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

Stephen Robertson, Shane White and Stephen Garton, "Harlem in Black and White: Mapping Race and Place in the 1920s," Journal of Urban History 39. 5 (2013): 871-72.

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Violence against white men and women in Harlem in 1935 White men and women were assaulted far more frequently during the disorder than at other times in 1935: at least twenty-nine of fifty-four of those attacked in the disorder compared with approximately six of fifty-nine involved in felony assaults in the rest of 1935, five of 197 stabbed, and none of those shot, in the cases in the District Attorney's case files and Black newspapers collected for Digital Harlem. None of those in felony assaults at other times were women. There is some uncertainty surrounding those numbers. Racial identity was not always recorded in case files. There was not a section for race on either the affidavit identifying the complainant in a case or the form for information about the defendant (which still privileged birthplace), so it appears only when added by a clerk or in incidental references. Criminal records generally noted when defendants were Black men or women, adding that information in brackets after their name rather than in a section of the form, meaning that the absence of that information was not certain evidence that a defendant was not Black. Residential addresses can indicate a likely racial identity, as central Harlem in 1935 was almost entirely populated by Black residents.

The circumstances of the assaults on white men were a mix, some quite distinct from the more random attacks of the disorder. One white man was serving a summons, another was a union organizer. Two others were targeted, like some in the disorder, as a result of operating businesses in Harlem, one as part of a protection racket, the second in what might have been a robbery. For the remaining two men, potentially white based on their residences, the reason for the assault was not clear. All of those assaults were clustered around and south of 125th Street, in the same areas as the violence of the disorder.

Most of the violence against white men and women in the case files appeared not in assaults but in robberies, two-thirds (61 of 151) of which involved white victims. Many of those who robbed whites, like those committing assaults in the disorder, did not uses knives or guns (32 of 61). They did frequently work in groups, attacking individuals on the streets, the form of violence most common in the disorder. Around one-third of their targets (21 of 61) traveled throughout the neighborhood, beyond the major avenues and cross streets on which the disorder focused, as collectors, salesmen, and delivery men. A smaller group (12 of 61) came looking for prostitutes. Both groups were regular targets of violence throughout the 1920s. Those robberies clustered around 125th Street, in the heart of the area of the disorder. Only one of those robbed was a woman. That four white women were targets of violence in the disorder thus appears particularly out of the ordinary.