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

Timothy Murphy assaulted & Paul Boyett shot

Around 9:00 PM, 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 Black men allegedly attacked Timothy Murphy, a twenty-nine-year-old white rock driller, on his way to his home at 44 Moylan Place. Murphy alleged that the men knocked him to the ground and then hit and kicked him. The men told him “they were beating me because I was a white man,” the Daily Mirror reported Murphy as saying. What they actually said was “You white son-of-a-bitch, take it now," according to his affidavit in the Magistrates Court. 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 allegedly attracted the attention of Patrolman George Conn from the 30th Precinct, immediately west of Harlem. He may have been in a radio car on his way to 125th Street, as the New York Amsterdam News reported "police drove up." His Magistrates Court affidavit described the crowd as numbering around ten men, a number reported by the New York Herald Tribune, Home News, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Other newspapers described larger crowds, twelve men according to the Daily Mirror, twenty men according to the Associated Press, and forty to fifty men in the sensationalized narrative published in the New York Evening Journal. The New York Times and New York Sun simply reported that several men had attacked Murphy. As Conn ran toward Murphy, newspaper stories and legal records agreed that he shot Paul Boyett, a twenty-year-old Black garage worker who lived only a few buildings away, at 310 West 127th Street. The New York Sun and New York Times reported Conn's statement that he had first fired a shot in the air to disperse the crowd and then ordered Boyett to halt and shot him only when he continued running. The Daily Mirror and Home News reported those details without making clear that Conn was the source of that information. The New York Evening Journal reported Conn fired two shots, one "in the air and then a second shot which struck Boyett in the back." A brief account in the New York Herald Tribune and Associated Press simply had Conn shooting Boyett, one of the group attacking Murphy. Several other newspapers did not mention that anyone else but Boyett had allegedly been involved in attacking Murphy: the New York American had Conn shooting Boyett "when he tried to flee," the Daily News "as he was about to strike" Murphy, and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle simply reported that Conn had shot Boyett. This incident was the most widely reported assault in the disorder, both because it occurred early in the evening, and because it fit the sensationalized narrative of racial violence which the Hearst newspapers and white tabloids employed.

Boyett testified at his trial that he had been “an innocent onlooker” drawn to the “disturbance,” and “struck no one at that time,” the New York Amsterdam News reported. In the confusion as the crowd rushed to leave as police appeared, a bullet hit him. While the newspaper stories on March 20 give the impression that Conn arrested Boyett where Murphy had been assaulted, testimony at the trial revealed that Boyett continued running back to his home, apparently pursued by Conn, who arrested him in the building's hallway. A trial jury accepted Boyett's account and acquitted him of assaulting Murphy. The only source on the trial, the story in the New York Amsterdam News, did not mention what evidence was presented. One issue may have been how Conn claimed he picked Boyett out of the crowd; only the Daily News explicitly mentioned that he saw Boyett beating Murphy, although the 28th Precinct police blotter recorded the charge against him as "kicked complainant." A likely alternative scenario to that offered by Conn was that he simply fired at the crowd rather than singling out Boyett and calling on him to halt, and that his shot hit Boyett, whose injury consequently led Conn to arrest him.

The New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Associated Press reported Boyett had been shot in the right shoulder, the Daily Mirror in the left shoulder, the New York American and Home News in the shoulder, and the New York Times, New York Sun, and New York Evening Journal reported the wound was in his back. Hospital records indicate that a doctor from Knickerbocker Hospital treated a wound to Boyett's right shoulder before he was placed in a cell. Conn was based at the 30th Precinct; St. Nicholas Avenue was the boundary between that precinct and the 28th Precinct. Rather than taking Boyett to his own precinct, Conn took him to the 28th Precinct station on West 123rd Street, as Boyett appeared in that precinct's police blotter. Both Murphy and Boyett appear in lists of the injured published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, Daily News, and New York American. Only Murphy appears in the list of injured published in the Home News and New York Post and only Boyett, in a list of those shot, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Herald Tribune.

Groups of Black men allegedly targeted at least three other white men around this time, all, unlike Murphy, in the area where crowds were clashing with police. William Kitlitz reported being attacked by James Smitten in front of Kress’ store, Maurice Spellman being assaulted at 125th Street and 8th Avenue, and Morris Werner at 125th Street and 7th Avenue. All those white 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 Street and 7th Avenue would continue to be the location of alleged 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 west of 8th Avenue. That section of Harlem was still an area of Black residents.

Murphy was one of four white men and women allegedly 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 injured. Police did shoot and kill two Black men, Lloyd Hobbs and James Thompson, in the latter case also injuring two white bystanders.

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