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

Rose Murrell arrested

Sometime during the disorder, Officer Libman of the 32nd Precinct arrested Rose Murrell, a nineteen-year-old Black woman, for allegedly having "stoned a store window," in the grocery store at 2366 8th Avenue, a story in the Home News reported. There is no information on the time or circumstances of the arrest. Libman also appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court as the arresting officer of another woman, Louise Brown, and two men, Henry Stewart and Warren Johnson, who, with Murrell, had all been arrested at 8th Avenue and West 127th Street, according to a story in the Daily Mirror. While the grocery store was located at this intersection, on the southeast corner of 127th Street, the location of Brown and Johnson's alleged offenses are not mentioned in any sources, and the store in which Stewart allegedly broke a window was two and half blocks north of where the story reported his arrest. It is possible that the intersection was where police were stationed, where those arrested were initially brought, rather than the site of their arrest.



The grocery store at 2336 8th Avenue was in the midst of the blocks of 8th Avenue on which there are reports of violence and police making arrests during the disorder: the arrest of James Hayes for allegedly looting the Danbury Hat store at 2334 8th Avenue near 125th Street; the arrest of Emmett Williams and Theodore Hughes for allegedly breaking windows and looting Frendel's meat market three buildings south at 2360 8th Avenue; the arrest of Thomas Babbitt for allegedly taking soap from Thomas Drug store at 2374 8th Avenue, across 127th Street; and at the very end of the disorder, the arrest of Jean Jacquelin at 128th Street for allegedly looting and police shooting and killing James Thompson across 8th Avenue from the store. Murrell lived at 260 West 126th Street, just east of 8th Avenue a block south of the grocery store, so may have been drawn to the noise and crowds on the avenue in the early evening of March 19. All six of the men and women arrested by police on 8th Avenue lived either west of the avenue or in the block between 8th and 7th Avenues.

Rose Murrell is recorded in the 28th Precinct police blotter as charged with inciting a riot. That charge is reported in a list in the Daily News and a story in the Daily Mirror. However, the list of those arrested in the disorder published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the list published in the New York Evening Journal include her among those charged with malicious mischief, an offense involving damage to property used in the prosecution of individuals arrested for allegedly breaking windows during the disorder. That was the charge recorded in the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book on March 20, when Murrell appeared in court, and reported in the Home News story about those proceedings. Police appear to have initially charged many of those arrested during the riot with inciting a riot, and then revised those charges to fit the specific act that an individual was alleged to have committed before their arraignment in court. Magistrate Renaud transferred Murrell to the Court of Special Sessions, and set bail at $500, indicating that the value of the damage to the building was not more than $250, the level required for the charge to be a felony. Almost two weeks later, on April 1st, the judges in that court convicted Murrell and sentenced her to one month in the Workhouse, according to the 28th Precinct police blotter.

Murell's name is spelled in different ways in the sources: as Murrell in the 28th Precinct police blotter and Harlem Magistrates Court docket and book and the Daily News and New York Evening Journal; as Murelle in the Daily Mirror; as Murell in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide; and as Morrell in the Home News.

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