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Shot & wounded (7)
The shooting of Lyman Quarterman attracted the most attention, largely because newspapers initially reported that the thirty-four-year old black man had been killed, but also because his shooting occurred early in the riot, around 10.30PM, in the midst of a crowd at 7th Avenue and 121st Street. Hospital records indicate that twenty-five-year-old Wilmont Hendricks was shot on Lenox Ave between 128th and 129th Streets “in some unknown manner," as Victor Fain, and Clarence London “while walking,” as did De Soto Windgate according to the records of the 32nd Precinct. In Benjamin Bell’s case, the language of the hospital record is more specific if not more revealing; his wound was received “when fired upon by some unknown person.” Those shot and wounded in the disorder also appear in the lists of the injured published by newspapers, their names accompanied only by brief descriptions of the nature of their wounds, about which different publications rarely agreed.
It is likely that police were responsible for most of these shootings. Officers assigned to control the disorder carried not just pistols but also “riot guns” — rifles. Images of armed officers are a staple of the photographs that accompanied newspaper stories. Reporting on the shooting of Lyman Quarterman indicated that police were struggling with the crowd of which he was part, but the white press overwhelming chose to address the possibility that an officer had shot him only obliquely. Those stories offered conflicting details, with the New York Herald Tribune reporting that no officers fired their weapons, the Times Union that many had, but only into the air and the New York Evening Journal that they had exchanged gunfire with the crowd. At least by the time looting started around midnight, a range of sources agreed that police were firing at crowds in an effort to disperse them. All the other shootings, and the two additional fatal shootings by police, took place after 1 am, and with one exception, in areas where looting occurred, or in case of 125th and 7th Avenue, where police were stationed. The one exception is De Soto Windgate, who was shot while walking on West 144th Street, six blocks from any other disorder. Details of his shooting appear only in the 32nd Precinct records of individuals aided by officers; the only connection to the disorder is the timing of his shooting. That leaves open the possibility it could be unrelated to the disorder. If they were hit by police bullets, the men may not have been the targets of those shots. When officers shot at James Thompson as he fled a building on 8th Avenue, stray bullets hit two white men on the other side of the street. Police firing into crowds to disperse them could also have hit bystanders.
Only one event involved shots allegedly fired by blacks. Several white newspapers and the Associated Press reported a group of men firing on police from a rooftop on 138th St. and Lenox Avenue at the very end of the disorder. But the fullest account of those events, in the Home News, does not offer clear evidence that a shooting took place: the officers who made the arrests responded to the sound of gunshots rather than seeing a shooting, and found no guns on the four men they arrested – “During the chase they are said to have thrown away their pistols.” Charged only with disorderly conduct, three of the men, Albert Yerber, Edward Loper and Ernest Johnson, were tried and acquitted in the Magistrates Court – hardly lending credence to their involvement in shooting at police (the fourth man, Charles Alston fell trying to escape police, suffering injuries that appear to have prevented him from being arraigned in court).
The only other evidence that members of the crowd were firing guns during the disorder is a report that a Boston-bound bus traveling through the neighborhood left with eleven bullet holes. In addition, two men arrested in the disorder were charged with possession of a firearm, one white and one black. No stories about the circumstances of their arrests appear in the press, as you would expect had they been involved in shootings.
In two striking examples, white papers reported gun fights that did not happen. When Stanley Dondoro was hit by shots fired by two detectives pursuing James Thompson, an New York Evening Journal story reported Dondoro had been hit by “other rioters [who] returned the fire.” The Associated Press story had only (the unarmed) Thompson involved in a “gun battle” with the detectives that saw “ten persons” shot.