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Public Hearings - Outbreak (March-April 1935), 25, Subject Files, Box 408, Folder 8 (Roll 194), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945 (New York City Municipal Archives).
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Police in front of Kress' store
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Although Inspector Di Martini told a MCCH hearing that he saw no “indications of further trouble” when he left 125th Street at 6:00 PM, he did station some officers at Kress’ store -"Sergeant Bauer, two foot policeman, one mounted policeman in the rear to prevent a riot” according to his testimony, or “a Sergeant and four patrolmen” on the 125th Street side and “a mounted patrolman and a foot patrolman” on the 124th Street side according to his report to the Police Commissioner immediately after the disorder. A patrolman stationed in front of the store told an MCCH hearing that there were 10-15 officers there around 6:15 PM; that total may have included officers on regular assignment on 125th Street. However many police were present, one was Patrolman Shannon, who like Bauer, had been inside the store earlier.
Patrolman Moran, who arrived after Kress' store was closed, described being instructed to “keep the crowd moving in front of the store.” He insisted he did so by requesting them to “move on;” the lawyers who questioned him at a hearing of the MCCH alleged he used force, pushing people and using his nightstick. By around 6:15 PM, Moran said the front of the store was “pretty clear” while a crowd walked up and down on the opposite side of the street. Louise Thompson told the MCCH that there “little knots of people” on the street (although she wrote in New Masses that the crowd in front of the store numbered in the hundreds, that across the street in the thousands). Two men set up a stepladder in front of the store, a Black man named James Parton speaking briefly and then as, Daniel Miller tried to speak to the crowd, a window in the store was broken and Patrolman Shannon arrested Miller. Outnumbered as they were by the crowd, police made the arrest following the practice of focusing on the leaders of crowds. Other officers then cleared the crowds from in front of the store, moving them first across West 125th Street and then towards 7th avenues. Thompson testified that “police got rough and would not let anyone stop on the street” and wrote “the cops who were becoming ugly in their attempts to break up the increasing throngs of people.” About fifteen minutes later Patrolman Irwin Young, assisted by several other officers arrested Harry Gordon when he climbed a lamppost to speak to the crowd. They bundled him into a radio car and took him to the 28th Precinct on West 123rd Street. Again, police were trying to control the crowd by arresting men they perceived to be leaders, possibly identifying them as Communists with whom they regularly clashed. They had not arrested Parton, the Black man who introduced both Miller and Gordon. A few minutes later, Patrolman Shannon, Sgt Bauer and Patrolman Moran were involved in arresting two white men and a Black man after they refused to stop picketing in front of Kress’ store. Those men carried placards that identified them as members of an organization associated with the Communist Party, which again likely contributed to the decision to arrest them.
After the arrests, police continued to move on people who stopped on the sidewalks around Kress’ store – and perhaps clear some who had gone into the street itself, as the New York Herald Tribune reported the street reopened after being blocked to automobiles and streetcars. By 7:00 PM, the crowds had been pushed to the avenues (some of those on 8th Avenue for a short time moved to attack the rear entrance of Kress’ store, where two police officers were hit by objects thrown by those trying to get into the store). Additional officers who arrived seem to have been key to that success. “15 patrolmen, six mounted police and uniformed men of five radio cars” were on 125th Street by that time according to the New York Evening Journal. Inspector Di Martini also returned, around 7:15 PM.
The Daily News published a photograph of the disorder that showed police officers engaging with crowds. The caption for the image, which captures the largest crowd to appear in a photograph of the disorder, described only the actions of one of the two uniformed patrolmen visible: "“The raincoated policeman swings in against the angry crowd as his comrade tries to hold the police line. One colored man is lifting his arm as if to restrain the cop.” The use of force captured here is at odds with Patrolman Moran's insistence that officers simply asked crowds to move. While uniformed patrolmen carried nightsticks as part of their standard equipment, detectives in plainclothes were issued them for riot duty, according to the New York Evening Journal. As well as hitting people with their batons, police officers used the butts of their revolvers and riot guns as clubs. The Times Union directly contradicted Moran's claim police did not use those weapons to move the crowds in front of the store: "Police night sticks swung and soon the mob was dispersed." Only the Daily News reported police fired their guns to move the crowd, describing with unlikely precision that five shots were fired in the air. Inspector Di Martini told a hearing of the MCCH that he heard no gunshots on 125th Street, so if those shots were fired it was before he arrived around 7:15 PM. The caption makes no mention of where the photograph was taken; the group appears to be on the sidewalk, perhaps near Kress’ store or later near 7th or 8th Avenue. Unmentioned is the horse’s head visible on the right side of image, indicating the presence of a mounted patrolman.
Mounted patrolmen, part of the police crowd control force, were reportedly deployed “to ride people off the sidewalk,” Louise Thompson testified. Lt. Battle told Langston Hughes that "an officer on a horse can be more effective than twenty patrolmen on foot," as the horses are "trained to brush a crowd back without stepping on anyone." When a reporter for the Afro-American arrived around 7:30 PM “mounted police rode the sidewalk [in front of the store] keeping the crowd back.” Charles Romney likewise told a hearing of the MCCH that he saw "men on horseback were on the sidewalk to trample people." The New York Times and Daily News opted to describe the mounted police in more sensational terms as ‘charging’ the crowds. In the New Masses, Thompson presented a similar picture, juxtaposing the mounted officers with women protesting in terms echoing those used by other Communists: “Brigades of mounted police cantered down the street, breaking into a gallop where the crowds were thickest. Horses' hoofs shot sparks as they mounted on the glass-littered pavements. The crowds fighting doggedly, gave way. The women more stubborn even than the men, shouted to their companions, "What kind of men are you-drag them down off those horses." The women shook their fists at the police. "Cossacks! Cossacks!" they shouted here in Harlem on 125th Street.” Years later, interviewed for her autobiography, Thompson identified many of the mounted patrolmen as Black officers and described the women as actually fighting with them. Another Afro-American journalist simply described the mounted police as "somewhat rough" during the early hours of the disorder. Whatever approach they took, it was mounted police that the Afro-American credited with keeping large groups away from Kress and on the avenues.
While police cleared 125th Street of large groups and stopped any more assembling there, they did not – or could not -- close it off. Instead, “they patrolled 124th and 125th Streets between Seventh and Eighth Avenues constantly to prevent more groups from assembling,” the New York Herald Tribune reported. Thompson testified that she walked up and down 125th Street after the arrests, but was only able to stop and speak with members of groups on the corner of 8th Avenue. Charles Romney told a hearing of the MCCH that when he arrived on 125th Street around 7:30 PM, walking from Lenox to 7th Avenue, he “noticed a crowd of police with sticks on their hands telling the crowd to go on.” Given the small numbers of police, those patrols did not protect the stores on the block from attack: Thompson testified windows were broken in almost every store between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM (although she was away from the area from 7:30 PM to 8:00 PM); and Romney likewise testified that at 7:30 PM "there were a lot of windows smashed." The New York Herald Tribune reported the same timeline, that “by 8 p.m. one or more windows in virtually every 125th Street store front in the block had been smashed.” Around that time the situation began to change as additional officers arrived, reinforcements that made it possible for police to set up a perimeter around 125th Street and keep people away from the stores.
As with other events at the beginning of the disorder, the most detailed and consistent evidence is the testimony of individuals present on 125th Street in hearings of the MCCH. Newspaper stories were generally vague and inconsistent about how many police were on the scene at what times and how they responded to the crowds, and tended to exaggerate the size of the crowds and the number of people on the street. It does seem that credible that several hundred -- and perhaps as many as 2000-3000 people -- were in the area during this time, although not gathered in a single group. This was a larger number than gathered in any one place later in the disorder, contributing to the different way that police responded.
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9:00 PM to 9:30 PM
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The window broken in the Willow Cafeteria just before 9:00 PM was likely the work of a group Louise Thompson saw break through the police cordon on to 125th Street around 9:00 PM. This outburst of attacks on store windows came just as Thompson thought that the police had established some order at 125th Street and 7th Avenue. A combination of police cordons on the west side had prevented groups from going along the street to the Kress store and guards in front of Herbert’s Blue Diamond Jewelry store on the east side had protected that business from further damage. The number of people police faced dwindled as Thompson watched groups disperse up and down the avenue. And then “another group broke through the police cordons and swept down to Kress’s once again,” [New Masses, 16] and “broke some windows.” [28] They were apparently on the opposite corner to where Thompson was located. Bricks hit the windows of Young’s Hat Store the second store west of the corner at 201 West 125th Street, for the first time around 9:00 PM. The hat store was in the same building as the Willow Cafeteria on the north side of the street. At least some of the broken windows in the four other stores in that building, the United Cigar store on the corner, the Minks Haberdashery next to it and the Savon Clothes store and General Stationery & Supplies store between the hat store and cafeteria, were likely the result of attacks at this time. Further west, in the building on the other side of the Harlem Opera House, all four businesses – the Conrad Schmidt Music Shop, Adler Shoes, Scheer Clothing, Howard Suits – had windows broken during the disorder, with some of that damage likely occurring at this time. That may be as far as group who got past police made it along 125th Street. Beyond that building were the Empire Savings Bank and Loew's Victoria Theatre. No stores west of the theater suffered significant damage other than those on the corner of 8th Avenue. A clerk in Young’s Hat store reported that its windows were broken “right out,” hit repeatedly until little glass remained. With the glass gone, the merchandise displayed in the window was accessible from to people on the street, and some of those hats were taken. There was no other evidence of merchandise being taken at this time, with most groups on the streets then apparently focused on breaking windows, and few store windows yet as damaged as those of the hat store.
Businesses, however, were no longer the only targets of violence. Three white men were also injured around this time near 125th Street, allegedly attacked by groups of Black men. All could have been on 125th Street making their way home, shopping or seeking entertainment, as they lived just west of Harlem, like the white man injured about thirty minutes earlier. Fifty-six-year-old Morris Werner received medical attention for a stab wound that he claimed was the result of being attacked by “by several unknown colored men” near the southwest corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue. While typical of violence prosecuted as assault at other times in 1935, the injury was one of only two stabbings among the fifty-four assaults that would be reported in the disorder. Louise Thompson, with a group on that corner, did not mention such an assault. Nor did any of the journalists in the area write about it or police arrest anyone for being responsible. Werner may not have been the only white man injured at that intersection around this time. Three of the white journalists gathered there, by the police perimeter, suffered injuries. Harry Johnson, who worked for the New York American, was reportedly beaten by three Black men, leaving him with injuries to his face that required him to call his editors and ask them to send another reporter to take his place. Everett Breuer, a Daily News photographer, and James Martin, his assistant, were reportedly hit in the face by rocks as they took images of a group of Black men and women in the island in the middle of 7th Avenue. Those forms of violence were typical during the disorder, unlike Werner’s stab wounds. In neither case did police arrest anyone.
At the other end of the block of 125th Street on which the Kress store was located, two additional white men suffered injuries. Maurice Spellman received medical attention for cuts around his right eye that he said were the result of being attacked by several Black men around 9:00 PM at 8th Avenue and 125th Street. Groups of people had gathered there trying to get to the Kress store, but, as with the alleged assault on Werner, no journalist wrote about the attack, nor did police arrest anyone. At the same time a block further west on St Nicholas Avenue up at 127th Street, Timothy Murphy, a twenty-nine-year-old rock driller on his way home, was knocked to the ground and hit and kicked by a group of Black men. He claimed one of those men said, “You white son-of-a-bitch, take it now,” a phrase that offered little explanation for the violence. While it referenced Murphy’s race, it did not make clear that was why he had been attacked let alone make any connection to rumors about a boy beaten or killed at the Kress store. There were few businesses in the area, so it was not somewhere groups would have come to break store windows. Rumors from 125th Street, however, would have reached residents.
Police witnessed the attack on Murphy unlike the other alleged assaults on white men at this time. Patrolman George Conn, in a radio car on its way to 125th Street, saw a group of around ten men gathered around Murphy. Jumping out of the car, Conn drew his pistol and fired a shot in the air to disperse the group as he ran toward them. As the men scattered, he fired a second shot at the group, hitting Paul Boyett, a twenty-year-old Black garage worker, in his right shoulder. Despite the wound, Boyett kept running toward his home, only a few buildings away at 310 West 127th Street. Conn caught up to him in the hallway and arrested Boyett despite his insistence that he was “an innocent onlooker” drawn to the disturbance who had not hit or kicked Murphy. Later, a trial jury did accept Boyett’s explanation and acquitted him. No one else was arrested for the assault on Murphy, who suffered cuts and bruises to his head, face and body, and a broken nose.
Somewhere on 125th Street, another police officer also responded to an assault on a white man around this time. Detective William Boyle attempted to “rescue an unknown white man being assaulted.” That man was likely having bricks and rocks thrown at him, as Boyle was hit in the left ankle. By 9:15 PM, Boyle was in the 28th Precinct station on West 123rd Street. Dr Sayet, who earlier in the day had treated the Kress store staff bitten by Lino Rivera, arrived in an ambulance from Harlem Hospital at that time to treat Boyle’s cuts and bruises. The detective then remained on duty.
Given that there would have been many more white men and women on the streets around 125th Street at this time than those identified as being assaulted, even as they were far outnumbered by Black residents, the groups who directed violence at white individuals rather than white-owned businesses were a very small portion of those reacting to events at the Kress store. That violence occurred in the midst of the disorder; only those who attacked Timothy Murphy may have sought out someone to assault. The others encountered white men while focused on 125th Street and the Kress store.
While people on the four corners of 8th Avenue and 125th Street had not yet begun to move away and break windows at the time of the alleged attacks on the two white men, at the other end of the block more windows were being broken on 7th Avenue. On the northwest corner of 127th Street, around 9:00 PM a window was broken in the saloon, next to the grocery store damaged a few minutes earlier. Three more windows were broken in the tailor and cleaning store in the middle of that block that had had a window broken earlier. As was the case earlier, those attacks do not appear to be the actions of a crowd acting together, but of small groups and individuals. They could have been the same people who had thrown objects at windows on this block earlier, or those people could have moved on and been replaced by others coming from or to 125th Street. There was still no evidence that police were in the area to deter or respond to these attacks. The white owners and staff of those businesses appeared to still have been present at this time; there was no indication that they were targeted by those breaking windows.
Fourteen blocks south of 125th Street, Lino Rivera left his home, where he had been since leaving the Kress store, at 9:00 PM. He had a cup of coffee somewhere relatively close by, where he saw “a lot of trouble around.” Whatever was happening likely involved some of the people that Carlton Moss had described people going south on 7th Avenue from 125th Street beginning around 8:30 PM. However, Rivera did not hear any explanation for the “trouble” that connected it with what had happened to him hours earlier. Perhaps still wary after that experience, he decided to cut short his plans for the evening, and returned home before 9:30 PM.
As Rivera was arriving home, Louise Thompson also decided to leave the streets and go to the home of a friend. For her, however, it was the lack of “trouble” and the diminishing number of people at 125th Street and 7th Avenue that appear to have prompted that decision. Police had cleared 125th Street of those who broke through the cordon half an hour earlier, and groups of people unable to reach the Kress store again began to disperse up and down 7th Avenue. Thompson likely joined those going south on 7th Avenue; when she returned about an hour later, it would be at 7th Avenue and 118th Street.