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Thomas Wijstem assaulted & killed
Notwithstanding the breakup of the crowds, three of the four brief newspaper accounts of the assault reported that a group of black men attacked Wijstem. While police only made one other arrest in such circumstances, on this occasion they did apprehend a suspect. That outcome is perhaps unsurprisingly given that this block of 125th Street was the headquarters of the police response to the disorder. On the other hand, it is noteworthy that all the police in the vicinity did not prevent the assault.
While many of those injured in the disorder suffered head injuries, Wijstem’s injury was one of the most severe, a fractured skull that rendered him unconscious. As a result, he appears in stories of the disorder and lists of the injured in the New York Evening Journal, New York Daily News, New York American, Home News, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Atlanta World, Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Gazette as a seriously injured ‘unidentified white man.’ The New York Post and New York World-Telegram did finally name him, on March 22, reporting respectively that his neighbors or his brother had identified him. Three months later, a brief story in New York Herald Tribune reported Wijstem had died in Bellevue Hospital without regaining consciousness. However, as the attack on Wijstem led to an arrest and prosecution for assault, he is included among both those assaulted and killed (but not among those injured in assaults).
Police charged Douglas Cornelius, a twenty-two-year old black man, with hitting Wijstem with a rock. Like the man he targeted, Cornelius lived in East Harlem, at 52 East 118th Street, a mixed black and Puerto Rican section. He appears in lists of those arrested for assault in nine papers, but only five of those reports link him to the unidentified man with the fractured skull. But as in the case of Paul Boyett and Charles Alston and his three companions arrested on West 138th St., it appears that police could not prove that Cornelius was actually involved in the assault. After apparently being indicted, the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book recorded the charges against him as having been dismissed.
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This page references:
- "Injured," New York Daily News, March 20, 1935, 3
- “List of Victims," New York Evening Journal, March 20, 1935, 1, 3.
- "Harlem Riot Damage is Figured at Half Million," Afro-American, March 30, 1935, 1, 2.
- "List of Dead And Injured In Riot In New York City," Norfolk Journal and Guide, March 30, 1935, 18.
- "Says Economic Conditions in Harlem Are Bad," Atlanta World, March 27, 1935, 1, 2.
- "5 dying and Scores Wounded as Race Riots in Harlem Subside," Home News, March 20, 1935 [clipping]
- "Snipers Fire on Police From Harlem Rooftop," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 20, 1935, 1, 2.
- “Riot’s Casualties," New York American, March 21, 1935, 2.
- Harlem Magistrates Court docket book
- C. C. Nicolet, "Deputies Smash Harlem Riot Club," New York Post, March 22, 1935, 1.
- "Riot Link Found in Typewriter," New York World-Telegram, March 22, 1935, 12.
- "2d Harlem Riot Victim Dies," New York Herald Tribune, June 25, 1935, 6.