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

Harry Gordon speaks to a crowd & Patrolman Irwin Young assaulted

Around 6.00 PM, a group of three white men and a black man arrived on 125th Street and began picketing in front of Kress’ store. Reports identified the men as members of the Young Liberators, an organization with ties to the Communist Party that had offices close by, at 262 Lenox Ave near 126th Street, although it is not clear that they identified themselves as such. 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, Harry 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 10.30 PM, by which time the crowds had moved to other parts of the neighborhood. Young was back on the streets by 10.10 PM, when he arrested Leroy Gillard at 200 West 128th Street, for allegedly looting.

The New York Age, New York Herald Tribune and Home News initially identified Gordon as the member of the group speaking to the crowd, pulled off the stand by Young and other officers. The New York American, New York Evening Journal, and New York Times instead name Daniel Miller as the speaker. 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 police did not actually charge him with inciting a riot.

When Gordon appeared in court the Assistant District Attorney 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. Lists of the injured variously described the injuries Young suffered as “cuts on hands” (New York Daily News; New York Evening Journal), “lacerations of right hand” (New York Herald Tribune), and "bruised on the hand" (New York American) – not serious enough injuries to justify a felony charge. The New York Herald Tribune 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. 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 suggests that he likely had some connection with the group, as he identified himself at the hearings as a member of the National Student League, another Communist-led group - and only the Daily Worker, the Communist Party paper, could locate and interview him.

Gordon is mentioned in most coverage of the disorder. Both the Hearst newspapers, the New York Evening News, New York American and the Daily Mirror, and DA William Dodge focused particular attention on the involvement of Communists and the possibility that they had instigated the disorder, the alleged assault on Young does not feature prominently in that reporting.

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 the New York Times and the charges police made, but the New York Times and New York Age 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 four alleged Communists  – but both stories rely on elements contradicted by other sources. The New York Times omits Gordon from the group arrested in front of the store whereas all the other sources confirm he was arrested then. The New York Herald Tribune 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, but is making another arrest around four hours later, at 10.10 PM. In a separate story on the same day the Herald Tribune 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.

Gordon appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, shortly after the other white men arrested at the start of the disorder. The clerk initially recorded the charge against him as felonious assault, but later struck that out and wrote "Red[uced] to Simple Assault misd[emeanor]." Magistrate Renaud remanded him to reappear on the March 25, and then again to March 27, before transferring his case to the Court of Special Sessions.

[That court later discharged Gordon].

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