink. "Men's wear" was a particular target of those who stole from store windows, according to the Afro-American, whose reporter otherwise emphasized destruction over theft, noting "generally the goods were dragged on the wet sidewalk and destroyed." In his "Hectic Harlem" column in the New York Amsterdam News, Roi Ottley included clothing in his description of looting, writing “As Negroes snatched choice hams from butchers stores…lifted suits from tailor shops…and carried out bags of rice and other edables…the feeling, “here’s our chance to have some of the things we should have,” was often evidenced.” So too did the Daily Worker: "When the shop windows were broken and wares of all sorts displayed, the starving and penniless Negroes in the crowd seized the opportunity to carry off food, clothes, articles of all sorts." The New York Post also imputed motives while identifying clothing as a target, describing looting as “the glamorous opportunity of snatching food and coats and liquor and tobacco from behind the broken panes.”
Clothing also featured in Louise Thompson’s account of what she saw during the disorder, as “In the cleaning stores people were going in, looking over the suits and dresses, deciding which they wanted to take and walking out with them.” A very similar scene was described by Adam Clayton Powell in the New York Post, in the form of a vignette rather than a general picture of looting: "Witness a young man step through the window of Wohlmuth's Tailoring Establishment at 134th and Lenox Avenue dressed on that cold, rainy night in nothing but a blouse, pants and an excuse for shoes. He comes out a moment later wearing a velvet collar Chesterfield and a smile upon his face - first overcoat this winter." Both vignettes presented the looting of clothing in terms akin to shopping, as involving the selection of items rather than a more indiscriminate grabbing what from store windows. So too did the vignette Roi Ottley included in his column in the New York Amsterdam News a week after the disorder: "In a wrecked tailor shop a chap was seen meticulously fitting himself out with a new spring coat, discarding his own shabby garment...He complained bitterly because he wouldn't be able to return for alterations." A Probation officer offered an explanation of Horace Fowler's actions that similarly cast them in terms of shopping, writing that he "fell in with mob - needed a suit." It was shoes rather than clothing that was selected in the Daily Worker's image: "One Negro in a shoe shop was seen trying on a pair of shoes, oblivious of the tumult around him!" Framing the looting in those terms presented clothing as requiring discrimination in its selection, needing to fit to be useful, to a greater extent than food and drink. To more indiscriminately take clothing would suggest the items were not for personal use, that taking them was not straightforwardly motivated by economic need. Ottley's second column on the disorder in the New York Amsterdam News featured such an anecdote:
Thompson and Powell's recollections of the looting of food and drink were framed differently, focused not on the selection of merchandise but on items being taken home and passed to second floor windows. Notwithstanding how newspapers framed the looting of clothing, suits and coats were a staple of Harlem's pawnshops, a portable form of wealth rather than simply a personal necessity.As we were dashing madly around a certain corner to duck the well-aimed and vicious swings of a policeman's nightstick (all Mose looked alike to the cops that night) we were amazed to see one of the Mose brothers loading a taxicab with suits from a looted store.
The man worked methodically...He painstakingly piled the suits into a bundle and carried them from the gaping store front to the cab...Indifferent to observers, he made two trips, loading the taxi to capacity...For no boss had he worked so conscientiously.
He was in progress of gathering his third bundle...when, suddenly and without warning, the taxicab back-fired and was off, speeding up the avenue...The noise attracted the attention of the looter...He ran to the street...and discovered, to his utter dismay and chagrin, that the cabbie had made off with the contraband.
The infuriated rioter immediately ran up the street in pursuit of the speeding vehicle...screaming at the top of his lungs, "Stop, thief!"
When last seen he was in mad quest of a cop.
Stories about the police line-up the morning after the disorder also featured clothing. The New York Herald Tribune listed "clothing" among the items that many of those paraded before police and reporters admitted to stealing, while the New York Sun listed "shirts." However, none of the three men arrested for looting who appear in photographs is obviously carrying clothing.
Legal records offer a similar mix of broad and individual pictures of the merchandise taken. Four business-owners selling clothing are among those identified who sued the city for damages, with losses of $14,125 for Harry Piskin's laundry, $1219.77 for Estelle Cohen's clothing store, $1273.89 for William Gindin's shoe store and $980.13 for Anna Rosenberg's notion store. Those damages are significantly higher than those suffered by all but two of the nine owners of stores selling food and drink who also sued the city. (The nature of eleven of twenty-seven businesses identified in suits against city are unknown, so could include additional stores selling clothing). Details of the losses of an additional six businesses are identified in legal proceedings. Two of those businesses suffered losses in the range of those involved in suits against the city: $10,000 for Louis Levy's dry goods store; and $2000 for Morris Towbin's haberdashery. The other four businesses reported fewer items taken: $800 for Morris Sankin's tailor's store; $585.25 for Nicholas Peet's tailor's store; $66.75 for Ralph Sirico's shoe repair store; and "20 suiting lengths of woollens" for Max Greenwald's tailor shop. An indication of what items made up those totals is provided by the details offered by Ralph Sirico and Nicholas Peet. In both cases, the looted goods included items belonging to customers; Sirico's store was near West 119th Street, so likely had mostly white customers, while Peet's store was several blocks north near West 123rd Street, so likely had more Black customers. Siroco told a Probation officer he had lost "18 or 20 hats which had been cleaned and blocked by him; about 25 pair of shoes which he had repaired; 5 or 6 pairs of unfinished shoes; one dozen leather soles; two and a half dozen rubber heels and a quantity of polish and shoe laces." Peet told another Probation officer his losses consisted of "$452.25 of secondhand suits, coats and pants, and an addition $133 of suits, overcoats, women's coats and dresses belonging to customers."
The ten individuals arrested for looting clothing allegedly only had a small proportion of that merchandise in their possession, as the vignettes offered by Powell, Thompson and Ottley suggest. Leroy Gillard had two suits, Horace Fowler had a man's suit and a woman's coat, Jean Jacquelin had two women's coats and two pairs of trousers, Daughty Shavos had "wearing apparel" worth $30, Clifford Mitchell had "wearing apparel" worth $25 (sums that suggest two or three suits or coats), Lamter Jackson had a bag of laundry, Edward Larry had eight men's shirts, Charles Saunders and John Vivien each had one pair of shoes, and Julian Rogers had three odd shoes. Also included in this group is James Hayes, as he allegedly looted the Danbury Hat store, although he took not clothing but a baseball bat. -
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2021-08-07T18:24:58+00:00
Ralph Sirico's shoe repair shop looted
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2022-01-12T20:43:24+00:00
Around 2 AM, as Detective Jeremiah Duross of the 6th Division drove a police car on 7th Avenue, the sound of breaking glass drew his attention to a group of people in front of Ralph Sirico's shoe repair store 1985 7th Avenue. As the detective pulled his car up next to the store, the crowd in front of it scattered. He leapt out of the car and claimed he saw Charles Saunders, a twenty-four-year-old Black unemployed elevator operator jump out of the store window and run down the street. Duross gave chase and arrested Saunders, who he alleged had been drinking and had a fresh cut on his hand, which he implied had resulted from breaking glass in the window. Although there are few incidents of disorder reported on 7th Avenue around the time of Saunders' arrest, a crowd had looted Jack Garmise's cigar store four blocks to the south only a few minutes earlier, at an intersection where police were stationed. Two hours earlier, between 11.30 PM and midnight, the superintendent of the apartments above Sirico's store reported two men smashed the shoe repair shop window. Around that time, there were several reported incidents the length of 7th Avenue below 125th Street, including an assault, attacks on passing cars and looting. It is likely that the presence of the building superintendent prevented the store from being looted at that time.
Saunders offered a different account than Duross, according to the Probation Department investigation report. He lived nearby, in a furnished room at 1967 7th Avenue a block south of the store, with Anna Gregory. Around midnight, Saunders left home to buy cigarettes. Walking toward a crowd in front of Sirico's store, he saw shoes and hats being thrown through the broken window on to the street, where people in the crowd were picking them up. While there are few accounts of goods being thrown into the street, there are descriptions of merchandise spread over sidewalks and streets, suggesting that some of those who attacked goods destroyed or distributed goods in this manner, rather than taking them themselves. Saunders claimed he followed the lead of those around him, and picked up a pair of shoes, cutting his hand on glass on the street in the process, and headed home. At that point Duross arrested him. Saunders denied having been drinking; the detective said Saunders did not have a pair of shoes in his hands when arrested.
In fact, it seems that Duross did not find anything from the store in Saunders' possession, as none of stolen goods were recovered, according to the Probation Department investigation report. Nonetheless, Saunders appears to have been charged with taking all the goods that the report recorded Sirico said had been stolen: "18 or 20 hats which had been cleaned and blocked by him; about 25 pair of shoes which he had repaired; 5 or 6 pairs of unfinished shoes; one dozen leather soles; two and a half dozen rubber heels and a quantity of polish and shoe laces," with a total value he estimated as $66.75. While the District Attorney's case file is missing, the Probation Department investigation report summarizes the indictment against Saunders as accusing him of taking merchandise worth $66.75. The two newspaper reports of the case are less specific, with both the Home News and Daily Worker reporting the charge as stealing "several pairs of shoes."
Saunders is included in the lists of those charged with burglary published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Gazette, and in the New York Evening Journal. The Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book records his arraignment on March 20, at which time Magistrate Renaud held him on $1000 bail to reappear. When Saunders was brought back to the court on March 22, detectives presented bench warrants indicating that the District Attorney had already filed an indictment against him. Magistrate Renaud consequently dismissed the charges against Saunders so the detectives could rearrest him, an outcome only reported in the New York Post (the District Attorney's file is missing). On April 1, Saunders appeared in the Court of General Sessions to plead guilty to petit larceny. In other cases after the disorder in which defendants did not have goods in their possession when arrested a district attorney generally offered a plea bargain for a different charge, unlawful entry. He appeared for sentencing in the Court of General Sessions on April 12, and then again on April 30, when Judge Nott gave him a suspended sentence and placed him on "indefinite" probation on the condition he go to Savannah to live with his sister (the 28th Precinct Police Blotter recorded only the suspended sentence, not the probation). Saunders spent the maximum period of three years under supervision.
Sirico had insurance that paid the cost of replacing his store windows. The business was included in the MCCH Business survey in the second half of 1935, and Sirico was still operating the store when he registered for the draft in April 1942, giving his first name as Raffaele. He had arrived in New York City in 1919. Sirico appears likely to have been in business in Harlem by the time of the 1930 census, when the census enumerator recorded that he worked in a shop. At that time he lived at 293 East 155th Street in the Bronx, with his wife and four children aged between eight years and fifteen months. -
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2022-01-12T20:26:55+00:00
Ralph Sirico's shoe repair shop window broken
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2022-01-12T21:00:33+00:00
Between 11.30 PM and midnight, Mr C. T. Berkeley, the superintendent of the apartments above 1985 7th Avenue, reported two men smashed the window of the shoe repair shop in the building, operated by Ralph Sirico, a forty-one-year-old Italian immigrant, according to a Probation Department investigation report. Around that time, 11.30 PM to 12.30 AM, there were reported incidents of violence the length of 7th Avenue below 125th Street, with Alice Gordon allegedly assaulted and Mario Pravia's candy store looted south of Sirico's store, and Sarah Refkin's delicatessan looted, stones thrown at Fred Campbell's car and other vehicles, and James Pringle arrested for allegedly urging crowds to attack police in the blocks to the north. That only windows were broken in Sirico's shop appears to be due to the presence of Berkeley, given that he got close enough that he thought he could identify the men if he saw them again. He apparently did not stay at the store. No one arrested during the disorder was charged with breaking windows in Sirico's store; however, police did later arrest one man for looting the store. Around 2 AM, the sound of breaking glass drew Detective Jeremiah Duross of the 6th Division attention to a group of people in front of the store as he drove a police car on 7th Avenue. As he pulled over, Duross claimed he saw Charles Saunders, a twenty-four-year-old Black unemployed elevator operator jump out of the store window and run down the street. Duross gave chase and arrested Saunders, allegedly finding several pairs of shoes in his possession.
The only mention of the store windows being broken was in the report of the Probation Department investigation of Charles Saunders. That report also recorded that Sirico had insurance that paid the cost of replacing his store windows, $38. The shoe repair store was included in the MCCH Business survey in the second half of 1935, and Sirico was still operating the business when he registered for the draft in April 1942, giving his first name as Raffaele. He had arrived in New York City in 1919. Sirico appears likely to have been in business in Harlem by the time of the 1930 census, when the census enumerator recorded that he worked in a shop. At that time he lived at 293 East 155th Street in the Bronx, with his wife and four children aged between eight years and fifteen months.