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

Timothy Murphy assaulted & Paul Boyett shot

Around 9 p.m, as police reinforcements tried to disperse the large crowds that had gathered on 7th and 8th Avenues around 125th Street, a few blocks northwest on West 127th Street between 8th Avenue and St Nicholas Avenue, a group of around ten Black men attacked Timothy Murphy, a twenty-nine-year-old white rock driller on his way home.

The men knocked Murphy to the ground and then hit and kicked him. The Daily Mirror reported Murphy said that men told him “they were beating me because I was a white man.” Their actual words, according to Murphy’s affidavit in the District Attorney's case file, were “You white son-of-a-bitch, take it now.” As a result of the beating Murphy suffered “lacerations, contusions [about his head, face and body], a broken nose and loss of hearing in his left ear.” Press reports simply said he received a broken nose.

The men beating Murphy attracted the attention of Patrolman George Conn and some onlookers. As Conn ran toward Murphy, he fired a shot in the air, causing the crowd to scatter. Conn then fired again, this time at the crowd, hitting Paul Boyett in the shoulder. A twenty-year-old Black garage worker, Boyett lived only a few buildings away from the scene of the beating, at 310 West 127th Street. According to one press report, Conn shot Boyett as he was about to hit Murphy. Most papers reported that Conn called on Boyett to halt before shooting him, as police practice required him to do, and only shot at him when he kept moving. At his trial on the charge of assaulting Murphy, the New York Amsterdam News reported that Boyett testified he had been “an innocent onlooker” drawn to the “disturbance,” and “struck no one at that time.” In the confusion as the crowd rushed to leave as police appeared, a bullet hit him. Boyett continued running back to his home, apparently pursued by Conn, who arrested him in the hallway of his building. Taken to the 30 Precinct, hospital records indicate that Boyett received treatment for his wound from a doctor from Knickerbocker Hospital before being placed in a cell. Both Murphy and Boyett appear in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, New York Daily News, New York American. Only Murphy appears in the list of injured published in the Home News, and only Boyett, in a group of those shot, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Herald Tribune.

Black groups targeted at least three other white men around this time, all east of the attack on Murphy. William Kitlitz reported being attacked by James Smithies in front of Kress’ store, Maurice Spellman at 125th St and 8th Avenue, and Morris Werner at 125th Street and 7th Avenue. All these men lived west of Harlem, relatively close to where they were attacked, so were likely regular visitors to 125th Street, to shop, seek entertainment or access public transport, on this evening caught up in the disorder. The area around 125th St and 7th Avenue would continue to be the location of assaults on white men and women for at least the next three hours, with three men and two women targeted. However, the assault on Murphy represented the western boundary of the disorder, the only event beyond 8th Avenue. That section of Harlem was still part of the Black neighborhood.

Murphy was one of four white men and women rescued from assaults by the intervention of police officers (with some press reports suggesting that this happened more frequently). Only in this case did police also make an arrest. In one of those other cases, an officer also fired shots at the crowd, but in that instance no one was reported as being hit. Police did shoot and kill two individuals, Lloyd Hobbs and James Thompson, in the later case also hitting two white bystanders.

The trial jury acquitted Boyett, the New York Amsterdam News reported, an outcome that indicates the evidence presented to them did not clearly support the press accounts of him being involved in beating Murphy (and even perhaps that witnesses did not confirm Conn called on Boyett to halt). Even in cases where groups beat individuals, the presence of crowds on Harlem’s streets could produce the same difficulty identifying and apprehending assailants faced in cases where objects hit people

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