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Probation Department Case File, 26516 (1935) (New York City, Municipal Archives).
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2020-12-04T16:51:58+00:00
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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Horace Fowler arrested
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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 Gazette, 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.
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2021-06-01T01:41:16+00:00
Nicholas Peet's tailor's store looted
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2021-06-01T19:48:49+00:00
Around 1:30 AM, Detective George Booker allegedly saw Horace Fowler, a thirty-two-year-old Black laborer, break the window of Nicholas Peet's tailor's shop at 2063 7th Avenue, reach inside, and take several articles of clothing. 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." It also reports that Fowler denied "breaking the window or knowing how it was broken." Fowler did admit stealing the clothing in his possession when Booker arrested him, a man's suit and a lady's coat, valued at $8.25 in the affidavit, but at $25 by Peet in the Probation Department investigation.
Peet put his total losses during the disorder at $452.25 in secondhand suits, coats and pants, and an addition $133 worth of suits, overcoats, women's coats and dresses belonging to customers, according to the Probation Department investigation. It is not clear how much of that stock 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 moved there long before 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.
Peet is not identified as having joined other white merchants in suing the city for failing to protect his business. None of those identified came from the area in which his store was located, but around eighty of those who brought suits were not identified. Peet did have insurance for his store windows, which paid $30 for their replacement, according to the Probation Department investigation; there is no mention of other insurance. Regardless, Peet was able to remain in business; the MCCH survey found a white tailor's store at 2063 7th Avenue in the second half of 1935, and Peet identified himself as still in business at that address when he registered for the draft in 1942. Born in Cyprus, he had arrived in New York City in 1929, from England. When he started the process to become a US citizen in November 1934, he lived at 12 West 123rd Street, two blocks east of his store, with his German-born wife Martha, who he had married in 1933. By 1937, when he filed his naturalization petition, the couple had moved two blocks south, to 9 Mt Morris Park, remaining in the enclave of white residences bordering Mt Morris Park. The 1940 census found Peet had moved out of Harlem, to 425 West 125th Street; they stayed on the west side when they moved again before 1942, to 435 West 123rd Street, their address when Peet registered for the draft.
Fowler appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20. He appears 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 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. 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 the judge sentenced him to three months in the workhouse.