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

Robert D. Levitt, "Kill the Whites Roar Maddened Harlem Mobs," New York Evening Journal, March 20, 1935, 3.

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Black-owned business signs (6) Six businesses were identified as having signs in their windows identifying them as Black owned. Stories in both white and Black newspapers presented such signs as a more widespread part of the disorder and as a key reason why Black-owned businesses were generally spared from damage and not looted. On placards and directly on windows with whitewash or soap were written “Colored,” "Black," and “This Store Owned by Colored,” the Afro-American reported. Three of the identified businesses fitted those generalizations, with a reporter for La Prensa describing signs that read "Colored" on a billiard hall and the Castle Inn on Lenox Avenue, and a sign reading "This is a Store Owned By Colored" in the Monterey Luncheonette reported by the Afro-American. Three other stores reportedly used a variation on those signs. Seven signs identifying a store named “Winnette’s Dresses” as a “Colored Store” are visible in both a photograph of an arrest taken during the disorder published in the Daily News, and a photograph taken the morning after the disorder showing a group of Black boys in front of the store published in the Afro-American.

The sign on the Williams's drug store used the same phrase, "Colored Store" with the additional phrase "Nix Jack," repeating the combination twice on its side windows. There is no information on the meaning of the phrase "Nix Jack." Roi Ottley, writing in his column in the New York Amsterdam News about the looting during the disorder as targeted at white-owned businesses, ended with an echo of that phrase: "THIS IS A COLORED COLUMN, NIX JACK!" The Cozy Shoppe customized the phrase to fit its name, rendering it as "Colored Shoppe." The Home News reporter departed from those descriptions, apparently confusing the nature of the signs displayed. Explaining how it was that "Most of the damage was done to shops which were known to be operated by white persons," the reporter claimed, "The colored persons who owned stores protected their shops against vandalism by picketing their establishments. They carried signs stating that the store was operated by colored people." No other sources mention pickets in front of Black-owned stores. There was no mention of signs being displayed in store windows in the Daily Mirror, New York American, New York Sun, or in Harlem's Black newspapers, the New York Age and New York Amsterdam News, or in the MCCH Report.

Signs appeared in Black-owned businesses as a response to windows being broken in nearby stores, providing material evidence that those throwing objects at windows chose their targets rather than being an irrational "mob." In some stories, those attacks were indiscriminate until signs appeared; other stories leave open the possibility that the signs reflected store owners' sense of the targets of those throwing objects at windows. "The mob made no choice, at first, of victims," in the most elaborate story, in the New York Evening Journal. "And then one colored man who owned a small restaurant pasted a sign in the window. It bore one word: 'Colored.' The mob passed him by and when others saw how the 'miracle' was worked, signs flashed up in store windows throughout West Harlem. Those owned by Negroes, in most cases, were not broken into." The dismissive tone of the story was typical of that newspaper's treatment of Black subjects; attributing the posting of signs to an individual and the protection from damage that resulted to a "miracle" diminished the decisions those on the streets made about what stores to target that Black store-owners recognized. By contrast, the Black reporter for the Afro-American, emphasized “Stores owned by colored persons in the rioting area had to rush improvised signs reading ‘Colored, “Black,” “This Store Owned by Colored," but cast the signs as based on an understanding of the intentions of those attacking stores, created "in order to be spared in the rain of bricks, whiskey bottles, and other missiles."

Briefer mentions in other newspaper stories generally echoed that framing. Among Black newspapers, the Norfolk Journal and Guide went furthest in emphasizing that Black-owned businesses initially were damaged: "Some Negro establishments were among the 200 which lost their plate-glass windows and had the window contents looted. Finally, some Negro stores in the affected area...had to resort to self preserving signs such as 'Colored' 'Owned by Colored' and 'Black.'" The Philadelphia Tribune ambiguously alluded to earlier attacks, while also erroneously expanding the violence to homes, reporting "Risks to live became so grave Tuesday night that Negroes put up signs on their stores and homes to indicate 'colored' lived there." Signs are simply presented as a response in the Indianapolis Recorder, "As the swarms of rioters swooped down upon the business district breaking store windows and stealing merchandise signs saying 'Colored Store' went up." Among white newspapers, those brief mentions emphasized the lack of damage to businesses that put up signs, without reference to what had happened earlier. Two such mentions came in additional stories in the New York Evening Journal. "The mob wrath in most instances touched no windows whose proprietors had had opportunity to scribble 'colored' in white chalk on the glass," wrote Joseph Mickler. Robert D. Levit similarly noted, "They carefully left unmolested those store which displayed hastily constructed signs with the word 'Colored.'" The story in the New York Post included a similar description, that "Many Negro storekeepers scrawled on their windows, with soap, the word 'colored' and the heat of the mob was never sufficient to cause the Negroes to attack their own." While stories in the Daily News did not mention signs, they appeared in the background of a photograph of two police officers making an arrest, drawing a mention in the caption: "On the dress store window are signs proclaiming it to be a ‘colored shop,’ to protect it from the raiding marauders."

Two more stories, in the New York Times and New York World-Telegram, described signs in windows the next day rather than during the disorder. Those signs may have gone up after the disorder, as storeowners became aware of details of the previous night's violence, or the white reporters may not have seen those signs during the disorder. The latter seems more likely. The signs in Winnette’s Dresses photographed after the disorder had been present, and photographed, during the disorder; likewise the sign on the Cozy Shoppe window filmed after the disorder was also reported during the disorder. In both the New York Times and New York World-Telegram stories, not only Black owners put up signs. "Negro proprietors had large white-washed signs on their windows announcing that 'This shop is run by COLORED people,'" the New York Times reported, adding, "Several white store owners took the cue and covered their windows with signs announcing that 'This store employs Negro workers.'" The previous year, the boycott campaign had tried to expand the number of stores with Black staff. Newspaper stories offered contradictory claims about whether such businesses were attacked during the disorder: the New York Post and Pittsburgh Courier reported they were spared, the Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide reported they were among those damaged.

A further set of store-owners' responses are included in the New York World-Telegram. "On every Negro store in Harlem today there were signs bearing this legend, 'Colored Store.' One said:-'Do not break this window. This is colored.'" Also, "There are many Chinese restaurants in Harlem, and they have placed similar signs on their windows. Chain stores have filled their windows with empty pasteboard boxes. Others have nailed boards across their windows." The only other mentions of Chinese-owned businesses as targets of attacks were of a single Chinese laundry posting a sign reading "Me Colored Too," reported by the Associated Press, in the New York Herald Tribune and Daily News (two newspapers that otherwise did not mention signs in their stories on the disorder), and in Time Magazine. That sign captured the issue raised by attention to those businesses: how did those attacking white-owned businesses regard those from other ethnic groups. The New York World-Telegram story implied that Chinese-owned businesses, of which there were 209 (3.5%, 209 of 5791) dispersed throughout Black Harlem, were not attacked, that those on the streets during the disorder agreed their owners were "colored too." Newspaper stories in the New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, and New York World-Telegram about the laundry contradicted that view, reporting that the business' windows were broken after the sign was displayed. However, there are no other reports of damaged or looted Chinese-owned stores. By contrast, La Prensa reported several Hispanic-owned businesses that suffered damage and looting, and no mention that such stores sought to identify themselves as a "colored store." The final response described by New York World-Telegram offered further recognition among storeowners of who the violence targeted. Rather than signs identifying why they should be spared from attack, white-owned stores barricaded their windows, seeking to prevent damage from objects that would be thrown at them.
Police establish perimeter around Kress' store After Inspector Di Martini returned to 125th Street around 7:00 PM, he called for police reinforcements. A New York Evening Journal story celebrated the response as “the most remarkable “military” feat in the history of the department.” That portrayal was certainly how the police department would have sought to present the deployment. However, the arrival of additional officers appears to have taken longer than the story allowed, and to have been focused on establishing a perimeter around Kress’ store. The piecemeal arrival of reinforcements made that a protracted process. As police struggled to keep crowds away from Kress' store, those clashes served to disperse crowds along the avenues rather than stopping the violence. Unable to prevent windows being broken in businesses on 125th Street, police had to guard damaged stores, limiting the officers who could be deployed on the avenues. Guards appear to have prevented looting; they did not stop additional windows being broken. After crowds broke through on to 125th Street around 10:30 PM, there are only two further incidents in that area during the remaining disorder, an alleged assault on a woman and a shooting, both at the intersection of 125th Street and 7th Avenue. Although other incidents whose timing is unknown may have occurred during that time, the evidence suggests that police perimeter held through that period.

The New York Evening Journal story lauding the police response reported “a small army of 700 police was beating back the rioters” on 125th Street between 8th and 7th Avenues. That number likely reflected the total deployment rather than the force that set up the perimeter around Kress’ store. It was in line with the number Di Martini reported to the Police Commissioner were in Harlem after midnight and fell between the totals reported by newspapers, with the 1000 officers mentioned by the Daily Mirror at one extreme, and the 500 officers reported by the Home News and New York Herald Tribune representing the other end of the range. While the officers coming from beyond the local precincts went initially to 125th Street, Lt. Battle later told Langston Hughes that the reserve officers from Harlem's precincts went to their stations, on West 123rd Street and West 135th Street. Some of those officers may have been sent directly to other areas of Harlem, particularly those who arrived later in the evening.

The perimeter established by police extended from 8th to Lenox Avenues, and from 124th to 126th Streets, according to stories in the New York Times, Daily Mirror and Pittsburgh Courier, the only sources that described police deployments. While Inspector Di Martini had summoned the reinforcements, the newspapers credited that deployment to Deputy Chief Inspector McAuliffe, who commanded uniformed police in the borough of Manhattan, and would have taken over from Di Martini when he arrived around 9:00 PM. The department’s Emergency trucks attracted the most attention in newspaper stories, presented as the anchors of the police cordon. Six emergency trucks were stationed at the intersection of West 125th Street and 7th Avenue in the strategy reported by the New York Times, Daily Mirror and Pittsburgh Courier. Emergency trucks were more dispersed according to the New York Herald Tribune; two at West 125th and 7th Avenue, one at West 125th and Lenox Avenue, and one at West 127th and 7th Avenue.

The Emergency Services Division had succeeded the Police department’s Riot Battalion in 1925. Each truck had a crew of eight officers and, in addition to rescue equipment, carried a Thompson machine gun, three Winchester rifles and a Remington shotgun, as well as a tear gas gun, for use against "disorderly crowds." The twenty-two trucks in the department in 1935 were dispersed throughout the city. While the two located closest to 125th Street arrived relatively quickly, additional trucks would have taken significantly longer. Squad #6 was based on East 122nd Street, and had been involved in clearing shoppers from Kress’ store earlier. Squad #5, based on Amsterdam Avenue, arrived around 7:15 PM, according to Patrolman Eppler. The New York Evening Journal identified trucks as coming from Kingsbridge in the Bronx and from Coney Island at the southern end of Brooklyn, the later apparently arriving later: “It slithered perilously over wet streets but arrived in time for its crew to get into action.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle identified another squad from Brooklyn, Squad #16 from Herbert Street, as having crashed returning from Harlem, at 1:00 AM (a time when there was still significant disorder). Thompson did not mention the trucks. Neither did trucks appear in any of the published photographs of the disorder. Some of their crew did, identifiable because the rifles they carried - described as “riot guns” in newspapers stories and photograph captions - caused them to stand out from other police. They did not, however, have a machine gun that needed to be “set up,” as the Afro-American reported: each truck instead carried a single hand held ‘Tommy gun.’ Nor were the trucks equipped with enough of those weapons for all the crew to have one. And there are no reports that they used tear gas. Those weapons prompted several newspapers to use martial language in stories about the squads’ activities. The New York Evening Journal story on the police reinforcements described Harlem as a “seething battleground,” and the police as “beating back the rioters in a savage and organized attack.” An Emergency truck from the Bronx “leaped off the machine and tore into a crowd of window smashers” (perhaps at Herbert’s jewelry store at 125th Street and 7th Avenue, where another New York Evening Journal story described a similar scene). The Daily Mirror described Emergency trucks as "being sent to the battle zone."

The other evidence of the presence of Emergency trucks placed them in less warlike roles. Newspaper photographs show their crew among the officers who guarded damaged stores. A patrolman with a riot gun stands in front of Herbert’s jewelry store on northeast corner of 125th and 7th Avenue in a photograph published in the Burlington Free Press. Stories in the New York Evening Journal and New York Herald Tribune described police with riot guns guarding the store (the Daily News, New York American and Home News described the officers simply as patrolmen). Another patrolman with a riot gun was photographed on the corner across 7th Avenue from the jewelry store. The image published in the New York Evening Journal is narrowly focused on the officer, whereas another version of that image published in the Daily Mirror shows a Black man walking past him, and the image published in the Daily News shows several Black men and women walking by on the sidewalk, evidence of the continued presence of people around 125th Street. Two additional patrolmen, one visibly carrying a rifle, stand in front of Sherloff’s jewelry store, just a few buildings north of the intersection, in an AP photograph published in the Los Angeles Times. Taken together, the images suggest that the crew of at least one Emergency Truck guarded stores at the intersection. Captain Rothengast, Patrolman Moran and Patrolman Eppler told the MCCH that they also guarded other stores on 125th Street, including Kress’ store. A photograph published in the Daily News shows a patrolman talking through a broken window with a man inside a store on 125th Street. Again, Black men and women are visible in the background on the sidewalk in the background, their presence indicating that police had not closed the streets.

The police perimeter appears to have focused on keeping crowds off 125th Street, not individuals and small groups. In addition to those visible in photographs, Captain Rothengast described seeing "groups of people in 125th Street – no more than 250" when he arrived at Kress’ store around 8:30 PM. A story in the Home News also reported that “In an effort to keep traffic moving, police permitted pedestrians to walk through 125th St. The sidewalks on both sides of the street were crowded.” Patrolmen Moran and Eppler testified that at least some of those people approached police guarding Kress' store asking about the boy beaten in the store, encounters also described by a reporter for the Afro-American. Allowing individuals to walk along 125th Street was not incident-free: around 8:30 PM, a white man was allegedly beaten in front of Kress’ store, with police arresting James Smitten for committing the assault. About twenty minutes later, police arrested Frank Wells for breaking a window in the Willow Cafeteria. Just before 10:00 PM, Detective Roge was hit by a rock in front of Kress’ store and another patrolman injured at 124th Street and 7th Avenue. At the same time, Louise Thompson described larger groups being pushed back by police. She told a MCCH hearing she saw "one policeman throw his billy into the crowds while the mounted police were riding them down” at the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue between 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM, a scene similar to that captured by a photograph published in the Daily News. There is no evidence of where that photograph was taken, but a second photograph of police dispersing a group of Black men and women, the most widely reproduced photograph of the disorder, was taken at 125th Street and 7th Avenue according to the caption. It shows the island that that divided the north and south lanes on the roadway, which contained trees and were surrounded by the barriers like those visible in the photograph. A group of men and women are scattering in response to a uniformed patrolman moving toward them. One man is bent over; the caption describes him as falling down. He may also have been pushed down or hit by the patrolman; another man obstructs the view of what has happened between the two men. (One version of the caption claimed that the photographer was hit by a rock soon after taking the image, which might explain why the patrolman was trying to move the crowd).

One of the Black men killed during the disorder, Andrew Lyons, sustained a fractured skull "during the thick of a melee at 125th street and Seventh avenue," according to the New York Amsterdam News, or a block further west at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue according to the Times Union. Police clubs may have been responsible for those injuries, but the doctors who treated Lyons recorded that had been too groggy to tell his roommate or anyone else how he had been injured. No sources mentioned police firing revolvers or rifles to try to disperse the crowds.

On at least two occasions large crowds appear to have broken through the police perimeter. Louise Thompson told a MCCH hearing that around 9:00 PM a crowd broke through on to 125th Street. The Home News also reported that incident. Store windows were broken, Young's hat store looted, and two white men and a white police detective allegedly assaulted around that time. A second crowd broke through around 10:30 PM, resulting in more windows being broken and a white man allegedly being assaulted, and police arresting four Black men.

Most of the incidents on 125th Street before 10:30 PM did not result in arrests, likely because police were heavily outnumbered by crowds and constrained by the responsibility of guarding stores. Only at Kress’ store it seems were enough officers stationed to make arrests: there arrests were made not just around 10:30 PM but also just before 10:00 PM and at 8:30 PM. There are no arrests among those with known times in the period between the arrest of the picketers in front of Kress’ store at 6.45 PM and arrests on 125th Street between 8:30 PM and 9:00 PM. There are approximately a dozen arrests made at unknown times and places that might have occurred during this time, but it is more likely that police were too outnumbered to make arrests, as Lt. Battle later told Langston Hughes. While an arrest for breaking windows was made just before 9:00 PM, police made no arrests for the assaults and broken windows reported when a crowd broke through soon after.

The police perimeter appears to have held after 10:30 PM. Sometime before then, no later than 10:00 PM, and likely as early as between 8:30 PM and 9:00 PM, groups had moved on from 125th Street to attack businesses on 8th Avenue and 7th Avenue, and later, Lenox Avenue. In response, police began to disperse across Harlem, driving along those streets in radio cars and taking up positions on street corners and guarding damaged stores. Exactly when the first police were sent beyond 125th Street is not clear. The first arrest made away from 125th Street, on West 127th Street between St Nicholas and 8th Avenues around 9:00 PM, appears to have been made by a patrolman on his way to 125th Street rather than being deployed elsewhere in Harlem. The arrest of Leroy Brown around 9:45 PM on 7th Avenue between 127th and 128th Streets is clearer evidence of a spreading police presence.

With the MCCH giving limited attention to this period of the disorder, witnesses who testified at their hearings did not provide the details they do of the earlier police response. Newspaper reporters and photographers were on 125th Street during this time, so would have seen some of these events and been able to obtain information from police. Inspector Di Martini spoke with a group of reporters including one from the Afro-American during this time. At the same time, those reporters would have had a limited view. The block was too long for those at one intersection to see the details of what was happening at the other intersection, or even for those at Kress' store to clearly see the nearby intersection with 8th Avenue. At the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue the Afro-American's reporter saw only "little knots of people on the corner;" "once he walked on, however, he found high police officials and the first detail of 500 extra policemen rushed to the area" and "a large number of people between Seventh and Eighth Avenues." It is unsurprising then that newspaper stories offer only general and fragmented accounts of this period of the disorder. Information on specific events comes from legal records, which are limited largely to the period around 10:00 PM when police made arrests, and narrowly focused on the actions of a single arresting officer.
Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store windows broken Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store on the northeast corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue had windows broken in the early hours of the disorder, beginning after police drove crowds on 125th Street toward 7th Avenue after 8.00 PM. Just how much damage the store suffered the store suffered is uncertain. "One brick was thrown through the window," the New York American reported, while the New York Post and New York Evening Journal reported windows on just one side of the store had been smashed, and the New York Herald Tribune that two windows were broken. The most damage was reported in an interview with Bernard Newman, the store manager, published in the Daily News. He claimed that fourteen "big show case windows" were broken. However, despite being attributed to the manager, the accuracy of that claim is questionable as the story also reported Newman as saying that "the mob jumped in the windows and scrambled for the jewelry," taking at least "Several thousand dollars worth" of merchandise. No other newspaper reported such looting; they all reported to the contrary that the store was not looted. "No attempt was made to loot the windows," according to the New York Herald Tribune, a statement echoed by the Home News. There was nothing to loot, in the New York American's story, as clerks had removed the display from the window. It was police arriving that prevented looting, according to the New York Evening Journal, describing the scene in typically sensational terms, "The emergency squad police swept into the mob with riot guns, drove the yelling, threatening men and women from their loot, and then guarded the store until armored trucks could remove the valuables." Newman was "deeply impressed with the police by the way they handled the situation in the vicinity of the store on the night of the riot," he told a MCCH investigator two months after the disorder, adding weight to the evidence that they did protect the store from being looted.

Two photographs show a smashed window and empty display that is likely a section of the windows of Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store. Both show the same section of the window; in one there was a white man with his back to the camera looking in the window. The store was identified as a jewelry store by the captions to both photographs, and several bracelets and a pearl necklace can be seen on the back row of the display in the image that includes the white man (no example of that image being published has been found; it is part of the Bettman collection).
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Only the caption of the photograph in the Afro-American gave a location for the store, on Lenox Avenue, so not at the address of Herbert's store. However, compelling details in the photograph point to Herbert's, namely the distinctive panels beneath the windows, which are visible in the Tax Department photographs of the store, most clearly in the section visible in the photograph of the building to the store's north on 7th Avenue. Mistakenly locating the store on Lenox Avenue, as the caption appears to have done, also occurred a story in the New York Evening Journal, quoting the manager! The Afro-American photo caption also reported that items had been taken from the store window, but did not use the term looting, instead describing merchandise "scattered in all directions" rather than taken. The image itself could equally well fit with the displays having been emptied by clerks, as several other newspapers reported, as with having been looted.

Whenever they arrived, police "were stationed in front of the store for the night," as the Home News put it, one of the few stores identified as receiving such protection. One patrolman standing in front of the store appears in a image taken by a photographer for World Wide Photos, published in the Burlington Free Press and several other newspapers. While the caption did not identify the store, the distinctive panels that decorated the exterior below the windows are visible behind the officer. He was armed with a "riot gun," a rifle rather than pistols regularly carried by police. Additional officers may have guarded other sections of the storefront. Four patrolmen with riot guns guarded the store in a New York Evening Journal story, three patrolmen in the Daily News, while the New York American and Home News reported two policemen guarded the store, and the New York Herald Tribune did not specify how many "police with riot guns." (Only the Afro-American mentioned police setting up "machine guns to prepare for pitched battle," weapons that were not part of police equipment). Clashes between those policemen and crowds are mentioned only by Bernard Newman, interviewed in the Daily News:
It looked for a while, according to Newman, as though the mob would crash the doors and pillage the store, despite three policemen with drawn guns who guarded the entrance. "We waited near the rear, ready to barricade ourselves in the cellar," Newman continued breathlessly, "but by some miracle the doors held."
In other reports, the police presence less dramatically deterred crowds from approaching the store windows. Police "patrolled in front of the building," in the New York Herald Tribune's account, "Their armament effectively preventing attack by looters," according to the New York American. A second patrolman with a riot gun was photographed guarding another store at the intersection of 7th Avenue and West 125th Street, likely the United Cigar Store across 7th Avenue from Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry on the northwest corner of 125th Street. Notwithstanding the police guards, no one arrested for breaking windows, or looting, was charged with targeting the jewelry store.

However many windows were broken, multiple rocks were apparently thrown at the store, as Newman displayed a collection of rocks to reporters from the New York Evening Journal, New York Post and Daily News, the later publishing a photograph of them. The United Cigar Store and the businesses on the other corners were also targeted during the disorder; Regal Shoes on the southeast corner was also reported looted, while the United Cigar Store on the northwest corner and the branch of the Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant chain on the southwest corner only had windows broken. Only three stores with broken windows are reported on West 125th Street east of 7th Avenue, suggesting that most of the crowd instead went north and south on the avenue, where there were multiple reports of looting and assaults, including the looting of another jewelry store, owned by Jack Sherloff, opposite Herbert's store by the Alhambra Theatre.

The broken windows in Herbert's Blue Diamond Jewelry store were more widely and extensively reported by the white press than any other damaged business. The prominent location of the business likely contributed to that coverage, as did the apparent willingness of the store manager, Bernard Newman, to speak with reporters.

The jewelry store is recorded at the address in the MCCH business survey in the second half of 1935 and is visible in the Tax Department photograph from sometime between 1939 and 1941.
Assaults on white men and women (29) 63 plain 2023-10-24T17:51:55+00:00
At least twenty-nine white men and women were assaulted during the disorder, in addition to nine white police officers. This violence has been overlooked in most scholarship on the disorder, which has followed the lead of the final report of the MCCH. Assaults were only obliquely mentioned in that document, which instead emphasized attacks on property: “In fact, the distinguishing feature of this outbreak was that it was an attack upon property and not upon persons. In the beginning, to be sure, the resentment was expressed against whites—but whites who owned stores and who, while exploiting Negroes, denied them an opportunity to work."

Newspapers told a different story, particularly the New York Evening Journal, a Hearst afternoon publication that sought out and gave prominence to white men and women assaulted by Black men. The most sensational and racist example of that emphasis was a story by Richard Levitt published under the page-spanning headline, “Kill the Whites Roar Maddened Harlem Mobs.” It was more a litany of racist fears and stereotypes than an account of the events of the disorder, with the phrase "kill the whites" used as a refrain to separate different elements of the story not in descriptions of specific events. In none of instances was the alleged call associated with the events being described. Invoking Black violence, or fears of Black violence, was a longstanding racist trope, employed in white narratives about the race riots of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Only two specific cases that include such threats were reported in the newspaper. A call to “Kill him” is attributed to a crowd of Black men and women that the New York Evening Journal described threatening B. Z. Kondoul, a thirty-five-year-old white man. Again, only one story mentioned that detail. So too the alleged assault on Betty Willcox, as she waited in a parked car. The story that quoted Willcox appeared alongside Levitt's article. The Black men she described surrounding the car screamed "White- we'll get you' We'll get all of them around here!"

While the New York Evening Journal slanted its coverage to emphasize interracial violence, there was other evidence for all but four of the incidents that it reported. Other white publications reported that violence more sporadically, while the Black press generally did not report it at all. At the other end of the political spectrum, the Daily Worker dismissed the claims of the Hearst press that the disorder had been a race riot and gave credit to Communists on the streets and the leaflets they and the Young Liberators distributed for urging the "unity of black and white workers." However, the radical newspaper obliquely allowed that attacks on whites did take place: "In a few instances where small turbulent groups were suspicious of whites and disposed to attack them, white Communists were pointedly excluded from attack." Several papers reported clashes between bands of Blacks and whites, in line with patterns from earlier racial disorders, but none offered details and there are no reports of blacks injured in those circumstances. Those claims appeared to reflect tropes about racial violence not descriptions of events during the disorder. Violence against whites took place throughout the disorder and across a wide area centered on 125th Street. Assaults on whites are thus woven into the disorder not so marginal as to distinguish the disorder from outbreaks earlier in the century.

White men and women on the street, newspaper reporters and photographers, storeowners, and passengers in vehicles traveling through Harlem all allegedly suffered injuries at the hands of Black assailants.

Crowds threw stones and rocks at whites. The occupants of vehicles traveling through the neighborhood became targets, with Patricia O'Rourke hit in her car and Joseph Rinaldi in a Boston-bound bus. In other cases, whites standing apart, observing crowds came under attack, including a newspaper photographer Everett Breuer and his assistant Joseph Martin, and security guard James Wrigley. Others appeared at the hospital with similar injuries resulting from flying glass and rocks that they did not report as assaults, that did not result from efforts to injure them but from the attacks on property. One of them was likely the unidentified white man with a bleeding head wound after being hit by an object who appeared in a photograph published in the Daily News.

The remaining assaults involved attacks by individuals or groups who targeted white individuals they encountered on the street. The victims of those assaults were apparently observing the events, like those hit by objects or walking Harlem’s streets either around the entertainments of 125th Street or near the areas of white residents north of 116th Street. Almost all those attacks took the form of beatings, with only two men stabbed, Edward Genest and Morris Werner. Attacks on Betty Willcox, B. Z. Kondoul, and Timothy Murphy only ended when police officers intervened, while William Ken was saved by Black coworkers. Such violence was not endemic to the disorder. "All night until dawn on the Tuesday of the outbreak white persons, singly and in groups, walked the streets of Harlem without being molested," Claude McKay reported in an article in The Nation. While McKay insisted that "there was no manifest hostility between colored and white," it was clear that he mistook the lack of attacks on whites at some times and places for a general attitude. A Columbia University student's experience captured the intermittent presence of violence against whites among the variety of behavior during the disorder. Hector Donnelly reported being hit on the shoulder by a milk bottle while walking on West 135th Street and Lenox Avenue having gone to the neighborhood unaware of the disorder. As several members of the crowd on the street then moved toward him, he knew he was "in for it." A policeman came running, however, and dragged Donnelly away. Although the officer told him, "You better stay out of here," the white student met a reporter he knew so decided to stay "to watch the excitement." He remained despite further warnings from police until he "got into more trouble." A group of four or five men bumped him as they passed him on the sidewalk and then stopped and continued to push him. Again, a police officer came and "broke up the trouble." After that encounter, Donnelly decided that he needed to leave the neighborhood.

White storeowners also appear among those assaulted, but in very small numbers not as the focus of violence as the MCCH report claimed. Herman Young's injuries resulted from glass from a smashed window rather than a direct attack. Max Newman was attacked as he closed his store, as was Joseph Sarnelli, with his assailants also attempting to rob him.

Four white women appear among those assaulted in Harlem. Two of the women were attacked in cars, Patricia O'Rourke while driving through Harlem, Betty Willcox while parked. Alice Gordon was assaulted by a group on the street. Elizabeth Nadish was reported simply as having been “beaten."

Attacks on white men and women occurred throughout the disorder (information about timing is missing for thirteen of the twenty-nine assaults), but were more geographically contained than in race riots in the north earlier in the twentieth century. Other than one man attacked north of 145th Street in an assault likely unrelated to the disorder, most attacks occurred around 125th Street, with a small number further south, around the stores on 116th Street. The first reported assaults came early in the disorder as the crowd on 125th Street clashed with police and began smashing windows. William Kitlitz was allegedly assaulted by James Smitten around 8:30 PM, Timothy Murphy and Maurice Spellman by different groups of men around 9 PM, and Morris Werner around 9:30 PM. All these men lived west of Harlem, relatively close to where they were attacked, so were likely regular visitors to 125th Street to shop, seek entertainment, or access public transport, and on this evening caught up in the disorder. Around 11:00 PM, a small cluster of assaults took place on or near 7th Avenue north of 116th Street, as crowds moved away from 125th Street into an area with white residents. Further assaults occurred north of 125th Street around 1:00 AM, back near the entertainment district frequented by whites. The final assault the timing of which is known was of a storekeeper during the looting that intensified after midnight.

Most assaults on white men and women left few traces in the official record: police made arrests in only seven cases (there was no information on the circumstances that led to the arrest of two of the men charged with assault). Seven victims of alleged assaults appeared only in records of ambulance callouts and hospital admissions. Fifteen assaults are reported only in newspapers. Four cases appeared in only the New York Evening Journal, a publication that reported the disorder with an emphasis on violence against whites distinct from the rest of the press.

Only one of the five Black men arrested for assaulting whites, Rivers Wright, was convicted, but only summarily by a Magistrate for the misdemeanor offense of disorderly conduct, for which he received a sentence of ten days in the Workhouse. That charge likely indicated that Wright had not been involved in the assault, but had been on the street nearby and been mistakenly arrested by police pursuing the assailants. In one case, there was no evidence of the outcome, one case was dismissed by the grand jury, and two men were acquitted by trial juries.
As Part of Related Categories:
Inciting crowds (16) On at least sixteen occasions during the disorder individuals allegedly acted in a way that caused crowds to gather or to break windows, or in other cases to attack police. Inciting crowds is used as a label for those events as it encompasses that range of activities. However, it also creates a problem by implying an intention that was not clearly evident in all those events notwithstanding that most appeared in legal records as a result of police arresting and charging individuals with riot. An additional instance was mentioned in evidence in a civil court case. Most of those incidents involved individuals who allegedly called out or tried to speak to others on the streets. Margaret Mitchell threw pans on the floor inside Kress’s store creating a noise that caused a crowd to collect and displays to be knocked off counters by women reacting to the efforts of police officers to push them out on to West 125th Street. Sam Jameson, Murray Samuels and Claudio Viabolo picketed in front of Kress’ store.

The reported instances of calls for crowds to act were concentrated on West 125th Street and on 7th and Lenox Avenues within two blocks of 125th Street. The one outlier was also one of only two reports not associated with an arrest further north on Lenox Avenue between 131st and 132nd Streets. The alleged events on West 125th Street occurred near the beginning of the disorder, beginning inside Kress’ store, followed by those on 7th Avenue north and south of 125th Street up to 11:15 PM, and then those Lenox after midnight. Again the crowd further north on Lenox Avenue fell outside that pattern, likely appearing on the street sometime between 11:00 PM and midnight.

Most of the alleged calls were to break windows made by men who themselves were breaking windows. John Kennedy Jones allegedly called only "come on," while motioning with his hand. Leon Mauraine and David Smith shouted "Com[e] on gang, here's two more windows, let's break them," Bernard Smith, “We will get this two windows here…You fellows get the others,” and Leroy Brown, “Go right along and get the other windows.” Other alleged cries that did not directly call for windows to be broken fueled crowds who went on to such attacks. The shouts “Down with the whites!” Let’s get what we can!” from the crowd further up Lenox Avenue reported by Herbert Cantor were followed by objects being thrown at windows. Similarly, a woman’s cries that a hearse arriving on 124th Street had come to pick up Rivera’s body drew a crowd that broke windows. While Daniel Miller said only a few words before being pulled down from a stepladder, someone threw an object through a window in Kress’ store as he spoke that linked him with window breaking. That association extended to Harry Gordon. He was arrested only a few minutes after Miller while attempting to speak to the crowd police had moved away from the store after the window was broken.

On three occasions men allegedly called for violence against white police. While fitting the more sensational accounts of violence offered by some white newspapers, those calls were out of place in the context of the attacks on store windows in which they occurred. James Pringle allegedly called out, “Let's go cross the way and scale rocks at the cops, they are coming down our side of the street.” Kill the cops, the dirty mother-fucking sons-of-bitches,” was the alleged cry of Claude Jones. A patrolman testified that William Ford shouted “Shed white blood, kill the cops, there has been enough black blood shed here now.” Ford and Jones both allegedly broke windows while a police officer alleged that Pringle “led others who smashed windows.”

John King clashed more directly with a police officer. Told to move on from the corner of 125th Street and 7th Avenue, he refused and threatened to “put that Kress store out of business and punish that man that injured the child.” King’s failure to move more than what he said likely led to his arrest. The officer who arrested Sam Jameson, Murray Samuels and Claudio Viabolo explained their arrest was for not following police instructions to move, in their case from the front of Kress’ store where they were picketing.

The three reported instances when Black women allegedly incited crowds came during the events around Kress’ at the beginning of the disorder in the gendered context of shopping and consumption. Two unnamed women, one inside Kress' store and one on 124th Street, shouted that Rivera had been beaten or killed rather than the direct calls to act attributed to men. Knocking pans to the floor, as Margaret Mitchell allegedly did, was a similarly indirect way of causing a crowd to gather different from the speeches and pickets attributed to men. Presented in that way, the women were not cast as leaders in the same way as the men alleged to have incited crowds. Rather, in alerting those around them to Rivera being beaten or killed they were effectively acting as protectors, an extension of their socially expected role in the family. Away from the store where Rivera was apprehended, and away from 125th Street, no women shouting or leading crowds were mentioned in newspaper stories or arrested by police.

Calls to break windows or attack police did not appear in newspaper stories about the disorder. Three newspaper stories about assaults mentioned shouts from groups. In reporting an alleged assault on the white reporter Harry Johnson, the Daily Mirror described someone in a group of three Black men calling out, “There’s a reporter. Get Him!” That detail is not mentioned in any of the other stories about the alleged assault. The other two incidents were reported only in the New York Evening Journal in sensationalized stories about alleged assaults on white men and women. That newspaper gave more attention to interracial violence than any other publication. One New York Evening Journal journalist, Richard Levitt, reported widespread calls to “Kill the whites.” The story fitted the emphasis on violence against white men and women, described in sensational and racist language, that distinguished stories on the disorder in the New York Evening Journal but was the only report that crowds called out that incitement to kill. However, it was more a litany of racist fears and stereotypes than an account of the events of the disorder. Under the page-spanning headline, “Kill the Whites Roar Maddened Harlem Mobs,” the phrase “Kill the Whites” appeared four times as a literary device: separating a descriptions of the sounds of disorder on 7th Avenue from a picture of “outnumbered and out- maneuvered” police; as a “battle-cry” between an account of looting and a description of a crowd attacking a white man who got out of a taxi on 7th Avenue; between a description of crowds attacking traffic and mention of three patrolmen guarding Herbert’s jewelry store; and as the story’s final line. In none of those uses was the call associated with the events being described. Invoking Black violence, or fears of Black violence, was a longstanding racist trope, employed in white narratives about the race riots of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Only two specific cases that included such threats are reported in the newspaper. A call to “Kill him” is attributed to a crowd of Black men and women that the New York Evening Journal described threatening B. Z. Kondoul, a thirty-five-year-old white man. Again, only one story mentioned that detail. So too the alleged assault on Betty Willcox, as she waited in a parked car. It was reported only in a story in the New York Evening Journal which appeared alongside Levitt's article. The Black men she described surrounding the car screamed "White- we'll get you' We'll get all of them around here!"

Rather than shouted incitements and speakers, newspaper reporting on the beginning of the disorder focused on the distribution of leaflets that police said were responsible for crowds gathering and outbreaks of violence. The Young Liberators printed a one-page mimeographed leaflet that charged the management of Kress’ store with beating a boy so severely that he was near death and injuring a woman who came to his aid. While the leaflet called on Black and white workers to protest the attack, the claim that it provoked the actions of crowds in front of Kress’ store depended on when it was distributed. Police told journalists that leaflets were in circulation on 125th Street within an hour or two of Rivera’s apprehension, so by 3.30 PM or 4.30 PM. Witnesses at the scene did not see leaflets until much later, after 7.30 PM, or more than an hour after the first window was broken in Kress’ store. A second leaflet, produced by the Communist Party after the Young Liberators approached them concerned about the growing disorder in Harlem, combined calls for protest with an appeal "For Unity of Negro and White Workers" and to not "let Bosses start any race riots in Harlem." Distributed around 9:00 PM or 10:00 PM, that leaflet arrived on the streets too late to trigger violence, but in time to contribute to rumors about what had happened in Kress' store.
Events
11:00 PM to 11:30 PM As the disorder continued to spread, the violence became a more complex mix. The attacks on businesses and on white men and women on the street continued alongside increasing incidents of looting.

The multiple windows broken by repeated attacks on the stores around the intersection of 7th Avenue and 125th Street by 11:00 PM provided an opportunity for looting. Officers in the area, particularly the plainclothes detectives among the crowds, were watching for anyone tempted by that chance. At 11:00 PM, Detective Peter Naton, only recently returned after arresting John King, allegedly saw John Vivien, a twenty-seven-year-old Black laborer, reach through the smashed windows of Regal Shoes and take a pair of shoes. With a previous arrest for robbery, Vivien may have been more willing to take merchandise than many of the other residents on the streets. He was some distance from his home, so had ventured into the disorder rather than remained a spectator on its margins. Individuals may also have begun to take merchandise from at least one other damaged business near the intersection that would also be reported as having been looted, Maurice Gilden’s optician’s shop.

Looting, however, was not yet the goal of most of those in the blocks of 7th Avenue below 125th Street. Fifteen minutes after Vivien’s arrest, a crowd of twenty-five to thirty people, the typical size of the groups observed during the disorder, gathered two blocks to the south at the intersection with 123rd Street. Already back on the street, Detective Naton, was closer enough to allegedly hear James Pringle, a twenty-eight-year-old Black laborer, call out to the group, “Let's go cross the way and scale rocks at the cops, they are coming down our side of the street.” As the group moved away, Naton arrested Pringle. He might have singled out him out as a leader or Pringle might have been the only member of the group the detective could apprehend. Either way, Naton claimed to have a rock concealed in the right hip pocket of Pringle’s trousers that he treated as evidence of his involvement in the violence on the streets.

As with the appeals to attack police reported by the officers who had arrested William Ford and Claude Jones on 125th Street around thirty minutes earlier, what Naton claimed was the crowd’s target was by his own account not what they actually went on to attack. They “smashed windows” and attacked several people. Among the businesses damaged at that time was likely Ben Salcfas’ grocery store on the northeast corner of 7th Avenue and 123rd Street. Patrolman Leahy arrested one of those who allegedly threw a rock that broke one the store’s windows, David Bragg, a thirty-three-year-old Black man. A resident of West 135th Street, he may have come to 125th Street earlier in the evening and moved south on 7th Avenue as the disorder intensified. Other members of the group eluded police. Among the targets of their rocks would have windows in nearby businesses looted later in the evening: the Lafayette Market at 2044 7th Avenue; Nicholas Peet's tailors store at 2063 7th Avenue; Sarah Refkin's delicatessen at 2067 7th Avenue; and the shoe repair store directly across 7th Avenue from the grocery store.

As they attacked white businesses, groups on the street continued to attack white men and women they encountered on the streets. After Michael Krim-Shamhal, a fifty-four-year-old white man, arrived on 7th Avenue from West 122nd Street around 11:00 PM he reported being assaulted by a group of people. Several blocks further south, around 11:15 PM, a thirty-four-year-old white woman named Alice Gordon alleged she had been several Black men. Shamhal and Gordon reflected the variety of white men and women still in Harlem. He lived close to where the alleged assault took place, on West 119th between 7th Avenue and Lenox Avenue. She lived well outside Harlem, in Rye, so either worked or was visiting the neighborhood, and may have going to subway or elevated railroad stations on 116th Street to return home. It was staff of the ambulances called to help Gordon and Krim Shamhal who recorded their accounts and treated the lacerations to the head each had suffered. Although police had been as far south as 121st Street about thirty minutes earlier shooting at groups of people, they were not in the vicinity of the assaults. The alleged assault on Alice Gordon was the first reported violence below 120th Street.

Crowds remained on 7th Avenue north of 125th Street, but there were few reported incidents at this time. Police patrols may have reduced the intensity of the violence but they did not protect businesses whose windows had been repeatedly damaged earlier in the night from being looted. Sam Lefkowitz’s store windows had been broken since 9:45 PM, when a group of people went up the block between 127th and 128th Streets; some of the substantial amount of merchandise he would report losing was likely being taken at this time. Businesses a block to the south owned by Abe Mohr and Joseph Cohen which lost merchandise could also have been targeted. So too could Max Greenwald’s tailor’s store. There were certainly people at the intersection between those two blocks as some threw rocks at a Fifth Avenue Coach Company bus passing at 11:00 PM. The bus route ran the length of 7th Avenue from Central Park to 155th Street. Despite traveling through the heart of Harlem, the buses had only white drivers and conductors. The company refused to employ Black staff, a sore point with the neighborhood’s residents that might have led some of those on the street to extend their attacks on white businesses to the bus. As the bus was almost certainly carrying Black passengers, it was unlikely that it was targeted as a substitute for the white men and women who groups had encountered and attacked earlier. The same could not be said of the cars that would soon have rocks thrown at them south of 125th Street.

Violence may have continued to spread further north on 7th Avenue. There would be looting near 131st Street around an hour later, so the attacks on windows in at least two white-owned businesses north of West 135th Street could have happened around this time. Most of the businesses in the area had Black owners. Nonetheless, enough windows were broken for the owners of one of Harlem’s best-known Black-owned businesses, the Monterey Luncheonette, to write “This is a Store Owned by Colored” on their windows to spare them from attack. Residents from the area rather than groups who had come from 125th Street could have been responsible. It was around 11:00 PM that groups began to come down Lenox Avenue from area around 135th Street. Police were nearby when at least some of the windows were broken as they arrested two men allegedly responsible. Robert Porter was charged with throwing an ash-can through the window of a shoe repair store a shoe repair store at 2360 7th Avenue, the northern most business reported damaged during the disorder. Julius Hightower allegedly threw a brick that broke windows in Moskowitz's tailor shop at 2310 7th Avenue. However, both men appeared to simply have been nearby when those attacks took place as the charges were later reduced to disorderly conduct. Police may have mistakenly grabbed them from among a crowd around the businesses or they could have begun to arrest whoever they could apprehend around outbreaks of violence to get people off the street. Footwear and clothing were particular needs of residents suffering the effects of the depression, so those businesses may have been targeted as part of a shift toward looting later in the disorder when more police were deployed.

On 8th Avenue too violence seemingly was spreading further north. A meat market on the block between 130th and 131st Streets had a bottle thrown through its window, the furthest north damage was reported on this street. Officer Libman of the 32nd Precinct arrested Henry Stewart, a thirty-three-year-old Black man, for throwing the bottle. The same officer had arrested Rose Murrell and perhaps Warren Johnson and Louise Brown at 127th Street, but he was unlikely to have been as far north as the meat market earlier in the evening. He may have remained in the area to attempt to control the crowds and protect the damaged businesses. Like Murrell, Stewart lived near 8th Avenue, so likely had come to the street in response to the rumors and noise of the disorder. However, he like Hightower and Porter, was only nearby when those attacks took place not responsible for them as the charge was later dismissed. If Libman arrested Warren Johnson and Louise Brown around this time, charging them with breaking windows when they proved to simply have been in the crowds in the vicinity of an attack, the similar outcome of the concurrent arrests on 7th Avenue makes it more likely that police had begun ti arrest crowd members to get them off the streets. Stewart, Johnson and Brown all lived on blocks adjacent to 8th Avenue so likely were among the residents who had come to the avenue in response to the news and noise of the disorder.

With most businesses now closed and many having suffered attacks for several hours, the lack of staff and the access available through broken windows provided the opportunity for those on 8th Avenue to take merchandise. While observers did not notice extensive looting for another hour, some of the businesses in these blocks may have begun to be targeted at this time. Just how extensive the thefts were is not clear as the only reported incidents involved arrests. However, the businesses involved in those arrests were spread over the three blocks north of 125th Street: the Danbury Hat store on the block above 125th Street; Frendel’s meat market on the block between 126th and 127th Streets; and the Thomas Cut Rate Drug store on the block between 127th and 128th Streets.

As violence continued on 8th and 7th Avenues, the disorder and the police response spread to Lenox Avenue for the first time. While many businesses on the avenue were closed by 11:00 PM, William Feinstein’s liquor store at 452 Lenox Avenue was open. David Schmoockler, the manager, watched as a crowd of around thirty people gather near Lenox Avenue and 132nd Street. In the next hour they proceeded to attack white-owned businesses, throwing objects, breaking windows, taking merchandise from some and setting fire to others. Herbert Canter observed the same group on the block south of 132nd Street. He had arrived back at the pharmacy he owned on the northwest corner of West 131st Street at 11:00 PM to try to protect his business. Where white crowds had converged on Black neighborhoods in response to reports of racial violence in the race riots earlier in the twentieth century, in 1935 the only whites who came to Harlem when they learned of the disorder were business owners like Cantor. He described the group as breaking windows as they proceeded down the street and as chanting "Down with the whites! Let's get what we can." Those shouts signaled that this group differed from those who had called out around 125th Street. They had urged windows be broken, and perhaps attacks on police. It was “whites” that those arriving on Lenox Avenue targeted, with threats against the power and property they had in Harlem -- not to kill them, as a sensationalized account the New York Evening Journal would later claim. Setting fire to stores, which would happen only in this area, fitted with those threats, going beyond breaking windows in protest at the behavior of white store staff. Taking merchandise was also the expressed aim of the group, a departure from the attacks on businesses that had occupied most of those on the streets up until now. Gathering around West 132nd Street, north of where any violence had been reported up to this time, the members of the group likely came from the surrounding residences not from the crowds initially drawn to 125th Street. The streets east of Lenox Avenue were the most densely populated in Harlem, their residents among the hardest hit by the economic depression.

Several businesses on Lenox Avenue between 132nd and 131st Streets with broken windows were likely attacked around this time. A Black staff member in Estelle Cohen’s clothing store at 437 Lenox Avenue did not prevent objects from being throw at the windows. He telephoned Cohen at her home in Washington Heights to tell her of the attack. She then called the police precinct and police headquarters, later writing to Mayor La Guardia with clear frustration that "all the satisfaction I got was that all the men were out and that all windows were being smashed." She must also have sent someone, likely her sons, to board up the damaged and emptied windows in an effort to secure the merchandise inside the store. It would prove to be a wasted effort. No one was in the hardware store at 431 Lenox Avenue, Anna Rosenberg’s notion store at 429 Lenox Avenue, and the Gonzales jewelry store at 427 Lenox Avenue when their windows were broken. Nor were there yet police in the area.

Attacks on businesses also started several blocks to the south, where at least some of those on the street would have come from breaking windows on the block of 125th Street between 7th and Lenox Avenues. By 11:20 PM, when Patrolman Nador Herrman arrived at William Gindin’s shoe store between on the block between 126th and 127th Streets windows had already been broken and merchandise taken from the display. Gindin had closed his store around 9:45 PM, so those attacks would have come as crowds from 125th Street began to make their way up Lenox Avenue around 10:30 PM. Patrolman Herrman made the first arrest on Lenox Avenue after allegedly seeing Julian Rogers, a thirty-seven-year-old Black auto washer, kick in an undamaged display window, take three odd women's shoes worth $1 each and put them under his jacket. He caught up with Rogers about 100 feet from the store. Given the damage to Gindin’s store, some other businesses between it and 125th Street likely also suffered some damage at this time. Harry Piskin was still in his laundry just off Lenox Avenue at 100 West 126th Street when stones were thrown at its windows. They were the first of escalating attacks that would later cause Piskin to leave and fruitlessly seek help from police. George’s Lunch, a restaurant at 319 Lenox Avenue, on the southwest corner of West 126th Street, was also open when crowds appeared on the street. The three staff responded differently to the disorder. Two Black workers left the restaurant when the attacks began. The white worker called the police station for help and then locked himself in a washroom at the rear of the business. No police responded. Attacks on the Radio City Meat Market in the block between 125th and 126th Street and the Sav-on Drug Store two buildings south of Gindin’s shoe store likely also began about this time. The arriving disorder would also have drawn the attention of Leo and Winifred Richards, the Black owners of Winnette’s Dresses on the corner of West 127th Street. The store may have still been open for business or the couple could have rushed from their home just a block east at 1 West 126th Street when they learned of the disorder. As crowds appeared, they hung at least seven signs reading “Colored Store” on the inside and outside of their windows. While neighboring white-owned stores suffered significant damage and looting, Winnette’s Dresses remained untouched.

Some of those arriving on Lenox Avenue went south of 125th Street rather than north. Windows were broken in the branch of the Liggett’s Pharmacy on the southeast corner of 125th Street, in the Empire Grill and Victoria Pharmacy on the block between 125th and 124th Streets and in the Eleanor Laundry in the block between 124th and 123rd Streets. Mrs Salefas described a sustained attack on her delicatessen at West 123rd Street and Lenox Avenue. A series of bricks hit the window, sending glass flying into the store and Salefas to take shelter in the rear storeroom. “It broke my heart to abandon my store,” she would tell a journalist the next day, “but what could I do all alone? Every time I peeked out from in back a shower of bricks greeted me.” Over time a $100 worth of food and some dishes were taken from the damaged store. That was as far south as groups appear to have gone. There were no reported incidents in the disorder in the blocks below 123rd Street until 119th Streets, where there were few businesses. Violence in the blocks around West 116th Street would come later in the evening, from groups moving along 116th Street not coming from 125th Street.

The arrival of crowds at Lenox Avenue and 125th Street also saw some groups continue to attack white men they encountered on the street. An alleged assault by a group of Black men on an unnamed white man at the intersection occurred sometime after 11:00 PM, when police arrived in the area. Detective Doyle of the 5th Division intervened, arresting Rivers Wright, a twenty-one-year-old Black man. However, Wright proved not to have been involved in the assault as the charge against him when he later appeared in court was disorderly conduct. As other officers had on 8th and 7th Avenues, Doyle either mistook Wright for one of the assailants or could only apprehend him among those on the street around the assault. The men who actually committed the assault remained on the streets and may have been involved in other assaults that would occur on Lenox Avenue in the coming hours.