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Probation Department Case File, 26469 (1935) (New York City Municipal Archives)
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2020-12-03T20:27:26+00:00
Fires (4)
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2022-09-27T20:05:21+00:00
Fires broke out in three stores during the disorder, all located on the two blocks of Lenox Avenue between West 130th Street and West 132nd Street. Two of those stores were adjacent, Anna Rosenberg’s notion shop at 429 Lenox Avenue and a hardware store at 431 Lenox Avenue. The third store, Lash's 5 & 10c store, was a block to the south, at 400 Lenox Avenue. That area of Lenox Avenue saw extensive looting, attacks on stores and violence. An additional fire was allegedly set on the roof of 5 West 131st Street, a block to the east, an area that saw few reported events during the disorder.
The fires broke out within a period of around an hour, beginning with the notion and hardware stores after 11 PM followed soon after midnight by Lash's store. All three stores were also looted. Only the New York Daily News captions for the photographs discussed below linked the fires to looting: "Fire was set by rioters after they looted place" in the case of Lash's store; and a more elaborate account for the image of the other stores: "It is but a step from looting to incendiarism. Here's a fireman tacking a blazing tailor shop at 420 Lexington Ave., fired after it was looted." Looting and damaging a business by setting it on fire were not necessarily as continuous as the caption presented: alleged looters generally took items they needed, such as food and clothing; setting fire to a store offered no similar benefit. Instead fires fitted with breaking windows and other attacks that targeted white-owned businesses.
The New York Evening Journal reported fires in two buildings (it is likely that its story treated the fires in the adjacent stores as a single fire, but as two different businesses were effected it is treated here as two fires), the New York Herald Tribune and Daily Worker a fire in one building, and the Home News, New York Daily News, New York Times, and New York World-Telegram referred generally to fires in several stores, offering no details. The Black-owned Philadelphia Tribune appears to have repackaged the New York Evening Journal account, and the Afro-American published photographs of fire-damaged stores not referred to in its stories about the disorder. Other Black newspapers made no reference to fires. Nor did the MCCH report. The roof-top fire was mentioned only in the Home News and the Daily Worker, perhaps because it occurred on the margins of the disorder. These stories attributed the fires to members of the crowds on the street during the disorder, but only the New York Herald Tribune described how one of the fires started.
Firefighters quickly attended the fires, likely because the nearest firehouse was only a few blocks to the north, at 104 West 135th Street, one building west of Lenox Avenue. Their efforts to extinguish the fires were captured by press photographers. A New York Daily News photograph showed smoke coming out of the hardware store window and doors at 431 Lenox Avenue, and firefighters on the scene fighting the fire. One is swinging an axe at the display window, while a second firefighter stands behind him. A third firefighter is just inside the store, his boots visible beneath the smoke. In the original photograph, cropped from the published version, a hose runs across the photograph to the left, in the direction of Rosenberg's notion store at 429 Lenox Avenue. An Acme agency photograph also published in the New York Daily News and in the New York Herald Tribune showed flames in the last section of the Harry Lash’s 5 & 10c store window on West 130th Street. Firefighters can be seen crouched in front of the window (they were cropped out of the version published in the New York Daily News). No other people are visible in the photographs, which are focused on the burning stores.
Fighting the fires was not straightforward, according to the New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Journal, and Afro-American, which described clashes between crowds and police and firefighters. “A gang of thirty-five Negroes” set fire to Lash's 5 & 10c store in the New York Herald Tribune story. A crowd then “tried to prevent a policeman from sounding an alarm. "Let it burn!" they shouted. When the firemen came they hindered them, too, bustling about the hydrants and shoving hose lines about. At last the firemen threatened to turn the water on them instead of the fire and they dispersed.” Some of those details also appear in the New York Evening Journal, but its story collapsed the two fires together: “As detectives and uniformed men closed in on crowds surrounding the burning buildings, they met with resistance. "Let them burn. Let them burn." The shout was taken up by hundreds, and it was not until firemen threatened to turn hoselines on the rioting men and women that they dispersed.” An entire block separated the two locations, too far for a single crowd to be involved. Both the number of police and the size of the crowd are larger in the New York Evening Journal story, which repeats the crowd's alleged chant, “Let them burn," giving it more prominence. Where the New York Herald Tribune characterized the crowd as having "hindered" firefighters, with actions that seem to involve individuals pressing forward to see the fire getting in their way, the New York Evening Journal characterized the crowd's behavior as "resistance." Those differences and characterizations are in keeping with how that publication sensationalized and exaggerated the actions of Black crowds. The brief photograph caption in the Afro-American mixed elements of the two stories: it followed the New York Herald Tribune in characterizing the crowd as having "hindered" firefighters, but coupled it with the struggle presented by the New York Evening Journal in claiming that "rioters" "fought them away.”
The New York Evening Journal story goes on to link the fires to increased police violence, with the decision to fire bullets at crowds being made in response to fires being set: "The police, working under directions of their highest commanders, were under orders to withhold fire unless necessary, but when the two incendiary fires were started, one at 429 Lenox Ave. and the other at Lenox Ave. and 130th St., bullets flew." The Black-owned Philadelphia Tribune repeated that claim as part of its repackaging of the information in the New York Evening Journal. Multiple other reports instead link police beginning to shoot at crowds rather than in the air to the outbreak of looting rather than to the fires.
Photographs taken the next day showed the damage resulting from the fire. The exteriors of Anna Rosenberg’s notion store and the hardware appear in an Associated Press photograph and a photograph published in the Daily Mirror. No glass remained in its display window, partially visible in the left side of the photograph, which has been emptied of merchandise. Damage to the exterior wall below the window could be the result of the fire. Inside the store is an L-shaped counter on which a range of different goods are stacked; there may be some damaged items on the ground, but neither the ceiling nor the shelves and counter show the fire damage visible in the hardware store to the right. A fire adjuster for Rosenberg’s insurance company, Royal Insurance, put the damage to her store at $980.13, according to the New York Herald Tribune. As the insurance policy did not cover losses from riots, Rosenberg was among the business-owners who sued the city to recover their losses. A jury in the Municipal Court awarded Rosenberg $804, confirming the extent of the damage done by the fire.
No such details exist regarding damage to the hardware store, only the images of its exterior, and three photographs of its interior, one in the Afro-American mistakenly identified as the notion store, a second also in the Afro-American identified as the hardware store, and the third in the New York Daily News. All three images feature the table in the center of the store visible in photographs of the exterior, which distinguished it from the notion store, and show damaged merchandise strewn throughout the store, material hanging from the ceiling visible in the foreground that is likely damage produced by the fire, as well as the burned out display window visible in the photograph of the firefighters at work. Burned shelves, merchandise and fire damage to the table in the center of the store are visible on the left of the photograph in the Afro-American that identified the business as a hardware store. A pile of debris in front of the store visible in the Associated Press photograph appears to be a combination of material from the ceiling and the display windows. The second exterior image shows a white man boarding up the damaged display window.
Fire damage to Lash’s store appears less extensive, better fitting the Home News reporter’s assessment that “damage from the fires was not great.” Only one small section at the rear of the store, on West 130th Street furthest from Lenox Avenue, looked to be burned in an Associated Press photograph. However, the rest of the store appears significantly damaged. Display windows that ran the length of the side of the store on West 130th Street, as well as those facing Lenox Avenue, can be seen smashed. In addition to the damage, Lash reported the loss of $1000 of merchandise. His insurers too refused to pay, he told a Probation Department investigator. He is not among the twenty-five business-owners named as suing the city seeking damages for what their insurance did not cover, but may have been one of the eighty-nine not named.
The fire on the roof of 5 West 131st Street received less mention in the press, with no reference to any damage it did. A Home News reporter explained that fire as “one method by which the mobs stirred up excitement." It was produced, the story claimed by stacking "great heaps of newspapers on the roofs of buildings," which, "when ignited, led those in the streets to believe spectacular fires were in progress and many fire alarms were sounded.” An eyewitness offered a different explanation to the Daily Worker, that the fire was a distraction not an incitement: “This was done, I suppose, to draw the attention of the police force and riot squads from Lenox Avenue where they had concentrated their forces and were attacking the Negroes.” False alarms and the sounds of fire engines are mentioned in [several newspapers], which might indicate that other roof fires were lit, or simply that calls were made to the Fire Department.
Fire-damaged stores attracted press attention out of proportion with their numbers, given that only three of approximately 300 buildings damaged in the disorder caught fire. A mention in the New York World-Telegram highlighted the impact of that emphasis: “The charred interiors of several shops in which fires broke out added to the appearance of a war-ravaged town.” Burned buildings offered a dramatic, ultimately atypical, picture of damage resulting from the disorder. Fires became more prominent in subsequent racial disorders. More were set in Harlem in 1943, but not the dramatic fires given prominence in coverage of the disorder in Watts in 1965. Harlem’s built environment ultimately meant setting fires could harm residents as much, if not more, than white business-owners. Beyond West 125th Street, multiple floors of apartments sat above businesses. Fatalities reported in four fires in Harlem at other times in 1935 made clear the risks of setting fires in stores in such buildings. -
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2020-10-22T02:15:56+00:00
Harry Lash's 5 and 10c store looted and set on fire
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Around 11.15 PM, Harry Lash closed his 5c & 10c store at 400 Lenox Avenue, on the southeast corner of West 130th Street. He likely then went home to his residence at 536 West 178th Street, north of Harlem in Washington Heights. Wherever he was, Lash apparently got news of the disorder in Harlem and returned to the store around two hours later, at approximately 1.20 AM, according to the affidavit he gave later that day in the Magistrates Court. He found the store windows broken, fixtures damaged, and "general merchandise" valued at $1000 missing. Display windows that ran the length of the side of the store on West 130th Street, as well as those facing Lenox Avenue, can be seen smashed in the Associated Press photograph published in the New York Sun. Significant damage to the window displays is also visible, but so too are large amounts of merchandise still inside the store, indicating the limits of the scope of the looting. Lash's store was in the heart of the blocks of Lenox Avenue north of West 125th Street where reported looting was concentrated. Disorder continued in this area after the time Lash returned to his store.
The rear of Lash's store on West 130th Street had also been set on fire, by a "group of 35 blacks.. soon after midnight," according to the New York Herald Tribune. That crowd "tried to prevent policeman from sounding an alarm - 'let it burn' they shouted," the report continued. "When firemen came, they hindered them too, bustling about hydrants and shoving hose lines about - when firemen threatened to turn the hose on them, they dispersed." Some of those details also appear in the New York Evening Journal, but its story combined the fire and those at at 429 and 431 Lenox Avenue two blocks to north: “As detectives and uniformed men closed in on crowds surrounding the burning buildings, they met with resistance. "Let them burn. Let them burn." The shout was taken up by hundreds, and it was not until firemen threatened to turn hoselines on the rioting men and women that they dispersed.” An entire block separated the two locations, too far for a single crowd to be involved. Both the number of police and the size of the crowd are larger in the New York Evening Journal story, which repeats the crowd's alleged chant, “Let them burn," giving it more prominence. Where the New York Herald Tribune characterized the crowd as having "hindered" firefighters, with actions that seem to involve individuals pressing forward to see the fire getting in their way, the New York Evening Journal characterized the crowd's behavior as "resistance." Those differences and characterizations are in keeping with how that publication sensationalized and exaggerated the actions of Black crowds. An Acme agency photograph published in the New York Daily News shows flames in the last section of the store window on West 130th Street, part of which is visible on the left edge the New York Sun photograph. Firefighters can be seen crouched in front of the window (they were cropped out of the version published in the New York Daily News). They appear to have quickly extinguished the fire; the visible fire damage is limited to the area immediately around the rear windows. There are no other newspaper stories or photographs of this fire, but it attracted the attention of newsreel cameramen. Some of the limited footage from the night of the disorder shows the fire burning in the store, with firefighters crossing in front of the camera. No bystanders are visible. Cameramen returned the next day, shooting footage of the burned section of the building both from Lenox Avenue, and, in the Universal newsreel, West 128th Street by the fire-damaged section looking toward Lenox Avenue. Debris is visible on the sidewalk in front of the fire-damaged section in the footage from Lenox Avenue, and several Black men and women walk by the store in the footage from West 128th Street.
Lash's store is misidentified in several sources, including the caption to the Associated Press photograph in the New York Sun: headed "Harlem Rioters Break Every Window in Radio Store," it read "Not a pane of glass was left unbroken in this West 125th Street establishment. The Harlem Church of the Air on the second floor escaped raiders." The New York Herald Tribune also described the store as a Raffer's Radio store. Some of the confusion resulted from the large sign on the store advertising Raffer's Radio Service, which by the time the Tax Department photograph was taken between 1939 and 1941 had been changed to read "Harry's 5 and 10c Store." The details of the windows and the shape of the sign in the Associated Press photograph match those in the Tax Department photograph. Signs for the You Pray for Me Church of the Air visible in the second story windows confirm that match. Sister Rosa Horn's Pentecostal Church occupied the upper floors of the building spanning 392-400 Lenox Avenue by September 1932, remaining for several decades. Additionally, the Acme agency caption and the caption published by the Afro-American identify the store as being on Lenox Avenue. The New York Daily News and New York Herald Tribune captions of the photograph of the store on fire mistakenly located it at 128th Street and Lenox Avenue, but the windows match the distinctive details of Lash's store, as does the presence of the Hope Wo Chinese Hand Laundry next to the store. A Chinese laundry appears in the MCCH Business survey at 68 West 130th Street, and the sign visible in the newspaper photograph can be seen in the Tax Department photograph.
Around 1.50 AM, an arrest for looting the store was made five blocks to the east, on the Third Avenue Bridge connecting the eastern end of West 130th Street in Harlem with the Bronx. Patrolman Louis Frikser, observed a Black man, nineteen-year-old Arnold Ford, "walking across the bridge with a package," according to the details provided in the Probation Department investigation. Ford was likely going home; he lived just three blocks beyond the bridge, 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 being part of a group of men who had entered Lash's store and stolen goods. Later, he made clear that he had not broken the store windows, but only joined others entering the store and "helping himself to some merchandise." "A few minutes later" the officer stopped a second man crossing the bridge from Harlem, Joseph Moore, a forty-six-year-old West Indian carpenter, and also arrested him for looting Lash's store. None of the reports of this case detail what caused Frikser to stop Moore or what he found in his possession. Like Ford, Moore was likely returning home; he lived next door to Ford, at 248 East 136th Street in the Bronx. 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).
Police charged both Ford and Moore with burglary in the Harlem Magistrate Court. Subsequently they were indicted by the grand jury and tried in the Court of General Sessions. During the trial on April 1, Ford pled guilty to petit larceny, while Moore was acquitted at the direction of the judge, an outcome for which the Daily Worker gave credit to the International Labor Defence lawyers who appeared for him. Ford was the only individual of the ten men convicted in the Court of General Sessions as a result of the disorder placed on probation rather than incarcerated, remaining under supervision under April 1938.
Police also arrested a third man for looting likely also for allegedly taking merchandise from Lash's store. Lash is recorded as the complainant when Milton Ackerman, a twenty-four year old Black man, was arraigned in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20. According to the New York Times, Ackerman was charged with "taking two rolls of paper, worth 5 cents, and 8 cents' worth of napkins from a Lenox Avenue store." It seems likely Lash's store at 400 Lenox Avenue was the location referred the story, especially given that Ackerman lived at 33 West 130th Street, only a few buildings east of that store and Lash's other store in Harlem was at 2530 8th Avenue, near the corner of West 135th Street, not on Lenox Avenue. There is no mention of where or when police arrested Ackerman.
Ackerman returned to the Magistrate's Court on March 25, when the charges against him were dismissed as he had been indicted by the grand jury, and he was held on $1000 Bail. Three days later he appeared in the Court of General Sessions, where Judge Donnellan dismissed the indictment and released him. Neither of the sources for that outcome, the 28th Precinct Police blotter or the New York Times, provided any explanation for the judge's decision.
While the store bore Lash's name, he does not identify himself as owning the business to either a census enumerator in 1940 or in his draft registration two years later. The enumerator recorded his occupation as manager of a general merchandise store, while the draft registration names his employer as A. Goldfarb, and gives the store at 2530 8th Avenue, not the branch on Lenox Avenue, as his place of employment. A thirty-seven-year-old who had arrived from Russia in 1913, Lash had been the proprietor of a hemstitching store in 1920 and 1930. Lash had insurance for his store, but as of early April 1935, when he spoke with a Probation Department investigator, his insurers refused to pay his claim. Despite that problem, Lash appears to have been able to remain in business, as the store appears in the Tax Department photograph taken between 1939 and 1941, with a large sign identifying it as "Harry's 5 & 10c Store." (The store does not appear in the MCCH Business survey, although there is a business recorded as "Apt Supplies" at 400 Lenox Avenue that may be Lash's store). -
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2020-10-22T02:18:54+00:00
Arnold Ford arrested
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2021-12-05T21:01:35+00:00
Around 1.50 AM, Patrolman Louis Frikser arrested Arnold Ford, a nineteen-year-old Black man, on the Third Avenue Bridge, which connected the eastern end of West 130th Street in Harlem with the Bronx. Frikser reported that he had observed Ford "walking across the bridge with a package," according to the details provided in the Probation Department investigation. Ford was likely going home; he lived just three blocks beyond the bridge, at 246 East 136th Street in the Bronx. The package he carried cannot have been large; it contained three cakes of soap, a can of shoe polish, two pairs of garters, six spools of thread, a jar of vaseline and three packets of tea, with a value of $1.15. According to Frikser, Ford admitted being 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. Later, in court, Ford stated that he had not broken the store windows, but only joined others entering the store and "helping himself to some merchandise." Eighteen months after the disorder, Ford told his Probation officer that he "found the goods in the street."
Patrolman Frikser stopped a second man crossing the bridge from Harlem, Joseph Moore, a forty-six-year-old West Indian carpenter "a few minutes" after Ford, and also arrested him for looting Lash's store. None of the reports of this case detail what caused Frikser to stop Moore or what he found in his possession. Like Ford, Moore was likely returning home; he lived at 248 East 136th Street in the Bronx, a building next door to where Ford resided. 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).
Police charged both Ford and Moore with burglary in the Harlem Magistrate Court. Subsequently they were indicted by the grand jury and tried in the Court of General Sessions. During the trial on April 1, Ford pled guilty to petit larceny, while Moore was acquitted at the direction of the judge, an outcome for which the Daily Worker gave credit to the International Labor Defence lawyers who appeared for him (that story made no mention of Ford). Eighteen months later, Ford told his Probation officer that he pleaded guilty "because he was told to do so and that as a matter of fact he is not guilty and did not take part in the riot and that he found the goods in the street." The officer described Ford as "brooding over his conviction," suggesting he regretted the plea.
Ford (and Moore) 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 Ford and Moore 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, on March 25, after their indictment by the grand jury on March 22.
Of the ten men convicted in the Court of General Sessions as a result of the disorder, judges placed only Ford and Charles Saunders on probation rather than incarcertating them. (the 28th Precinct Police Blotter recorded this outcome as a suspended sentence)Ford remained under supervision under April 1938.
The judge's decision to place Ford on probation likely owed much to the interest shown in him by Dr. Mason Pitman, superintendent of the Colored Orphan Asylum, located north of Manhattan at Riverdale, West 261st Street. Pitman expressed surprise that Ford had been arrested, writing to the Probation Department, "I do not understand why Arnold got into this trouble but I suppose that is something none of us understand, as we have never been put on the spot," and asking for leniency - going so far as to appear at the sentencing hearing. Ford and his younger brother and sister had been placed in the institution in 1927, when a judge committed them as neglected children. His mother Susan had turned to the court saying she had been deserted by her husband, Arnold Josiah Ford, a prominent Black Hebrew rabbi. However, the Big Sisters informed the Probation Department that the couple had divorced, with Josiah marrying again and Susan having children with another man. At the hearing Josiah agreed to contribute to his ex-wife's support but "would not claim the children." (Arnold's social security record identified his father as Donold J Ford, whose name does not appear in the Probation Department file). Ford remained in the Asylum until 1933, spending the last two years at it's boarding home in Jamaica, Queens, before being discharged back into his mother's care. The summary of his records at the Colored Orphan Asylum noted "He was found to be a nice boy in every way and was well liked by all who came in contact with him." Ford and his mother lived together at several addresses before moving to 246 East 136th Street two months before the disorder. Susan worked a few days a week as a domestic servant for a household on West 77th Street, while Arnold occasionally worked as an itinerant bootblack.
During his three years on probation, Ford frustrated the efforts of the Probation Department to supervise and direct his life. He reported far less frequently than required, blaming a lack of carfare for the trip, took up few of his probation officers' suggestions for vocational training, and refused to apply for aid from the Home Relief Bureau because it required answering invasive questions. His mother did not share his objections, as she began receiving Home Relief in September 1935, and cut back her hours of domestic work. Ford did enroll in the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1936, seeking an assignment to one of the rural work relief camps, but was rejected when the medical examination revealed he had a hernia. For several months Ford traveled to Morrisania Hospital for treatment, during which he was bedridden at home for at least two months. Around his illness, Ford briefly worked as an errand boy for a grocery store on Amsterdam Ave and West 79th Street, let go because his employer did not think he was physically able to carry heavy bundles, then two days a week as a cleaner and porter for a synagogue in the Bronx at Gerard Avenue and 161st Street, and then as an errand boy for a millinery firm on West 37th Street. Soon after he got that position in March he moved out of the apartment at 258 East 148th Street that he and his mother had moved to in June 1936, and in with the mother and a cousin of the woman he had married a month earlier, Gwendolyn Jordan, a twenty-year-old housemaid, at 134 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn. He did not pass on that news to his Probation officer, who learned of the marriage from a Home Relief investigator who had visited Ford's mother.
In August 1937 Ford lost his job, fired for making an error in delivering a package. The next month he found a job as a pin boy at Williamsbridge Bowling Alley at 225th Street and White Plains Road, working from 1 PM to 1 AM for two-thirds of his previous wage and requiring a journey of more than eighteen miles. But the next month Ford was again looking for work; when his Probation officer urged him to apply for Home Relief, he recorded Arnold and Gwendolyn as refusing and saying “they did not want to answer so many questions as the Home Relief Bureau wants to know too many personal questions which they refuse to answer and they would feel like slaves to this bureau and they believe that the clients of this bureau are treated like slaves.” Gwendolyn took a similar position on medical care for her pregnancy; when the Probation officer urged her to visit the hospital, she refused, he wrote, “because they ask too many questions and also because free service is no good and that the patients are ill-treated and neglected.” Instead, she planned to have the baby delivered at home by a local physician who the family went to for care, and the couple saved about $40 for the expenses. Tragically, that doctor was not in attendance when Gwendolyn went into labor in December 1937, and the baby presented in breech position. Although an ambulance was called, the child died. The Probation officer's assessment of those events is jarring in its callousness: “It seems that the probationer, his wife and his mother-in-law are ignorant and suspicious people who cannot be advised by anybody.” In the remaining three months of his probation, Ford and his wife continued to live with his mother-in-law, her cousin, and his two adult daughters, pooling their relief payments and wages, with Ford's contribution being what he could make from odd jobs while he looked for work.
In 1940 Ford was living with his wife and their one-year-old daughter, at 863 Home Street in the Bronx, when the census enumerator called. He gave his occupation as porter, but was still without a job, as remained the case when he completed a draft registration card later that year. On the card his address is recorded as 892 Union Avenue in the Bronx, although that address was struck out and replaced successively with four other addresses in the Bronx. A note on the card indicates Ford served in the Navy, receiving an honorable discharge on October 7, 1946. -
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2020-10-22T02:20:21+00:00
Joseph Moore arrested
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2021-09-16T17:32:54+00:00
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 Gazette, 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.