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

Theodore Hughes arrested

Some time during the disorder, Officer Carrington of the 32nd Precinct arrested Theodore Hughes, a twenty-two-year-old Black man, for allegedly taking two pieces of salt pork from the window of Frendel's meat market at 2360 8th Avenue, according to a story in the New York Herald Tribune and a list in the New York American. Those are the only sources that provide any details of the charges against Hughes. Located between West 126th and West 127th Streets, the store was in the midst of the blocks of 8th Avenue on which there are reports of violence during the disorder: the arrest of James Hayes for allegedly looting a Liggett's drug store on the corner of West 125th Street; the arrest of Rose Murrell for breaking windows in a store three buildings to the north; the arrest of Thomas Babbitt for taking soap from Thomas Drug store a block north; and at the very end of the disorder, the arrest of Jean Jacquelin at 128th Street for looting and police shooting and killing James Thompson across the street from the store. Hughes lived at 50 Old Broadway, on the Upper West Side near West 131st Street, beyond the boundaries of Black Harlem. Given that he was arrested on the western boundary of the disorder, he may have come to the neighborhood from his home.

Hughes appears in the lists of those charged with larceny published in the Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Gazette, and in the New York Evening Journal and New York Daily News. The charge of larceny rather than burglary fits with the circumstance that he did not break the store window mentioned in the New York American. He was among the first of those arrested in the disorder to appear in the Harlem Magistrate's Court on March 20. Sent to the Court of Special Sessions by Magistrate Renaud, Hughes was held on $500 bail. There is no evidence of the outcome of his trial. He is one of the few who appeared in the Harlem Magistrate's Court who was not mentioned in the Home News story on March 21 that provides brief details of the charges against those arrested in the disorder. Given the location of the market, Hughes should have been taken to the 28th Precinct and appear in their blotter, but he does not. Carrington may have instead taken him to his own precinct, the 32nd, on West 135th Street.

There is some conflicting information about Hughes' racial identity in the sources. The list published in the New York Daily News identified him as white; however, that list misidentified several of the other people arrested in the disorder as white. The Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book, the one official source that included Hughes, recorded his race as "B[lack]."

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