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

Patrolman Irwin Young assaulted

Around 6.00PM, Harry Gordon, three other white men and a black man arrived on 125th Street and began picketing in front of Kress’ store. The group were members of the Young Liberators, an organization with ties to the Communist Party that had offices nearby, at 262 Lenox Ave near 126th Street. They carried signs that read “Kress Brutally Beats and Seriously Injures Negro Child and Negro Women. Negro and White Don’t Buy Here” and “Kress Brutally Beats Negro Child.” At some point the men set up a stand in front of the store and a member of the group began to speak to the crowd gathered there. When someone threw a rock through the window of Kress’ store, police moved to arrest the speaker. In the ensuing struggle, Gordon allegedly grabbed Patrolman Irwin Young’s nightstick and used it to hit the officer. He and the four other men were arrested and hurried into waiting cars. Young was the first police officer allegedly assaulted in the disorder; five others would be assaulted around 125th Street before 10.30PM, by which time the crowds had moved to other parts of the neighborhood.

Most sources identify Gordon as the member of the group speaking to the crowd, pulled off the stand by Irwin and other officers. The NYAm and NYT name another member of the group, Daniel Miller, as the speaker, and describe Gordon responding to Miller’s arrest by climbing a nearby lamppost to rally the crowd before police also pulled him down and placed him under arrest. Newspapers listed the five men among those arrested, charged with inciting a riot; only some reported Gordon was charged with assault. A small number of subsequent reports omitted Gordon from the group arrested in front of Kress’ store, perhaps because of the different charge against him.

When Gordon appeared in court the ADA downgraded the assault charge from a felony to a misdemeanor. At the hearing police alleged that Gordon was standing on a mailbox in front of the Kress store and yelling that a Negro boy had been murdered in the store at the time Young moved to arrest him. It was when Young pulled him down from that perch that Gordon allegedly assaulted him. Reports variously described the injuries Young suffered as “cuts on hands” (NYDN), “lacerations of right hand” (HT; NYJ) – not serious enough injuries to justify a felony charge. The HT reported Young received medical treatment at the scene, but he does not appear in the hospital records, as the other officers injured around this time do.

Several days later, testifying on the first day of the hearings held by the MCCH, Louise Thompson contradicted Young’s account of Gordon’s arrest. She declared that Gordon did “nothing” while being “brutally beaten by two large Policemen.” Gordon himself later appeared at the hearings to not only deny that he had assaulted Young but to charge the officer had hit him from behind with the night stick, and continued to beat him during the car journey to the precinct and the booking, and again later while he was a prisoner (and in interview in the DW, he described police assaults on black prisoners). In his testimony Gordon denied being part of a protest in front of Kress’, claiming instead he was a passerby who climbed the lamppost to urge the crowd to disperse. However, other evidence contradicts that claim – including the appearance of an ILD lawyer in court to represent him and the other members of the Young Liberators. (Gordon was also interviewed in the DW, while other journalists could not locate him).

Gordon is mentioned in most coverage of the disorder, as both the Hearst newspapers and DA William Dodge focused attention on the involvement of Communists and the possibility that they had instigated the disorder – a claim that the MCCH report refuted. His alleged assault on Young does not feature prominently in that reporting, which is more concerned with his possible role instigating others.


The available sources offer conflicting information on these events, The Mayor’s Commission report describes two different speakers being arrested in front of Kress’ store without naming either, with the first speaker arrested after someone threw an object that smashed one of the store windows, and the second later dragged down from a lamppost across the street. That account is in line with those in Am and NYT, but the NYT and NYA both report that Young was injured later in the disorder, at the rear of Kress’ store at the same time as three other officers not during the arrest of the Young Liberators  – but both stories rely on elements contradicted by other sources. The NYA reports that Gordon was charged only with inciting a riot, where other records, including court records, confirm the charge was assault. The NYT reported that Gordon assaulted Young in the clashes at the rear of Kress’ store on 124th Street, and omits him from the group arrested in front of the store whereas all the other sources confirm he was part of the group arrested earlier. The HT included Young in its list of injured police in similar terms as the officers assaulted on 124th Street, including reporting that Young received medical treatment, but he does not appear in the hospital records as those other officers do. In a separate story on the same day the HT also includes Gordon in a list of those arrested, accused of assaulting Young while speaking in front of the store. So while it is possible that Young could have arrested Gordon and returned to be part of the clashes on 124th Street, it appears more likely that the stories mistakenly lumped him in with the group of officers injured then.

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