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

Salathel Smith arrested

Officer Connelly of the 32nd Precinct arrested Salathel Smith, a forty-seven-year-old Black man, somewhere north of West 130th Street sometime during the disorder, perhaps for assaulting Vito Capozzio, a man of unknown race and age. Smith, who lived at 246 West 121st Street, appeared in lists published in the Home News and New York Age of those arrested during the disorder who were found guilty in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court and sentenced to the Workhouse for two days on March 20. The story included no information on the events that led to his arrest. No other newspaper lists or stories mention Smith, including the other reports of those court proceedings. He did appear in the Washington Heights Magistrates Court docket book, where the charge against him was recorded as disorderly conduct.

The other information in the docket book suggests Smith may have been involved in a fight, not in the disorder. Check marks indicate that the charge, complainant and arresting officer in his case were the same as those of the man who appeared above him in the docket book, Richard Jackson, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man who lived at 102 West 119th Street. The charge was annotated "fight." Like Smith, Jackson was found guilty by the Magistrate and sentenced to only two days in the Workhouse. That violence cannot have resulted in any injury if the charge was disorderly conduct: the applicable section of the statute applied only to a person who used "offensive, disorderly, threatening, abusive or insulting language, conduct or behavior." Vito Capozzio was the complainant, his address recorded as "3764 Boulevard," perhaps in the Bronx. Given that evidence, Smith and Jackson may have got into a fight in a business which Capozzio either owned or worked in. Their appearance in the Washington Heights Court, and arrest by an officer from the 32nd Precinct, indicate that they were arrested north of 130th Street, an area that saw fewer incidents and arrests during the disorder. Smith and Jackson would not have been the only men who appeared in court that day not arrested as part of the disorder; eleven of the forty-four recorded in the docket book on March 20 faced charges obviously unrelated to the disorder, such as offenses against the Sabbath Law.

Disorderly conduct was a charge that could be adjudicated in the Magistrates Court. Magistrate Ford convicted Smith and Jackson. He sentenced both to just two days in the Workhouse or a $5 fine; neither paid the fine. Jackson did appear in two sources that Smith did not: the list of those arrested for assault published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American, and Norfolk Journal and Guide; and a New York Herald Tribune story that reported the charge and sentence. However, he, like Smith, is missing from most sources that provided information on those arrested. The presence of Smith in the New York Age story likely reflects the reporter's confusion about whether his arrest related to the disorder, given that the charge against him was one made against others arrested in the disorder.

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