This page was created by Anonymous. 

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

Raymond Easley arrested

Around 1.45 AM, Patrolmen Kalsky and Holland of the 28th Precinct allegedly saw a group of people around the cigar store at 1916 7th Avenue, and then a milk can thrown through the plate glass windows. The officers got to the store in time for Kalsky to arrest Thomas Jackson, a thirty-four-year-old Black driver who he charged had thrown the milk can, and Holland to arrest Raymond Easley, a twenty-one-year-old Black man, he charged had taken cigars from the store window, according to a story in the Home News. Holland also found that Easley was carrying a razor. Two arrests at the same incident of alleged looting was unusual during the disorder, suggesting that the officers were closer to the store than in other instances, perhaps only having to cross West 116th Street rather than 7th Avenue.

Easley was not mentioned in the affidavit in the District Attorney’s case file in which he and Jackson are co-defendants, nor does the file contain an examination of him. The only document in the case file referring to Easley was a criminal record; he had no previous prosecutions. Other than the story about his arraignment in the Magistrates Court in the Home News, Easley only appeared in the list of those arrested published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list published in the New York Evening Journal, and a report on his return to the Magistrates Court in the New York Herald Tribune.

Easley and Jackson (whose real name was Thomas Dean) both appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20, but took different paths through the legal system. Magistrate Renaud held Jackson for the grand jury on charges of burglary; he remanded Easley on the same charge and on the charge of carrying a dangerous weapon, a misdemeanor offense, for having the razor in his possession. Both appeared in court again on March 27, but while Jackson, indicted on March 22, pled guilty to unlawful entry in the Court of General Sessions, Easley was back in the Magistrate's Court, having the burglary charges against him dismissed as he had already been indicted by the grand jury as a result of evidence presented in District Attorney Dodge's investigation. The New York Herald Tribune, the only newspaper to report on those proceedings, noted that Easley was rearrested. The 28th Precinct Police Blotter and the District Attorney’s case file are the only sources that recorded that the indictment was dismissed on April 12.

A day earlier Easley had returned to the Harlem court to face the weapons possession charge, having previously had the investigation continued on April 3 and April 9. On April 11 the magistrate sent him to the Court of Special Sessions. There is no record of the outcome of that trial and no newspaper reports of those appearances.

This page has tags:

This page references: